LaRaza en los USA - An accidental release at the Census Bureau revealed surprising details about U.S. Hispanics and Latinos

The Monastery of Christ in the Desert, Abiquiu, N.M. (Karl W. Wegmann/Alamy)

If “Hispanic” were an ordinary ancestry, it would easily be America’s most common, well ahead of German. But it’s not. It’s a fantastically broad term whose meaning swerves and sways depending on whom — and where — you’re asking.

Since 1997, the U.S. government has defined Hispanic (or Latino) as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.” In most of the United States, the largest Hispanic group is Mexican.

Of course it is! Mexico is the most populous Spanish-speaking country on Earth, by far, and it shares 1,954 miles of border with the United States. More importantly, a third of the continental United States — parts of 10 states that are now home to at least 1 in 4 Americans — used to be part of Mexico.

But a substantial share of Hispanic Americans also come from Puerto Rico, especially those living in the Northeast and Central Florida. Puerto Ricans also dominate Puerto Rico, of course — though at this point, Puerto Ricans on the mainland outnumber those in the Caribbean territory.

And there are large pockets of Hispanics from other places: Central Americans dominate in the D.C. area. Folks from South America and the Caribbean predominate in Florida and the New York-to-Boston urban corridor. And in New Mexico and southern Colorado, there’s a significant population of Hispanos — descendants of people who settled there centuries before Mexico gained independence from Spain and whose roots trace directly to that European nation.

 

Despite their different origins, these Hispanic groups share many similarities, both to each other and to the nation as a whole. Most Hispanic Americans were born in the United States (68 percent), for example. And while many speak Spanish at home, a third speak only English (32 percent).

These statistics come with a fat asterisk: As it turns out, they don’t include everybody who considers themselves “Hispanic or Latino.” We know this thanks to the demographic demigods at the Pew Research Center, who discovered a revealing aberration in a recent census data release.....

MUCHAS MAS ESTADISTICAS EN EL ENLACE...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/19/hispanic-latino-brazilian-census-definition/