Latinos
Hispanic and Latino Americans are Americans who have a Hispanic or Latino American background, culture, or family origin. This demographic group includes all Americans who identify as Hispanic or Latino, regardless of race. According to annual estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2024, the Hispanic and Latino population was estimated at 68,086,153, representing approximately 20% of the total U.S. population, making them the second-largest group in the country after the non-Hispanic White population.
"Origin" can be viewed as the ancestry, nationality group, lineage or country of birth of the person, parents or ancestors before their arrival into the United States of America. People who identify as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race, because similarly to what occurred during the colonization and post-independence of the United States, Latin American countries have had populations made up of multiracial and monoracial descendants of settlers from the metropole of a European colonial empire (in the case of Latin American countries, Spanish and Portuguese settlers, unlike the Thirteen Colonies that will form the United States, which received settlers from the United Kingdom). Hispanics and Latinos of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry are sometimes known as mestizos. In addition, there are also Indigenous peoples of the Americas (Native Americans), descendants of African slaves brought to Latin America in the colonial era, and post-independence immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia.
As one of only two specifically designated categories of ethnicity in the United States, Hispanics and Latinos form a pan-ethnicity incorporating a diversity of inter-related cultural and linguistic heritages, in which use of the Spanish language is the most important common element. The largest national origin groups of Hispanic and Latino Americans in order of population size are: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Salvadoran, Dominican, Colombian, Guatemalan, Honduran, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan. Although commonly embraced by Latino communities, Brazilians are officially not considered Hispanic or Latino. The predominant origin of regional Hispanic and Latino populations varies widely in different locations across the country. In 2012, Hispanic Americans were the second fastest-growing ethnic group by percentage growth in the United States after Asian Americans.
Hispanic Americans of mixed Indigenous descent and European (typically Spanish) descent are the second oldest racial group (after the Native Americans) to inhabit much of what is today the United States. Spain colonized large areas of what is today the American Southwest and West Coast, as well as Florida. Its holdings included all of present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida, as well as parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, all of which constituted part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, based in Mexico City. Later, this vast territory (except Florida, which Spain ceded to the United States in 1821) became part of Mexico after its independence from Spain in 1821 and until the end of the Mexican–American War in 1848.
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