Karen Hill

Andy Garcia is not Italian, but the actor played Italians in two of his biggest film roles: a rookie G-man in The Untouchables (1987) and the heir to a Mafia family in The Godfather, Part III (1990). Garcia is a Cuban American. Born in Havana in 1956, he fled with his family to Miami after … Read more

The first Latino astronaut was Costa Rican born Franklin Chang Diaz (1950- ). A physicist who specializes in plasma rockets, he became an astronaut in 1981 and first flew aboard the space shuttle in 1986. California-born physicist Ellen Ochoa (1958-) was the first Latina astronaut. She became an astronaut in 1991 and first flew into … Read more

Those shirts with the two stripes down the front that you often see in Florida are called guayabera shirts. They are popular in warm parts of Latin America and among many Hispanic American men, especially in Florida. They have pleated stripes down the front, four pockets, and side vents. No need to tuck them in; … Read more

Based in Secaucus, New Jersey, Goya Foods specializes in foods for the U.S. Latino population. It was founded in 1936 by Prudencio Unanue, a Spanish businessman who moved to Puerto Rico before settling in New York. Still headed by a Unanue family member, Goya is now one of the five hundred largest private companies, according … Read more

Univision and Telemundo are both owned by Anglo companies. The cable network Galavision is Mexican-owned. Management and performing talent tend to be white Cubans and South Americans. Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Hispanics of mixed race are severely underrepresented. Many newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and web sites are devoted to Latinos. Some are in Spanish, some … Read more

Critics of undocumented immigrants say they take jobs from “real” Americans and burden the welfare system. But supporters say undocumented immigrants take menial, low-paying jobs that Americans would be unlikely to take. Supporters also say that undocumented immigrants are less likely than American citizens to apply for welfare benefits. Why would someone who fears capture … Read more

Not many immigrants come from Spain these days. In 1995, 1,321 came, far fewer than the 89,932 admitted from Mexico. Nowadays, the annual immigration from Spain is roughly equivalent to the numbers from the Netherlands or the former Czechoslovakia.

Americans first started noticing Antonio Banderas in a 1988 film called Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This dark comedy from Spain played to great acclaim in the United States. Its director, Pedro Almodovar, became internationally known, as did Banderas, a star of this and other AlmodOvar films. The actor has since come … Read more

Hispanic immigrants to the United States often think of themselves first as nationals of a particular country, Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador. Their U.S. born children or grandchildren may become so assimilated to Anglo culture that they think of themselves as Americans rather than Hispanic Americans. There is considerable discord between Hispanic … Read more

Hispanic Americans marry outside their national group often. In this, they show the willingness to mix that has always been part of Hispanic culture. The practice tends to break down walls between communities. When a Mexican American marries a Puerto Rican, the common bond between Hispanics is strengthened. When their child marries an Anglo, the … Read more

Remesas are “remittances”, money that immigrants to the United States send home to their families in Latin America. The immigrants save up the money from their jobs and send it home, often via one of several courier agencies that specialize in the task. For many Latin American countries, remesas are an important source of foreign … Read more

The first Puerto Rican to break into professional golf was Juan “Chi Chi” Rodriguez. Born in Puerto Rico in 1937, he worked as a caddy at age six. Too poor to afford to buy equipment, he made his own golf club from a guava tree branch and practiced his swing on tin cans. By the … Read more

A hammock is a bed of netting or canvas that hangs between trees or other supports. The Spanish picked up both the item and the word, hamaca, from the Arawak or Taino of the West Indies. Hammocks are now familiar all over the world, particulary in tropical vacation spots and sunny backyards, but are especially … Read more

The card game canasta is a variation on rummy and originated in Uruguay and Argentina in the 1940s. With a name that means “basket” in Spanish, canasta quickly spread throughout Latin America. It became a big fad in the United States between 1949 and 1951. Its variants include other games with Latino-flavored names, such as … Read more

The first Latino to break into major league baseball was Esteban Bellan in 1871. But Hispanics did not become a major force in baseball until after 1947, when Jackie Robinson made it possible for players to be nonwhite. Since then, people from many parts of Latin America have come to make up a large percentage … Read more

The singer Julio Iglesias, born in 1943, is from Spain, but he is highly popular throughout Latin America and among Hispanic Americans. His early albums were all in Spanish, but he has recorded songs in other languages as well, including English and French. That practice has made him an international star, appreciated by people of … Read more

The samba did not come from any Spanish speaking country. The dance called the samba comes from Portuguese-speaking Brazil, where it evolved as a folk dance among people of African descent. It became a dance for urban Brazilian couples in the late nineteenth century, and became internationally popular in the 1920s and 1930s. It was … Read more

Hollywood has a long tradition of using non-Hispanics to play Hispanic roles. Silent-screen “Latin” lover Rudolph Valentino was Italian. Tyrone Power practically made a living playing suave Spaniards in films such as The Mark of Zorro (1940). Blond, blue-eyed Charlton Heston played a Mexican detective in Touch of Evil (1958). Things hadn’t changed that much … Read more

Belying the common image of the Hispanic American as a hired hand in someone’s factory or field, Latinos are more likely than ever to run their own companies. As of 1992, Hispanic Americans owned 862,605 businesses-5 percent of all the businesses in the country. California, Texas, and Florida have especially high numbers of Hispanic-owned business. … Read more

Hispanic Americans do all kinds of work. Here is an assortment of occupations that some have pursued. You may be surprised to hear that some on the list are Latino. Lyle Alzado: Football lineman Martina Arroyo: Opera singer and sometime guest star on TV’s The Odd Couple Joan Baez: Folksinger Jerry Garcia: Deceased leader of … Read more

The Puerto Rican actress Rosie Perez, born circa 1968, grew up in troubled circumstances in Brooklyn. At twelve, she was put in a group home for cutting a woman’s neck. Moving to Los Angeles, she found a constructive way to channel her frenetic energy: as a star of such movies as Do the Right Thing … Read more

Futbol is the Latin American name for soccer, one of the region’s favorite sports. Another favorite pastime is beisbol, or baseball. American football has not really caught on in Latin America. But tennis, golf, and boxing have long been crowd-pleasers. Soccer, known as football outside North America, has become increasingly popular in the United States, … Read more

Latino performers were rare in the 1930s and 1940s, the Golden Era of Hollywood. Mexican-born Lupe Velez was popular for her “Mexican Spitfire” comedies. Dominican American Maria Montez appeared in adventure films. Mexican American Anthony Quinn played minor villains until the 1950s, when he became a full-fledged star. The greatest exception was the sex goddess … Read more

Spain still has a king, but the king’s power is restrained by law. The current ruler is King Juan Carlos I, who succeeded Franco upon the dictator’s death in 1975. Born in 1938, Juan Carlos helped Spain make the transition from autocratic to democratic rule. As a constitutional monarchy, the country is governed by the … Read more

Hispanics from one country get mistaken for Hispanics from another country all the time. As a rule, Anglos on the West Coast assume every Hispanic they meet is from Mexico. Anglos on the East Coast assume all Hispanics are from Puerto Rico, except for Miami Anglos, who think they are all from Cuba. There are … Read more

Among the people who fled Spain during the Spanish civil war was a future Nobel Prize winner: poet Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958). He was one of many intellectuals opposed to Franco who emigrated at this time. He lived in Cuba for a while, then in the United States, where he taught at the University of … Read more

Born in 1905, the Spanish-born molecular biologist fled war in Europe to come to the United States in 1941. For thirty-two years, beginning in 1942, he taught at New York University. One of his interests was RNA (ribonucleic acid), a compound found in living cells that is important in cell reproduction. Ochoa isolated an enzyme … Read more

The last name of American writer Truman Capote (1924-1984) is Spanish. Of Spanish American descent, he was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He became well known for his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and his “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood (1966), an account of the real-life mass murder of a rural Kansas family. Celebrated in … Read more

The Abraham Lincoln Battalion was a battalion of about 2,800 volunteers from the United States who traveled to Spain to fight for the Republican cause in the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). With similar volunteer units from more than fifty other countries, it was part of the International Brigades. The Abraham Lincoln Battalion, also known as … Read more

Sixty-five percent of Hispanic Americans call themselves Democrats, and most elected Latinos in Congress are Democrats. But Democratic candidates should not assume that Latinos vote strictly by party. Traditional Democratic issues, civil rights, immigrants’ rights, social programs to aid the poor, are important to Latinos. But so are such Republican watchwords as law and order, … Read more

The unusual name of jai alai comes from Basque, it means “joyous festival.” Cuban Basques brought it to the United States in 1924. It is popular today in Florida and Connecticut, where betting on the game is legal. Also called pelota (Spanish for “ball”), the game is played with a hard rubber ball and wicker … Read more

Basque Americans settled mainly in Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon, along with some other parts of the West, including California and Wyoming. They first came to the United States in the 1800s. Skilled as shepherds, Basque immigrants found work in that business and came to dominate the sheepherding industry of the West. Most were poor when … Read more

Between 1906 and 1913, Hawaii was a popular destination for Spanish immigrants because work could be found there in the sugarcane fields. During those years, about eight thousand Spanish immigrants came to the South Pacific islands of Hawaii, then a U.S. possession and now a state. Most of these Spanish Americans later settled near San … Read more

Basques are a people with an unusual distinction: they are Europe’s oldest known ethnic group. To look at them, you might think they are Spanish, but their homeland, known as the Basque country, straddles both southwest France and northern Spain. Their native language is not Spanish but Basque, which has no known ties to any … Read more

There are more than five thousand Hispanic elected officials in the United States, including about twenty members of the U.S. House of Representatives. President Bill Clinton’s first-term cabinet included two Hispanics: Henry Cisneros, secretary of housing and urban development, and Federico Pena, secretary of transportation. Of the two, only Pena stayed on in Clinton’s second … Read more

The first Hispanic mayor of a major American city was Henry Cisneros (1947– ), future U.S. cabinet member. He was mayor of San Antonio, Texas, the nation’s ninth largest city, from 1982 to 1990.

The Spanish civil war started in 1936 when General Francisco Franco (1892-1975) led a revolt against the Spanish Republic. Franco was a fascist, which meant he believed in a dictatorial, militaristic form of government. Germany and Italy, both fascist states at the time, sent arms and advisers to support Franco’s group, known as the Nationalists, … Read more

As of 1994, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 30.7 percent, nearly a third, of Hispanic Americans lived below the poverty level. That means that a family of four would make under $15,141 per year. Poverty is more widespread among Hispanic Americans than among white Americans. The proportion of white Americans living under the poverty … Read more

Many Hispanic Americans are recent immigrants from impoverished countries. Many can only find work in unskilled jobs. With effort and education, they or their children may yet achieve middle-class prosperity. Others have been here a long time but suffer from generations of discrimination, notably the Chicanos of the West and Southwest. With poverty come such … Read more

The term “illegal alien” is loaded with a presumption of criminal guilt. In contrast, “undocumented worker” is a neutral description of the situation of people who are in the United States without papers proving their legal status. If an immigration court were to hear their cases, it might conceivably uphold their right to be here. … Read more

Spanglish is the informal name for a brand of Spanish peppered with borrowed words or phrases from English. Even in Latin America, some Hispanics routinely use words like lonche (for “lunch”) or jonron (for “home run”) because the word pleases the ear or best expresses a certain shade of meaning. Puerto Ricans like to throw … Read more

There are many variations in Spanish dialect. In New Mexico, a relatively pure form of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish has been preserved from the days before the region was conquered by the United States. Many Chicanos of Texas and California speak Pachuco, a slang that includes Mexican expressions and English-derived terms. The fast-paced Cuban dialect … Read more

There is no single stand on bilingual education for most Hispanic Americans. Many agree that children who have just immigrated should be allowed to pursue some studies in Spanish until English mastery is achieved. Children who speak no English cannot reasonably be expected to just pick it up without having their grades suffer. On the … Read more

A growing minority of Latinos are Protestant, but the vast majority remain Roman Catholic. Like many other Catholics, they do not always observe all the church’s rules, but they get their kids baptized and often make financial sacrifices to send them to parochial school. The Virgin Mary and the saints are honored with pictures and … Read more

Anglo prejudice against Hispanic Americans is matched only by Hispanic American prejudice against Anglos. Many Latinos think of Anglos as cold, materialistic, and money-grubbing. By contrast, Latinos see themselves as warm, family-oriented, community-minded people. One Colombian said of Anglos: “They don’t care for their fellow man, be it their father, son, or neighbor. They only … Read more

Many possible origins have been suggested for the term gringo, a disparaging name used by Latinos to refer to Anglos. Some people think it originated in the phrase Mexicans used to yell to green-coated U.S. troops during the Mexican War: “Green, go.” But the phrase is found all over Latin America, not just in Mexico. … Read more

Some scholars think this insulting name for a Latino is related to how Latinos pronounce the word “speak,” as in “No spic English.” However, it was applied to Italian Americans before being targeted against Hispanics, and might be an abbreviation of “spaghetti.”

For the same reason you don’t see the Frito Bandido anymore. These character trademarks were staples of TV commercials of the 1960s. They were popular with Anglo American audiences but offended many Hispanic Americans. The Fritos corn chip bandit suggested a sterotype of Mexicans as sleazy criminals. The Chiquita Banana girl made Latinos seem silly … Read more

One famous Spanish American from the 1900s is the actor Martin Sheen. He was born Ramon Estevez in Ohio in 1940 to a Spanish immigrant father and Irish American mother. His most famous film is probably Apocalypse Now (1979). His sons Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen are also movie stars. The winner of the 1968 … Read more

Under U.S. immigration laws enacted in 1965 and afterward, no more than 270,000 visas permitting immigration can be issued in any given year. No more than 20,000 visas can be issued to any single country per year. Some categories are exempt from this limitation, such as children of U.S. citizens and political refugees. Even so, … Read more

A compadre is literally a coparent. When a Latino child is born, the parents choose good friends to be compadres, often the godmother and godfather (madrina or padrino) at the child’s baptism. The compadre is expected to be a second parent throughout the child’s life, keeping in contact and helping out as needed. The system … Read more

For Latin American women, the ideology of machismo has often meant oppression and second-class status. Many accept the authority of men as an inescapable part of life, whether it is legitimate or not. Latinas in the United States have greater freedom than in their home countries to earn a living and be respected as equals … Read more

The racial makeup of South America’s Hispanics varies greatly. Many are mestizos, a mix of European and Native American, but there are also mulattoes, blacks, pure whites, and pure Native Americans. In the highlands of Andean nations live many Native Americans, representing 45 percent of Peru’s population and 55 percent of Bolivia’s. In Argentina and … Read more

The link between machismo and Latino culture is strong. It is so strong that Anglos who would like to seem tough often try to identify themselves with Hispanic culture. Nowhere is this more true than in movies and TV. Clint Eastwood wore a poncho in his westerns. As a Secret Service agent in In the … Read more

The Spanish word for male is macho. Machismo is the Latino idea of what it means to be a man. It includes such notions as courage, virility, honor, toughness. It usually implies that men are superior to women and rightfully hold authority over them. At its noblest, machismo means providing for one’s family, keeping one’s … Read more

South Americans use the same methods as other undocumented immigrants from Latin America. Some first travel to Mexico and are smuggled into the United States over the border. Others visit the United States on tourist visas, then quietly stay after the visas expire. In the heavily Hispanic section of New York City called Jackson Heights, … Read more

Many South Americans seeking a better life go to other countries on the continent. Colombians, for example, often move to neighboring Venezuela, Ecuador, or Panama. Peruvians may emigrate to Chile, Paraguay, or Argentina. Some feel they will have an easier time in a foreign country that shares their language and some common elements of Latino … Read more

On the whole, South American immigrants to the United States tend to be better educated and more prosperous than other Hispanic newcomers. They tend to be middle-class people with technical skills and a strong belief in education. Many come from cities rather than rural areas. One reason: travel to the United States is expensive. It … Read more

In Spain and Latin America, a child is given both its father’s last name and its mother’s maiden name. For example, Anita Castillo Sanchez would be the daughter of a father named Castillo and a mother whose maiden name was Sanchez. The mother is thereby honored along with the father, though her name will drop … Read more

During the 1980s and 1990s, the military dictatorships and juntas fell by the wayside. For the moment, democratically elected governments prevail across the continent. But in every country there is always the danger of a return to military rule. Problems continue. In the 1980s and ’90s, both Peru and Colombia fought wars against guerrilla armies. … Read more

Three words explain why South Americans started coming to the United States in larger numbers after 1950: commercial air travel. By the end of World War II, commercial flights to the United States had come within the reach of middle-class South Americans. If they could afford a plane ticket, they could come. They had reason … Read more

Political instability has plagued the continent throughout its history. Ever since achieving independence, the nations of South America have been famous for their frequent revolutions and coups. Constitutions and elected presidents give way to dictators and juntas and new constitutions and presidents. The 1960s and 1970s were a particularly stormy time. The military took power … Read more

Many people are not aware of South Americans in the United States perhaps because South American immigrants tend not to think of themselves as South American, or even as Hispanic. They identify with their home country, Ecuador or Peru, for example. In many cases, these countries have long been rivals or enemies. An Ecuadoran might … Read more

According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1.5 million South Americans have come to the United States from 1820 to 1995. Most of them have come from South America’s Hispanic nations. Ninety-one percent have come just since 1950, and 85 percent since 1960. In the 1980s alone, 456,000 South Americans were admitted to the United … Read more

In the United States, the nuclear family, mother, father, children, is by far the most important unit of kinship. In Latin America, the nuclear family is one part of a vast extended family of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, who live close together and help each other out. Moving to the United States breaks up … Read more