To the US Govt - the guys who publish all the statistics telling us how many of who or what we are here - "Hispanic" means origination from a geographical area south of an arbitrary political border. Hence "Hispanics" who have spoken nothing but English (Belize, Trinidad) or Portuguese (Brazil) all their lives, Hispanics who are as "white" as I am, Hispanics who are black, are all lumped in to one group as "Hispanics".
Just to continue the hijack, this is extracted from another post I made:
I believe there is some debate about this term as there is about the [mis]use of the word Latino/a.
The term Latino itself is in this context a generic non English and non ethnic term used to describe any person ancestrally from a Latin speaking country, so this would therefore include Portugal and Brasil (and Italy, Romania etc). Many Spaniards I know do consider themselves Latino, some do not. Often the word is only used by them to describe their lifestyle.
The term Latino is often [mis]used in the US for Latino-American, i.e someone from South or Central America including Brasil. Thus, for example, as a Spaniard Antonia Banderas
is Latino but not Latino-American.
We also have a good number of Portuguese in my area, Portuguese as in native to Portugal or the Azores. Do we lump them in with the "Hispanics" just because they speak the same language as the typical Brazilian? (I don't know, I never asked one - I suspect they'd be unimpressed with the notion)..
....Brazilians and Portuguese speak Portuguese, which last I checked was not Spanish, even if it is very similar.
Hispanic: of or relating to the Spanish language or culture. simple.
As I understand it, strictly, for the Portuguese the collective term is Lusitanic or Lusophone. So named for the area of the Western Iberian peninsula formerly called Lusitania and re-enforced later with the creation of Hispania Ulterior Lusitania by Augustus.
The former Roman colony of Hispania did originally include what is now Portugal so excluding the Portugese from being Hispanic would seem illogical
at face value. However since the end of the Portuguese restoration war the two cultures have gone their own ways linguistically and culturally. Spain retained the by then derived word Spania for its sole use.
One could really only call Lusophones Hispanic for their interaction
with Hispanics. The US Census does not generally report Portuguese speakers as Hispanic because it's a term generally reserved for Spanish speaking peoples. I suppose one
could argue lusophones are a subset of Hispanics though I doubt that would be well received!
In real. everyday terms I'd agree NIC is quite correct, historically I'd say it's arguable. Big D, I'm unsure what you mean? The meaning of Hispanic has nothing to do with borders or their latitude and everything to do with lingustic and cultural heritage.
