In the Spanish version of Wikipedia, the word Latinos refers to the Latins, the ancient tribe who spoke Latin and lived in Latium, while the people we call Latinos in English are referred to as “Latinoamericanos.” Who knew?
To learn that there are two kinds of Latinos, bilingually speaking, the ancient and the modern, gave me pause. I realized I didn’t know how modern Latinos had acquired the name.
The following summarizes the legacy of ancient Latinos, explains how they became the namesakes of modern Latinos, and considers some connotations.
The ancient Latinos founded the city of Rome, which then conquered and colonized the Mediterranean basin and beyond, creating an empire of around 60,000,000 people, about ten percent of whom were enslaved.
In the Western Empire, Latin became the common language. By the time Christianity became the empire’s official religion, Latin was already the language of the Roman Catholic Church.
When the empire in the West fragmented, so did Latin, morphing into the various Romance languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Although English is mostly made up of Latin-based words, it is considered Germanic due to its structure.
During the Middle Ages, Latin continued to be the language of the European elites and the Roman Catholic Church, by then the hegemon of Western Europe.
The Renaissance was the rediscovery and revival of the Classical World from which the new kingdoms and languages of Western Europe had descended. Works written in Latin were both the stimulus and vehicle of this rebirth.
Spain, Portugal, France and England also revived the imperial impulse, sending forth soldiers, colonists and missionaries. Emulating Rome, they forged empires that covered over half the planet, including almost all of the Americas. All four also enslaved people.
These empires crumbled, of course, but, like Rome before them, they left their marks. About a third of the people in the world are now Christians, and an overlapping third now speak one of the four colonizer languages, all of which use the Latin script you are reading now.
In 1855, the French statesman Michel Chevalier developed the idea of Pan-Latinism. In his formulation, the Romance language, Catholic (Pan-Latin) nations were the natural intersectional allies of France in its struggle with the Germanic language, Protestant (Pan-German) nations and the Slavic language, Orthodox (Pan-Slav) nations. He was erecting a big tent for what he called the Latin Race.
Around 1860, Emperor Napoleon III, eager to reestablish French power in the Americas, raised the banner of Pan-Latinism. Soon, the French press was calling on the recently independent Spanish-speaking nations of the Western Hemisphere to rally round that banner, giving these nations a new Pan-Latin name: Amérique latine or, in English, Latin America. Their people were called Latino-Américains.
Et, voila! The French coined the modern term “Latino.”
What Napoleon III really wanted was to make Mexico a junior partner in France’s effort to compete with the United States, and, because the U.S. was entering its Civil War, he thought the time was right to test the Monroe Doctrine, which discouraged European intervention in the Americas. (He even provided the slave-holding Confederacy with financial support, hoping it would survive, thus dividing Pan-German power in North America.)
So, in early 1862, Napoleon III ordered the French army to march on Mexico City and topple the government of President Juarez.
On May 5, 1862, the French were turned back by the Mexican army at Puebla.
On May 9, 1862, Juárez declared that this victory would be celebrated forever as Cinco de Mayo. In June of 1863, the French army took Mexico City. Juarez retreated.
In April of 1864, Napoleon III installed Maximilian von Habsburg as the Emperor of Mexico. By early 1865, Emperor Maximilian I and the French army controlled central Mexico.
In April of 1865, the Civil War ended, and what had been modest American support for Juarez became substantial. Surplus weapons and ammunition reinforced American diplomatic pressure on France.
In 1866, Napoleon III ordered the French army to withdraw from Mexico. Maximilian I chose to stay and fight.
On May 15, 1867, Maximilian I, outgunned, outnumbered, and surrounded, surrendered.
On June 19, 1867, Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico, was executed by firing squad.
Napoleon III’s dream of a Latino-Américain empire led by France died as well. The term “Latin America” survived, however, as did the name “Latino” — but how?
The liberal elites of Spanish descent in Mexico had come to view the monarchy from which their country had recently won its independence as backward, so to call themselves Hispanoamericanos was unacceptable. France, on the other hand, had been safely ousted from the hemisphere and was entering its Belle Époque. From 1871 until World War I, France was the cultural capital of the modern world. As Carlos Fuentes put it,
“Repudiating Spain meant accepting France as a new temple of freedom, good taste, romanticism, and all the good things that life had to offer.”
So Paris was cool, and cosmopolitan Mexicans wishing to associate themselves with modern European culture could announce their fandom by adopting the chic Panlatino name “Latinoamericanos.” Again, voila!
Later, when immigrants to the United States from Central and South America needed a name that would deemphasize their previous national, racial, and linguistic differences, they embraced the inclusive Latinoamericanos. Any differences in their old countries were less significant than their differences with the predominantly Anglo culture in their new home.
Today, in English, the name Latino is the big tent for these immigrants, their descendants, and anyone in the U.S. who identifies with the culture of Latin America. Understandably, the Spanish, Portuguese, and French, as Europeans, are generally excluded.
While it is axiomatic in the United States today that each individual has the right to be addressed however they want, the word Latino does carry some baggage. After all, the Romans were enslavers, conquerors, and colonizers. Their linguistic, religious, and cultural successors — the empires of Western Europe — were as well, on a global scale, and added mass conversion to the list.
To make the point finer, Latin was the official language of the Crusades, the Crucifixion, and the Spanish Inquisition.
One episode highlights the irony. When the French Emperor Napoleon III used the French army to install an Austrian, Maximilian von Habsburg, a man who had never before crossed the Atlantic and had only recently learned Spanish, as Emperor of Mexico, Benito Juárez, the first fully indigenous elected president in the Americas, had the Pan-Latin puppet shot. Juárez wasn’t imperial France’s Latino-Américain pawn; he was a Mexican.
Like President Juarez, many Latinos today do not really see themselves as the heirs or descendants of those who once conquered, colonized, converted, and enslaved them. They may share the name, even the language, but not the baggage.
So when you hear the word “Latino,” do you hear the echoes of the heraldic trumpets of conquering European emperors? I don’t. I hear Ricky Muñoz of the Tejano/Norteño group Intocable playing the lilting opening bars of the song “Caminare” on his accordion.
Words can change over time.
Scott Chambers is a cartoonist, author and songwriter in Encinitas.