by the El Reportero editorial board

The question behind this column arose unexpectedly while El Reportero was preparing a recent story about a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency event celebrating our community’s heritage. During that process, Beatriz, who provided us with information for the story, raised a simple but important question: Should we call ourselves Latino or Hispanic?

It is a question that deserves more than a quick answer.

The word “Latino” is used so naturally today in the United States and throughout the Americas that we rarely stop to ask what it actually means, where it came from, or whether it accurately describes the historical and cultural inheritance of our people.

That question led us to look more closely at the history behind these terms. And what we found makes a strong case that, historically and culturally, Hispanic describes much more of our inheritance than the modern label Latino alone can convey.

“Latino” did not originate in the Americas. Its roots lie in Latium, the region of ancient Italy where Rome emerged. As Rome expanded, Latin, Roman law, institutions and customs spread throughout large parts of Europe.

One of those territories was Hispania, the Roman name for much of the Iberian Peninsula. Centuries later, through a long and complex historical process, Spain and Portugal emerged from that Iberian world.

And here an important distinction begins.

Rome never conquered the Americas. There were no Roman provinces in Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil or Argentina. Roman legions did not establish American cities, nor did Rome directly bring Latin to the New World.

The connection came through another route: Rome profoundly influenced Hispania; Spain and Portugal emerged from the Iberian Peninsula; and Spaniards and Portuguese later brought their languages, institutions, religion, legal traditions and customs to the Americas.

Our European inheritance, therefore, did not arrive directly from Rome. It came through the Iberian world.

That distinction is fundamental. Our connection to ancient Rome is indirect; our historical connection to Spain and Portugal is direct. Spanish-speaking Americans did not inherit Latin from Roman colonizers. We inherited Spanish from Spain. Brazilians inherited Portuguese from Portugal.

So where does “Latin America” come from?

The expression became established during the 19th century, when intellectuals were developing the idea of “Latin” peoples in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon world. France also used the concept in connection with its geopolitical ambitions in the Americas.

This raises an obvious question. If Americans are called Latin because Spanish, Portuguese and French developed from Latin, why should that identity be restricted to the Americas?

Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian are Romance languages descended from Latin. They are spoken by peoples in many parts of the world. Speaking a language derived from Latin cannot, by itself, explain an entire civilization or cultural identity.

Language matters enormously. But culture is much more than language.

Our religious traditions, legal systems, family customs, celebrations, architecture, foods and ways of understanding society developed through centuries of interaction among Indigenous peoples, Africans, Spaniards, Portuguese and many other peoples. That history cannot be reduced to the linguistic fact that Spanish and Portuguese descended from Latin.

Brazil illustrates the distinction. Brazil is not Hispanic America in today’s Spanish-language sense, but it is part of Ibero-America, sharing profound historical roots with Spanish-speaking American nations through the Iberian experience.

None of this means anyone should be told not to call himself or herself Latino. Identities evolve, and particularly in the United States, Latino has acquired a widely understood social and cultural meaning.

But accepting a modern identity should not require forgetting an older one.

If we ask which term more directly identifies the European historical and cultural inheritance transmitted to most of Spanish-speaking America, the answer points not directly to Rome, but to Hispania and, ultimately, Spain.

That was the discovery behind the question that started this column.

We can call ourselves Latino. But we should also understand why Hispanic is not merely another government checkbox or an outdated label. It describes a historical inheritance that existed centuries before the modern term Latin America became popular.

Our Latin linguistic roots reached America largely through the Hispanic and Iberian world. Recognizing that fact does not erase our Indigenous, African or other ancestries. It simply recognizes another essential part of who we are.

Perhaps, then, the question is not whether we are Latino or Hispanic.

The better question is why we should forget that before we were called Latinos, we already had a Hispanic history.