Hispanos


Hispanos are people of Spanish descent of the 16th century-to-19th century in New Spain, in what is today the Southwestern United States, who retained a predominantly Spanish culture as it relates to their cultural region, having lived in that region since it was territorially incorporated into the United States. Their population in the American Southwest is around 1.8 million and the largest of these groups, numbering around 750,000, are the Hispanos of New Mexico, originating in Spanish and Mexican Santa Fe de Nuevo México, they have left a large impact on New Mexico’s culture, cuisine, and music. Many of the New Mexican Hispanos are mestizos, of mixed Hispanic ancestry, with Pueblo, Apache, Navajo, Comanche, and Native Mexican heritage. Other Hispanos groups from the United States include Californios and Tejanos, other similar Hispanic and Latino Americans are Chicanos, Spanish Floridians, Isleños, and Puertorriqueños or Boricuas.
The distinction was made to compensate for flawed U.S. Census practices in the 1930s which added people of the American Southwest as recent immigrants rather than centuries-long established citizens.

Description

Though the word Hispano in the Spanish language could describe anyone of Spanish ancestry, when used in the English language the term specifically refers to Hispanic and Latino Americans who have lived in the Southwestern United States for centuries, who did not cross any border into the United States, but rather had the border cross them. They have lived in the area that today is the Southwestern USA from the time that the area represented the northernmost region of the colony of New Spain. That Spanish colony then mostly became Mexico upon its independence from Spain. Finally, the northernmost parts of Mexico became a part of the USA, which the USA acquired along with the existing population.
Hispanos are mostly descendants of Spanish settlers, Mexicans who arrived during the Spanish colonial period and the Mexican period, and Mestizos of mixed Spanish and Native American ancestry.
Most Hispanos differentiate themselves culturally from the population of Mexican Americans whose ancestors arrived in the Southwest after the Mexican Revolution.

History

As the United States expanded westward, it annexed lands with a long-established population of Spanish-speaking settlers, who were overwhelmingly or exclusively of white Spanish ancestry. Prior to incorporation into the United States, Hispanos had enjoyed a privileged status in the society of New Spain, and later in post-colonial Mexico.
Regional subgroups of Hispanos were named for their geographic location in the so-called "internal provinces" of New Spain:
Another group of Hispanos, the Isleños, are named after their geographic origin in the Old World, viz. the Canary Islands. In the US today, this group is primarily associated with the state of Louisiana.

Demography

Hispano populations include Californios in California, Arizona and Nevada, along with Utah and southwestern Wyoming, which had no Hispano communities, and western Colorado, that had no Californio communities); Nuevomexicanos in New Mexico and Colorado; Tejanos in Texas; Isleños in Louisiana and Texas; and Adaeseños in northwestern Louisiana. While generally integrated into mainstream American societies, Hispanos have retained much of their colonial culture, and have also absorbed several American Indian and Cajun traditions. Many Hispanos also identify with later waves of Mexican immigrants that arrived after these lands became part of the US.
Many Hispanos, particularly those of younger generations, identify more with the mainstream population and may understand little or no Spanish. Most of them are Roman Catholic Christians. Several linguists and folklorists have studied the culture and language of some of the Hispanic communities, including Samuel G. Armistead, who studied the Isleño communities of Louisiana, and Juan Bautista Rael, who studied the Nuevomexicanos communities.