Hispanic and Latino Americans

This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. Consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding subheadings. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page. (October 2024)

Hispanic and Latino Americans in the U.S

Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos (Spanish) Americanos hispânicos e latinos (Portuguese)
Proportion of Hispanic and Latino Americans in each county of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico as of the 2020 United States census
Total population
65,329,087 (2020) 19.5% of the total US and Puerto Rico population (2020) 62,080,044 (2020)[1] 18.7% of the total US population (2020)[1]
Regions with significant populations
California Texas New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, Washington, D.C. metro area and other Northeastern metro areas Florida Southwestern United States Midwestern industrial cities
Languages
Spanish American English Portuguese Spanglish Porglish New York Latino English Miami English Chicano English
Religion
Catholic 43% Unaffiliated 30% Evangelical Protestant 15% Non-evangelical Protestant 6% Other 4% [2]
Related ethnic groups
Latin Americans Spanish Americans Portuguese Americans White Latin Americans White Hispanic and Latino Americans Afro-Latin Americans Black Hispanic and Latino Americans Indigenous Americans Hispanos Tejanos Chicanos Nuyoricans Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans[3]

Hispanic and Latino Americans (Spanish: Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos; Portuguese: Americanos Hispânicos e latinos) are Americans (in U.S.A.) of full or partial Spanish and/or Latin American background, culture, or family origin.^[3][4][5][6] These demographics include all Americans who identify as Hispanic or Latino regardless of race.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]} As of 2020, the Census Bureau estimated that there were almost 65.3 million Hispanics and Latinos living in the United States and its territories.

"Origin" can be viewed as the ancestry, nationality group, lineage or country of birth of the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States of America. People who identify as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race, because similarly to what occurred during the colonization and post-independence of the United States, Latin American countries had their populations made up of multiracial and monoracial descendants of white European colonizers, indigenous peoples of the Americas, descendants of black African slaves, and post-independence immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia.^{[13][14][15][16]} As one of only two specifically designated categories of ethnicity in the United States, Hispanics and Latinos form a pan-ethnicity incorporating a diversity of inter-related cultural and linguistic heritages, the use of the Spanish and Portuguese languages being the most important of all. The largest national origin groups of Hispanic and Latino Americans in order of population size are: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Salvadoran, Dominican, Brazilian, Colombian, Guatemalan, Honduran, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan. The predominant origin of regional Hispanic and Latino populations varies widely in different locations across the country.^{[14][17][18][19][20]} In 2012, Hispanic Americans were the second fastest-growing ethnic group by percentage growth in the United States after Asian Americans.^[21]

Multiracial Americans of Indigenous American descent and European (typically Spanish) descent are the second oldest racial group (after the Native Americans) to inhabit much of what is today the United States.^{[22][23][24][25]} Spain colonized large areas of what is today the American Southwest and West Coast, as well as Florida. Its holdings included all of present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida, as well as parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, all of which constituted part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, based in Mexico City. Later, this vast territory (except Florida, which Spain ceded to the United States in 1821) became part of Mexico after its independence from Spain in 1821 and until the end of the Mexican–American War in 1848. Hispanic immigrants to the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area derive from a broad spectrum of Hispanic countries.^[26]