To Know Before You Go

Hispanic?

Many people, authors and institutions who should know better refer to Brazilians as "Hispanics" and Brazil as an "Hispanic nation". You will see Brazil and Brazilians categorized as "Hispanic" in such places as books, college textbooks, US government documents and web pages as well as many other places. The fact of the matter is this mis-categorization is pure ignorance. This misconception may be due to the fact that Brazil and Brazilians are surrounded by Hispanic nations and Hispanics. A quick check of any English dictionary will show you that the meaning of the word Hispanic is "belonging to Spain, its language or people, Spanish". Plain and simple, Brazil does not belong to Spain, its language is not Spanish and, while there are Spanish immigrants in Brazil, they do not constitute a sufficiently large enough percentage of the population to justify attaching the label "Hispanic" to either the Brazilian people or the country of Brazil. One can certainly refer to Brazilians as Latinos and Brazil as a Latin American nation but never Hispanic.

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