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Fire (Beatriz DaCosta)-DC Comics

There seems to be a misunderstanding among people who are unfamiliar with the Brazilian American community. The majority of us US-based Brazilians and Brazilian Americans do not identify as Latinos and nor does the U.S. government consider us as such.

When most Brazilians in the U.S. use the word Latin or Latino, we're speaking of our Spanish-speaking neighbors. In the USA, the Latin media does not cater to Brazilians nor care to include them, although Brazilians and Brazilian Americans are perfectly okay with this, since we don't view as being part of the same community. The U.S. Census Bureau and government does not include Brazilians and Brazilian Americans under the Latin umbrella, anyway. None of my relatives in Brazil self-identify as Latin. They identify as Brazilians and South Americans.


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The official United States Census category of Hispanic or Latino is limited explicitly to people of "Spanish culture or origin", and therefore does not include Brazilian Americans. As employed by the United States Census Bureau, Hispanic or Latino does not include Brazilian Americans, and specifically refers to "Spanish culture or origin"; Brazilian Americans appear as a separate ancestry group. The 28 Hispanic or Latino American groups in the Census Bureau's reports are the following: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican Republic; Central American: Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, Salvadoran, Other Central American; South American: Argentinian, Bolivian, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Uruguayan, Venezuelan, Other South American; Other Hispanic or Latino: Spaniard, Spanish, Spanish American, All other Hispanic. There is no shared colonial and/or political history, no shared culture, language, ethnic background etc. It wasn't until the 1950s that Brazilians started seeing themselves as part of Latin America. The term was used almost exclusively to Spanish-speaking populations, up to that point, even in the US. When asked, for clarification purpose, if she did not consider herself Latina, a young Brazilian woman answered directly, “No”. Interviewer: What does it mean to be Latina, what do you think the meaning of the word Latina is? Same informant: “Maybe I am wrong, and it is not a description I have of Latinos, but I think, first of all, Latinos, they impose themselves. I have heard in school so many times, ‘you are Brazilian you are not Latina’. Latinos separate themselves from us. … I think also because of the language, they all speak Spanish and we Portuguese, and culturally they are different; their music is different even though they may move their bodies a bit the way we do, but it is different.”

Another Brazilian woman when asked why she did not see herself as Latina, she answered: “My culture is Brazilian and I don’t want to have anything to do with salsa and my language is not Spanish.”

Considering the historical(colonial and neo-colonial) and linguistic similarities among the nations of Latin America, we will in the larger project inquire into the gains and pitfalls of immigrants defining or not defining “ourselves” as Latinos
Sources:

http://www.census.gov/population/www...F4-race.html#4

http://www.census.gov/population/www...F4-race.html#5

http://www.hispanichartford.org/mult...a-y-la-latina/

http://www.hispanichartford.org/mult...ura-brasilena/

http://www.hispanichartford.org/mult...s-en-hartford/

http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/v...?f=26&t=136913