Saturday, November 07, 2015

An update to "Clinton will win because of the Latino vote"

I still stand on this premise, but a couple of things require me to revise and extend my remarks.

-- Adrian Garcia ran such a laughably awful campaign that he probably set back the caucus of Tejano Democrats a cycle or two.  This from his campaign manager, who sounds like la gabacha estupida (though I have no idea as to her nationality):

"There was no way to anticipate the dramatic influx of voters in this election," Garcia campaign manager Mary Bell said.

Riiiight.  No one could have predicted that terrrorists would hijack planes and fly them into buildings despite a PDF saying exactly that two weeks previous after the Texas Supreme Court ordered the City of Houston to vote on people's civil rights, it would turn 2015 into a bathroom election.  Except for everybody.  That is as powerfully stupid as you can find in the free range.

Despite the dire straits in which Latinos and Democrats find themselves, in Houston and throughout much of Texas outside of the RGV, Clinton will still do far more to mobilize the Latino/Hispanic bloc than anyone else running for president, and by a long measure.

-- As a gabacho with a lot of learning to do myself, I finally get the difference between 'Hispanic' and 'Latino'.

The words "Hispanic," "Latino" and "Spanish" all have different meanings, and Kat Lazo is here to clear it up.

In a video from Bustle, the YouTube personality, who frequently discusses feminism and social norms in her videos, took to the streets of New York to ask people if they knew the difference before giving her explanation. Spoiler: not many people did.


Luckily, Lazo explained how the terms differ. In short, "Hispanic" focuses on Spanish-speaking origin. This means Spain is included, but Brazil is not because Brazilians speak Portuguese. "Latino" refers to people of Latin American origin. This includes Brazil and excludes Spain.

"Hispanic is ... based on whether you or your family speak the language of Spanish whereas Latino is focusing more on geographic location, that being Latin America," Lazo said in the video.

One man on the streets of New York helped Lazo with her explanation when he talked about his experience with the term "Spanish." "I hate when people call me Spanish because I’m not," he said. "If you’re Spanish it’s because you’re from Spain."

Portugal is neither Hispanic nor Latino, and Hispaniola (thanks again to the Italian Scallion, Cristoforo Columbo, although Peter Martyr might be most directly fingered for the name being Anglicized) is very precariously Latino despite being more Caribbean than Latin American, and because the languages spoken in the two countries of the island, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, are mashups (Haitian Creole and Dominican) AND despite the French influences as well.  If you think that's confusing, Google Malta.  (I've been, and it's cool.  But pretty much every European and African power through the centuries has taken a piece of Maltese ass and called it their own.)

NOW I get it.  I'm slow but I'm thorough.