Hispanic means "of Spain," it refers to the people/cultures that have their roots in the cultural influence/imperialism of Spain.

Latino/Latina means "of Latin America" (actually I think it's an abbreviation of the Spanish or Portuguese translation of "Latin American") and refers to people whose ancestors are from Latin America.

So an American whose ancestors came from Spain would be Hispanic but not Latina and an American whose ancestors came from Brazil would be Latina but not Hispanic. Someone whose ancestors came from Mexico would be both Hispanic and Latina.

Like most broad, potentially emotionally charged, cultural labels many people don't agree with this labeling and/or may self identify differently. Especially those who don't have a strong cultural or linguistical ties to where their ancestors are from.

Hispanic is 'from Spain', so Spanish, Cuban, Puerto Rico...however it's often used interchangeably with Latino.

There's also Chicano which means from Mexico.

> We also have the term Hispanic to refer to folks from Latin America

Not quite. Brazil is in Latin America, but Brazilians are not Hispanic.

Thank you for the correction! I had always thought Hispanic / Latino / Latina were interchangeable. This whole time I thought the Latin* descriptors just meant something along the lines of "native Spanish speaker of the Western Hemisphere."

As a side note, most of Spain itself is in the Western Hemisphere.

Hispanic refers to Spanish-influenced cultures, not all of South America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_America

I think that's why it's largely considered Latin America instead of Hispanic America.

And indeed that in my opinion is an issue.

People in Quebec are french-speaking or francophone, but calling them "French" is dismissing everybody in Quebec who is not of "pure" French descent.

That's a very good point, though I always took "French-Canadian" to mean "French-Speaking Canadian" instead of specifying origin and location, similar to how we have the term "African-American" which is a euphemism for skin-color as opposed to specifying origin and location.