View source for Latino/Hispanic label

Address the diversity of the latino/hispanic experiences and realities in the USA.  In particular, I focus on the diversity of the Mexican American realities in the state of Texas. A distinct group in the imagined national community.

The US Census Bureau (2010) defines the label Hispanic or Latino in the following way:
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“Hispanic or Latino” refers to a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. (2)
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In 1990 the definition of the Census Bureau was different:
<blockquote>
"A person is of Spanish/Hispanic origin if the person's origin (ancestry) is Mexican, Mexican-American, chicano, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Ecuadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, Salvadoran; from other Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean or Central or South America; or from Spain." (51)
</blockquote>


However, it was in the early 1970s when the term "Hispanic" was first used by the US government to refer to people with origins from the south of the Rio Grande, Spanish speakers, and with Spanish surnames. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare started to use the term and in 1980 it was first used in an official U.S. census. Although several latino-hispanic scholars make reference to Nixon as the one who coined the term "Hispanic" it was actually created by a bureaucrat named Grace Flores-Hughes originally from South Texas, an assistant  in and an ad-hoc committee in what was then the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. For Mexican Americans, discriminated in the State of Texas, it was better to claim their Spaniard heritage, as former inhabitants and land owners in this territory. It was important to start counting this population so they could argue for federal funds and help.

How do people from latino/hispanic origin fits in the the American racial hierarchy? what kind of position do they occupy?  

* [[Oboler, N. (1995) Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives : Identity and the Politics of (Re) Presentation in the United States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.]]

* [[Valdivia, A. and Garcia, M. (2012) "Introduction." Mapping Latina/o Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader. New York: Peter Lang Press, 2012.]]

* [[Hernandez, R. (2012) The Latino Paradigm: The Struggles Within and the Need for National Identity. Mapping Latina/o Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader. New York: Peter Lang Press, 2012.]]

* [[Calderon, J. (1992) "Hispanic" and "Latino": The Viability of Categories for Panethnic Unity]]