Ethnic Identity In Latin America

"After Zorro, people spoke Spanish to me for ages. I'm Welsh but that movie instantly gave me a new ethnicity." This was a quote by the actress, Catherine Zeta-Jones, when asked to speak Spanish in an interview for Univision, a media network targeted primarily for a Spanish speaking audience. This is one of many results that come from of a complex reality of identity that is controlled by a social structure that labels an individual based on similarities to a particular ethnic group. Society has the need to shape the ethnic identity of a person by categorizing them into a homogenized single group defined by resemblances of their nationality and culture that often ends in discrimination and oppression. The fact of a person’s identity is never …show more content…
An example is the cause of labeling “Latinos” and “Hispanics” as one definition for an abundance of nationalities coming from South America, Mexico, Europe, and right here in the United States. The effect that these umbrella terms had resulted in impositions used by a hierarchy society that did not want to acknowledge every identity in Latin America and instead created one identity for everyone as a form of negation to prevent racial profiling or offending someone who may identify themselves otherwise. If you go to South America, for example, Chile, and ask people what their ethnic identity is, you will hear, “I am Chileno”, one hundred percent of the times that you ask. In Mexico, people will say, “I am Mexicano”, or “I am Zacatecano”, depending on what state in Mexico they are from. The one answer you will never here, in a country other than the United States that is a Spanish speaking country is, “I am Latino” or “I am Hispanic”, which is a social implication of a negative action used to protect anyone who is not of a Spanish speaking descent, by using one term that can quietly oppress a growing ethnic group that consists of a quarter of the United States’ …show more content…
The cause of identifying and shaping an identity with social factors that provide a negative outlook on cultural tolerance will have the effect of not understanding how a person’s identity is unique to their cultural values and their how they interact with society. There has to be awareness in how ethnic groups are viewed regardless of how they are perceived and build towards a knowledgeable behavior and mutual respect for one another. It will be a work in progress, but to keep the value of not neutralizing ethnicity and how people identify themselves would become a step forward in developing a positive society that can learn to accept and become familiar with cultural characteristics and behaviors of not only an ethnic group, but also human beings in