One of my wife’s cousins has a young blond-haired boy who proudly announces his African American roots. His father is from South Africa, and his mother from Brazil—South America. African American. 
It seems that it may vary by region, but in NY, the word 'Hispanic" is rarely used when referring to a person or group comprised of specific members (like a club or organization). If anything, it is an outdated term. Chicano is considered offensive by most.
It all depends on where you were from and where you grew up. Myself, I grew up thinking of myself as ‘hispanic’, never ‘latino’…and the only time I ever heard ‘chicano’ was in derogatory tones from white people.
I am from an older generation, however.
-XT
A Mexican-American professor in college once said that she finds “Hispanic” offensive and that she prefers “Latino/a”. Since then I’ve always used the latter term. I don’t think anyone has ever corrected me.
“Chicano” feels much more political to me. My dad uses it a lot. He grew up as basically the lone Jew* in East LA, which is almost entirely Latino. Virtually all of his friends (even today, including friends he’s made since leaving the neighborhood), are of Mexican descent. They came of age in the 60s and were a bunch of radical left-wingers. “Chicano” fits in with that mental image to me.
*This is an exaggeration. My dad says there were two Jews in his high school.
I took a class once in Mexican American studies. An interesting thing I learned was that the phrase used varies greatly by region. Speakly strictly of the United States and very generally:
People in Texas use the the term Hispanic.
People in New Mexico use Spanish.
People in Southern California use Chicano.
People in the east coast use Latina.
You also have trend variations: for a while, Latina was the hip thing to use.
There also tends to be a huge difference in this community:
People with ties directly to Mexico (typically people from Mexico directly and sometimes the first generation)
People that are not. This includes people that have Mexican American culture, typically people that do no speak the language. They tend to be viewed very negatively by the former group.
It’s a very complicated subject. People of Latin origins, for lack of a better term, vary greatly. Though speaking Spanish tends to be the one uniting factor, it doesn’t have to be.
Lastly, to give you personal views:
I consider myself Hispanic.
I speak Spanish fluently and am more a part of Mexican culture not Mexican American culture.
My mom was born in Mexico and my direct ties are strong.
I find it odd to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, for example. That is a Mexican American thing.
I would correct you if you called me:
Latina: I feel it has a urban quality to it. To me, “J-Lo” is Latina, not me.
Spanish: I find this offensive much like the term “colored”.
Chicana: it has a political connotation to it.
You can call me any of the terms except Spanish and I will not be bothered.
In the end, use Hispanic or Latino. The person to whom you speak should not be offended if you use either term in polite terms. If they are bothered, they will correct you.
In Texas you will hear the term “Hispanic” much more often than “Latino”. No one I know uses the word “Chicano.” A search of a Houston TV station’s website had 700 hits for “Hispanic”, 225 hits for “Latino”, and 3 hits for “Chicano.”
Italians were traditionally called “Latins” (Latino is a Spanish word). My understanding is that “Latin lover” was appied to Italian and Spanish dreamboat men. As for the French, well, they’re French. 
If Latino/a is a short hand for “Latinamerican”, English way of saying “latinoamericano/a”, then it has its origins in the 19th century. The guy I linked above, Hostos, talked a lot about “América latina” (Latin America), and used “latinoamericano” as an adjective and descriptive of people from Latin America.
The use of that word in the US, to designate a group of people… may be new to the majority or mainstream US, but it is not a new term for the people that term applies.
And seconding Nava, it refers to cultural heritage.
I didn’t think I implied it was a new term. I was trying to say that the term was popular to use.
My mom used to get popular culture magazines and it seemed that they used the term Latina more and more because it was hip and popular.
Chicano derives it’s origins in the Chicano Movement which sought to answer the existential question: Where did we come from?; in a (Eurocentric) historical context the Mexica (pronounced Meshica: in Nahuatl) is what the Aztecas called themselves (much like Dine for Navajos). The term was used to name Mexico (Meshico) and those who reside there Mexicanos (Meshicanos) which was shortened to Chicanos… many use Xicano to write the adjective to honor it’s lexicology… Chicano has transcended the original racial pejorative to now include those who’s social and political consciousness is in line with the Chicano Movement (see MEChA El Plan de Santa Barbara) but does not, for many, go so far as to extend Chicanismo to those outside La Raza… it’s orthodox or Americanized usage usually denotes an American-born person with Mexican heritage…
Mestizo, also a european construct, is used to describe those with indigenous and Spanish heritage (this includes many Native Americans)…
Hispanic was created by the U.S. government to distinguish the true “Whites” with “Latinos” who were categorized, by census primarily, as White… then they came up with “White-Hispanic” to apease those who were “Hispanic-but-not-brown” and the Whites became White-non-Hispanic… to further delineate the White race… We only became a “race apart” and a protected class after Hernandez v. Texas (1954)… and the term Hispanic was born… before then many light-skinned “Mestizos” were categorized as “White” which leads many Chican@s to claim pure/almost pure “Spanish” blood, while denying any indigenous blood… Hispanic denies our indigenous roots… and is more accepted by those Mestizos who are younger and naively favor a raceless persona, due to the stigma of being “of color” in the U.S… and the pressure to be “post-racial” in a very racialized society…
Latin@ is yet another european construct… and pays homage to the fact that we have Spanish blood (Spanish being a Latin-based language: la Malinche being the first) we also have “Coyotes” or Spanish, Native, Black… and “Mulattos” (not PC) who are generally African and Spanish…
So what does this say about identity politics… so much is at stake in affirming an internally ascribed identity which may or may not trump any externally ascribed identity especially if the externally ascribed identity is stigmatized… socially speaking, so much is attached to racial signifiers like ethnic/racial categories that we will deny our “true” (not with a capital T as this is all subjective and socially constructed) heritage and arm ourselves with a less-denigrating term… This is one conundrum that “whites” don’t have to navigate… proof positive of “white privilege”… I once read something in which the author alluded to the fact that when he wakes up he thanks God that he is poor and white rather than poor and black… he was aware of his “white privilege”, something not many “whites” can acknowledge… because after all… they created, maintain and nurture the American liberal notion of post-raciallity (aka Meritocracy)… attributing the many disparities which occur along lines of race/ethnicity to the culture(s) of the “Others” versus white nationalism…
Xombie!
@John Mace: not quite, the “X” is used in place the “Ch” consonant… i.e. Xicano Xulo…
You need to loosen up and not take everything so xeriously.
xim ximinee, xim ximinee, xim xim xeree, a sweep is as lucky as lucky can be . . .
La Raza is la Hispanidad, of which Mexican-Americans are only a part.
I find it interesting that usually when I run into someone who misunderstands the term, it tends to be people who think it means “the Conquistadores”, you’re on the other end.
Also, la Malinche didn’t have Spanish blood, and there were mestizos born in America and America-born people who learned Spanish before Cortés even met her. They simply didn’t become famous.
I used to live in a neighborhood named after Gonzalo Guerrero, a Spanish sailor who jumped from Columbus’ ship (second voyage, IIRC), and married a Yucatec Maya woman. Presumably they learned each others’ languages, though he obviously “went native” more than she “went Spanish”.
In response to a previous post: How odd that you perceive “Latin American” (Latino) as more restricted than “Hispanic”. Since the former excludes Spain, but the latter excludes Brazil – and Brazil has a much bigger population than Spain. And for those that take “Hispanic” to mean “Hispanic American”, this is even more apparent, as it excludes Spain as well.
In my experience, educational conext is part of the difference between these terms. “Latin American” (and variations) has become the norm in most academic settings. (examples from my life include the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, and the KU Center for Latin American Studies). Thus, almost by default, “Hispanic” sounds just slightly low-class to my ears, but that’s surely unfair.
Some geographers include the Canadian province of Quebec in “Latin America” – hey, why not? After all, it was settled/invaded by Europeans who spoke, and many still speak, a Romance tongue – but in the “real world”, few people would call Celine Dion a “Latina woman”. Certainly, I doubt Celine thinks of herself as one!
Ok, not in this thread, but in another similar thread, I did make the following remark:
During high school, in my Spanish 11th grade (junior) class, which was Literatura Latinoamericana (Latinamerican literature), I did have to read translated essays by some writers from Haiti, French Guyana, and the French-speaking Lesser Antilles (don’t know if that’s the right term in English). I forgot if I had to read a translated essay from Brazil.
Related to the whole Latino/Hispanic… Here is this video, aptly called Latinoamérica. Note that it is a song with some political message. Also, I generally don’t like the singer. Yet, the video is awesome, and it does a good thing at portraying what a “Latino” is/looks like, and hey, we are OK with that term. The singer and musician are from Puerto Rico, Susana Baca from Perú, La Momposina is Colombian, and Maria Rita (heard, not seen) is Brazilian. And yes, it does skew a bit towards South America, since that’s where the singer wrote the song (according to him).
IIRC it’s originally a French concept. And Napoleon III used the term Latin America, to justify his meddling with Mexico. It was to be in opposition to an Anglo-Saxon America. So, at least according to the “inventor” of the concept, French are definitely Latins (not Latinos, Latins. And French still refer to themselves today as Latins). Italians would be too.
Latin=Romance language not Iberians.
I’ve never seen anyone include Quebec in “Latin America”, but we do perceive ourselves to be a Latin people (not Latino, as Capitaine Zombie points out), which we figure accounts for at least part of our cultural differences with the more Anglo-Saxon/Germanic (and traditionally Protestant) English-speaking Canada and United States.
But this said, Spanish is a language that I hear on a relatively frequent basis here in Sherbrooke, and in my department we do have a few Hispanic students and researchers, so maybe we are Latino-influenced after all. 