Everything You Need to Know About Latina, Latino, Latinx, Hispanic, and Latine Identities

Our community is as beautiful as it is expansive and diverse. And yes, every single one of these identities is valid. Let’s explore what that means:

dani herrera
6 min readMar 25, 2022

I was born and raised in Argentina. Ever since I arrived in the US, I have had trouble finding a definition that “fits me.” Am I Hispanic? Latina? Latinx? Latine? I had no idea!

Because, at the end of the day, I was already from Latin America, and we don’t necessarily address ourselves as “Latino” — That’s who we are already? And, to be honest, back home, the conversation around race and ethnicity is at a completely different stage. So these conversations… don’t really happen that often? Or at all?!?!

And to top it all off, Latin America and the Latin American experience are not a monolith.

Every country — and sometimes every province, State, region, or city — has its own rules and its own ideas of identity and expression. There are so many nationalities, languages, and ethnicities in the Latin American community that finding one word to describe us all, in all our complexity and diversity, seems… well, not easy!

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dani herrera

DEI Consultant & Speaker | Top 100 DEI Leaders in '21 & '22 | Featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Refinery 29 & more | She / Her / Ella |