After I came out as trans and nonbinary in 2016, the word “Latinx” became a life preserver.
Before then, growing up Peruvian-American in a heavily Mexican-American town, I clung to umbrella terms like “Latina” to describe my experience. “Latina” worked as my “close enough” identity marker for years, imprecise enough to wrap me into the fold with shared aspects of our cultures, like telenovelas and tías chismosas, while leaving space for the differences between myself and my adopted Chicano community.
But as an incredibly gendered language, Spanish — and, in turn, the words “Latino” and “Latina” — didn’t leave much room for my hazy gender variance. Caught somewhere between the “o” and “a,” I wasn't sure where my newly realized transness left me in regard to my cultural identity. Today, I know that I wasn’t alone in my worry; many gender-variant people with roots in Latin America struggle to find a term to articulate our genders and cultures in one breath.
Enter terms like “Latinx,” “Latin@,” and “Latine,” created as gender-inclusive alternatives to “Latina” and “Latino.” For many queer people, these newer terms create space for their transness and queerness to exist intertwined with their culture. But since their inception, these alternatives have also sparked debate, with critiques ranging from linguistic to overtly transphobic.
For instance: Many argue the “x” sound in “Latinx” is difficult to pronounce in Spanish, which is why the term “Latine” has come into favor for many in recent years. Still, others maintain that any alternative to “Latino” is an affront to Spanish, gentrifying the language by imposing white U.S. notions of gender variance and politics onto it.
Beyond apprehension towards a trans-inclusive identity label, many who can technically fit under “Latinx” are pushing against the term for another reason entirely. Spanning three subcontinents, over 33 countries, and too many languages, racial identities, and cultures to count, it’s no stretch to say that Latinidad is an incredibly ambitious identity project that can't fully capture anyone, especially the most marginal under it, like Black and Indigenous people. A growing number of people argue that Latinidad isn’t meaningful as an identity marker because of its wide net of identities.
This leaves many of us who could be included under a wide ethnic banner, such as “Latinx” or Latinidad, simply wanting less and more; more preciseness, more specificity, and overall less erasure. At this point in my life, I've realized that words like “Latinidad” and “Latinx” have always failed to encapsulate my Indigeneity and have let go of using them in most spaces. Others are distancing themselves from Latinidad for similar reasons.
As with all terms that attempt to capture a multitude of racial, cultural, ethnic, and religious identities, there is no clear or correct answer to what we should call ourselves. That’s why we’ve asked eight LGBTQ+ people to share their relationship to the term “Latinx” and Latinidad at large.
Tyaela Nieves (they/she)
As someone who is queer, nonbinary, Afro-Latino, Black, and Puerto Rican, Tyaela Nieves tells Them that their relationship to umbrella terms like “Latinx” and “Hispanic” shifts depending on who she’s around.
“Hispanic feels like a sterile term for the community but I typically use it when in education or office spaces, especially when speaking to white people,” Nieves says. “Latinx/Latino feel like the terms I use most frequently. Though I use them interchangeably, when I’m with older Latino people, I usually use Latino.”
Nieves believes that the idea that gender-inclusive Spanish is “ruining” the language is a jaded one rooted in homophobia and opposition to change. Though people often argue that gender-inclusive terms like “Latinx” are only used by elitists, Nieves says our shifting language can be attributed to a generational gap and tools of globalization like social media.
“Language evolves and those terms intend to be more inclusive,” Nieves says. “We’re a huge community. We can be found all over the world. We are not all the same. I hope inclusive language can bring us to a better understanding of this rather than limiting our understanding of ourselves.”
Agustín Garcia Badillo (they/them)
Agustín Garcia Badillo is a queer Latinx educator based out of Los Angeles. As someone who is nonbinary and Mexican, Badillo says using “Latinx” and “Latine” in particular feel like ways to honor both their gender and ethnic identities. Beyond creating a way to describe their experience in the world, Badillo tells them using Latinx to label themself has helped them find a rich community.
“My relationship with these terms has deepened over the years because they’ve allowed me to create connections with other queer, trans, and nonbinary people who have roots in Latin America,” Badillo says. “It also feels fruitful to honor my ancestors by not claiming to gender norms or an ‘assigned’ gender identity… I hope that through our story-sharing, we can encourage other Latine/x people to take up space and celebrate their ethnic identity without dismissing their gender identity.”
Alessia Servin (she/they)
As a first-generation settler in Canada, Alessia Servin says their relationship to both their Mexican heritage and Latinidad as a whole has been a long and complex journey. Growing up in suburban Ontario with very few Latine people around her left her with little knowledge of her culture.
“I grew up feeling too brown to be Canadian and too white to be Mexican,” Servin tells Them. “I felt like I would never be either and to add the continued gender crisis I am experiencing on top of that I felt extremely alienated from either identity.”
Servin says finding “Latinx” — an identity label that describes both her gender variance and culture — in recent years has helped her connect both with her queerness and Mexican identity.
“These two identifying factors are the first thing that people see when they look at me,” Servin says. “I am brown and I am femme-presenting but I am not solely a woman. Within both of those factors, there are a lot of assumptions made by others about me and who I am as both a person of color and as a woman. The term ‘Latinx’ lets me live as a person who is very gender confused and figuring it out while still being able to define myself within my native tongue that tends to be exclusionary because of its gendered nature.”
Juan Velasquez (he/him)
Juan Velasquez, business manager for Them and Teen Vogue, says he generally doesn’t use any of the umbrella terms such as “Latino” or “Hispanic” to name his identity. Rather, he prefers to be more specific.
“I always say I’m ‘Mexican’ specifically because I am very proud to have been born in Mexico and feel a strong connection to my country of origin,” Velasquez says.
Velasquez says he feels a disconnection from Hispanic as an identity label in particular because of its connection to Spain. Unlike Latino/a, Latine, and Latinx, which all refer to people with origins in Latin American countries, “Hispanic” refers broadly to Spanish-speaking countries, including Spain.
“I’ve always felt like the term ‘Hispanic’ was a little antiquated and something I would only see on official documents or something,” Velasquez says. “I also have felt like that term in particular emphasizes Spain more than others, which I feel very removed from.”
Serena Marie (she/her)
Serena Marie is a queer Indigenous Peruvian community facilitator and bartender. Serena says she favors “Latine” over “Hispanic” or “Latino” as someone who is surrounded by trans and nonbinary loved ones in her work as a community connector, though she uses “Latina” for herself.
While she initially used “Latinx,” she quickly switched to using “Latine” after hearing some elders who wanted to use trans-inclusive language had difficulty with the “x” sound.
“I’d rather use something that if someone who may have resisted in the past wants to try, it’s way easier to understand than ‘x,’ so I went to using ‘e’ in a day,” Serena said.
Growing up as an adoptee in Minnesota and being raised by white parents, Serena says her relationship with Latinidad is one she had to fight for. From taking the initiative to learn Spanish and cultural practices to visiting Peru, Serena has worked hard to build Latine community as an adult. Though she has been reconnecting with her Indigenous ancestry recently, as someone with birth parents from the Amazon and the Andes, Serena says she has a ways to go before letting go of “Latine” as an identity marker entirely.
“I was introduced to people letting go of Latinidad six months ago,” Serena tells Them. “I think it’s very cool and a deeper way to decolonize your mind, but I think throughout my journey of being Latina, I just got here. I still feel comfortable with it but I also know the indigeneity in me is really important and eventually will come first or only.”
Olivia Antezana (they/them)
Olivia Antezana says as a nonbinary Bolivian, “Latinx” currently feels like a comfortable umbrella term to describe their ethnicity. However, they’ve recently begun to question whether or not they align themselves with Latinidad at all, regardless of the specifics of their identity marker.
“In trying to reconnect with my Quechua heritage, I wonder if I even identify with ‘Latinx’ and Latinidad because of the ways Spanish colonization sought to violently erase the same gender identities that the terms ‘Latinx’/’Latine’ are being inclusive of,” Antezana says.
“I don't disagree with the terms whatsoever, and welcome expanding the Spanish language to include trans and gender-nonconforming people, but I'm less bonded to being Latinx when I think of my own gender identity because I identify more with the roles my fellow gender-nonconforming ancestors held prior to colonization… Even outside of the Spanish language, the cultures across Latin America have always had words for gender diverse and trans people.”
Ángel (they/them)
Ángel is a transmasculine Ecuadorian art assistant of Andean Indigenous and German ancestry working in Los Angeles.
They tell Them they primarily grew up with “Latino” and “Latina” as the dominant ways to describe their cultural experience, steering away from “Hispanic” because of its direct connection to Spain and colonization. Ángel says they’ve grown to be skeptical of all umbrella terms to describe Latinidad because of the span of experiences they cover — or fail to.
“I understand myself to be Latine, but I don’t associate it with words of pride or solidarity because my relationship to Latinidad is shaped mostly by traumas and prejudices,” Ángel says.
“The things I have in common with my Dominican, Mexican, Guatemalan, Peruvian, Colombian, and El Salvadorean friends is shared traumas of homophobic Catholic traditions, families resistant to going to therapy, anti-Black racism and colorism within family histories, and the experience of being racially othered by white Americans. These experiences don’t fill me with pride. We have shared experiences that can be traced to a history of colonization by the Spanish, but that doesn’t complete or define us.”
Instead, Ángel says they’ve learned to find pride in the specificity of their Andean indigeneity.
“I have pride to come from mountainous people who loved soups, and created foods like llapingachos and choclos and ají. I have pride that I’m learning Kichwa with my tía and learning to play the charango. But this isn’t Latinidad, these are Andean cultural practices.”
María Saldana (she/her)
Them columnist and community organizer María Saldana has a complicated relationship to Latinidad. As a Charapa femme from the Peruvian Amazon, Saldana says her indigeneity is central to her life. After immigrating to Miami with her mother, her identity was often pushed aside by others who read her as Latina when she was growing up, regardless of her lived experiences.
“Nobody remembered or held that my family and I were Indigenous, they barely remembered we were Peruvian,” Saldana tells Them. “I felt isolated and often erased growing up. In some ways, being coded as ‘Latina’ helped me find community and shared experiences with Latine folx, but over time it has felt hurtful to not be seen the way I see myself.”
While Saldana doesn’t use the term to describe herself, she understands the importance of gender-expansive identity labels as someone who group up within Latinx community spaces.
“Language can be such a tool for resistance and shifts over time,” Saldana says. “I really think we get to make it what we need it to be to grant us connection. I think it’s important to get curious about why we feel resistance to changes in language — where is the discomfort coming from?”
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