La Raza

(I highly encourage reading my two last posts before this one)

To make matters even more confusing--after I just told you that Hispanic is not a race but an ethnicity, which is true--we do see ourselves as a race.

One of our rallying cries is "La Raza" which quite literally means "The Race". But we are our own race, we are a unique race, we are a mixed race.

Spain tried to keep it into categories at first.
1. Spanish + Indian (aka white and Native American) = Mestizo
2. Mestizo + Spanish = Castizo
3. Castizo + Spanish = Spanish
4. Spanish + Black = Mulato
5. Mulato + Spanish = Morisco
6. Morisco + Spanish = Chino

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Casta_painting_all.jpg (here's an image link where you can zoom in) 

And on and on and on until it just gets ridiculous. After so many generations, what are we?

Most of us have dark hair, but not all

We tend to be on the shorter side, but not all.

We tend to have yellow undertones to our skin, but not all.

Brown eyes, but not all.

Some of us look white and for some of us, puedes ver el nopal en su cara "you can see the cactus on their face"--meaning that they are very "Indian" looking.

If pressed, I think a lot of people in Mexico when asked their race would answer Mestizo, but it's not often that people in Mexico are asked and there is little sentimental attachment to that label.

So then what? Honestly, I think most of us just look at ourselves as a new breed. A race created by Spain's imperialism. Whatever we are, we are. We look like this, we talk like this, and screw it, let's just all say that we are a race. 

Especially living here in the U.S., where we are other instead of common, La Raza becomes important because it helps unite us. Latin America is infested with colorism (which goes hand in hand with classism), but no one in the United States notices or cares that Juan is a few shades lighter than Jose. I honestly sometimes wonder if Americans can even tell. 

And so we have to stick together, once again. When we pushed out Spain a lot of our country was already mixed. It's not like the United States where the white settlers turned against their white motherland. Our revolutionary leaders were mostly mixed. 

I might be rambling by this point--sorry. I'll end it here, but with a big asterisk that I am talking about my own country, Mexico. I do not have any type of first-hand experience with Hondurian, Guatemalan, Puerto Rican, Cuban, etc etc culture. I have no idea if they feel the same way or what they see themselves as.