Hispanic Is Not a Nationality: The Many Cultures Behind One Word

Every year, Hispanic Heritage Month gives Americans a familiar collection of images: flags, food, music, dancing, bright colors and celebrations of Spanish-speaking cultures.

But there is a problem with trying to fit dozens of countries, histories and identities beneath one neat cultural umbrella.

Hispanic is not a nationality.

A Guatemalan family is not culturally interchangeable with a Dominican family. Honduras is not Ecuador. Puerto Rican history is not Mexican history. Two people may speak Spanish and still have completely different relationships with food, race, music, religion, migration and even the language itself.

That distinction is where Local Culture wants to begin this Hispanic Heritage Month.

National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15. The observance began as Hispanic Heritage Week in 1968 and was expanded to its current 30-day format in 1988. Its unusual mid-month starting date has meaning: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua commemorate independence on September 15, followed by Mexico on September 16 and Chile on September 18.

But a month designed to recognize shared heritage also gives us an opportunity to pay attention to the differences within it.

What do we mean when we say Hispanic?

Even the terminology is more complicated than it initially appears.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Latino describes Hispanic as signaling a connection to Spain or the Spanish language. Latino, in common usage, generally refers to people with origins in Latin America. Under that distinction, someone from Spain may be Hispanic but not Latino, while a Brazilian may be Latino but not Hispanic.

Then there are people who prefer Latina, Latino, Latine, Latinx, their nationality, a hyphenated American identity—or simply American.

There isn't one universally preferred answer.

New Pew Research Center findings published in 2026 illustrate just how personal these labels can be. Fifty-three percent of U.S. Hispanic adults surveyed said the term they use most often for themselves includes their country or place of origin, either by itself or combined with “American.” Twenty-seven percent most often use a broader pan-ethnic label such as Hispanic or Latino.

That tells us something worth remembering: sometimes the broad category is useful, but the specific story matters more.

Someone may check “Hispanic or Latino” on a form and introduce herself everywhere else as Ecuadorian.

Someone else may proudly identify as Afro-Latino.

Another person may say Honduran American.

Identity can hold several truths at once.

A shared language isn't a shared culture

Spanish connects much of Hispanic America, but even language changes as it travels.

Accents change. Vocabulary changes. Slang changes. Indigenous languages continue alongside Spanish. English enters the conversation for families living in the United States.

And not every Latino person speaks Spanish.

Pew Research found that nearly a quarter of U.S. Latino adults surveyed in 2022 said they could speak Spanish only a little or not at all. Among third-generation or higher Latinos, that share was much larger. Most respondents also said speaking Spanish was not necessary for someone to be considered Latino.

So even the assumption that Hispanic identity can be measured by fluency misses the complexity of families whose languages change across generations.

One category, very different histories

The differences become even clearer when we look backward.

Latino ancestry in the Americas reaches into civilizations and peoples that existed centuries before European colonization, including Maya, Aztec, Taíno and Inca societies. It also includes European and African histories created through migration, colonization, slavery and cultural exchange.

Those histories did not unfold identically everywhere.

The Caribbean developed differently from the Andes.

Central America developed differently from the Río de la Plata.

Coastal communities developed differently from mountain communities.

African influence is especially visible in parts of the Caribbean and Latin America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Indigenous cultures remain central to national identity in countries including Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico. European colonization left Spanish language, religious traditions and institutions while also bringing violence, forced conversion and systems of racial hierarchy.

And centuries later, those histories can still be tasted in food, heard in music and seen in celebrations.

That is why reducing all of it to tacos, salsa music and a row of colorful flags never really tells the story.

What does that mean on Cape Cod?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's latest QuickFacts data, people identifying as Hispanic or Latino make up about 4.2 percent of Barnstable County's population.

That number tells us there is a community here.

It does not tell us who they are.

It doesn't tell us which countries families come from.

It doesn't tell us what they cook on Sundays, which songs their parents played, how they celebrate birthdays, what language they speak with their grandparents, or which traditions their children are carrying forward.

Those are cultural stories.

And those are the stories Local Culture is interested in.

Throughout Hispanic Heritage Month, we're going country by country and tradition by tradition—looking at independence, food, Indigenous heritage, African influence and the many ways culture survives after crossing borders.

Because there is value in celebrating what people share.

There is also value in learning enough to recognize their differences.

Hispanic is an umbrella. Underneath it are millions of individual stories.

And this month, we're getting more specific.