La Raza

This article is about Latin American cultural identity. For other uses, see Raza.

La Raza is a Spanish-language term (literally meaning "the race", but also connoting "el pueblo" or "la gente", both of which mean "the people"), which refers generally to the people of Latin America who share the cultural and political legacies of Spanish colonialism, including the Spanish language and culture, and their descendants.

It is very roughly analogous to the English-language terms "Hispanic" or "Chicano", in that it attempts to define/describe a group of people with a common (Spanish-speaking) cultural heritage, despite the wide variations among those cultures.

The term "La Raza" may also encompass a racial significance associated with "mestizaje", or race-mixing. In this sense, the term is inclusive of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the descendants of African peoples brought to Latin America as slaves, European immigrants, as well as the racial identities that comprise the Iberian peninsula — and all the mixtures among them.

Use in the United States

In the 1960s, some ethnic political and/or civil-rights groups began to use the term to distinguish Spanish-speakers, and/or people of Latin American descent, from Anglo- and other non-Hispanic Americans — and to more inclusively describe a population, based on one or more common traits, irrespective of national or generational distinctions.

See also

• Casta
• Chicano
• Día de la Raza (Columbus Day)
• Ethnicity (United States Census)
• La Raza Cosmica
• Latino
• Hispanic
• Hispanic nationalism
• Mestizo
• Mexican American
• National Council of La Raza
• Race (United States Census)
• Volk