YES —GOVERNOR HUCKABEE SANDERS’ BAN ON ‘LATINX’ IS THINLY VEILED TRANSPHOBIA, BUT IT IS EVEN MORE DANGEROUS THAN YOU MAY THINK

One of Governor Huckabee Sanders’ first orders in office was to ban the term ‘Latinx’ from all state documents.

Latinx is a label created in the United States that is meant to be inclusive to non-binary Latin Americans, as Spanish is a very gendered language.

Governor Huckabee Sanders condemned the label as being “culturally insensitive.”

Latinx’s Spanish counterpart, Latine, also tends to be more popular in the United States than in Central and South America and has been criticized by many Spanishspeaking people across North and South America as being part of an American liberal agenda.

However, there are many Latinx who feel that the term is crucial for being inclusive to non-binary and transgender people.

Governor Sanders’ quoted a survey by Pew Research conducted in 2020 that asserted that only 23 percent of Latinx in the United States had heard of the term ‘Latinx,’ and only 3 percent of that sample actually used the term.

However, Nathian Shae Rodriguez, associate director in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University investigated the survey.

Of the 62 million Latinx (as of 2021), only a little over 3,000 were surveyed, and Rodriguez noted that most of the respondents were over the age of 35 or 40.

He asserts that Millennial and Gen-Z Latinx are much more likely to use the term.

However the individual Latin American may feel about the term, one thing is certain: this is not an issue that should be dictated by the Arkansan government and certainly not the governor.

To allow Governor Huckabee Sanders to ban the term Latinx is to allow our identity to be dictated by our state’s government, and more dangerously, by people who are not of our community.

After all, the frustration that many Latin Americans feel about the term ‘Latinx’ is derived from a feeling that an identity is being imposed upon them that they did not choose.

I would argue that this frustration is worth exploring.

Although I caution that this exploration should not come at the expense of our fellow nonbinary and transgender Latinx. We must change our language to accommodate them. Language is a malleable tool that can be used to suit our needs—or at its worst—be used to control us.

Spanish itself is a colonial language that was used to assimilate and control Latin American indigenous peoples while attempting to destroy their cultures.

The terms ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’ assert that our history and present culture is the finished product of Iberian colonization.

Nothing could be further than the truth.

Our indigenous cultures persist in the form of indigenous communities, as well as detribalized indigenous peoples who may not be directly connected to their ancestral roots.

This is why we are often confused for Native Americans here in North America.

I was born and raised in Arkansas and am often mistaken for being native to North America.

It was not until I was an adult that I realized I had significant indigenous ancestry, as well as Spanish and African ancestry, although I still cannot identify my indigenous culture because of the task of tracing my lineage. I most likely never will.

Most Latin Americans face this reality because we are so disconnected from our indigenous and Afro-indigenous backgrounds.

This is not an accident—this is the product of violent and systemic colonization—of attempted genocide.

We were always meant to be suffer an identity crisis under colonization. This is what it means to be detribalized.

Although the majority of Latin Americans identify as being mixed race, such as the concept of mestizaje in Mexico, the outcomes can be extreme among race groups and have real consequences in Latin America, as well as the United States.

Such differences in race result regularly in colorism and racial tension within race groups.

As a result, economic disparities exist in Latin America that are directly determined by with race.

For instance, according to a report conducted by Vanderbilt University in December of 2017, race in Mexico is the single strongest determinant of a Mexican citizen’s economic status and educational attainment.

The average Mexican household income in 2017 was reported to be approximately $193 in US dollars a month.

For lighter-skinned Mexicans, household income raises to $200 a month, while darker-skinned Mexicans earn only $137.

It is worth noting that Latin America has deep roots in African culture by enslaved peoples who were ripped from their homelands.

Apart from many Latin Americans having African ancestry, one may see the widespread influences of African culture melding with indigenous cultures such as in our foods like barbacoa and banana leaf tamales.

It is evident in our music like reggaeton, samba, cumbia, and bachata. Latin America also unknowingly guards indigenous language with our everyday speech, sprinkled with words such as cachete (cheek) and aguacate (avocado).

Our religions; our traditions; our family structures—they all speak to a truth hidden in plain sight: we are not a monolith.

Our peoples are made up of descendants of countless communities: of indigenous cultures scattered throughout the continent; of African enslaved peoples in Haiti; of waves of European refugees across South America; of Japanese immigrant agricultural workers in Brazil; of Chinese refugees in Panama; and of course, the descendants of Spanish colonizers across Central and South America and the Caribbean.

To untangle what it means to be Latin American is an impossibly complex task.

Yet, we seem to seek a form of unity. We accept the terms Latino/e/x and Hispanic because it suggests a form of solidarity, even if we cannot directly identify what binds us together.

Perhaps to be Latin American is to persist. To survive.

Are non-binary and transgender Latinx not trying to survive as well?

Non-binary people (and all LGBTQIA+ people, for that matter) have always existed in the Americas and always will.

They have always existed in our cultures. The muxes of Zapotec communities in Oaxaca, Mexico are celebrated even today as a third gender. They still wear traditional dress, preserve the indigenous Zapotec language, and maintain various traditions that are not as widely observed among the rest of the Zapotec community. They too, persist.

The Western concept of nonbinary as a gender should not be confused with their status as a third gender, however, as they have recognized indigenous roles that do not directly translate to Western concepts.

They deserve recognition, protection, and celebration, as well as all people who are not included in the traditional gender spectrum in Latin American and the United States.

Latin Americans should use the term that suits their individual identity.

No one will ever be or should be forced to use the term ‘Latinx.’ But the attempt to eliminate the word ‘Latinx’ in any official capacity is a form of colonization and forced assimilation.

Governor Huckabee Sanders’ attempt to deny non-binary and transgender people’s existence while pandering to conservative Latinos is an underhanded attempt to position Latin Americans against each other.

It is my hope that Latin Americans in the United States will see that that Governor Huckabee Sanders’ directive poses a risk to the identity that we share as Latin Americans and challenge any such efforts with swift repudiation.

To accept the Governor’s ban on the term ‘Latinx’ is to lend legitimacy to her authority—or any non Latin American politician, for that matter—to decide our identity for us. After centuries of forced assimilation, we deserve selfdetermination of identity.

BY BRYAN HERNANDEZ