Hispanic Groups

Introduction

Hispanic American literature incorporates the writing of Chicanos, or Mexican Americans; Puerto Rican Americans; Cuban Americans; and other Americans of Central or South American heritage. Marked in contemporary times by the 1947 publication of Mario Suárez's short stories in the Arizona Quarterly, Hispanic American literature can trace its roots to several hundred years earlier, when the then Spanish-controlled region that is now the western United States was inhabited by Spaniards, Creoles, and mestizos. Hispanic American literature has been written in English, Spanish, and caló (a hybrid that incorporates the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of English and Spanish).In this study, the term Hispanic is used to describe both Hispanic and Latino populations. There were about 48 million Hispanics residing in America in 2007, 70% of whom were concentrated in seven states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Arizona, and New Jersey. About 40% of Hispanics in the United States are foreign-born. It is projected that the total population of Hispanic origin will grow from 35.6 million to 102.6 million, an increase of 188%, between 2000 and 2050. Their share of the nation's total population would nearly double, from 12.6% to about 25% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). The percentage of Hispanics in the U.S. workforce is high, but incomes tend to be low. The median Hispanic household annual income is about $38,679, which is lower than the national median for non-Hispanic households, $54,920 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). The poverty rate of Hispanics is about 20.7%, compared with 24.7% among Africans and 10.6% among Asians. These statistics have significant implications for philanthropy and fundraising among Hispanics in the United States (Cortes, 1995).

Mexican American

By 1960, Mexican-Americans formed a predominantly urban population already living in the barrios. Their urbanization has only intensified over time, since 1990, only 9.5% of them still lived in rural areas, a percentage below the national. It was also around 1990 that some of this population began to leave the inner cities to move to the suburbs. Today, Mexicans form fairly dense population groups, which are often added for Hispanics of different origins;

55.3% of Mexicans live in the western states, 31.7% in the South, 10.7% in the Midwest and 2.3% in the Northeast. The largest concentrations of Mexicans are in Los Angeles (in the neighborhood of East Los Angeles, Hispanics represent 96.8% of the total population, with an overwhelming majority of Mexicans), and also in El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, San Francisco and Chicago. In these urban centers, their high visibility is not without cause restrictions campaigns from state governments, particularly California and Texas but also the federal government, as well as lobbying and xenophobic reactions from the people "Anglos", although different studies have shown that immigrants in the United States do not strain the economy (Cortes, 1999).

Puerto Ricans

Puerto Rico, officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States with the status of self-government, located in north eastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of the Virgin ...