Hispanic in the US is an invention of the Census Bureau. People from Latin America don't "know" that they're "Hispanic" until they come here. And when Americans think of the term, they usually think non-white. Even most JTFers use Hispanic to mean non-white. So white Latin Americans should not call themselves Hispanic. I think we should just say Latin American as a geography location just like people from the US and Canada together are called North American. Mexico is technically North American too. I know in Latin America, they call Americans (US) North Americans rather than American because they see the whole continent (North and South) as America. But I don't think they use it to refer to Canada.
Definitely agree with you there that hispanic is primarily invented for census purposes, even on biometrics forms they appear to no longer have hispanic listed, it says Caucasian, African, Asian, Native American or Alaskan native, or unknown.
I am wondering if that is going to be changed on census forms, but then you get a lot of Hispanics that mark white which ends up making the census report incorrect data.
Anyways about the Native American with white, yeah a lot of whites over exaggerate how much mixture they have if any, but there are seriously some southern states in the US especially in Louisiana where there is very noticeable French and native admixture which you can definitely tell by the facial features, I have seen a lot in New Orleans who resemble Hispanics but are not, then you have your average blonde hair blue eyed guy who wants to be a hippy and claim they have indigenous ancestry which is kind of weird.
Most of the South Americans refer to non citizens as gringos which is not always used as a negative word like it is in say Mexico, generally refers to a foreigner from Europe or the Americas as they don't distinguish, Asians are referred to as chino, blacks are called negro which is Spanish for black and not used in racist context, sometimes white can be called blanco, and I have heard the word Indio used to negatively refer to someone from Bolivia or Peru to insist on full indigenous ancestry.
Anyways, Central America is technically part of North America like you guys pointed out but is distint since they don't share any commonalities with the anglosphere in terms of culture, food, language, etc and for good reason.
I think a higher portion of people in South America Especially Central America either have Amerindian ancestry as a majority, South America even in those who appear white have minor indigenous blood but it doesn't show up in features always as its highly diluted since there is still a large caste system un officially practiced especially in the southern cone area of South America. There were large number of immigrants from all over as of recent migrations from the mid 1900s for various reasons which probably stick to their own communities.
