Why Latinx 

In the early 2000s, queer Latinxs began using the term on message boards and blogs. The trend accelerated after the 2016 massacre of 49 mostly queer Latinx people at Pulse, the Orlando nightclub. It built on the use of the machismo-resisting “Latin@s” or “Latino/a,” which pushed back against the Spanish language’s male-centric gendering. Latinx sought to cast an even wider net.

The “x” was already employed by many in Latin America to replace the male “o” and female “a” conjugations, yielding words such as “todxs,” meaning “everyone” in Portuguese and Spanish.

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For some Latinos, particularly older ones, Latinx sounds weird. They find it hard to pronounce the “x” in English, though Spanish pronunciations of “Latin” and “x” can combine into a smooth “Latin-equis,” which rhymes with Dos Equis, the Mexican beer.

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Others argue the term doesn’t do enough. Mexican historian and activist Citlalli Citlalmina Anahuac makes the case that both Latinx and Latino are anti-Indigenous, like the term Hispanic, often seen as centering Spanish colonizers. “The term ‘Latin’ is Eurocentric and centralizes whiteness,” she told me. “By adding an ‘x’ or an ‘e,’ we’re just playing with a colonial identity.”

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But for many, Latinx feels like an important act of resistance against mainstream exclusion. Afro-Zapotec poet Alan Pelaez Lopez sees the “x” as symbolic of a wound, an important “reminder of the erasure of Black Latinxs,” among other traumas with which the community must reckon.

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The letter “x” has a history in the civil rights movement as well. Latinx researcher Nicole Guidotti-Hernández points to Malcolm X, who adopted “X” to replace the white enslaver’s last name imposed on his family. She also points to Chicano civil rights activists who commonly replaced “ch” with “x” (Xicano instead of Chicano) as a nod to the Indigenous language Nahuatl.

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Defenders of the term admit it isn’t perfect. Paola Ramos, a queer Latina and Vice News correspondent who wrote “Finding Latinx,” isn’t trying to force it on others. She just wants to normalize it. She gets inundated with hate and harassment for using the term — mostly from white, right-wing Latino men.

“When you’re a white Latino and you start seeing yourself next to a Black Latino, next to a transgender Latino, next to a queer Latino, next to an Indigenous Latino, you start to truly understand the diversity of our community,” she said. “That’s an image that a lot of people reject.”

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The desire to dictate how Latinos can identify and exist comes predominantly from the right. But exceptions do exist. Tanya K. Hernández, an Afro-Latina of my mother’s generation and author of a forthcoming book on anti-Blackness among Latinos, says she’s had editors and colleagues — even some white ones — tell her she should default to the word Latinx, which doesn’t come naturally to her, even though she is not opposed to its use. She gently but firmly declines.

“People should have the right to describe themselves in the ways they find most appropriate,” she argues. Plus, she told me: “I’d rather talk substance as opposed to the formalities of the proper etiquette or the proper word on a particular day. We still have children at the border. We still have people in immigration detention centers. Let’s talk about that.”

Perhaps the debate about a word wouldn’t generate so much heat if it weren’t cast as either/or. Latinx strives for inclusivity. We don’t need to be pitted against one another, Latino versus Latinx. That’s exactly what far-right forces would like. Don’t fall for it.

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We tend to view the term as an American English attempt to define the greater Pan-American Diaspora in English terminology. Which stands separate from the term "Latine" which was designed to be functional in the Spanish language. You will regularly see us use the terms interchangeably depending on the context and conversation.​