Hispanic and Latino are ethnonyms used to refer collectively to the inhabitants of the United States who are of Spanish or Latin American ancestry (). While many use the terms interchangeably, for example, the United States Census Bureau, others maintain a distinction: Hispanic refers to people from Spanish-speaking countries (including Spain but excluding Brazil), while Latino refers people from Latin American countries (including Brazil but excluding Spain and Portugal). Spain is included in the Hispanic category, and Brazil is included in the Latino category; Portugal is excluded from both categories. Every Latin American country is included in both categories, excluding Brazil.
Hispanic was first used and defined by the U.S. Federal Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Directive No. 15 in 1977, which defined Hispanic as "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central America or South America or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race." The term was formed out of a collaboration with Mexican-American political elites to encourage cultural assimilation into American society among all Hispanic/Latino peoples and move away from the anti-assimilationist politics of Chicano identity, which had gained prominence in the preceding decades through the Chicano Movement. The rise of Hispanic identity paralleled an emerging era of conservatism in the United States during the 1980s.
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