Book Description

Latino and Hispanic history in a handy Q & A format written for everyone. Spanish roots, Latin American civilization and the US national experience are essential components of the modern Latino and Hispanic community in the USA Did you know? • Spain’s presence began more than a hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth and Spain still claimed roughly half of today's continental USA at the close of the American Revolutionary War. • Latinos and Hispanics officially became the USA’s majority minority in 2003. • As of the 2010 Census, those numbers had swelled to 50.5 million, roughly 16.3 percent of U.S. population. • Demographers predict that one in every three US residents will be Latino and Hispanic in ethnicity by 2050. What you will learn: • The forces behind the conquistadors and the empire that stretched from Europe to the Americas to the Philippines; • The historical differences that distinguish people who trace their origins to the Caribbean’s three remaining Spanish-speaking states: Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic; • The diverse and divergent development of Central and South America; • The reason Mexico ceded half her territory to the USA and why her descendants account for fully 65 percent of the overall Latinos and Hispanic population; • The demographics that characterize the modern Latino and Hispanic community in the US.