Hey, how are you? I’m no historian so maybe you weren’t asking me, but I’m a Brazilian international relations major who has a love for Latin-American history :). What I can clarify for you is that there is a confusion of terms. Latin-American itself is a debated term, in general terms, however, it should not be interchangeably used with Hispanic or Spanish, and here is why: the term ‘Spanish’ is/should be applied to those who are born in Spain. The term Hispanic, however, refers to a larger cultural-sociological-ethnic and historical group of peoples, the Spanish and the peoples of central and South America that were colonized by and descend from the Spanish conquistadors.

Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French are all languages derived from the ‘vulgar Latin’ meaning, the language spoken by everyday people in the Roman Empire’s lands that today we call France, The Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and Italic Peninsula (Italy).

The concept of Latin-America is hotly debated and one view is that it was created by a equatorian diplomat in the court of Napoleon the III. The goal was to legitimize France’s interference in Mexico in opposition to the growing influence that the United States was starting to exercise over Central and South America.

Long story short, Latin America refers, generally, to all the countries south of the US border who were colonized by the French, the Spanish and the Portuguese (so, Haiti included and the Dutch/English caribbean excluded). We shouldn’t refer to all Hispanic peoples as Latinos/as because they are not necessarily Latinos/as. I’m Latina, as a Brazilian, still, I’m not Hispanic.

Last but not least, an importante note: many indigenous peoples both in Central and South America do not claim the terms latin-American/Latinos/as because it doesn’t reflect their ancestry and it comes from the identities of their colonizers, white Europeans. The African diaspora and their descendants are also a group that at times negates that nomenclature. Cuba, for example was declared by Fidel Castro as an ‘Afro-Latin nation’ due to the importance of African influences in the countries identity.

I hope I’ve been able to answer some of your questions or maybe lead you on a path to broaden your research and find your own answers. I’m glad to talk about it further :)

There are several issues pertaining to Latin American identity that need to be addressed when talking about why exactly it's called Latin América. As previously stated, the idea of Latin pertains specifically to those areas of the larger American continent south of what we call in Spanish Anglo América, i.e. Canada and the United States.

However, the once widely accepted Napoleon III hypothesis for the widespread of the terms Latin and Latin America, popularised by John Phelan in 1965, has long since debated and is currently considered to be largely invalid.

While it is true that Michel Chevalier was the first person to use the word Latin, which he wrote in an 1836 book in which he differentiated the Anglo-Saxon Americans from the Latin Americans, that's all he did. Chevalier never actually referred to Latin América as a larger concept, he simply used the term "Latin" to divide both cultural areas, in an attempt to further justify his already standing belief that France was destined to continue expanding their grip over the American colonies; several decades later he would be one of the most fervent defenders of Napoleon III's invasion of México and his appointment of Maximilian as Emperor of México.

Phelan knew of this, and he in fact stated that Chevalier hadn't mentioned Latin América as a whole. He did however claim that an article published in 1861 in France in the Revue des Races Latines was the first instance in recorded history to use the term Latin América, which is simply not true. We have evidence of the term "Latin" being used by Latin American writers and politicians like José Martí, Francisco Bilbao, Francisco Muñoz del Monte and José María Torres Caicedo as early as 1851, the latter of which is considered to be the first person to ever use the term.

Phelan's argument rests mostly on the expansionist and imperialist desires of Napoleon III, which were definitely real. What he purposefully ignores, is a very simple element of the issue: if the French ideal of society was still as highly coveted by Latin Americans as it had been during the earlier decades of the century, following the independence movements, most Central and South American elites wouldn't have outright rejected Maximilian's appointment as Emperor of México. Even if the term might "Latin" might have originated from an association with the Romance or Latin parts of Europe, scholars argue that the adoption of the term by many Latin American writers and politicians became associated with the construction of a self appointed cultural identity, at a time when many intellectuals viewed US expansionism as a very real threat to Central and South American sovereignty.

See, in 1853 a US citizen by the name of William Walker started invading Central American nations, eventually settling in Nicaragua and, taking advantage of the political unrest already present in the area, appointing himself as president of the country. What the leaders and intellectuals of the continent expected from the US, rejection to this unlawful act, was not what they got, because US president Franklin Pierce not only recognised Walker as legitimate ruler of Nicaragua, he dispatched an embassy to formalise relations. Once again, the Monroe Doctrine had proven itself to be a comfortable lie, only to be applied when it suited the US' interests, as I've explained here. And in this case, restoring the rightful Nicaraguan government wasn't in the US' best interests, because what they wanted was to continue plotting the construction of a channel to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific (gee, I wonder what happened with that idea), and having a strong foothold near Panamá was certainly ideal.

And so, faced with this particular threat, many Latin Americans turned towards the old unionisation ideals of the great Liberators, Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, especially Bolívar's, who had always dreamt of a unified American continent under one flag and one nation, as expressed in his vision for the Gran Colombia. One of the fundamental lines of reasoning behind this newfound revival of Bolívar's ideals was race: Latinos and Latinas were a race that was in peril of being subjugated by the Anglo American race. The very first example of the use Latin América of which we have evidence comes from a 1856 poem by Torres Caicedo, in which he writes

La raza de la América latina

al frente tiene la sajona raza

Which translates to

The Latin American race

is faced with the Saxon race

Again, this was written five years prior to the first use of the term by the French.

The use of the term against US advances and expansion attempts continued for the decades to come, and became more intensely associated with the renewal of the Monroe Doctrine during the most violent manifest destiny years of James Gillespie Blaine's tenure as State Secretary in the early 1880s, and then with the 1898 Spanish-American War, during which many Latin American thinkers, essayists and poets dedicated entire volumes to the importance of resisting US imperialism, thus cementing not only the popularisation, but the widespread adoption of the term Latin American in terms of a rejection towards any and all forms.

Now, all of that being said, it is very important to understand that a Brazilian or a Haitian person, while being Latin American, are almost always not Hispanic. That term, which is falling out of style because it equates being Latinx to having some sort of cultural and identity bond with Spain, even after centuries of independence, refers specifically to the people who are from the countries that were once controlled by the Spanish Empire, and therefore excludes all other former colonies. The idea of Hispanics is that the underlying cultural bond is sharing Spanish as a mother language. But even then, there are many people in several countries traditionally thought of as part of Spanish América, who are natives, and thus vindicate their native cultures, languages and customs, and reject the notion of being equated with the Spanish, because some of them don't even acknowledge Spanish as their official language. For example, the Plurinational State of Bolivia recognises 37 official languages in its territory.