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Being Latino isnt a race, there is no universally shared Latino experience, there is no universally shared Latino culture, there is no universally shared Latino language. The term Latino purposefully glosses over the huge gaps in identity in favor of a white-aligned identity
The term Latino was forced onto people with Indigenous American and African roots, and promoted a culture that taught them to forsake their own cultures and punished those who did not, by means of ostracizing them from power and wellbeing
When the Europeans conquered, they were no longer considered by their own tribe, their own heritage, they were now racialized as different races, thought to be "scientifically" inferior to whites. In colonial society, the only way to "purify" yourself was to marry a white person
So this is where the myth of the mestizo comes in, the Mestizo is treated as superior to their indigenous ancestors and as such they internalize it and start to hate themselves for their own native features. the Mestizo is on a constant mission towards european conformity
This is the complex racial hierarcy system that colonial Spain at the time, though systems like this were used all over the colonial world. It ranked mestizos as literally more pure than their ancestors and gave them more benefits and access to land and power
A mestizo is someone who is considered "mixed race" - european and native american, and constitute upwards of 60% of latino population, controlling what the word means to the rest of the world.
as such, because mestizos were historically taught to forsake our culture and assimiliate into white society, we are beneficiaries of colonial structures moreso than Latinos with primarily African and Native Am roots, who are almost invisible because of the lack of statistics
It was only 5 years ago that Mexico included a spot for Latinos of African descent because of the culture of mestizaje that the country was built off of
