Cultural Identity In Latin America

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Since 19th century, the movement of Spanish people never stopped. These immigrants carry their knowledge and identity with them when they migrate from one nation to another. On setting down in the new place, they lose some of their cultures identity when it comes to integration with the mainstream society. This paper discusses how the movement of Spanish people affects cultural identity in terms of language and religious.

What is Cultural Identity?

Bhugra (2004) states it is the ‘Racial, cultural and ethnic identities form part of one's identity, and identity will change with development at a personal as well as at a social level along with migration and acculturation’.
Bhugra, D. (2004). Migration, distress and cultural identity. British …show more content…

The first settlement in present U.S was at St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, followed by others in New Mexico, California, Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana. In 1598, San Juan de los Caballeros was established, near present day Santa Fe, New Mexico, by Juan de Oñate and about 1,000 other Spaniards. According to Perez and Juan (2005), there were total of three hundred thousand Spaniards moved to U.S during 1820 to 2000s. The arrival of Columbus was part of colonialism in Latin Americas. The Spanish conquerors had succeeded to build a very huge area of colony in Latin America, results in huge numbers of Spanish living in these areas in …show more content…

Spanish language has the official status in almost every country, except Brazil. This is due to the influences by the Spanish colonization of America that began in 1492. They carried and spread their language among the native. This also caused the indigenous languages of the Americas evolved into replacement with Spanish.

• Europe
According to 2013 census, there are more than two hundred thousand Hispanics reside in France, which translates that it is the second largest Spanish community outside Spain. Due to geographical reason, Spanish is one of the most commonly studied foreign languages in French schools. Spanish language is also the mother tongue of more than four hundred thousand people in France. This is because the figure is also includes the immigrants from Latin America, which also speak Spanish. Generally we can say that the Spaniards in France retain their language in a decent way. http://www.ine.es/jaxi/tabla.do?path=/t20/p85001/a2013/l0/&file=01001.px&type=pcaxis&L=0#nogo According to Sedghi (2012), there are more than seventy thousand Spaniards living in UK. However, Spanish language, in the data as of 2011 census, is spoken by 120,000 people. In line with France, it is also the commonly foreign language taught in British

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