Latinos in the United States: Demography, transnationalism, cultures and identities

The phenomenon of the Latino population accelerated growth in the U.S. has caught the attention of scientists of a variety of disciplines so arousing an increasing interest on it. The socio-cultural issues of the Latinos in the American society, socio-cultural assimilation and/or insertion and identity (re) configuration are some of the less studied issues from the emitting societies. In Cuba, in the last years, some investigations from a quality point of view have been conducted. An approaching to this was made through this essay based on works of American and Latino authors and the results of research carried out in our country, providing the author's vision with the acquired experiences with the study of the subject for some years. By means of a characterization of the heterogeneous Latino population in the US concerning some socio-demographic features and socioeconomic indicators, a climate of intolerance and racism suffered by Latinos that is the context in which they develop their identities, and analyzes the cultural interactions between the different Latino cultures, the Anglo-Saxon culture, and others in American society and the multiple identities resulting of these cross-cultural hybridization processes in which several distinctive factors like ethnic origin, social class, gender, migratory and age generations, race, and transnational links take part.