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Budget and Management for purposes of data collection as a simplified way to categorize people of Latin American and Caribbean descent. However, many indi- viduals of Latin American and Caribbean heritage or origin reject the term His- panic to identify themselves, considering the label a denial of gains made by U.S. ethnic rights struggles and something that improperly identifies them more with Spain than with Latin America and the Caribbean. As with all identities, Latinos/as choose their identifiers among a shifting and mutable repertoire that varies depending on the individual’s political, historical and spatial contexts. Most Latinos first identify with their own national or subna- tional origins. For example, a woman with roots in Puerto Rico might first identify herself as una puertorriqueña and then as a Latina.2 The term Latino is made fur- ther problematic by the thousands of non-Spanish-speaking indigenous migrants in the United States who may identify primarily with their small village or perhaps state of origin, and not with a Spanish-language heritage, as is the case with Mixtec migrants from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, who have developed Oaxacan hometown associations in places such as Los Angeles. The term Latino America in this publication’s title additionally complicates the conundrum of identity and identifying by insisting on a transnational dynamic between Latin Americans and U.S. Latino/as. Although perhaps seeming at first glance a malapropism, Latino America suggests a shared hemispheric historical experience among North, Central, and South American as well as Caribbean pop- ulations that challenges us to reconsider fixed regions of study that divide the United States and Latin America into discrete units of inquiry.3 Furthermore, by closely resembling its Spanish-language cognate, Latinoamérica (Latin America), Latino America makes a direct connection with Latino/as’ region of origin. Latina/o History as U.S. History Latina/o history is central to the history of the United States. Just as we might learn about indigenous populations, Anglo-European settlement on (that is, migration to) the East Coast, or African slavery as part of the history of the United States, Latino/as have also played a critical role in shaping this country’s history. From the sixteenth-century Spanish settlements in states such as Alabama, California, and Florida, to the role of state residents in nineteenth- and twenti- eth-century U.S. military campaigns in Latin America, to the contemporary surge of Latino/a populations in the Carolinas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Connecticut, Latino America: A State-by-State Encyclopedia clearly demonstrates that Latina/os have been intimately connected to every historical stage and to every region in the United States. U.S. economic and military imperialism, liberalized immigration laws, popu- lation expansion in Latin America, and comparatively higher wages in the Introduction xvii