I love the way my friend Juan Guillermo writes from his big Guatemalan heart. If you want to understand the Hispanic Market in the U.S., a good first step is to understand JG, by reading his blog.
[Sidenote advice for dealing with your Hispanic Friends: Stay away from them when you have a bad sunburn on your back. Unlike your stiff white buddies who are happy with an arms-lenth handshake, your Hispanic Friends want to hug you and pat your back like JG did to me at least three times last week in Austin.]
I have seen it first hand: 1st generation Latinos going back to their home countries after a couple of years of living in the United States; the obvious difference is their accent: it definitely differs from the one they had prior leaving, it has a little bit of Mexican/Cuban/Puerto Rican, depending on where they moved to, along with a mixture of couple other Latin American accents intertwined with English. Then comes the words they use… i.e. they begin to refer to a “picop” (pickup truck) as “troca”… They don’t feel it, but they have “drank the Kool-Aid” sort of speak, of the U.S. Hispanic/Latino Community.
It was interesting on a personal level, but it was not until I had spent some time living in the U.S., that I realized that never before had I been so proud of my Latin American heritage, as now that I had been away from what I’d called home all my life. Before there were Mexicans, Argentineans, Cubans and Peruvians; now I only see Latinos/Hispanics; even given the differences among us, there is still a vast common ground that holds us together.