Background
The word “Hispanic” refers to any person who can trace his or her origins to the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and Portugal are located, although the term is more commonly associated with Spain and the Spanish language. “Latino” means anyone from Latin America or descended from Latin Americans. A person from Spain is therefore Hispanic but not Latino. A person from Guatemala is Latino; if they have Spanish ancestry, they are also Hispanic. “Latina,” from Spanish, refers only to girls and women; “Latinx” and “Latine” are gender-inclusive variants of “Latino/a.”
Neither “Hispanic” or “Latino” refers to race; rather, these terms refer to ethnicity. Being Hispanic or Latino does not indicate any particular skin tone. People of all races live in Spain and Latin America, and members of the diaspora can be of all races. The Spanish and Portuguese colonization of Latin America means that many Latinos have European ancestry. The original people of Latin America include hundreds of Indigenous groups, and millions of their descendants are alive today. The slave trade forcefully introduced Africans to Latin America, and many Latinos have African heritage. Asian immigrants and enslaved people from the Philippines began coming to Latin America in the 1600s, and modern-day Latinos also include descendants of these groups.
Early Spanish Explorers
When imagining the first contact between Europeans and the Indigenous people of what is now Virginia, many modern Americans picture English ships sailing across the Atlantic. However, the Spanish may have flirted with settling Virginia well before the birth of Jamestown, a possibility that originated with the Spanish conquistadors who notoriously stumbled onto America when they set out for India. The arrival of Christopher Columbus and his men on Hispaniola is the best-known storyline of the Age of Exploration. Spain was at the forefront of so-called discovery—making contact with, exploiting, and terrorizing the Indigenous people of the Americas in their home territories. Before the English named Virginia after their virgin queen, Elizabeth I, the area was part of the large region that the Spanish named Ajacán.
Whether the Spaniards arrived in the Virginia portion of Ajacán remains unconfirmed, in part because cartography from the period appears inconsistent. Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón likely exaggerated when he reported in 1526 that he and his men had traveled as far north as the Chesapeake Bay. If they were telling the truth, however, their settlement, San Miguel de Gualdape, preceded Jamestown by eight decades. The settlement lasted all of three months, and its exact location remains unknown, though modern scholars often place it in Georgia or the Carolinas.
In 1561, a Spanish ship in search of gold may have blown off course and landed in the Chesapeake, which the Spanish called the Bahia de Santa María. The captain took two Indigenous people, including Paquiquineo, the son of an Algonquian chief, onboard and brought them back to Spain. Paquiquineo was subsequently sent to Mexico City, where he became ill and was baptized Don Luís, after the viceroy of New Spain, Don Luís de Velasco. Don Luís recovered, and when King Philip II ordered a mission to the mid-Atlantic, which at the time was only vaguely charted territory, Don Luís was appointed as the Indigenous guide.
After two failed attempts, Don Luís eventually returned to Ajacán, landing near what is now the James River in September 1570 with a group of Jesuit missionaries. (The Segura Educational Initiative for Children in the Diocese of Richmond, which provides tuition assistance for Latino students attending diocesan Catholic schools, is named after Father Juan Baptista de Segura, who led the missionary group.) After initially aiding the missionaries, Don Luís led a February 1571 ambush that killed all of them except for an altar boy, Alonso de Olmos, who escaped and told the story when a Spanish relief expedition found him the following year. The Spanish governor sent a military expedition to the James River in August 1572, and more than twenty Indigenous men were killed, though Don Luís escaped. After this massacre, Spain ended its attempts to colonize modern-day Virginia and concentrated on settling American soil farther south.
No archeological remains of Ajacán exist, and early English records do not indicate that the Indigenous people knew the Spanish language or had other knowledge of Spanish culture. According to popular folklore, the famous wild ponies roaming Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge are the descendants of animals that escaped a shipwrecked Spanish galleon in the 1500s, but if so, they aren’t telling.
In 2002, the Catholic Diocese of Richmond initiated a process to have the Jesuit missionaries canonized because they represented the first Christian presence in modern-day Virginia and became martyrs to the cause. In 2013, the canonization advanced when it moved to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, formerly known as the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, at the Vatican.
Modern Immigration
The first wave of Latino immigration to Virginia consisted of Cubans and Dominicans who came in the 1950s and 1960s. The second wave consisted of South Americans who came in the 1960s and 1970s. The biggest wave was led by Central American immigrants beginning in the 1980s and remains ongoing forty years later. As a result, Virginia has one of the highest concentrations of Salvadoran immigrants in the United States.
Prior to 1980, when the U.S. Census first began including the term “Hispanic,” many Hispanic and Latino immigrants identified as white even if they were not purely of Spanish or Portuguese origin. The census added “Latino” in 2000. Thus, it is difficult to count Virginia’s Hispanic and Latino population before this time. As of 2020, Latinos comprised 10.6 percent of Virginia’s population and were concentrated in Northern Virginia, especially in Arlington, Alexandria, Woodbridge, and Manassas; in Richmond’s Southside and nearby Chesterfield County; and in the Tidewater area. Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, and Winchester also have significant Latino communities.
Over half of Virginia’s Latinos are of Salvadoran, Mexican, or Puerto Rican heritage. Members of each immigrant group left their homeland for a complex set of political and socioeconomic reasons. Many Salvadorans, for example, have sought refuge from the country’s civil war (1979–1992) and ensuing gang violence. Poverty and natural disasters also have contributed to the Salvadoran influx.
As in previous generations and with other groups of new arrivals, some Americans do not welcome immigrants, viewing them as criminals or competition for jobs. Others with anti-immigrant views have racist objections. In 2014, tens of thousands of undocumented Central American children came to the United States without their parents, fleeing escalating violence and poverty in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Though the surge in undocumented children abated, Virginia, like many states across the country, is still working to address this crisis of minors in need of food, shelter, and education.
Many Virginia jurisdictions and universities have developed offices specifically tasked with helping immigrants navigate new territory. In 2005, the Virginia Latino Advisory Board was established to advise the governor on issues relating to economics, education, health, housing, and overall well-being. The City of Richmond has the Office of Multicultural Affairs, while Fairfax County’s Seven Corners area has the Willston Multicultural Center. Numerous public school districts have created welcome centers to address the unique needs of newcomer students and families. Moreover, private and nonprofit institutions work with charitable organizations to assist the multilingual community. As with other immigrant groups before them, Hispanics and Latinos likely will gradually gain wider acceptance in Virginia and become fully integrated into their communities. Until then, new immigrants will continue the delicate dance of assimilation as they decide which aspects of their culture to keep and which to lose.
Cultural Traditions
Hispanic and Latino immigrants have always adapted their traditions to Virginia. These traditions are becoming more widely visible in Northern Virginia and have trickled into areas farther south. Though immigration often fractures families in the worst circumstances, familia remains central to Hispanic and Latino cultures. Immigrants often must make a special effort to observe holidays and major traditions, but that effort can result in a welcome respite from an alien and sometimes antagonistic culture.
Quinceañeras (often shortened to quinces) originated in the New World during the Spanish colonial era as a coming-of-age ceremony when a girl turned fifteen. At that time, a young woman received a priest’s blessing either to marry or to enter a convent, thus becoming a woman in the eyes of society. Today, quinceañeras are more likely to be followed by parties than betrothals. Some parties are as lavish as weddings, with catered food, live music, professional photographers, and other luxuries.
Cinco de Mayo (the Fifth of May) is a Mexican holiday that has gained favor in the United States, becoming even bigger here than in its home country. Though commonly confused with Mexican Independence Day, Cinco de Mayo commemorates Mexican forces’ defeat of the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Cinco de Mayo festivals unite Mexican and non-Mexican groups. Every year, the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce hosts the ¿Qué Pasa? Cinco de Mayo Festival in Richmond. Thousands flock to the city’s canal to see Incan designs, Venezuelan artistry, Bolivian dancers, and other attractions that are Hispanic or Latino but not Mexican, an example of how immigration often blurs homeland traditions and creates new ones.
El Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), the Mexican interpretation of Allhallowtide, celebrates and good-naturedly mocks death as a means of accepting and reducing fear of it. This holiday is also celebrated by some non-Mexican Latinos, especially those who are Mayan or of Mayan descent. According to legend, the souls of the dead briefly return to visit their loved ones at the start of November. Deceased children and infants (los angelitos, or little angels) arrive on November 1, and adults come on November 2. Celebrants honor the spirits with gifts, music, and prayer as well as cleaning and decorating graves with candles and marigolds, which symbolize death. Homemade altars adorned with crosses, images of the Virgin Mary, photos of the deceased, and papel picado (perforated paper, a signature Mexican folk art) also are common. Typically, people leave ofrendas (offerings) that vary according to what the deceased person liked in life. Parades, vigils, dancing, and feasting often take place near or at the cemetery. Traditional foods include mole (meat in a spicy chocolate sauce), tamales, tortillas, fresh fruit, hot chocolate, sugar skulls, and pan de muerto (bread of the dead). Folklore holds that in exchange for such joy and reverence, the spirits protect their loved ones from evil.
For many Latin American and Spanish children, El Día de los Reyes Magos (Kings’ Day) holds as much excitement as Christmas does for other Christian children. It is the day Latino children traditionally open presents. The day honors the gifts the magi bestowed on baby Jesus, and just as other Christian children write letters and postcards to Santa Claus, Hispanic and Latino children may write letters and postcards to all three kings or just their favorite one. On the night of January 5, children place bits of hay in their shoes or in an empty shoebox as a nod to Christ’s humble beginnings. Some children also leave food for the kings’ camels. The shoes and boxes are left under beds for the kings to fill with candy and small toys, much like Christmas stockings. Bigger presents may be placed under a Christmas tree.
Two other notable examples of Hispanic and Latino cultural blends in Virginia are food and music. Restaurants often are not just Mexican or Salvadoran but both. Pupusas, once a rarity in Northern Virginia’s culinary scene, are now ubiquitous and are offered alongside Mexican enchiladas and tacos al pastor. Virginia dance schools usually do not teach dances from a single country but offer courses in “Latin dances” that group together the bachata, the tango, and others. Catholic churches usually offer a single Spanish-language Mass and honor different traditions if and when time and resources allow.
Latinos in Virginia Today
Latinos in Virginia are not monolithic. While the majority originate from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries, a small but significant percentage speak Portuguese or Indigenous languages. As of 2020, more than half of the commonwealth’s Latinos were bilingual, more than a quarter spoke only English, and roughly 17 percent spoke mainly Spanish. The population is young, with a median age of 29.5, and is among the state’s fastest-growing groups. With one in ten Virginians now of Latino descent, they are significant drivers of the economy, and their social, political, and intellectual contributions are widespread. Jason Miyares became the first Hispanic elected to statewide office when he won the race for attorney general in 2021. Virginia’s Marymount University is designated as a Hispanic-serving institution of higher education since it has a full-time undergraduate student enrollment that is at least 25 percent Hispanic.
Although many Virginians celebrate the American Dream, there are myriad issues regarding equity, social and language justice, access to health and government services, and other critical needs. Nevertheless, Latinos have proven themselves resilient, strategic, and determined to overcome barriers as they grow in numbers and influence throughout the commonwealth.
