Well, that’s an accurate origin of latino.

But that doesn’t mean someone is obligated to internalize being latino. That’s extra true when a person is the child of immigrants. They can be raised within their parent’s culture, and then take on varying degrees of identification with either that culture, or the surrounding one.

And there’s nothing saying that someone in the Latin American country they’re born in can’t separate themselves, at least internally, from the culture of their country, or their region.

That’s true of any culture. You can be from the us and take on any degree of identity as an american, or reject that entirely and build your own identity on any number of factors.

You never met anyone that’s of latino origins that assimilated fully into the culture of a different country? It’s pretty common. My best friend’s husband is Nicaraguan, and identifies as that, Latino, and American. He’s got siblings that were raised in Nicaragua before the family moved here that outright ignore that culture and don’t even speak Spanish with anyone poster than their parents. He’s got nieces and nephews that embrace being latino, but not necessarily Nicaraguan, and vice versa.

A sense of cultural identity is largely voluntary.