Chapter 4: Educating Latina/O Students With Special Needs

Hispanic and Latino are terms used to denote individuals from Mexican, Central/South American and Caribbean Islands where Spanish is the primary language. Chicano, a term popularized in the 1960’s, was originally designated for Mexican Americans primarily from economically oppressed urban environments as an empowering sociopolitical term, which is still used today by some from the Mexican American community. Similarly Diasporican is a term used to describe the sociopolitical realities of Puerto Ricans who have settled across various regions of the United States thus being influenced not only by Puerto Rican identity but the situated realities of the region settled in the United States (Valldejuli & Flores, 2000).