The “x” in Latinx is an attempt to un-gender the term Latino, yet it still pays deference to a Eurocentric ideology that actively denies the indigenous and African heritage of the people it claims to represent. If one is serious about non-gendered terminology, why cling to a European language as the basis of one’s identity? Why not simply adopt an indigenous term? Wouldn’t this be more reflective of our cultural inheritance as native people?

Personally, I prefer to identify as Mazewalli, a term in the Nawatl language that means “indigenous person.” Like many Mesoamerican languages, Nawatl is a non-gendered language. As an indigenous man who descends from the Nawa peoples of Puebla, I think it is far more powerful and meaningful to my identity if I use a term in the language of my ancestors.

Mexico is one of the most linguistically diverse nations on the planet, with 62 indigenous languages still being spoken. This means there are a multitude of authentic, culturally specific labels we can use to describe ourselves which better reflect who we are.

The very idea of a “Latin America” and “Latin” people comes from the French intellectual Michel Chevalier, who sought in the late 1800s to create an umbrella term that would unite colonial subjects under a generic “Latin” identity. In doing so, Chevalier hoped to assist Napoleon III in expanding the French empire. Chevalier hoped that if he could convince Mexicans to adopt a “Latin” view of themselves, they would be more inclined to align themselves with French interests. In 1968, John Leddy Phelan, in his “Pan-Latinism, French Intervention in Mexico, and the Genesis of the Idea of Latina America,” explains Chevalier’s intentions:

In order to forestall such a dismal prospect, Chevalier had an emphatic answer. France must reassert in a vigorous fashion that hegemony over the Latin world which belonged to her since the time of Louis XIV. Chevalier exhorted, “Only she [France] can prevent this whole family [the Latin nations] from being engulfed in the double inundation of the Germans or the Anglo-Saxons and the Slavs. To France belongs the role of awakening the Latins from the lethargy in which they are now submerged in the two hemispheres, to raise them to the level of other nations and to put the Latins in a position where their influence can be felt in the rest of the world.

If Mexicans embraced the ideals of “Latinism,” the French would now be their “Latin” brethren as opposed to the “Saxons” who also had interests in Mexico. As historian Thomas Holloway notes, “Napoleon III was particularly interested in using the concept to help justify his intrusion into Mexican politics that led to the imposition of Archduke Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico... ”

Unfortunately, the idea found a home among Mexico’s ruling elite. The notion that indigenous people would be “improved” by transforming them into Latinos was a central part of Jose Vasconcelos’s idea of “La Raza Cosmica,” a racial fantasy that promoted whiteness as the “door to the future” for indigenous Mexicans. In her book Seeing Indians: A Study of Race, Nation, and Power in El Salvador, author Virginia Q. Tilley breaks down the racism of “La Raza Cosmica” thusly: