Follow TV Tropes

Following

Latino Is Brown

Go To

"For Europeans, South America is a mustached man with a guitar and a gun."

There exists a stereotypical perception in North American media that all of Latin America is composed of a single race of olive-skinned, raven-haired folk of mixed European and Indigenous descent. Thus, if a work features many Latino characters, most if not all look this way, or characters will think they do before being corrected by an actual Latino character. In real life, this is a specific background ("Mestizo"note  in Hispanic America and "Caboclo" or "Mameluco"note  in Brazil), and Latin America comprises a variety of ancestries and ethnic groups, similar to Anglo America, making the region one of the most racially diverse in the world.

The "Latin=brown" stereotype is most prominent in the United States and Canada, since brown-skinned Latinos are the ones those populations are most likely to knowingly encounter. In most of Latin America, the white people are generally wealthier and less likely to emigrate for economic opportunities, and many that did would change their names to something more English-sounding to avoid discrimination and to assimilate better. Black Latinos are assumed to be African-American unless they reveal otherwise,note  and most people don't even know Asian Latinos exist even though Brazil is home to the world's largest ethnic Japanese and Lebanese populations outside those respective countries. As a result, North Americans have come to associate the Latin identity with Mestizo features.

This trope extends to Spaniards themselves as well, as there is also a certain idea that Spain (if differentiated from Latin America at all) is predominantly populated by people with a similar brown-ish skin tone. In reality, like Latin America, Spain is a pretty diverse mixed bag, going from people who easily might pass as Northern Europeans to people dark enough to resemble Northern Africans (it helps that Iberians have a historically significant Semitic and Berber input, going from even before the Phoenician colonizations and the Muslim conquest of the peninsula, all with a sprinkle of Romani too).note  The same applies to Italians, Greeks and other Mediterraneans, who might or might not feature your typical olive skin depending on many factors.

Compare Phenotype Stereotype and Facial Profiling (where people from a country are always depicted with coloring and features associated with that country) — single-character examples should go there. Related to Spexico (where Iberian Europeans are conflated with Latin Americans), Latin Land (especially when the trope portrays all Hispanic American countries as an uniform mass) and The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires (when Latin Land extends into Portuguese-speaking Brazil). Compare All Jews Are Ashkenazi, All Muslims Are Arab, Interchangeable Asian Cultures and Racial Face Blindness. Since Cultural Blending is often involved, Not Even Bothering with the Accent is very much expected in scenes featuring Gratuitous Spanish. Subtrope of Mistaken Nationality and/or Mistaken Ethnicity.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 
    Comedy 
  • Gabriel Iglesias mentions in one routine how the first time he brought home his then-girlfriend (later wife) to his mother, who like him is brown, she turned to him and asked him in Spanish why he'd brought a white girl home. Said girlfriend then replied to his mother, in Spanish, since while being very light skinned she was in fact Mexican.
  • Paul Rodriguez has a bit defying this, about how Latinos come in every color and ethnicity on the planet, from as black as Sammy Sosa to as blonde-haired and blue-eyed as Cameron Diaz, and everything in between.
    Paul: You know why? Because we'll sleep with anybody! When it comes to sex, we're not prejudiced. If we don't like your color, we'll fuck you in the dark!
  • In his first Comedy Central Presents episode, Greg Giraldo mentioned that he was rejected to host a nature show in spite of them looking for a Hispanic host due to "not looking Hispanic (read: dark-skinned) enough". He then joked about how the host would supposedly act:
    Greg: (in a stereotypically Mexican accent) The conditions of the desert are looking to be hot...muggy...a good day to cross a river... (winks at the audience)
  • Marcello Hernandez jokes about this in one routine, noting how jarring it is that he's a Latino-American (half-Cuban, half-Dominican specifically) born to immigrant parents who "looks like a white TikToker."

    Comic Books 
  • In America Chavez's solo series, America (2017) a large portion of the cast consists of Latinas, and America's backstory shows her going through various places in Central and South America. Every one of these people are brown-skinned.
  • In Joelle Jones' Wonder Girl (Infinite Frontier) (2021) every Brazilian character has the exact same brown skin tone.

    Films — Animated 
  • In Coco, all of the living characters have dark skin. Justified, as the film's scenes in the Land of the Living takes place in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where the vast majority of its residents have at least some amount of Native ancestry. It's implied that the Rivera family is one of those families, as many of its female members wear traditional clothing.
  • Notably averted in Encanto, which is set in Colombia. While Mirabel, her mother and sisters, her grandmother and her uncle Bruno have the standard Mestizo features, her aunt Pepa has fair skin and auburn hair, while her father Agustín has more Asian features and Pepa's husband Felix is Afro-Colombian with dark skin and an afro, and their three children have varying degrees of African features. The village folk also have an array of skintones, hair colors/textures, and facial features as well.

    Films — Live Action 
  • Aliens has the character Vasquez, who is indeed Hispanic. But her actress Jeanette Goldstein (who is Jewish with mixed Moroccan, Russian and Brazilian descent) wears a fake tan and dark make-up to look more stereotypically Hispanic. For years it was assumed that this was a case of Fake Nationality because of this trope.
  • In The Incredible Hulk (2008), there's a scene where General Ross finds out that Bruce Banner is working at a soda factory in Rio de Janeiro, and advises his subordinates to be on the lookout for a white man employed there. According to census data, white Brazilians make up about 51 percent of the city's population in real life.
  • Lampshaded in Moonlight (2016). Juan, a black Cuban played by Mahershala Ali, acknowledges the Latino = brown perception by saying Americans often don't think Latinos can be black.
  • The film adaptations for West Side Story have differed:
    • West Side Story (1961) differentiates the Puerto Ricans from the Italians by making all the Puerto Ricans dark skinned—most, in fact, are played by non-Hispanic actors in brownface. Anita's actress, Rita Moreno, is Puerto Rican, but they had to darken her skin too because otherwise she looked too light compared to the others.
    • The 2021 version averts this though. Not only did Steven Spielberg cast Latino actors for the roles, but he cast from a wide selection of ethnicities. Rachel Zegler (Maria) is of Colombian descent and Ariana DeBose (Anita) is Afro-Latina (because of this trope, Ariana feared she was too dark for the role). Moreno also returns in a different role and appears with her natural skin tone.
  • Subverted in The Hateful Eight by Bob/Marco the Mexican, who is played by the fair-skinned Demián Bichir and is presumably of Spanish descent. His fair skin presumably assisted him in hiding his true ethnicity from the notoriously anti-Mexican Minnie until he and his gang could kill her and take over her haberdashery.
  • In Snakes on a Plane, the Hispanic mother Maria is played by Elsa Pataky, a blonde, blue-eyed Spanish actress of Romanian-Hungarian descent on her mother's side. The actress is noticeably more tanned in the movie than her usual and was made to look like she had natural black hair that was dyed blonde.
  • Cassanova Was A Woman: Cassanova gets mistaken for a gringa (non-Latina woman) due to being a blonde who has blue eyes and is fair-skinned, though in fact she's a Latina (Cuban-American) who speaks Spanish fluently. She even does bilingual reporting on the radio. When she tries out for an acting role which sought a Latina, all the other women there are darker, which she notes talking to her friend Evelyn, saying she looks like a child of The Brady Bunch parents, saying if someone doesn't have Jennifer Lopez's appearance they're not deemed Latin enough so Cassanova doesn't get these parts. Instead, she's often cast playing white Canadian, Russian or Irish women. Evelyn replies she's more Latin than many women who have the Phenotype Stereotype, given many don't even speak Spanish. Evelyn, Cassanova's younger sister Evette and Lola (her agent, then later girlfriend) are also brunettes with olive or similar skin tones. Her mother and other sister Miriam are exceptions, being blondes with fair skin like Cassanova. A couple of the background people working on the Telemundo soap opera are also black or white Latinos, it's indicated.

    Literature 
  • In Animorphs, Marco is the only Latino character (and his father is implied to not be Latino), but the covers showing him have a pale-skinned model. In the 2011 re-release, a pale model was used at first, but later changed to a brown one due to claims of whitewashing. Played straight in the graphic novel adaptation, where he has a noticeably darker skin tone. In the TV series, he was played by the noticeably brown Boris Cabrera.
  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: The titular heroine is a Cuban with fairly light brown skin and brown hair. She is able to pass as a gringa by dyeing her hair and advances her career by getting 'white' parts this way.
  • Victoria: The female lead Maria de Alva hails from an old aristocratic Spanish family and is purely European by blood and in appearance. However, this appearance is also held as sufficiently uncommon for a Latina for the American protagonists to consider it worth commenting on.

    Live Action TV 
  • black•ish: While discussing the concept of N-Word Privileges, Charlie and Curtis mention that certain Latinos can say the word since they're black, while others obviously aren't black and thus cannot.
    Charlie: Big Pun, Fat Joe? Okay. Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin? No bueno.
  • Orange Is the New Black: A Discussed Trope. One of the Latinas asserts that there are many different Latino ethnicities. She says that a blonde woman in a lingerie brochure might be Latina for all they know. Likewise, the blond-haired CO Alvarez is accused of being a fake Latino, but he counters that there are many Latinos who look Anglo and points to Martin Sheen as an example. Mendez too could be considered a Latino due to his last name, and having a Cuban father, though neither he nor anyone else identifies him as such.
  • Penny Dreadful: City of Angels: Mateo objects that Rio is white, not Latina (because she's got pale skin), and thus she can't be pachuco. However, she retorts that her parents came from northern Spain to Mexico. Of course, she's just one of Magda's many guises (who's really a demon, though apparently from Mexican culture at least). All of the other Latino characters however have olive skin and black hair.
  • One Day at a Time (2017): Elena is dismayed to realize that unlike her olive-skinned grandmother, brother, and mother, she is perceived as white and not Latina because of her fair skin.
  • mixed•ish: Johan is often taken for Mexican at his school because he has curly dark brown hair and olive skin. He rolls with it, due to being tired of explaining that he's actually mixed race, with black and white parents, plus being called a racial slur as a result.
  • Vida: Nelson prefers dating white woman over Latinas as he likes fair skin. However, in reality Latina women have a variety of skin tones (not to mention that Latino is a culture, not a race, thus White vs. Latino isn't a binary option, however in the US they're often treated that way). Only those with olive skin and darker are shown in the series, except for maybe Nico.
  • Switched at Birth: Regina, Adriana, Natalie and other Latinos in East Riverside are all dark-skinned. Regina's daughter, Daphne (fair-skinned, red-haired, green-eyed) is revealed to have been Switched at Birth. Regina's biological daughter Bay, played by a white actress of Italian descent, is very pale skinned (which is really unlikely given her heritage). This becomes a plot point in one episode where Daphne applies for a Latina scholarship, and every other candidate there is very stereotypical of a Latina. She laments to Regina that even though they think she's Latina, no one else sees it that way. Later though when she's introduced to Jorge's family, none of them questions it. A chemistry professor who she has is fascinated, remarking how rare red hair is among Puerto Ricans.
  • Gang Related: "Perros" has young Mexican women trafficked who are blonde and pale-skinned. This is due to them having ethnic German ancestry, and their looks are also noted to be unusual among Mexicans. All other Latino characters, the lead Ryan included, have olive brown or darker skin tones along with dark hair.

    Music 

    Video Games 
  • Knuckle Heads: Averted in that the people of Latin America, or at the very least Brazil, are not portrayed as universally brown skinned. The character on the roster from Brazil, Claudia Silva, is a fair-skinned Fiery Redhead while the spectators that are visible in the background of her stage portray a crowd who come from a diverse set of ethnic backgrounds.

    Webcomics 

    Web Video 
  • Todd in the Shadows once mentioned that Pitbull (full name Armando Christian Peréz), who's Cuban American, does not look Hispanic at all and just looks white. As mentioned above, most Cubans are of unmixed Spanish descent and look exactly like him in terms of complexion.
  • During a short review of The Three Caballeros, Youtuber Schaffrillas Productions criticses the filmmakers as "a bunch of white dudes" seeking to "condense this rich culture into a popular animated film for predominantly white audiences", ignoring the fact that of the three countries the film takes place in, Brazil and Mexico both have large white pluralities, and Uruguay has an even greater white majority than the United States.
  • Discussed in the video "Things Black Latinos Are Sick of Hearing", where a black Latino man at a party gets asked a lot of annoying questions. He's introduced by the party thrower as his "black Latino friend". The video ends with a Venezuelan woman coming to the party and having the same treatment, albeit as his "white Latino friend". There is, of course, also a "Things White Latinos Are Sick of Hearing", with the aforementioned woman (Joanna Hausmann, who's Jewish and a fair-skinned redhead to boot, quite the opposite from the stereotype in every way).

    Western Animation 
  • Family Guy has a lot of Hispanic characters with similar tanned skin and often black hair.
  • Invader Zim averts this (due to its creator being a light-skinned Latino). The Membrane family is of Mexican descent per Word of God, but they all have extremely pale skin; The Movie makes them slightly more tanned, presumably as a way to make their ethnicity more obvious, but even then they're still lighter-skinned than usual portrayals of Latinos.
  • Jem:
    • Raya is Mexican-American and her entire family has brown skin. They all have dark brown hair except for the pink haired Raya.
    • When the band visits Mexico most characters have a similar skin tone.
  • In The Loud House and its spinoff, The Casagrandes, Ronnie Anne and her family have light brown skin as well as the other Hispanics.
  • Zigzagged in Elena of Avalor. The residents of the Latin America-inspired kingdoms Avalor, Cordoba, Paraiso, Cariza, and Galonia all have different shades of brown skin, with a few exceptions:
    • Naomi and her family are immigrants from Norberg, the world's equivalent of colonial-era America (without the colonization), and thus are meant to be the equivalent of Caucasian-American (additionally, Naomi and her father are blonde-haired and blue-eyed, while her mother is a redhead). However, they're members of the working class rather than wealthy.
    • Lieutenant Higgins and an incidental woman are clearly white redheads, though Higgins is implied to be from outside of Avalor while the extra seems to be a white-passing Avaloran.
    • Mateo's mother Rafa is white-passing, though she had slightly darker skin in the pilot.
    • Tomiko is a college student from abroad, implied to be Satu (East Asia/Japan equivalent), though still represents the Asian diaspora in Latin America.
    • Some characters seem to be Afro-Latino, particularly the Carizan royal family and Valentina.
    • Other characters also seem to be of indigenous descent, though this seems like a Continuity Snarl, as the native Maruvians had been magically wiped out by the Shadows of Night; it's possible Avalorans were descended from other indigenous groups.
  • Amanda Lopez, Milo's love interest from Milo Murphy's Law, is an olive-skinned Latina with dark purple hair. Word of God states she was made a Latina upon Disney's suggestion, and initially wasn't of a specific ethnicity. Two characters that show up in "Cake 'Splosion!" and who seemingly are Amanda's parents follow suit, with the woman having the same kin and hair color as Amanda, and the man having a dark brown skin with black hair.
    • This is averted with some characters from other shows of the same universe: Isabella Garcia-Shapiro from Phineas and Ferb, who is Mexican-Jewish with a white skin complexion similar to that of Phineas and Ferb themselves; and Gretel and Kevin Grant-Gomez from Hamster & Gretel, who are mixed Venezuelan with a very pale skin complexion (Gretel is even blonde). It's played more straight with their parentage: Isabella's mother Vivian is olive-skinned, and so is Gretel and Kevin's mother Carolina. Their abuelita is also very brown-skinned as well.
  • In The Owl House the Nocedas (including main character Luz) are a Latino family depicted with olive skin and brown-to-black hair.
  • In Total Drama, every character who is Hispanic, such as Alejandro (and his brother José), Courtney, Zee, and Brody (with the latter three being confirmed as such by Word of God), as well as the Latina Axel, has brown skin and dark hair.

Top