Within the Latino community itself in the United States, there is some variation in how the term is defined or used.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Various governmental agencies, especially the U.S. Census Bureau, have specific definitions of Latino which may or may not agree with community usage. These agencies also employ the term Hispanic, which includes Spaniards, whereas Latino often does not. Conversely, Latino can include Brazilians,[10][11] and may include Spaniards and sometimes even some European romanophones such as Portuguese (a usage sometimes found in bilingual subgroups within the U.S., borrowing from how the word is defined in Spanish),[3][6][7][4] but Hispanic does not include any of those other than Spaniards.
Usage of the term is mostly limited to the United States. Residents of Central and South American countries usually refer to themselves by national origin, rarely as Latino. Because of this, many Latin American scholars, journalists, and Indigenous-rights organizations have objected to the mass-media use of the word to refer to all people of Latin American background.