The origins and ongoing development of Latino and Hispanic history in a handy Q & A format written for everyone! Latinos and Hispanics officially became the USA's majority minority in 2003. As of the 2010 Census, their numbers had swelled to 50.5 million, roughly 16.3 percent of U.S. population. In fact, only Mexico has as a larger Latino and Hispanic population than the U.S. According to projections, one in every three U.S. residents will be Latino and Hispanic in ethnicity by 2050. Thus, for Americans from the average person on the street to the analyst who will chart the seismic shifts in public policy that must accompany such epic demographic changes, it is crucial to understand the intricate and variegated weave that forms the Latino and Hispanics historical cloth. Learn about the conquistadors and the Spanish Empire that stretched from Europe to the Americas to the Philippines. Understand the historical differences that separate the Latinos and Hispanics who trace their origins the Caribbean's three remaining Spanish-speaking states: Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. See the diverse and divergent growth of Central and South America, targets for dramatic U.S. interventionism and major sources of U.S. immigration since the 1980's. Understand the reasons why Mexico has ceded half its territory to the U.S.A. and why her descendants account for fully 65 percent of the overall Latinos and Hispanic population. Finally, discover how the Spanish presence in the U.S. began more than a hundred years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth and why Spain still claimed roughly half of today's continental United States at the end of the Revolutionary War. Follow the dual forces of continental expansion and hemispheric interventionism that have linked with U.S. with Latin America.