The Deconstructionist critic Barbara Johnson has the theory of “the difference within”. She suggests that when Group A calls itself different from Group B and assigns characteristics to it, as it happen in racism, Group A is trying to exorcise its own fears about not being always coherent and unchangeable. Unable to accept “the difference within”, Group A constructs “the difference with”. That is how stereotypes are born; for example, if a society wants to see itself as controlling over its feelings, calm, responsible and hardworking, it tries to see itself in the mirror on another culture to which the opposite features can be attributed.

“Passionate” is shorthand for the stereotyping of, erm, people who speak Spanish as a first language, either South American or Spaniards (I’ll say it again: Spaniards are not Latinos). I don’t like stereotypes, and I don’t like things that belong in different categories to be put together, and I don’t like the current stereotype on “Latinos”.

What the hell does passionate mean? Sometimes it applies to love, and we are back at the Latin Lover myth, which is every bit as racist as the Asian-woman-as-pleasure-giving-submissive-geisha myth. Sometimes it means we get very easily carried away by our feelings, and then it is extremely condescending. Besides, it shows poor vocabulary and a lazy train of thought. Say that I am enthusiastic, opinionated, extrovert, expressive, emotional, temperamental. Just by a lucky coincidence, I am all those things. I am not “passionate”. That label is so overused it doesn’t mean anything any more.

There is also the idea that Spanish-speakers share one culture. We don’t, really, no more than English or French speakers worldwide do. Someone from León shares with someone from Venezuela as much as someone from Yorkshire would have in common with someone from Seattle.