Hispanic Americans

Hispanic Americans of mixed Indigenous descent and European (typically Spanish) descent are the second oldest racial group (after the Native Americans) to inhabit much of what is today the United States. Spain colonized large areas of what is today the American Southwest and West Coast, as well as Florida. Its holdings included all of present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida, as well as parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, all of which constituted part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, based in Mexico City. Later, this vast territory (except Florida, which Spain ceded to the United States in 1821) became part of Mexico after its independence from Spain in 1821 and until the end of the Mexican–American War in 1848.