Clickz gets the subtleties of Latinos not quite right

Clickz is admirable in that it broached the issue of Latinos and Latin Americans on-line and its related search marketing, but I have to say it got a lot not quite right.

Here's the story, some highlights and then my comments.

Challenges of the Latino Search Market by Grant Crowell
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3626459

Highlights:

• Internet penetration in Latin American averages 15 percent.
  
• 45.3 million Latin Americans online. From the story, I can't tell if the author means only people actually living in Latin America.

What's amazing about these stats is that 8 years after the outrageous hype about Starmedia, QuePasa, etc. the market is still tiny and still in its infancy.

Here's what I see as wrong with Crowell's story.

1. He lumps U.S. Latinos and Latin Americans together in one group, but excludes Spain.
   
2. He refers to North America as the English-speaking part, excluding Mexico. He refers to Europe as separate from Spain.

It just makes me cringe when non-Latinos talk about the opportunities in Latin America as somehow joined to those of us living in the United States. The author lumps all of Latin America together and excludes Spain. First and foremost, lumping the Spanish-speaking world together is like lumping the English-speaking world together. The English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Jamaicans, Austrailians, New Zealanders and those living in the United States and Belize have only language in common. Mexican-Americans have almost nothing in common with folks from the southern cone like Uruguay.
I just think it's wrong to even try to lump everyone together in a single group.