system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: The difference between South American, Latino/a and Hispanic

Also in which cases should I use them?
gpt
Hispanic means anyone who comes from Spanish-speaking country. This is virtually all of Central and South America but excluding Brazil. Brazilians are NOT Hispanic.

Latino/a is usually used as a synonym for Hispanic but it can also sometimes include Brazilians (but again sometimes it doesn't).

And South American just means someone from a South American country. But there's plenty of Hispanics, Latinos, etc. from North America (Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc.)

All of that being said, it's important to know that while we usually treat it that way, Hispanic is NOT a race. Hispanics can be white, black, Asian, Native American, and any mixture of those and still be Hispanic. We usually think of Hispanic as a race because many of them are what's called 'Mestizo' which is a racial category describing people who are descendants of white Spaniards and Native Americans who intermarried long ago. Do NOT call people Mestizo, it's not a word that's used outside of like academia and government documents.