Arkansas Governor and former White House press secretary in the Trump administration, Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders, signed  an executive order shortly after she was sworn in on January 10,  prohibiting the use of the term "Latinx" and its derivatives of all official communications of the Arkansas government.

“That within sixty (60) days of this Order, all state offices, departments, and agencies shall revise all existing written materials by replacing the terms ‘Latinx’, ‘latinx’, ‘Latinxs’, or ‘latinxs’ with ‘Hispanic’, ‘Hispanics’, ‘Latino’, ‘Latinos’, ‘Latina’, or ‘Latinas’. If the changes to the revised documents require promulgation under Arkansas law, then the requisite state office, department or agency shall promulgate the revised document in accordance with Arkansas law”, according to the document.

The term Latinx is a gender-neutral form of “Latino” or “Latin” that has gained some traction among progressive circles as an inclusive term.  Activists and academics concerned with debating the differences between the terms “Hispanic”, “Latino” and “Latinx”, passing through the categories of identity, language and community, ended up, many of them, supporting and adopting the term that broadly contemplated the Latin/Hispanic population in the country.

As we noted in February 2022, “Although the debate began in the last decade, it was only recently that the term ‘Latinx’ has gained prominence and attracted resistance from those who oppose its use, which has also been proposed as an alternative to languages that follow the binary gender, such as Spanish and Portuguese”.

However, in the executive order, Governor Sanders declared the reason behind the ban as the “responsibility of the government to respect its citizens and use ethnically appropriate language, especially when referring to ethnic minorities”.

Sanders’ executive order referred to this criticism, citing the “Royal Academia de la Lengua Española” (RAE), the unofficial arbiter of rules for the use of the Spanish language worldwide.

The Real Academia Española, the Madrid-based institution which governs the Spanish language, has officially rejected the use of “x” as an alternative to “o” and “a” in Spanish, the order says.

A  2020 Pew Research Center report was cited to support the decision. The report showed that 3% of Hispanic and Latino adults in the U.S. use the term Latinx. The report also showed that of the adults surveyed, only 23% have heard of the term Latinx, 20% of respondents do not use the term Latinx, and the remaining 3% make up the group that uses the term.

In addition, since its creation, the term was criticized for being unpronounceable in Spanish, and some said it decreases the inclusion of the Spanish language in the country.

Ed Morales, author of the book “Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture”, shared his opinion on the new order to CNN, saying, “Sanders is making sure the debate around 'Latinx' drowns out more important issues in the community. […] Her anti-woke rhetoric will do nothing to address the economic issues that are front and center in the minds of Latino/as in the US, including in Arkansas, one of our nation’s poorest states”.

Others interpreted the ban as a wake-up call for what might come from the government.

“It's an attack not only on the Latino community, but on the trans and nonbinary community as well,” Irvin Camacho, a community rights organizer, told NBC News. “But what I am worried about is if this administration on the first day decided to sign this executive order — what does it look like for us going forward?”

Along with the executive order prohibiting the use of “Latinx”, she also signed an order prohibiting the Critical Theory of Race in Arkansas schools. The order stated that “Critical Race Theory (CRT) is antithetical to the traditional American values of neutrality, equality, and fairness”, and instructed the Secretary of the Department of Education to “review and improve policies that prevent prohibited indoctrination, including CRT”.

According to TheHill, “The governor’s office did not respond to whether that included other terms disavowed by the Latino community, like ‘illegal alien’ or ‘illegal immigrant’, or whether the term Latinx had ever been used in official Arkansas communications in the past”.