True, I should have specified that actual Spanish should be preferred over any bizarre artificial alternatives
"Latinx" is used because it avoids an unfortunate implication intrinsic to "Latino", "Latina", or "Latin@": the gender binary.
So does "Latin", but the point is to publicly signal virtue, hence the eye-catching and bizarre "x".
You can't forget about "womxn" and "folx." The insertion of an "x" seems to be more of an attempt to colonize/Lysenkoize the lexicon than to actually be inclusive.
It's about power and control.
He who controls language controls thought. He who controls thought wields absolute power.
Sticks in your craw, doesn't it, that x? Kinda like how trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people do in our cisnormative society. It is deliberate, and it's intended to acknowledge the presence of something that was always there, but absent from our culture's understanding of the world.