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Spanish has become the U.S.'s de facto second language, Nuevo Latino has taken its rightful place in haute cuisine, the sounds of rock en Español and reggaeton have filtered up the charts, and Latinos not only star on but own and manage major league baseball teams. But like any immigrant group that has shaped mainstream U.S. culture before fully asserting its economic or political power, the nation's 41.3 million Hispanics are just getting warmed up. While they command nearly $600 billion in buying power, they are only starting to attract the marketing attention on Madison Avenue that they merit, and their political clout similarly lags behind their sheer numbers. The country's largest ethnic minority, Hispanics promise to help remake America in the 21st century as vitally as African Americans did in the 20th.

Still, perhaps more than any of their immigrant predecessors, Hispanics defy easy categorization. Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans and Argentine Americans may all speak the same language, but many wouldn't dream of standing under the same cultural umbrella. A fair number of U.S.-born Hispanics don't speak Spanish, and many others have little or no European blood. Indeed, the category Hispanic is a gringo construct—first used by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1980—and the only one based on culture and language instead of race. That dubious distinction frustrates some Hispanics, who believe they belong to a separate race, the product of an epic Latin American miscegenation of Iberian, Native American and African heritage. A growing number, especially in California and the Northeast, prefer the term Latino. But in a Time poll of Hispanic adults, 42% said they choose to be called Hispanic, only 17% said Latino and 34% had no particular preference. Such a wide array of opinions and agendas is reflected in Time's list of the nation's 25 most influential Hispanics, who range from celebrities like J. Lo and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to the lesser-known labor activist Pablo Alvarado and art curator Mari Carmen Ram"rez. She says her job is to be an evangelist for Latino culture. With these 24 powerful Hispanics at her side, no wonder word is spreading fast.

• From music to politics to business, Hispanics are remaking America. TIME presents 25 titans leading the Latino charge into the 21st century