I'm from south america, been living in the US for a bit, and never encountered the term. Kind of curious to know where it comes from, and why it has a strong re

I'm from south america, been living in the US for a bit, and never encountered the term. Kind of curious to know where it comes from, and why it has a strong reaction. I feel like it's probably trying to include both genders, since spanish doesn't have a neutral gender, and that normally annoys me, since it's normally pretty clear when you mean actually-male or neutral-male, but I'm not necessarily against it. People from around where I come from would've probably gone with latin@, though.