Hortencia is a Latin American adolescent who has been hanging out more and more with her Latin American girlfriends. She used to have more white friends, even dating several white guys from her school, but lately, she finds herself more interested and attracted to Latin Americans. This past weekend, Hortencia and her friends went to a Mexican cultural festival and enjoyed the music and food immensely. She has also decided that she prefers the Catholic church that her friends' families go to for Sunday mass, rather than the Catholic church in the white neighborhood that her family usually attends. Hortencia is in the _____ stage of ethnic identity development.

The term ethnicity refers to the culture, beliefs and values of one’s heritage. When one person grows in a place where the majority of people are from other heritage/ethnicity, the person goes through different stages of Ethnic identity development.

According to Phinney's, there are 3 stages on the Ethnic identity development:

Unexamined Ethnic Identity: In these stage, people fall into one of two categories: they either don't find ethnicity as an issue of contention (diffusion category), or they have collected information about ethnicity with family and gets influenced by this information but without having had interaction with individuals of the actual ethnic group (foreclosure category)
Moratorium/ Ethnic identity search: The encounters individuals have cause them to look into their own ethnicity and become aware of it, they continue to seek more information by exploring with other members of the group.
Ethnic identity achievement: They have a positive, bicultural identity and are informed about their own ethnicity but also they are aware of all ethnicities.

In this example, Hortencia has been hanging out more and more with her Latin American girlfriends and lately she finds more interested and attracted to Latin Americans and their culture and religion. We can see that she has become aware of her own ethnicity and has been having contact with Latin Americans, she is discovering their traditions and culture. Thus, we can say that she is in the Moratorium stage.

*Note: She hasn't reached a bicultural identity but right now she is focusing more in Latin American culture. That's why we can say that she hasn't reached the third stage yet.*