This is the obvious answer. Another, I believe, is a sense of community (lower societal stress).

The article doesn't mention the other obvious comparisons, the non-black latin american countries, such as Argentina and Chile.

For instance, Chile ranks higher than the US here, despite being a poorer country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expec...

Lets take in mind that genetics are complicated here.

Spaniards where a mix of mediterranean and african people: Arabs, Jews, Celts (Irish/French), Catholics (Italian/French), Hindi (Gipsies), Phoenician from the actual Israel, Guanche from Canary Islands, Dutch/Scottish/English sailors settled in Cadiz... and after this, native americans and sub saharians entered in the family and things went really crazy in this sense.

So a Spaniard and a North African can be genetically very close. And a Spaniard and a Jew can be closer genetically than an american Jew that could be in fact a mix of Mediterranean Jews and English. By the same reason some afroamericans can be pretty close to hispanics genetically. Is the culture and the history what is different, not the genetics.

Yes

After all, "hispanics" are Native-Americans genetically (though there are differences between regions)

Maybe they are more adapted to something (may be even the corn-heavy modern American diet)

I guess the societal factors play an important part as well.