Hispanic Heritage Month

In 1968 Congress authorized President Lyndon Johnson to proclaim Hispanic Heritage Week, and so he did. Having been a schoolteacher in rural Texas, Mr. Johnson was intimately familiar with the plight of the Latino worker and in such a tumultuous year as 1968, the dedication of this sliver of time to celebrate our heritage although well meant, today seems almost ominous of the many more struggles to come all the way up our days.

In 1968 Cesar Chávez was in the middle of organizing farm workers throughout the nation leaving a trail of hope and justice. That same year Dolores Huerta was celebrating Robert F. Kennedy’s victory in the Democratic presidential primary when the young candidate was cowardly assassinated in a concert hall of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Latinos were active and front and center in this transformational year and yet our place in it will be forever overshadowed by the overwhelming weight of the civil rights struggle and the horrors of the Vietnam war, the first war ever to be televised live from the theater of war. I am not exactly sure if Mr. Johnson’s realized that history simply would have no space for us in such banner year but the idea of a week celebrating our heritage was a very good one. Gracias Lyndon!

Ronald Reagan, the great communicator, among the many effective Public Relations decisions he made, in 1988 the last year of his presidency, expanded our little space in the calendar to a whole month and therefore it has been 24 years since from September 15th to October 15th we celebrate the Hispanic Heritage Month.

In days like the ones we are currently living, when in one hand we as a community are being constantly demonized by certain elements in our society and on the other we have acquired unprecedented awareness of our place in the American family and of the formidable political power we have in our collective hand, it’s a good thing to pause for a moment and render homage to the ones who preceded us in this journey and to their legacy as well as to reflect where we want to go and how to get there.

How are you planning to celebrate the HHM this year? Will your kids be involved? Your friends? Your community? Share with us what your plans are, and even more importantly how do you feel about the Hispanic Heritage Month?