Recommended Readings from Hispanic Heritage Month

(Note: This was supposed to be posted by Oct.15^th, but I forgot) 

I’ve discussed my ambivalent and somewhat strained relationship with Columbus Day in the past (October, 2008 & again in October, 2013). Suffice it to say, that this “holiday” more than most others gives me pause to reflect, not just on my personal identity, but on the history of the world during the last half millennia.

Columbus may not have been the first European, or even the first “outsider”, to travel to what would later become the Americas. His voyages, however, were obviously the catalyst for what would become centuries of invasion and plunder, colonialism and expansion, war and conquest. The modern world we live in was born from this clash of civilizations, and it continues to have to look back to try and make sense of it.

Hispanics and Latinos are both groups of people who were birthed from these conflicts and confrontations. I don’t believe that we have a collective identity, because like all Americans (North, Central, and South) it depends on where you start our narrative, and it depends on which branches in our bloodlines you decide to follow. That’s not to say that we don’t share something. We share a language, and at least in my circles, a love of life that is rooted not in the so-called American Dream, but in America itself.

There is something special about this half of the world. The so-called Old World sensed it the moment they stumbled upon it. The great expanses of open land, the pristine nature that invited explorers and pioneers to venture into what they thought was mostly uninhabited space. It seemed like a great place to continue doing what they had been doing for centuries back in Europe, the Mideast, and Asia.

It has been a bloody, violent, hard-fought history that has us where we are in 2019. For better or worse, we have already written two hundred and twenty plus years of our history in the Western Hemisphere, and Hispanics have been here since the beginning. Thus, as we say goodbye to another Hispanic Heritage month, I would like to take some time to recommend some books you can find in our collection. Here then, are ten (click on the link to read the descriptions)

• The Hispanic 100: A Ranking of the Latino Men and Women Who Have Most Influenced American Thought and Culture by Himilce Novas published in 1995 Cesar Chavez,
• Cool salsa : bilingual poems on growing up Latino in the United States edited by Lori Carlson published in 1995
• Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music and Puerto Rican Cultures by Frances Aparicio published 1998
• Harvest of Empire: a history of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez published in 2000
• Cesar Chavez: a biography by Hal Markovitz published in 2003
• Ellen Ochoa : First Female Hispanic Astronaut by John Wukovits published in 2007
• Once Upon A Quinceanera by Julia Alvarez published in 2008
• 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago published in 2011
• Blurred borders : transnational migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States by Jorge Duany published in 2011
• Our America : a Hispanic history of the United States by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto published in 2014

Thank you for reading and I hope you found something useful.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2019. All rights reserved.

Reflecting on Hispanic Heritage Month

Did you know that September 15^th through October 15^th is Hispanic Heritage Month? Like other “monthly” celebrations, this one first began as a week-long acknowledgment of one group of “Americans” in an attempt to raise everyone’s awareness of their contributions¹. Over time, these seven days grew to thirty days, but through the quirkiness of history and legislation, Hispanic Heritage Month began in the middle of one month and ended in the middle of the next.

The terms Hispanic, Latino, Spanish and now, Latinx, all describe a subset of people, and I have heard them used interchangeably, however, they describe different groups, depending on who you ask. There are many articles available² that explain the difference between these terms, but a short version of the difference is that Latinos come from Latin America (and include Mexico, Central America, Brazil, and all the Caribbean Islands), but not Spain³. Hispanics, on the other hand, all hail from any predominantly Spanish speaking country. Technically speaking, only Spaniards are “Spanish”, though in the US the term is often assigned to those of us who speak the language. Latinx⁴ is a new term being used here and there in an effort to create a gender-neutral term for the group now called Latinos or Latinas, though not everyone is on board.

While all these terms may be useful for agencies tracking data, they do little to express the diversity of the individual people they are supposed to represent. Take the term “American”, for example, an expression favored by US citizens. Everyone in the Western Hemisphere who hails from one of the Americas (South, Central, North) is an “American”. That means all the people, everyone from the Bering Strait near the northern tip of Alaska to the hellish Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of Argentina; they are all “Americans”.

Of course, what I am talking about above is more a question of semantics than identity. But personal identity is created by the culture that surrounds it, and the tools are language, media, and representation. For me, what these kinds of monthly celebrations (Black History, Hispanic Heritage and Women’s History Months) remind me of, is that there has long been a dominant narrative of exclusion. We have been told a story about who we are, where we come from and how we got here, that doesn’t quite include all the actors.

True, some of this has been corrected since the Civil Rights, counterculture and Women’s movements have brought to light the undeniable contributions of previously unacknowledged individuals. But we are still a long way from truly rewriting our collective history as one that includes all our voices. Perhaps this will always remain impossible, since we seem fixated on what makes us different, rather than what binds us in common.

The truth is that each one of us is a complex and dynamic mixture of multiple identities. We spend our lives forming and reforming ourselves, attempting to find some whole costume, some complete self that feels unified and true. We all have racial, regional, religious, national, linguistic, sexual, political selves that help to describe us, but can never fully define us.

Hispanic Heritage Month is a thirty-day period meant to recognize the contributions of the Spanish speaking populations to the history of the United States. It is a long, often contentious history, marked by division and focused on our differences. Especially in the age of Trump, being a Hispanic or Latino in the United States has meant being reminded of our “outsider” status. But we are not outsiders and we are not minorities.  The Spanish speaking people of the Americas have been here just as long as their English, French, Portuguese and Dutch-speaking European counterparts. In fact, the western half of the United States testifies to this with places named Los Angeles (the angels), Nevada (snowy), Colorado (reddish), Montana (mountain), Rio Grande (big river), Palo Alto (high pole) and on and on.

The monthly celebrations started in the 60s and 70s were meant to serve as national reminders that our country had been built by a patchwork of people from all over the world. It was meant to disrupt the narrative that “true Americans” arrived on the Mayflower, had ties to the thirteen colonies and spoke English. There are still more stories that need to be told, more voices that need to be heard, and most of all a message that needs to be spread: The “American Dream” belongs to all of us.

References:

1. https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/15032398402
2. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/difference-between-hispanic-latino-and-spanish_n_55a7ec20e4b0c5f0322c9e44
3. https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-hispanic-and-latino
4. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latinx-elitist-some-push-back-word-s-growing-use-n957036

Resources:

Bureau of Labor Statistics

https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2012/hispanic_heritage/

Hispanic Heritage Month Website

https://www.hispanicheritagemonth.gov/

Events at the Library of Congress

https://www.loc.gov/events/?q=hispanic+heritage+month

Smithsonian Institute

https://www.si.edu/events/heritagemonth

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you found something useful.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2019. All rights reserved