These AZ groups are honoring Hispanic Heritage Month with community celebrations and civic engagement

People from more than 20 countries consider themselves to be Hispanic or Latino, with ancestors from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central, South, and Latin America.

Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated each year from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, offering the chance for people in the US to acknowledge and pay tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched the country and society. 

Part of the holiday’s mission is challenging the belief that the Latino and Hispanic community is one homogenous group, said Gilberto Lopez, assistant professor in the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. The month helps shed a light on the diversity, whether that be culture, ideologies, religions, political views, or origins.

For members of Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month isn’t very different from the group’s day-to-day operations. The organization already celebrates the history and contributions of the Hispanic community every day through their advocacy and other efforts to improve the lives of Latinos. 

“[We] are actively on the ground, talking to voters, and really connecting with majority-Latino neighborhoods and communities across the state,” Cesar Fierros, director of communications for LUCHA, said. 

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According to the latest Census data, there are more than 65 million people who identified as ethnically Hispanic in the US, making up nearly 20% of the nation’s population—and if Latinos were their own independent country, their GDP would be the world’s fifth-largest, according to a UCLA study.    

“Hispanic Heritage month is all year, every month, but I think it’s especially important that…the Latino community across this country gets recognition for its amazing contributions that it’s made,” Fierros said. 

Latino Loud, a nonpartisan voter engagement campaign by Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) Action Fund, has been using the month full of events and celebrations to connect with even more Latino voters, targeting the low propensity voters—those who are registered, but rarely participate in elections, and if they do, only at the national level. 

Making it to one or two events daily, Latino Loud is engaging the people there, especially youth who have never had a conversation about voting before, said Lydia Guzman, director of advocacy and civic engagement for Chicanos Por La Causa.

These events include a Community Pachanga that CPLC hosted on Sept. 20, showcasing an art gallery inside their youth-based Central Park Rec Center space, with a local artist, Larry Valenzuela, doing live art painting. The event also featured lowriders, food, and vendors selling jewelry, bags, and other merchandise.

The month can be a time to bring important issues forward that need to be addressed within the community, and it’s an opportunity to educate the Latino community about voter registration, and various social justice topics, said Marissa Calderon, associate director of family empowerment at CPLC. 

“Latinos have always been here, but when I was growing up, the only thing we ever saw about Latinos in the history book was maybe one little paragraph about Cesar Chavez,” Guzman said. “People don’t know that we’ve been here—people think that we just crossed the border.”

Celebrating diversity of cultures

Hispanic culture is incredibly diverse, and while there may be some commonalities, there are also vast differences, said Eileen Díaz McConnell, president’s professor in the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. 

Some people don’t understand why you need to celebrate another person’s culture or heritage, and there are still a lot of stereotypes and pieces of misinformation about Latinos that are harmful and hurtful out there, said Díaz McConnell. 

Fellow ASU professor Lopez agreed with this statement. 

“There’s a lot of negativity when talking about the cultural ‘other,’ and celebrating it allows our society to realize, no, we’re [Latinos] not the cultural ‘other,’ we’re very much part of what the United States is,” he said.

For example, the majority of Latinos in the US are born within the country, but many people overestimate how many Latinos in the US are undocumented immigrants, said Díaz McConnell. 

“If people are able to see the humanity behind any group, and if a heritage month helps with that, then I think it’s probably a good thing,” said Díaz McConnell. “I think if you read a book you wouldn’t have read or, you watch a movie with themes that you wouldn’t have watched otherwise and it gives you greater insight into your neighbors, it’s probably a good thing.” 

It’s not just an excuse to eat tacos and drink margaritas, she said, as consuming food is not the same as learning deeply about other people and their culture. 

There is a difference between showing culture appreciation versus cultural appropriation, and the most important part is to learn about the “why,” Calderon with CPLC said. Learning the backgrounds behind certain Hispanic dishes, music, or artwork is how people can show appreciation. 

“For people who are Latino, they are celebrating their heritage all the time…I don’t wait for Hispanic Heritage Month to celebrate,” said Díaz McConnell.

“Latino” refers to those of Latin American descent, and the term Hispanic originally came out of Spain, describing connection to Spain and the language of Spanish. Lopez said the terms reflect that it is not a homogenous group.

The term Hispanic was originally used by the US government for the Census, and many Latinos see it as a label that was created and imposed by the government, Lopez said. But, it’s more important to ask people which term they use, and how they personally prefer to define themselves, he said. 

People from more than 20 countries consider themselves to be Hispanic or Latino, with ancestors from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central, South, and Latin America—so you can’t confine the group, Lopez said.

Latino political power

Overwhelmingly, politicians are finally starting to realize how diverse political ideology can be for Latinos, Lopez said. “They go on a campaign trail in Miami, speaking to the Cuban community, and the message will be different than it is when they come out to the West to talk to Nevada and Arizona Latinos.”  

The political power of the Latino community has been rising for years, and the demographic has become the driver of election outcomes in Arizona and other states across the country, Fierros said.

“There is no path to the White House, we believe, without winning over the overwhelming majority of Latino voters,” Fierros said. 

Issues that politicians are prioritizing, like housing, healthcare, education, economic empowerment are important to every American, but even more to Latinos because they have historically faced inequality on those same issues, Guzman said. Now, they want to court the Latino vote, as Latino’s political power rises, she said. 

“It’s paramount that folks that are maybe not part of the Latino community understand the issues that we really care about and value,” Fierros said. “They should understand how powerful our community is as well, because when we show up, we can deliver.” 

The needle is moving, and more and more Latinos are voting with every passing election, and politicians are placing more effort into winning over the Latino vote, Guzman said. 

“They know that their race will be decided by the Latino vote,” she said.