Latino Her­itage Month (LHM) orig­i­nated in 1968 in the form of National His­panic Her­itage Week. In 1988, Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan expanded the week­long cel­e­bra­tion to its cur­rent monthly length, begin­ning on Sep­tem­ber 15th and end­ing in Octo­ber 15th. The month has the inten­tion of rec­og­niz­ing and cel­e­brat­ing the pres­ence and her­itage of His­panic and Latino Amer­i­cans in the United States, as well as their con­tri­bu­tions to the soci­ety and cul­ture of the U.S. In line with this mis­sion, sev­eral Latino groups on cam­pus have made it their goal to share this cel­e­bra­tion with the whole of the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of Prince­ton University.

This year, the events that Acción Latina and Chi­cano Cau­cus –the two Latino groups par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year’s Latino Her­itage Month Com­mit­tee– orga­nized were designed to max­i­mize impact on the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion of uni­ver­sity stu­dents, par­tic­u­larly those not cog­nizant or fre­quently engaged with the cul­tures in ques­tion. The cel­e­bra­tion started on Octo­ber 4th with the Latino Her­itage Month Kick­off Event, at Cam­pus Club. Senior Gre­cia Rivas (’13) opened the evening by remind­ing us of the impor­tance of our Latin Amer­i­can her­itage, and was fol­lowed by Ms. Ten­nille Haynes, the Direc­tor of the Carl A. Fields Cen­ter, who gave an inspir­ing speech about mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. We closed the night by danc­ing to the rhythm of Latin Amer­i­can music. 

For the first LHM week, we had a very engag­ing lunch dis­cus­sion about the Latino and Latin Amer­i­can iden­tity with Prof. Pedro Meira Mon­teiro (Oct 8th), and the stu­dent panel “Inter­sec­tions of Race and Sex­u­al­ity” (Oct 9th), an event where stu­dent lead­ers shared their per­sonal expe­ri­ences with this inter­sec­tion, draw­ing dis­tinc­tions and acknowl­edg­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties amongst dif­fer­ent racial and eth­nic groups. We also cel­e­brated our Latino her­itage at the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Art Museum; “Lati­nos at the Museum” (Oct 11th) included Mex­i­can food and bev­er­ages, a spe­cial guest per­for­mance by Bal­let Folk­lórico de Prince­ton, and a short themed tour of the Art of the Ancient Amer­i­cas gallery. To close that week, we had a film screen­ing of “Gun Hill Road”, fol­lowed by a talk­back with Direc­tor Rashaad Ernesto Green (Oct 12th). 

 We started the fol­low­ing week’s cel­e­bra­tions with a Mex­ico vs El Sal­vador soc­cer match screen­ing (Oct 16th), orga­nized a “Latino Trivia Night!” (Oct 18th) in order to test our knowl­edge of Latino and Latin Amer­i­can geog­ra­phy, pol­i­tics, music, arts and lit­er­a­ture, and ended the week with an “Indoors Pickup Soc­cer” tour­na­ment at Dil­lon Gym (Oct 20th). Before fall break, we also encour­aged every­one to go to the dis­cus­sion orga­nized “Lati­nos in the 2012 Elec­tions: An Expert Dis­cus­sion on Research and Politics.”

Finally, we closed the cel­e­bra­tions with a “LHM Vari­ety Show” (Nov 9th), an event where per­form­ers from the Prince­ton Com­mu­nity gath­ered together to cel­e­brate the Latino cul­ture, dances and music; and a Clos­ing Gala (Nov 10th), our final LHM event con­sist­ing of a Latin-American themed din­ner catered by Taste of Mex­ico, fol­lowed by a dance party with the band Rumba con Son.