Why is Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month so controversial?
We love to celebrate many things. Holidays. Birthdays. Special days of the year. So why is Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month so controversial?
Many reasons but one of the main reasons is that Latinx/Hispanic community is not just one racial or ethnic identity. We have a deeply complex and rich history of cultural roots spanning over 22 countries and several territories across both American Continents and in the Caribbean. These numbers tends to expand depending on your terminology.
We are not a melting pot but a series of deeply relevant stories that make up our diverse heritage. It so much more than anyone can often imagine including me. Sometimes it can feel like we are the complicated family members of the table because our collective relationship to so many forms of diversity, history, food and language never rarely tell a single story. Our experience brings all the usual rhythms of America's history and a whole bunch of subdivided, musical time signatures related to the conversation on race, ethnicity, identity and belonging.
Let's not be afraid to let this "Latinx" identity expand, collapse or subdivide. In a recent Live over on Instagram, we dive into this tough conversation and so much more. If you missed the live conversation, I invite you to give this video a listen and then weigh in below.
So, why does Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month bring up so many feelings?
Our ancestral roots are both simple and complex. We have deep roots in the Indigenous communities of the continent combined with a number of African and European ancestry as a result of colonization and the slave trade. After the colonization process began we can trace several migration routes from people all over the world back to the Americas, generating more and more diverse experiences. Much of what is loved about the Latinx/Hispanic culture is the diversity and the welcoming we tend to have for others. It is also important to remember that our cultural exchanges of sharing different ideas, traditions, and knowledge began well before slavery and the colonization process.
This month can be especially hurtful for the people that are left out and strategically omitted from our stories, history books and political narratives. Many Black and Indigenous people, tribes and communities have made incredible contributions to all aspects of our society, across North and South America. And yet they have been strategically left out by our European ancestors to create a narrative that imagines us as the second class citizens on a land that we shared for thousands of years before the colonizers came onto American shores.
For me, the Latinx experience has been a political choice over a cultural one. A political one in that I continue to hold space to ensure more people of different identities will be seen and to reconcile our deeply divided relationship between the two Americas. So much of the census box is a metaphor for why the Latinx identity is at times undefined and messy, and in other moments so culturally rich and satisfying.
We throw a damn good party, especially cultural celebrations, but when it comes down to organizing and digging into a deeper, more inclusive collective strategy, we can fall short. I think we are afraid to look deeper. It means uncovering a number of historical and cultural blind spots that keep us divided and conveniently pitted against one another. it also prevents future generations from healing and bringing the most vulnerable to the center of our conversation.
Building and amassing a shared identity is a politically viable strategy to begin to grow power and resources for the communities we advocate for. But if we amass power and resources that works against the most vulnerable and invisible people in the Latinx community, then we are simply replicating the racist, colonial vision that we are already carrying in our ancestral backpack and positioning ourselves against other Black and Brown and tribal communities.
If we want to create impact in our communities we need to diversify the Latinx leaders at the table racially and economically. If we are going to be successful in our communities, we need to take a more complete and serious approach to history, reparations and healing so that we can move out of a constant state of urgency and into an impactful vision and purpose.
I would like to feel like I am a part of a community that uses its power to co-lead a strategy that's inclusive of the voices of Black and indigenous people inside and outside of our pan ethnic identity. I want to see a strategy that reclaims diasporic identities and acknowledges the losses we all experience from the ongoing colonization process.
I was raised in a Colombian household and my daily lived childhood experience is deeply Caribbean, therefore I identify as American of Caribbean and South American descent. I have worn the hat of Latina leader in many spaces as a way to insert my point of view and make room for those marginalized inside the Latinx experience. This role has also served as a political ambassador building bridges between US and South American activists.
I have gone to my share of Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations of course because I am the first and only of two people in a generation of my family to grow up in the US. It can be a lonely journey when you lack the community and connection of your cultural and ancestral roots. When your family has chosen to migrate to other countries beyond the US.
What do we need in order to start repairing?
The combination of the deep complex and rich historical and cultural roots at play and what remains unresolved for Latinx people is an understanding that this Latinx hat remains intertwined between culture, politics and economic identity more than a cultural one.
We have a complex set of ancestral roots because historically, the countries we live in have generally received people from all over the world with open arms. You will find that much of what you love about the region is because of its complex diverse roots. These cultural exchanges began before the slave trade with tribes engaging across continents and continue to grow and diversify after colonization took hold.
But, even after all of that, we remain largely invisible and misunderstood to many Americans of all shades and ethnicities in the US and Canada. We also are misunderstood with our own people to the South who don’t understand why we don’t identify fully as North Americans and don’t see us as their own.
To Heal & Move Forward…
There are many questions that we must address to heal and move forward including:
Should we deny our identity as North Americans simply because we remain unacknowledged by the society we live in? What is the cost of lack of acknowledgement?
What if we had a deeper awareness and understanding of African and Indigenous people with roots in the North, central and southern region of the Americas?
What could heal within and across our communities if we acknowledge all that has been missing from our experience?
Is calling ourselves Latinx useful when so many people are excluded? What if we reshaped our identity to include more of us under one umbrella?
Many people want to move on from the identity debate. To forget it is something we need to address. I would offer that it is an ongoing evolving and beautiful experience for us to repair and reconcile our identities.
We must remember that we cover all the skin hues, and yet we lack a real presence of dark skinned Latinx people with African roots at the center of leadership inside organizations. And are our tribal descendants in the Latinx spaces sufficiently visible?
We should be actively engaged without trying to find a singular solution.
Are we so rigid that we cannot embrace more change? Are we ready to mourn our own loss of identity because of the journey our ancestors had to and continue to travel, after all colonization is not over yet.
We are still in the learning phase of who we are as two-time Americans with roots all over the world. Even in this moment of complexity, I probably feel more American than I ever have. After all, my parents were born in Central and South America and I was born in North America. I feel incredibly blessed to have an ongoing evolving experience with my cultural identities.