2nd Annual MEC Latino Heritage Month Celebration

On Thursday, October 15th I attended the 2nd Annual MEC Latino Heritage Month Celebration. It was at CUNY Medgar Evers College and was organized by the Association for Latin American Students at this school. The event was from 6-9 pm.

I decided to go to this event in the first place because the words "Hispanic Heritage Month" grabbed my attention from the flyer. I started thinking that I didn't even know it was Hispanic Heritage Month and I thought as a Hispanic myself, it would be great to find out what it was all about. Also, when I went back to my student teaching placement the day after, I realized not one school I have been to celebrates or even mentions Hispanic Heritage Month. I have seen plenty of schools celebrate Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March and I wanted to see how I could change that, starting with finding out more myself.

The event started with an open mic poetry slam. There were 4 people that read poetry about a variety of topics that included racism, being biracial, colonialism, race in general, immigration, and identity. One poem that stuck out to me was one about beng biracial. It was said by a young girl whose name was Nyambi Morgan and it was titled "Mixed and Misunderstood". In this poem she described how difficult it is for herself to claim an identity when she’s biracial . One line that resonated from the poem was about having to mark “other” on applications that ask about race. Morgan wrote she didn’t know what that meant. It was as if “other” meant not human.

Sounds of Earth, a Puerto Rican band, performed. Their music has African roots and they played the drums and the woman wore a traditional costume from Puerto Rico. The dances were infused with both Hispanic and African rhythm. After the performance, they showed two movies that had to do with denied rights in Puerto Rico. “La Operación” (The Operation), was about the sterilization of women in Puerto Rico in the late 30’s. “The Borinqueneers” was about the Puerto Rican Infantry Regiment, the only all-Hispanic unit in the US Army. Both films highlight the injustices and abuse of rights of these groups of people. There was a panel at the end, with students, professors, and activists, discussing the movie and other events that occurred that have to do with racism, discrimination, etc. I had no idea about all these horrible events that happened to the people of Puerto Rico. I had never heard of these events and it made me feel like I need to go out and find out more about events such as this one because I’ve realized that events like this are generally not openly talked about.

As a future educator, I want to encourage my students to learn about their races’ roots, but also one another’s. It would be great to talk about and explore an event like this every couple of weeks to get my students to “open their eyes” to the serious things that happen around the world. After going to this event, I know a lot more about Hispanic Heritage Month and I want to find out more. I want my future students to have that feeling too.