Hispanic Heritage Month Feels Different This Year

National Hispanic Heritage Month | September 15 – October 15

Hispanic Heritage Month has a different meaning for me this year.

Normally, this month invites us to celebrate.

Our music.

Our food.

Our languages.

Our countries.

Our traditions.

Our accomplishments.

And I will celebrate all of those things.

But this year, celebration alone does not feel like enough.

As immigration policies continue to change and immigration enforcement has intensified across the United States, I find myself thinking more deeply about what it means to be Hispanic or Latino in America—and about who gets to be seen as belonging here.

I think about language.

I think about skin color.

I think about accents.

I think about names.

I think about immigration status.

And I think about how quickly assumptions can be made about another human being before anyone has bothered to learn their story.

When Speaking Spanish Makes Someone Question Whether You Belong

Spanish is the language of my childhood.

For millions of people, it is the language of family, memory, music, comfort, prayer, laughter, discipline, love and home.

It should never make someone less American.

And yet we are living through a moment when speaking Spanish, having an accent, working certain jobs or simply appearing Latino can contribute to someone being viewed with suspicion.

That should concern all of us.

Not because immigration laws should not exist. Every sovereign nation has the right and responsibility to establish immigration laws.

But enforcement and human dignity are not mutually exclusive.

We should be capable of discussing immigration policy without stripping people of their humanity.

We should also remember the complexity of the land beneath our feet.

America is often described as a nation of immigrants. That is only part of the story.

Indigenous peoples lived on these lands long before the United States existed. Africans were brought here through slavery rather than immigration. Generations of immigrants arrived voluntarily and involuntarily from virtually every part of the world. And some communities did not cross a United States border at all—the border eventually moved around them.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 transferred an enormous amount of Mexican territory to the United States, including what would become California, Nevada, Utah and much of present-day Arizona and New Mexico. Established Mexican communities suddenly found themselves living within a different nation.

That history is part of the reason the expression resonates so deeply:

“We didn't cross the border. The border crossed us.”

It does not describe every Latino immigration story.

But it reminds us that history is far more complicated than the labels immigrant and native-born sometimes suggest.

Expat or Immigrant?

There is another distinction I have been thinking about.

Expat versus immigrant.

I hear one word used for someone who leaves the United States or another wealthy country to live somewhere else.

I hear the other used for someone coming from Latin America, Africa, Asia or another part of the world searching for opportunity.

Technically, circumstances differ. People relocate for many reasons and immigration categories are complex.

But socially?

I cannot ignore what I see.

The words we choose sometimes reveal how differently society views migration depending on who is moving, where they come from, how much money they have, what language they speak and what they look like.

A wealthy person moving abroad may be called an expat.

A working-class person crossing another border searching for economic stability may simply be called an immigrant—sometimes with judgment attached before we know anything else about that person's life.

Veo la diferencia entre sociedades.

I see the difference between the billionaire and the middle-class family.

Between the wealthy traveler and the migrant worker.

Between the person whose international mobility is considered sophisticated and the person whose migration is considered threatening.

And those differences deserve examination.

There Is No One Way to Look Latino

This Hispanic Heritage Month, I also want us to remember something that is sometimes lost when we place millions of people under one label:

There is no single Latino race.

Latino identity carries Indigenous roots.

African roots.

European roots.

Asian roots.

Caribbean roots.

And countless combinations of them.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Latino describes Latino ancestry as reflecting the encounters among Indigenous, European, African and other peoples throughout the history of the Americas.

Some of us are Black.

Some are Brown.

Some are White.

Some are Indigenous.

Some are multiracial.

Some speak Spanish.

Some do not.

Some were born in Latin America.

Some were born in the United States.

Some families have been on what is now United States soil for generations.

Some arrived yesterday.

We are not one race.

We are not one complexion.

We are not one political opinion.

We are not one socioeconomic class.

We are not one immigration story.

We are not even one culture.

And that diversity does not weaken us.

It is us.

No Podemos Ignorar Nuestras Raíces

Para mí, ser Latina también significa reconocer toda nuestra historia.

Las raíces indígenas.

Las raíces africanas.

Las raíces europeas.

La mezcla de culturas que existe dentro de nuestras familias, nuestros países y nosotros mismos.

No podemos hablar de nuestra identidad mientras ignoramos el color, la raza, la historia o las diferencias que existen entre nosotros.

Tampoco debemos sentir que para lograr unidad tenemos que convertirnos en una sola cosa.

La unidad no requiere uniformidad.

Podemos pertenecer sin ser iguales.

Podemos respetarnos sin borrar nuestras diferencias.

Podemos celebrar lo que tenemos en común sin pretender que nuestras experiencias son idénticas.

Nuestros antepasados mismos nos recuerdan que somos el resultado de muchas historias.

Y desde mi propia fe, yo lo veo aún más sencillo:

Dios no nos creó para ser copias unos de otros

.

Nuestra diversidad no fue un error.

Individuality Should Not Be Something We Fear

Sometimes society seems determined to place people into boxes.

Hispanic.

Black.

White.

Immigrant.

American.

Poor.

Wealthy.

Educated.

Uneducated.

Citizen.

Foreigner.

But human beings are more complicated than boxes.

We carry histories within histories.

Someone can be Ecuadorian and American.

Black and Latina.

Indigenous and Hispanic.

First-generation and deeply American.

Spanish-speaking and a United States citizen.

An immigrant and a veteran.

A newcomer and a contributor.

None of those identities cancel the others.

We should not have to erase pieces of ourselves to make other people more comfortable.

Heritage Also Means Responsibility

So this year, Hispanic Heritage Month means more to me than displaying a flag or eating traditional food.

It means asking difficult questions.

Who gets to belong?

Who gets called an immigrant?

Who gets called an expat?

Whose accent is considered charming and whose is considered suspicious?

Whose migration is celebrated and whose is condemned?

Whose history gets taught?

Whose ancestry gets acknowledged?

And perhaps most importantly:

Can we disagree about immigration policy without forgetting the humanity of the immigrant?

I believe we can.

I believe we must.

Because behind every immigration statistic is a human being.

A mother.

A father.

A child.

A veteran.

A worker.

A student.

A dreamer.

A family.

A story.

Acknowledging someone's humanity does not require agreeing on every policy.

It simply requires recognizing that dignity should never depend upon someone's accent, complexion, bank account, country of birth or immigration classification.

This Is My Hispanic Heritage

So yes, this Hispanic Heritage Month, I will celebrate.

I will celebrate our music.

Our food.

Our countries.

Our entrepreneurs.

Our veterans.

Our artists.

Our workers.

Our mothers and fathers.

Our abuelos and abuelas.

Our languages.

Our resilience.

But I will also celebrate something much harder to put inside a heritage-month graphic:

our complexity.

I will honor the Indigenous blood that survived colonization.

The African blood that survived enslavement.

The immigrants who started again.

The communities whose borders changed around them.

The people who crossed borders.

The people who built lives between cultures.

And the generations born here who continue asking what it means to be both Latino and American.

Because our differences do not diminish our collective story.

They are our collective story.

We do not need to become one race.

We do not need to look alike.

We do not need to speak exactly the same language.

We do not need identical journeys.

Our responsibility is not to erase those differences.

It is to learn how to live together while honoring them.

That, to me, is what heritage demands of us.

Know where you came from.

Honor those who came before you.

Stand for the dignity of those walking beside you.

And never allow anyone to convince you that you must erase part of yourself in order to belong.

We belong with all of our layers.

Con todas nuestras raíces.

Con todos nuestros colores.

Con todas nuestras historias.

Rise. Rebuild. Become.

Levántate. Reconstrúyete. Conviértete.

Zully Gisella Goya Paz

Founder & CEO | GiMeZu