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Hispanic Heritage Month (HHM) takes place September 15 to October 15 every year as a time to recognize and celebrate the many contributions, diverse cultures, and extensive histories of the American Latino community.

Beginning in 1968, Hispanic Heritage Month was originally observed as "Hispanic Heritage Week", but it was later extended to a month in 1988. Since then, HHM has been celebrated nationwide through festivals, art shows, conferences, community gatherings, and much more. The month also celebrates the independence days of several Latin American countries, including: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua on September 15th, Mexico on September 16th, and Chile on September 18th. They also include holidays that recognize Hispanic contributions such as Virgin Islands-Puerto Rico Friendship Day that is celebrated in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

This year's theme is Building Prosperous and Healthy Communities. Building upon the theme will different weeks of action focusing on how the Administration has been supporting the Latino community:

September 15: Hispanic Heritage Month Kick-Off Day

October 15: Last Day of Hispanic Heritage Month

Check out the Initiative's Calendar to learn of in-person and virtual events that the Initiative and our federal partners are hosting during Hispanic Heritage Month.
Read the Presidential Proclamation on National Hispanic Heritage Month Read the Presidential Proclamation on National Hispanic-Serving Institutions Week Resources:

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White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics

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Hispanic Heritage Month (HHM) takes place September 15 to October 15 every year as a time to recognize and celebrate the many contributions, diverse cultures, and extensive histories of the American Latino community. Beginning in 1968, Hispanic Heritage Month was originally observed as "Hispanic Heritage Week", but it was later extended to a month in 1988.

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Film & Discussion

September 16

100 Ways to Cross the Border
Post screening discussion with filmmaker Amber Bemak in person.
Celebrated Mexican/Chicanx performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his performance troupe La Pocha Nostra have spent their careers working with conceptual, social, and physical borders. With intimate access to the artist and his troupe, 100 Ways to Cross the Border unabashedly documents the impact of Gómez-Peña's work and his contributions to conversations on Latinx and Chicanx identity, politics, and border theory.

(National Gallery of Art)

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National Hispanic American Heritage Month 2023

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Paying tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society.

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As the headline unambiguously states, here at NPR we've kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month.

Not Latino Heritage Month. Not Latinx Heritage Month. Not even a compromise or a combination of the three: Hispanic/Latino/Latinx Heritage Month.

To be honest, NPR began to participate in the national event that is called Hispanic Heritage Month with no discussion about existing tensions within Latino communities regarding the use of the word Hispanic, its origins and whether it may be time to swap out the catchall label for something different.

Perhaps that has something to do with the rapid pace of the news recently regarding the end of a 20-year-long war in Afghanistan, another terrifying spike in the COVID-19 pandemic or this week's recall election in California.

Or, in full transparency, it could have something to do with the fact that as of 2020 only 6% of the NPR's newsroom and on-air journalists identify as Hispanic or Latino.

But it's not too late to pose the following thorny questions: What's the harm in lumping together roughly 62 million people with complex identities under a single umbrella? Is a blanket pan-ethnic term necessary to unite and reflect a shared culture that is still largely (infuriatingly) excluded from mainstream popular culture? Or the more basic question: ¿Por que Hispanic?

How Latinos/Latinas/Latinx people became Hispanic

Hispanic Heritage Month initially began as a weeklong celebration in 1968 under President Lyndon Johnson who, at the time said, "The people of Hispanic descent are the heirs of missionaries, captains, soldiers, and farmers who were motivated by a young spirit of adventure, and a desire to settle freely in a free land."

"This heritage is ours," he proclaimed.

It wasn't until 1988 that President Ronald Reagan extended the week to a full 31 days - through Oct. 15 - keeping the Sept. 15 start date because it coincides with national independence day of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Similarly, Mexico celebrates on the 16th, Chile on the 18th and Belize on the 21st.

But even before Johnson landed on the term Hispanic, there was a lot of debate within government entities on how to refer to Latinos in the United States, Cristina Mora, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, tells NPR.

Mora, who wrote about the adoption of the term Hispanic in Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Created a New American, found that use of the umbrella categorization is inextricably linked to the U.S. Census and its attempts to identify and quantify different groups of people.

The Pew Research Center reports that in the 1930s Latinos living in the U.S., regardless of their place of birth or family origin, were all noted as "Mexican" by door-to-door U.S. Census Bureau counters. It wasn't until 1970 that the agency began asking Latinos living in the U.S. to self-identify as either "Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, Other Spanish" or "No, none of these." This, however, led to a bizarre and unexpected underrepresentation of white Americans who misunderstood the classifications. Apparently, hundreds of thousands of confused people living in the South or central regions of the U.S. mistakenly identified as Central or South American, according to Pew.

But even with the added Latino subgroups, Mora says the 1970 Census once again resulted in a severe undercount of the minority but growing population, which in turn led to a national backlash from activists, academics and civic leaders who demanded fair representation.

Latinos could have been called "Brown"

New groups were formed to tackle the problem, including the Census Bureau's Spanish Origin Advisory Committee and a group of Spanish-speaking federal employees called the Ad Hoc Committee on Racial and Ethnic Definitions. Mora recalls several of the options being floated at the time included "Brown," "Latin American," "Latino" and Hispanic.

"One of the problems is that Latinos were seen as foreigners, invaders and not inherently American. And one of the jobs of the advisory board was to really show that Latinos were an American minority group, like African-Americans - a minority that stretched from coast to coast and that were patriotic, that fought in wars, that contributed to American history, that built American cities. So when a term like Latin American was used, right away, it seemed to strike discord because it was seen as too foreign," Mora explains.

She adds: "Hispanic was never a term that everybody loved, but it was a term that got a lot of support from within Latinos in the Nixon [administration] and, later, the Ford administration." It was eventually added to the 1980 census.

Many Latinos had an immediate disdain for the term

"We hated the term Hispanic because it was a term that we felt was forced upon us by the U.S. government," Paul Ortiz, author of An African American and Latinx History of the United States, tells NPR.

"It wasn't a natural fit for anyone that I knew. I didn't know anyone growing up who said, 'Oh, hey, I'm Hispanic.' It was always either, I'm Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano or Chicana," says Ortiz, who is also a history professor at the University of Florida.

A large part of that, he says, is based on the origins of the word Hispanic, which is the English translation of the Spanish "Hispano," meaning a person whose cultural traditions originate from Spain.

When that is the starting point, he says, "That immediately erases all of the centuries of pre-Columbian history, culture and civilizations that existed before the European conquest and colonization of the Americas ... and that's understandably upsetting to people who are not white."It alienates indigenous and Afro-Latino communities whose history includes deep resistance to the Spanish invasion and is not necessarily tied to Spain, Ortiz says.

The term Latinx is rising in popularity

The recent popularity of the word Latinx in the U.S. presents another alternative to the contentious Hispanic label that proponents say also offers gender inclusivity. Ortiz marvels at the way it has so quickly been adapted by young people, academic institutions and corporations alike, though it is not without its own critics.

When naming his book, it was his students who suggested using Latinx in the title. "Originally it was going to be African-American and Latino History in the United States. But my students really impressed upon me the themes of inclusivity and diversity, [saying] we have to be open."

He's also noticed that in the past two years or so, many of the speaking requests he's received from corporations are for Latino or Latinx Heritage Month not Hispanic Heritage Month - that includes an invitation to speak at a Deutsche Bank event later this week.

Ortiz suggests that one theory for the shift is that it is being driven by diverse employee organizations within the companies. "Almost all of them - the ones that have reached out - have taken on the term Latinx."

"I find this fascinating because the stereotype is that the term Latinx is being foisted upon us by academics but that's just not true," he says.

The types of stories told during Hispanic Heritage Month are also important

Beyond the dispute over what to name the month-long celebration, there is another concern: that in an effort to make it more palatable or commercially viable, stories of oppression, prejudice and injustice are whitewashed or ignored.

"Too often the focus is on the musical contributions or dancing or other happy artforms," Mario T. Garcia, professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, tells NPR.

"But we also need programming that reflects historical problems ... because you can't assume that Latinos already know about the lynchings in South Texas in the 1910s," the Zoot Suit Riots, the segregation of Mexican kids in schools, or the Chicano-led high school walkouts of the 1960s that permanently changed higher education enrollment for Latino students.

In his experience, Garcia notes, the U.S. public education system does such a poor job of teaching Latino history in this country, that often Hispanic Heritage Month is the only opportunity for any students to learn about it. "It is a real shame," he says.

But approached in the right way, he adds, even these stories can be ultimately seen as happy. "Because the historic struggles of Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, other Latinos are happy stories ... because only through those struggles have we been able to achieve more social justice in this country, more education."

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Yes, We're Calling It Hispanic Heritage Month And We Know It Makes Some Of You Cringe

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Opinions around the word Hispanic versus Latino or the newer Latinx are rooted in personal experiences. Here's a look at how more than 62 million people in the U.S. fall under the Hispanic umbrella.

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Every major league player born in Puerto Rico, including the Dodgers' Kiké Hernández and Edwin Ríos, will have the option Wednesday to wear No. 21 as part of the league's annual celebration of Roberto Clemente.

Nearly 50 years after his death, Clemente remains the most revered figure in Puerto Rico and a Latin American icon. He was a Hall of Fame outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates and beloved humanitarian. He died a hero at age 38 when his plane overfilled with aid en route to earthquake victims in Nicaragua crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico on New Year's Eve 1972.

But often overlooked in the yearly commemoration is Clemente's activism as a Black man who spoke out, frequently in his second language, against racism in the United States during a career that paralleled the civil rights movement.

Clemente, a U.S. Marine Corps reservist, admired Martin Luther King Jr. and spent an afternoon with him at his farm in Puerto Rico. He denounced the segregation he confronted during spring training in the Jim Crow era of the South and pushed for the Pirates to make changes to better accommodate Black players.

When Clemente reported to Pirates spring training in Florida for the first time, Black players usually had to wait on the bus for their white teammates to bring them back food from restaurants after games. Clemente despised the routine. He threatened to fight any Black player who took the food, according to David Maraniss' biography of Clemente. He requested separate transportation and the Pirates eventually provided a station wagon for the Black players.

He openly denounced his second-class citizenship while learning a new culture and becoming one of the greatest baseball players of his generation.

"It's incredible when you have a Hall of Famer with not only that trajectory in baseball, but in humanitarianism and his willingness to fight for human rights," former major leaguer Carlos Delgado said in Spanish during a telephone interview. "He had great pride and integrity as a Black Puerto Rican and Latino, claiming his place in a very, very complicated environment.

"You look at it now and I can't even imagine what it was like in the '60s to be Black in a clubhouse with mostly white people, with white reporters constantly bothering you, making fun of your accent."

Delgado is a Black Puerto Rican. He was six months old when Clemente died, yet grew up idolizing him. To honor Clemente, he wore No. 21 in five of his 17 seasons - one with the Toronto Blue Jays and four with the New York Mets - in the majors and would've worn it more if he could have.

Along the way, the former All-Star first baseman followed Clemente's footsteps by using his platform to take a stand. In 2004 with the Blue Jays, Delgado protested the American military's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan by not standing for "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch.

"Sometimes you have to understand there are bigger things than you, bigger things than the game," Delgado, 48, said. "As an athlete, you have a platform with a lot of followers. You can push positive things, you can push movements and support movements."

It was a controversial act in a sport that had long discouraged people from taking social or political stands. That changed this season. Players across the majors have spoken out against systemic racism and police brutality following the death of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake. Last month, the Dodgers were among six teams who refused to play their game out of protest after a police officer shot Blake in Wisconsin.

The Dodgers are known as the franchise of Jackie Robinson, who didn't break the color barrier just for Black Americans, but for the Black diaspora, including the hundreds of Black Latinos who have followed.

It could've also been the franchise of Clemente. The organization signed an 18-year-old Clemente out of Puerto Rico in 1952, but lost him to the Pirates in the 1954 Rule 5 Draft. Clemente went on to become a National League MVP, World Series MVP, 15-time All-Star, four-time batting champion, and 12-time Gold Glove Award winner. The right fielder boasted one of the strongest arms in history and finished his career with 3,000 hits.

He did it all as a Puerto Rican, a Latino and a Black man whose life remains celebrated decades later and whose number, like Robinson's No. 42, might one day be retired across the majors.

"I hope that we can continue the conversation, that we can tell future generations: 'Look, this is Roberto Clemente. These are the values and integrity we want representing us,'" Delgado said. "That's the most important thing. Values, discipline and respect never go out of style."

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Remembering Roberto Clemente as a Black man who fought against racial injustice

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Players around the MLB on Wednesday will be wearing No. 21 in honor of Roberto Clemente Day. Here's what you need to know about the Hall of Famer.

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Clemente's anti-racist activism and resistance took many forms. Although sports journalists tried to diminish Clemente by mocking his accent and attempted to Anglicize his name as "Bob," he refused to be whitewashed. Whenever he had the chance, Clemente affirmed his identity by asserting his given name "Roberto" and addressing his family in Spanish on local news networks.