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https://www.npr.org/2021/09/15/1037504461/hispanic-latino-heritage-month-hollywood-movies-usc-annenberg
1) What is the importance of seeing accurate and positive representation in media?

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The signs that it's officially Hispanic Heritage Month are all around us, be it a Google Doodle or an annual film festival.

But the national attention paid to Latinos and Hispanics this time of year belies a persistent reality, according to a new report: Latino and Hispanic Americans are still underrepresented and poorly represented in popular films.

Released on the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month (which ends in mid-October) the report from USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative surveyed leading Hispanic and Latino actors and characters with speaking parts across 1,300 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2019. The report's authors also assessed the number of Hispanic and Latino directors, casting directors and producers.

"As companies celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month through online posts, events, and employee resource groups," Annenberg Inclusion Initiative founder Stacy Smith said in a statement, "the evidence is clear that concern for inclusion happens when convenient or expected and not when it comes to greenlighting films by, for, and about the Hispanic/Latino community."

Hispanic and Latino people make up nearly 1 in 5 of the U.S. population. In the county home to Hollywood, over half of Angelenos are Hispanic and Latino.

They also go to the movies more than any other group. Hispanic and Latino Americans have the highest per-capita theater attendance among all ethnicities in the country, according to a 2019 report from the Motion Picture Association of America.

Here are some of the key findings from the Annenberg report.

Hispanics/Latinos are rarely cast in a lead role

Just 7% of major films in 2019 featured a lead Hispanic or Latino actor. When it comes to speaking or named roles, about 6% of characters cast that year were Hispanic or Latino - not even a full percentage increase in representation when compared across the total 13 years of hit films.

A Hollywood diversity push hasn't advanced Latinos and Hispanics

Actors of color have landed more high-profile roles in the years following backlash campaigns to boost diversity in Hollywood, like #OscarsSoWhite. Yet in 2019, USC Annenberg found, Hispanics and Latinos trailed all ethnic groups when it came to on-screen time.

Hispanic and Latino characters continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes

When they are seen on screen, Hispanics and Latinos are often typecast in roles that involve criminality, poverty or immigration, according to the USC report. More than one-third of lead Hispanic and Latino actors in 2019's biggest movies were depicted as criminals.

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Hispanics And Latinos Are The Biggest Moviegoers. The Big Screen Doesn't Reflect That

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The signs that it's officially Hispanic Heritage Month are all around us, be it a Google Doodle or an annual film festival.

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Connecting With Spirits Through Giant Handmade Kites

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Mexican Independence Day is celebrated on September 16 by Mexicans and people of Mexican ancestry around the world.

It falls on the same date every year, honoring the country's fight for independence from Spain, specifically the moment a famed priest gave the "El Grito de Dolores" battle cry.

It is sometimes confused with Cinco de Mayo, a popular celebration in the United States, which commemorates the Battle of Puebla.

Mexico's War for Independence from Spain lasted for over 11 years, but September 16, 1810-when the fight commenced with a historic battle cry-is the date universally regarded as the nation's Independence Day. No surprise, the festivities are remarkable and take place not only in major Mexican cities like Jalisco and Mexico City, but around the world.

As one of the country's biggest holidays, along with the Day of the Dead, and Revolution Day (which celebrates the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century), Independence Day means massive street parades, plenty of signature dishes, and rodeos. Unlike Cinco de Mayo, which is mainly celebrated in the city of Puebla, Independence Day is observed nationwide, with schools and businesses closed in observance. Phrases like "Viva Mexico" or " Viva la independencia nacional" are heard from crowds on the streets.

For some perspective on the holiday, we spoke to Juan Aguirre, Executive Director of Mano a Mano, a New York-based nonprofit that celebrates and spreads awareness of Mexican culture. Read on to learn about the history, facts, and traditions associated with Mexican Independence Day, or Día de la Independencia de México, as you'd say it in Spanish. Here's how to celebrate it in 2021, whether you're in Mexico or anywhere around the world.

Mexican Independence Day celebrates the beginning of Mexico's fight for sovereignty.

A pivotal tradition of the holiday is honoring "El Grito de Dolores." Known colloquially as "El Grito," it's the famous battle cry from September 1810 uttered by Miguel Hidalgo that kicked off the War for Independence. Hidalgo, who resided in the city of Dolores famously took up the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint, inspiring many to follow him and begin the fight for independence in earnest.

"One thing that's really important when you talk about Mexican Independence Day is what's known as 'The Cry of Dolores,' which was the speech that was given to fight for independence. When Mexicans celebrate Independence Day, they reenact this cry," Aguirre says.

Though Hidalgo's attempt at a revolution was unsuccessful, it inspired another priest, José María Morelos, to create a more cohesive, prepared fighting force with the same goal. With the help of Agustín de Iturbide, a Mexican military leader who defected from Spain, the freedom fighters took Mexico City in February 1821 and declared national independence

Iturbide's Plan de Iguala, established three key tenets of sovereign Mexico: Independence from Spain, equality for Spaniards and Creoles within the country, and a ban on all religions besides Roman Catholicism. Spanish Viceroy Juan de O'Donojú signed the Treaty of Cordoba on August 24, 1821, formally approving a plan for an independent Mexican monarchy.

As such, August 24 technically could be considered the real Mexican Independence Day, as that's when Spain acknowledged the separation by way of O'Donojú's signing. But, because none of it would have been possible without "El Grito de Dolores," that date holds none of the cultural significance that September 16 does.

The holiday's traditions include fireworks and folk dancing.

Independence Day in Mexico is celebrated with huge street parties, parades, and everything from fireworks to rodeos to brass band and mariachi performances and traditional folk dancing in the streets (bailes folclóricos). In Mexico City, there's a military march that proceeds to the memorial of Hidalgo.

On the evening of September 15, the Mexican president recreates "El Grito" in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands from the balcony of the National Palace. After each line, the audience chimes in with a spirited "Viva!" culminating in the president ringing a bell as another tribute to Hidalgo.

Local politicians occasionally do their own rendition of "El Grito."

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Revelers are typically clad in red, white, and green to honor the Mexican flag.

Signature dishes like Chiles en Nogada are essential parts of the celebration.

Foods that are traditionally made for Mexican Independence Day include pozole, menudo (a beef stew that's been referred to as a hangover cure), birria de borrego (spiced lamb) and queso fundido, while tequila is the beverage of choice for those imbibing.

Chiles En Nogada is also frequently eaten on Mexican Independence Day, because its cream sauce, parsley, and poblano chiles, give it the same colors as the Mexican flag.

The holiday is sometimes confused with Cinco de Mayo.

Aguirre explains that Americans of non-Mexican heritage sometimes confuse Mexican Independence Day with Cinco de Mayo, which commemorates Mexico's victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla. He said that as Cinco de Mayo became more popular-and commercialized-in the. U.S., its meaning has been diluted.

"In the '60s, the Chicano Civil Rights movement made Cinco de Mayo more prominent. Then, later in the 1980s, corporations began to take that holiday and use it to market products," he says. "There was a big explosion of Cinco de Mayo in the United States and that's why people confuse them. In Mexico, Cinco de Mayo is really not that significant. It's only celebrated in one state."

Pedro Martin Gonzalez Castillo

There are plenty of ways to celebrate Mexican Independence Day outside of Mexico.

Independence Day is widely celebrated beyond Mexico's borders, with parades and festivals taking place in heavily Mexican cities like Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, and New York.

"Mexicans all over the world usually get together in the consulates or embassies and celebrate there," adds Aguirre. While the revelry was mainly virtual in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, scheduled 2021 events are being announced every week, such as the 2021 Las Vegas El Grito festivities. The programming includes a three-day music mini-festival curated by Columbian music superstar J Balvin kicking off on September 16, as well as concerts by Mexican acts Banda MS and Pancho Barraza.

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How Mexican Independence Day Is Celebrated Around the World

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Mexican Independence Day is celebrated on September 16 by Mexicans and people of Mexican ancestry around the world. It falls on the same date every year, honoring the country's fight for independence from Spain, specifically the moment a famed priest gave the "El Grito de Dolores" battle cry.

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Sofia Hernandez Salazar is a Costa Rican human rights, and environmental activist.

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Sofia Hernandez Salazar is a Costa Rican human rights, and environmental activist.

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Sofia Hernandez Salazar (born August 26, 1998) is a Costa Rican human rights, and environmental activist.

Sofía is a political science student at University of Costa Rica. She is an organizer for Fridays For Future Costa Rica, coordinator of Escazú Ahora Costa Rica and Young Leaders Costa Rica and co-founded Latinas For Climate. She attended 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference as part of the Costa Rican delegation.

She joined Fridays For Future Costa Rica in mid-2019 and in one of her first strikes in front of the Presidential House she was part of a conversation with the President of the Republic, Carlos Alvarado, and other activists about the importance of declaring a climate emergency and of giving a real protagonism to youth in climate and environmental decision-making spaces. Subsequently, Sofia has again engaged in talks with the Costa Rican Presidency, specifically with the Vice President, Epsy Campbell, where she urged on importance of ratifying the Escazú Agreement and with the Vice Minister of Political Affairs and Citizen Dialogue on the importance of withdrawing the trawling law.

Since September 2020 she is one of the coordinators of Escazú Now, an initiative conformed by Fridays For Future Costa Rica, Greenwolf Costa Rica and the Youth and Climate Change Network that aims to promote the ratification and proper implementation of the Escazú Agreement in the country.

In December 2020, Hernández was part of a global group of 9 women and non-binary activists that published a letter to global leaders on Thomson Reuters Foundation News, entitled "As the Paris Agreement on Climate Change marks five years, urgent action on climate threats is needed now". The international group included Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Belyndar Rikimani, Leonie Bremer, Laura Muñoz, Fatou Jeng, Disha Ravi, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye and Saoi O'Connor. She helped organize the Mock COP26 and was a Costa Rican delegate.

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Sofia Hernandez Salazar (born August 26, 1998) is a Costa Rican human rights, and environmental activist. Sofía is a political science student at University of Costa Rica. She is an organizer for Fridays For Future Costa Rica, coordinator of Escazú Ahora Costa Rica and Young Leaders Costa Rica and co-founded Latinas For Climate.

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Winning Latino Support for Women's Voting Rights

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Actively Learn-LATINX AND HISPANIC HERITAGE TEXTS

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Actively Learn-LATINX AND HISPANIC HERITAGE TEXTS

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Uh oh! Looks like Actively Learn doesn't support your current browser. Don't worry, you can still use Actively Learn after upgrading to the latest version of one of the browsers below:

If you have questions about upgrading or believe you're seeing this message in error, please contact us!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z96u3R8dbUQ

1. The East L.A. Walkouts are part of local history, have you ever heard of them?
Why do you think that is.
2. What were some of the issues in schools and what is the impact/legacy of the blowouts?
3. After hearing some of the students' demands what changes do you think would help Cypress be more inclusive and honor all cultures and identities of students?

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Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM)

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Hispanic Heritage Month: The East L.A. Walkouts

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Celebrate National Hispanic American Heritage Month With These Stories

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Celebrate National Hispanic American Heritage Month With These Stories

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Celebrate National Hispanic American Heritage Month With These Stories

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During National Hispanic Heritage Month, we recognize that Hispanic heritage is American heritage. We see it in every aspect of our national life: on our television and movie screens, in the music that moves our feet, and in the foods we enjoy. We benefit from the many contributions of Hispanic scientists working in labs across the country to help us fight COVID-19 and the doctors and the nurses on the front lines caring for people's health. Our Nation is represented by Hispanic diplomats who share our values in countries all over the world and strengthened by military members and their families who serve and sacrifice for the United States. Our communities are represented by Hispanic elected officials, and our children are taught by Hispanic teachers. Our future will be shaped by Hispanic engineers who are working to develop new technology that will help us grasp our clean energy future and by the skilled union workers who are going to build it.

National Hispanic Heritage Month is an important reminder of how much strength we draw as a Nation from our immigrant roots and our values as a Nation of immigrants. I am proud to recognize my four Hispanic Cabinet Secretaries - Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Small Business Administrator Isabel Guzman - who are all leading executive departments that oversee critical components of American life. My Administration is focused on making equity a priority and ensuring that Hispanics are front and center in our efforts to improve the lives of working families across the country.

During National Hispanic Heritage Month, we also recognize that America cannot succeed unless Hispanic families and communities succeed, sharing equally in the benefits of our recovery and our investments. My American Rescue Plan provided much-needed relief to the Hispanic community during the pandemic. Additional Paycheck Protection Program funding for small businesses and rental assistance has helped families stay in their homes, and the child tax credit is helping lift Hispanic children out of poverty.

A critical key to building back better is ensuring that Hispanic communities also benefit from investments in roads, clean water, and broadband as well as access to early education and other resources that support working families and improve educational outcomes. We must also continue the fight to protect the sacred right to vote and provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented Hispanics - especially Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status holders, farmworkers, and essential workers - through desperately needed immigration reform. Creating a pathway to citizenship is a top priority for my Administration not only because this benefits our Nation's economy but also because it is the right thing to do.

As we honor and celebrate the contributions of Hispanics to our Nation, we also reaffirm our commitment to extending the hand of friendship to Latin America and strengthening democracy in the region. My Administration has sent over 5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to Mexico with millions more on the way. We have donated over 33 million doses of the vaccine to 21 other countries in Latin America. This included the first doses of the vaccine to reach Haiti, carried there by the United States Coast Guard. This vaccine will help protect Haiti's first responders and health care workers.

In recognition of the achievements of Hispanics, the Congress, by Public Law 100-402, as amended, has authorized and requested the President to issue annually a proclamation designating September 15 through October 15 as "National Hispanic Heritage Month."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim September 15 through October 15, 2021, as National Hispanic Heritage Month. I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all Americans to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-sixth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

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A Proclamation on National Hispanic Heritage Month, 2021 | The White House

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During National Hispanic Heritage Month, we recognize that Hispanic heritage is American heritage. We see it in every aspect of our national life: on our television and movie screens, in the music that moves our feet, and in the foods we enjoy. We benefit from the many contributions of Hispanic scientists working in labs across the...

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Table of Contents

1. Origins of Hispanic History Month

2. Why the Date of Hispanic Heritage Month Is Important

3. Hispanic Heritage Expands From a Week to a Month

Hispanic Heritage Month is an annual celebration of the history and culture of the U.S. Latino and Hispanic communities. Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 will last from Friday, September 15, 2023 through Sunday, October 15, 2023. The event commemorates how those communities have influenced and contributed to American society at large.

Origins of Hispanic History Month

The term Hispanic or Latino (or the more recent term Latinx) refers to a person's culture or origin-regardless of race. On the 2020 Census form, people were counted as Hispanic or Latino or Spanish if they could identify as having Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or "another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin."

Hispanic Heritage Month actually began as a commemorative week when it was first introduced in June of 1968 by California Congressman George E. Brown. The push to recognize the contributions of the Hispanic community had gained momentum throughout the 1960s when the civil rights movement was at its peak and there was a growing awareness of the United States' multicultural identities.

Brown, who represented East Los Angeles and a large portion of the San Gabriel Valley-both heavily populated by members of the Hispanic and Latinx communities-wanted to recognize the role played by those communities throughout American history.

On September 17, 1968, Congress passed Public Law 90-48, officially authorizing and requesting the president to issue annual proclamations declaring September 15 and 16 to mark the beginning of National Hispanic Heritage Week and called upon the "people of the United States, especially the educational community, to observe such week with appropriate ceremonies and activities." President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first Hispanic Heritage Week presidential proclamation the same day.

The timing of Hispanic Heritage Month coincides with the Independence Day celebrations of several Latin American nations. September 15 was chosen as the kickoff because it coincides with the Independence Day celebrations of five "Central American neighbors," as Johnson called them-Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Those five nations declared their independence from Spain on September 15, 1821.

In his proclamation, Johnson also acknowledged Mexico, which declared its independence from Spain on September 16, 1810. Although not mentioned specifically by Johnson, Chile also celebrates its independence during that week (September 18, 1810 from Spain) and Belize, which declared its independence from Great Britain on September 21, 1981, was subsequently added to the list of nations specifically celebrated during what is now Hispanic Heritage Month.

Hispanic Heritage Expands From a Week to a Month

From 1968 until 1988, Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan all issued the yearly proclamations, setting aside a week to honor Hispanic Americans. In 1987 U.S. Representative Esteban E. Torres of California proposed the expanding the observance to cover its current 31-day period. Torres wanted more time so that the nation could "properly observe and coordinate events and activities to celebrate Hispanic culture and achievement."

In 1988, Senator Paul Simon (D-Illinois), submitted a similar bill that successfully passed Congress and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on August 17, 1988. And on September 14, 1989, President George H.W. Bush (who had been a sponsor of the original Hispanic Heritage Week resolution while serving in the House in 1968) became the first president to declare the 31-day period from September 15 to October 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month.

"Not all of the contributions made by Hispanic Americans to our society are so visible or so widely celebrated, however. Hispanic Americans have enriched our nation beyond measure with the quiet strength of closely knit families and proud communities," Bush said.

In the decades since, National Hispanic Heritage Month proclamations have been made by every sitting president of the United States.

HISTORY Vault

Sources

National Hispanic Heritage Month
Hispanic Heritage Month, United States Census Bureau
The Creation and Evolution of the National Hispanic Heritage Celebration, United States House of Representatives
National Hispanic Heritage Month, Library of Congress
National Hispanic Heritage Month, 1989, The America Presidency Project
National Hispanic Heritage Week bill signed, Sep. 17, 1968, Politic

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Hispanic Heritage Month - Origins & Facts

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Hispanic Heritage Month is an annual celebration of the history and culture of the U.S. Latinx and Hispanic communities that spans from September 15 to October 15.

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Sylvia Rivera: Pushing Boundaries | Taína Caragol

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"Latino/x-owned Businesses are changing the landscape of our economy and our country. Starting businesses at higher rates than any other demographic, but still unable to scale at the same rates as other non Latino/x businesses especially due to the impact of COVID. Despite many success stories and daily wins, according to a Stanford study, we are leaving over 1.4 trillion dollars on the table. Together, we can change that."

1. What do you think you can do to support Latinx businesses?

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Support Latino Business - Shining a light on the driving force of our U.S. economy

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We invite everyone to be a part of the movement to help uplift the Latino/a/x business community.

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1. Why do you think LGBTQ+ Latinx history should be "kept alive"?
2. Have you heard of any other Latinx LGBTQ+ activists before?
3. How are LGBTQ+ Latinx people treated differently compared to just Latinx or LGBTQ+ people?

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José Gutiérrez has been working as an LGBTQ rights and AIDS activist for nearly his entire adult life. His volunteer career helping LGBTQ people living with HIV and AIDS began in Atlanta, where he moved from Mexico in the 1980s.

Since relocating to Washington D.C. more than two decades ago, Gutiérrez has become a renowned supporter and advocate for human and LGBTQ rights. As a member of the LGBTQ community, and living with HIV, Gutiérrez has an acute understanding and sensitivity to the specific cultural and sociopolitical obstacles faced by these groups.

Gutiérrez founded the Latino GLBT History Project and organized the first DC Latino Pride, reflecting his recognition of need to preserve the history of the Latinx community, and its importance to the broader LGBTQ fight in the country. His love for and commitment to the Latinx LGBTQ community inspired him to create the José Gutiérrez Collection, an art collection that features different historical articles compiled at LGBTQ events since the 1980s.

His collection keeps alive the engagement and contributions of the Latinx-LGBTQ people. Through the multiple exhibits of his pieces, Gutiérrez aims to educate the community and honor its fight for equality.

HRC sat down recently with Gutiérrez to talk about his advocacy work, art collection and Hispanic Heritage Month.
Why is it important to maintain the historical memory of the Latinx LGBTQ movement?
The contributions of Latinx-LGBTQ groups in the country are an intrinsic part of our heritage. The historical memory of our community is very rich in the participation of great leaders, activists and pioneers; therefore, it is essential to keep it alive and to educate our new generations about the struggle we have been through, our participation in the movement and the progress we have made.
Which Latin American figures have influenced your work as an activist?
In my career as an activist and as a historian of our Latinx LGBTQ community there have been many people who have left a mark in my life, such as José Sarria, Sylvia Rivera, César Chávez, Dolores Huerta and Nicole Murray-Ramírez. All of them worked tirelessly to be visible and taken into account, making the Latino population an important part of the fight for equality in all the arenas.
How did you come up with the idea of creating a Latinx historical collection?
I have always loved history. When I moved to D.C. in 1993, I joined the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights for the first time and soon after I began to attend almost all the community gatherings. I kept and purchased articles from all the events, so much so that they started to feel as part of my home decor. The invitations to be part of exhibits and conferences followed soon after. My collection inspired by the D.C. Latinx LGBTQ community is one of the largest in the country and consists of photographs, posters, flyers, flags, books, costumes, buttons, crowns and more. The pieces are actually the living memory of many Latinx and LGBTQ groups, organizations, leaders and beauty queens, whose work has contributed and supported our community.
What is the best part of working for the Latinx, LGBTQ and HIV communities?
Having the opportunity to serve them is an honor. To educate and help these communities is a noble cause and a much-needed effort in times like these. My greatest satisfaction is the smile and the gratitude of our people. Thanks to their support, I have organized more than 35 historical exhibitions and presentations about our community history. I am very proud of this achievement and eternally grateful for having the chance to be part of this communities.
As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, what makes you proud of being Latinx?
There are many reasons why I am proud to be part of this community. Some of them go back to our cultural roots, our language, our food, our people and also our leaders. An important part of that pride is based primarily on those Latino leaders, activists and citizens, who struggle everyday to help our movement and fight for human rights in order to make a better world.
HRC is proud to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and honors the contributions of many Latinx members of the community, whose work has helped make the LGBTQ a better and stronger movement for equality.

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José Gutiérrez has been working as an LGBTQ rights and AIDS activist for nearly his entire adult life. His volunteer career helping LGBTQ people living with HIV and AIDS began in Atlanta, where he moved from Mexico in the 1980s. Since relocating to Washington D.C.

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This documentary provides a close look at the history, culture, and life of America’s largest minority group today: Latinx Americans. Starting in the 1500s, Latinx Americans traveled through hundreds of years of events and experiences that have changed history. The film includes interviews with over one hundred Latinx people sharing their personal stories, making this project a unique overview of a large and diverse American cultural group.

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LATINO AMERICANS is a landmark six-hour documentary featuring interviews with nearly 100 Latinos and more than 500 years of History.

LATINO AMERICANS is the first major documentary series for television to chronicle the rich and varied history and experiences of Latinos, who have helped shape North America over the last 500-plus years and have become, with more than 50 million people, the largest minority group in the U.S. The changing and yet repeating context of American history provides a backdrop for the drama of individual lives. It is a story of immigration and redemption, of anguish and celebration, of the gradual construction of a new American identity that connects and empowers millions of people today. Learn More...

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Latino Americans is a landmark three-part, six-hour documentary series that is set to air nationally on PBS in the fall of 2013. It is a story of immigration and redemption, of anguish and celebration, of the gradual construction of a new American identity that connects and empowers millions of people today.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIMWdfSxoh8

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“Hispanic” heritage includes a diverse range of cultures, nationalities, histories and identities.

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In Mexican-American communities, National Hispanic Heritage Month begins with the shout that marks the start of the Mexican Revolution-the grito heard around the world. In the border town that raised me, crimson red and earthy green flank the image of the eagle with the serpent in its clutches. Folks donning these national colors, holding in one hand and an agua fresca in the other, celebrate Mexican Independence Day each year on September 16th. This same scene unfolds throughout the United States with different foods, different colors depending on the specific Hispanic community. Each celebration is undeniably unique.

As we celebrate and honor the heritage of our students throughout Hispanic Heritage Month, we must also do the important work of understanding how and why the distinct histories of a multinational, multicultural and multilingual group of communities were consolidated into Hispanic heritage in the first place.

As someone who falls under the definition of Hispanic, the way I personally identify shifts. Sometimes, I'm Latinx or Mexican American. Other times, I note that I'm a non-black Latinx person. Almost always, I will identify myself as Xicana. Understanding the history behind these shifting identifications-and particularly the history of the word Hispanic-can help us better understand the challenges this term has created.

Becoming Hispanic

Well into the 1970s, before we were Hispanic, we were marked by our own nationalities or our ancestral identities. In Texas communities like El Paso, we were Chicanos, Mexicanos or Tejanos. In New York City, folks were often Puerto Ricans or Cubans.

1980 marked the first year that the U.S. Census offered Hispanic as an option for describing ethnic identity on the short form, the form that went to all households. The form offered a list of those who might choose to identify as " Spanish/Hispanic," including people who identified as "Mexican," "Mexican-Amer.," "Chicano," "Puerto Rican," "Cuban" or "other Spanish/Hispanic."

Federal recognition of a single Hispanic ethnic identity was a strategic goal of Hispanic community organizers, who hoped to create a collective identity that people from a group of countries colonized by Spain could use to exert political and economic power. In a discussion of her book Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New America, Cristina Mora notes, "Organizations and institutions invest in keeping these terms as broad as possible." Media companies like Univision therefore supported recognitions that would allow them to appeal to a wider consumer market in the United States.

The idea was to leverage this power to address shared concerns, improving the material conditions of communities that shared ancestral geography and, in some instances, the Spanish language. In many ways, the adoption of a broad, Hispanic identity helped organizers achieve these goals. It is undeniable that there is economic benefit and political power in the use of Hispanic.

But we can't discount the perhaps-unintentional effects of this intentional effort. We must ask, "Which communities within the spectrum of Hispanic people have seen benefits from this broad, consolidated identity? What has happened in communities that haven't seen the benefits? For whom have conditions remained stagnant or even deteriorated?"

And, perhaps most critically, "Who gains from erasing specific experiences of individual people and diverse cultural identities within the Hispanic community?"

Ethnic Homogenization Is Anti-black

In the attempt to build political power through pan-ethnic solidarity, particularly vulnerable populations have been excluded from the benefits of that power. In the most extreme cases, Hispanic identity has been used by some to uphold and excuse anti-black violence. We might remember the conversations that unfolded during the George Zimmerman trial. Commentators often conflated ethnic and racial identity to argue that Zimmerman couldn't be racist because he's "Hispanic, not white."

In the past few years, the exploration of anti-blackness in Hispanic communities has entered the mainstream. Organizations like the National Latina Institute and publications such as Everyday Feminism articulate the pervasiveness of anti-blackness in Hispanic communities and name strategies for dismantling this oppression within our own families and beyond. Less visible in this mainstream conversation is the argument put forth by Afro-Latinx organizers, artists and writers themselves.

When visualizing those most affected by the national debate on immigration, for example, more often than not we picture the face of a non-black person. To do so is to ignore those who share both blackness and Hispanic identities. In this case, the homogenization of the groups that are supposed to be represented by the word Hispanic has obscured the experiences of Hispanic people who are also black.

During my first year of teaching in the predominantly Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights, New York, I witnessed the necessity of honoring the specific identities of Afro-Latinx students. Both my students and I were considered Hispanic under the definition put forth by the Census Bureau, but there were stark differences in our experiences of Latinidad because of our racial identities.

In the Classroom

There is no perfect pathway or absolute language for recognizing both the shared and unique experiences within Hispanic communities. However, one way to start is to make space for the unmaking of the word Hispanic. As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, here are some ways to do so:

Dispel the mainstream myth of a homogenous Hispanic identity by discussing the racial spectrum of experience held under the term Hispanic.

Discuss the contention around the words Hispanic and Latinx. Explain that these terms are not universally accepted.

Ask Latinx and Hispanic students (or their families) how they identify themselves before assigning these labels to them. Ask all students (or their families) their racial or ethnic identities before assigning labels to them.

Highlight the work of organizations, like Undocublack, that expand the traditional imagery of an immigrant.

Explain that Hispanic history is Black history. Listen to the stories of Afro-Latinx communities.

Explore the creation of the word Hispanic as a category in the U.S. Census.

Resist highlighting exclusively Mexican history, culture, events or people.

Prepare your own understandings of racial and ethnic identities, including the differences between the terms Hispanic and Latinx.

Familiarize yourself with U.S. Latinx civil rights history.

Bernal-Martinez is TT's Teaching and Learning Specialist and a Xicana documentary artist and educator.

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Unmaking "Hispanic": Teaching the Creation of Hispanic Identity

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In Mexican-American communities, National Hispanic Heritage Month begins with the shout that marks the start of the Mexican Revolution-the grito heard around the world. In the border town that raised me, crimson red and earthy green flank the image of the eagle with the serpent in its clutches.

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He was a social activist who used nonviolent protest to champion farm workers’ rights. Chavez knows how it feels to be a hard migrant worker because his family went through that.

1. what made Cesar Chavez such an effective leader.

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"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore". -César Chávez

CESAR CHAVEZ, [1927-1993] was a dynamic, social activist who used nonviolent protest to champion farm workers' rights. He made people think about where their food came from and drew strength from his own struggles.

This Latino American was born in Yuma, Arizona and grew up on his family's farm. Losing their property during the Great Depression, they moved to California and became migrant workers. The work was incredibly hard with very low wages and Cesar's family had trouble just putting food on the table. Because they had to move around so much to work the fields, he went to 38 different schools before completing eighth grade. Chávez loved to read and learned about the nonviolent protests methods used by Ghandi in India. His own experience also taught him important lessons about the unfair treatment of migrant workers. He left to serve in the Navy for two years and married when he returned home. After working on farms for a few years he took a job working for Latino civil rights.

Where others saw adversity he found inspiration. In 1952 he became an organizer for the Community Service Organization that worked for California civil rights. He became the national director of the group and it is said that President Kennedy offered him a job to head the Peace Corps in Latin America. Chavez chose to instead join Dolores Huerta to found the National Farm Workers Association, now known as the UFW or United Farmworkers of America.

Chavez lead the United Farmworkers to secure union contracts that stopped the use of DDT. Workers were required to wear protective clothing to reduce harmful exposure to pesticides and his efforts ended spraying when workers were in the fields. To make his point, Chávez fasted for 36 days in protest of pesticide use on grapes. Through his leadership he formed a diverse coalition for farm worker boycotts that included students, union members, religious leaders, minorities and middle class consumers. He died as he had lived, peacefully and more than 50,000 people attended his funeral services in Delano where he began his movement for social justice. A recipient of the Presidential medal of freedom, libraries, schools, parks, streets and scholarships are named in his honor. His birthday is an official holiday in 10 states and his motto "Si se puede!" which translates to "Yes it can be done" still resonates. He himself said his job was to help ordinary people do extraordinary things. Dignity and respect were gifts he gave people, a belief in themselves, no matter how much was in their pockets or what kind of education they had.

In creating his portrait for Bravo! Poems about Amazing Hispanics I struggled with my brushes to communicate how unique and humble he was. How he valued equality and justice. His humanity and ability to connect to and inspire so many from different walks of life.

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"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore". -César Chávez CESAR CHAVEZ, [1927-1993] was a dynamic, social activist who used nonviolent protest to champion farm workers' rights.

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The chaotic brilliance of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat - Jordana Moore Saggese

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1. See different ideas being merged together from different ethnicity.
2. Educate others about the different cultures being combined and how it is okay and sounds beautiful.
3. Would you listen to the music that is being played in a normal day life?

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Shakira: Improving Latino Education Crucial to Community

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Shakira: Improving Latino Education Crucial to Community

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Shakira is a music artist who was named to the President's Advisory Commission, to discuss the Education for Hispanics.
Her thought/belief was to seek early education to Hispanic/Latino communities who need it the most, but can't afford it. She bases this off of the statistic of high school educational achievement is based in academic skill upon entry from Kindergarten.
As stated she seeks academics for kids of need but can't reach it, and with that she also believes that its clear that boosting academic achievement to most of all grade levels improves their academic skill even before kindergarten.

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Latino youth are the fastest-growing group in America, and more Latino children are living in poverty than children of any other racial or ethnic group; one in four, that's 6.1 million Latino children living in poverty in the United States.

For a host of reasons, young Latinos in this country disproportionately drop out of school and far too few finish college. And as I have seen in my own philanthropic work, the only road out of poverty is education.

Investing in the educational achievement of this vulnerable population will not only help determine the economic future and competitiveness of this nation, but can serve as a model for the world. I am grateful to have an opportunity to support and inform such important work.

I hope that through my appointment to this commission, I will be able to share what I've learned through the 15 years I have been involved in the education of Latino children. As we all know, race and ethnicity shouldn't be factors in the success of any child.

It is my belief that if we provide early childhood education to Latino children who need it but cannot afford it, it will take less than a decade to reap the benefits. There will be fewer Latino students being held back, fewer who need special education at a later age, less crime involving school-age children, and a smaller achievement gap between Latino and White students.

This isn't just my belief. There is substantial scientific support for this notion. According to numerous recent studies, the largest predictor of high school educational achievement is academic skill level upon entry into kindergarten. Even by middle school, these academic patterns have become entrenched, forming a blueprint that shapes a student's entire academic experience and life. Upon entering kindergarten 42% of Latino children are found in the lowest quartile of performance in reading skills compared to just 18% of white children.

For that reason it is clear that the most powerful avenue for boosting academic achievement at all grade levels is improving the basic academic skills of children before kindergarten.

The Obama administration has made a point to improve Latino education and, as I have discussed with President Obama, I am extremely passionate about working with the White House to plan an early childhood education summit in the coming year. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized.

As the Latino population grows, the U.S. economy becomes more and more dependent on its success.

There is no doubt that the future of the United States is inextricably tied to the future of the Latino community here and the education of its youth.

The more we invest in strategies that nurture the bodies and minds of young Latino children the more we'll guarantee economic prosperity for this great country in the years to come.

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Shakira: Improving Latino Education Crucial to Community and to America's Economic Competitiveness

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Latino youth are the fastest-growing group in America, and more Latino children are living in poverty than children of any other racial or ethnic group; one in four, that's 6.1 million Latino children living in poverty in the United States.

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More Latino Teachers in the school system 

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More Latino Teachers in the school system 

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This video just shows a brief summary of how and why more Hispanic teachers should be included in the school system.
How can more Hispanic teachers benefit the school system?
Why should schools be more diverse, and what are its benefits?
What if there were more diverse schools across the world and how would this type of school education look like?

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Why it matters that Hispanic students have teachers they can relate to

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Francisco de Goya and the Spanish Enlightenment

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Francisco de Goya and the Spanish Enlightenment

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1.) What do you think are the causes that led Goya to move from optimistic, lighthearted paintings to more pessimistic ones?

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The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over the course of his long career, Goya moved from jolly and lighthearted to deeply pessimistic and searching in his paintings, drawings, etchings, and frescoes. Born in Fuendetodos, he later moved with his parents to Zaragoza and, at age fourteen, began studying with the painter José Luzán Martínez (1710-1785). In 1746, the year of Goya's birth, the Spanish crown was under the rule of Ferdinand VI. Subsequently, the Bourbon king Charles III (r. 1759-88) ruled the country as an enlightened monarch sympathetic to change, employing ministers who supported radical economic, industrial, and agricultural reform. Goya came to artistic maturity during this age of enlightenment. In Madrid, the painter brothers Francisco (1734-1795) and Ramón Bayeu y Subías (1744-1793) had set up shop in 1763, and Goya soon joined their studio, eventually marrying their sister Josefa. He visited Italy in 1770, after two failed attempts in drawing competitions at the Real Academia des Bellas Artes in San Fernando.

Goya's introduction to the royal workshops, a relationship that lasted the rest of his life and spanned four ruling monarchies, began in 1774. The German painter Anton Raphael Mengs asked Goya to work on tapestry cartoons, or preliminary paintings, for the Royal Tapestry Factory at Santa Bárbara. Goya painted sixty-three cartoons for two royal palaces, which included nine hunting scenes for the dining room at San Lorenzo del Escorial and ten cartoons for tapestries destined for the dining room at El Pardo. The tapestries glorify leisure activities of the rich, poor, young, and old in a playful Rococo manner comparable to the style of Tiepolo. The Blind Guitarist ( 22.63.29) was originally designed for the antechamber at El Pardo and comes from this genre. The tapestry weavers, frustrated by its complex composition, returned the cartoon to Goya. However, before simplifying it, Goya preserved the original design in a copperplate etching, the largest print he ever made. In 1778, Goya produced a group of etchings based on paintings by Velázquez. Goya made these etchings upon Mengs' suggestion that he study Velázquez portraits in the royal collection.

As Goya continued to move in circles of royal patronage, he received more commissions from the aristocracy. Between 1785 and 1788, he painted executives and their families from the Bank of San Carlos, including the count of Altamira. The Condesa de Altamira and Her Daughter ( 1975.1.148) shows his skill at capturing the sensitivity of the sitters and his mastery of a painterly technique, which portrays in broad brushstrokes the brilliance of fine clothing and other accoutrements of wealth. Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga ( 49.7.41), a portrait of the Altamiras' third son, shows Goya's interest in surface pattern and the play of light; the caged birds symbolize the innocence of youth. In a later child's portrait of astonishing emotional evocation ( 61.259), the symbolism alludes to Spain's military struggle with France.

At the age of forty, Goya was appointed painter to King Charles III, and, in 1789, he was promoted to court painter under the newly accessioned Charles IV (r. 1788-1808). The year 1789 also marked the fall of the French monarchy (with Charles IV unwilling to assist his cousin Louis XVI), and in 1793 France declared war on Spain. Around this time, Goya traveled to Cádiz in Andalusia with Sebastián Martínez y Pérez, a wealthy businessman and art collector. Goya's remarkable portrait of his friend ( 06.289) captures the subject's likeness and intensity by emphasizing his personal expression, inner character, and humanity. His social standing is conveyed in his demeanor and the quality of his clothing, and his role as an astute collector of books, prints, and paintings is suggested by the sheet of paper in his hand.

Having survived an extended period of illness in Cádiz, Goya emerged months later completely deaf, but able to return to Madrid in 1793. In 1799, he completed and published a suite of eighty allegorical etchings called the Caprichos; Out Hunting for Teeth ( 18.64.12) and The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters ( 18.64.43) are two etchings from this series. They introduce a world of witches, ghosts, and fantastic creatures that invade the mind, particularly during dreams, nightmarish visions symbolizing a world against reason. That same year, Goya was promoted by the crown to first court painter and spent the next two years working on a large-scale portrait of the family of Charles IV ( Museo del Prado, Madrid, P00726). Harking back to the compositions of Velázquez, Goya placed the royal family in the foreground and, in the background, himself at an easel. The painting is simultaneously a depiction of a united, strong, and regal monarchy, and a shockingly naturalistic-in some cases even grotesque-group portrait.

Goya, Napoleon, and Nineteenth-Century Spain
The enlightened monarchy of Charles IV came to an end when Napoleon's armies invaded Spain in 1808. The brutal incursion-which included mass executions of Spanish citizens who rose up in opposition to the invasion-culminated in French occupation and the installation of Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne. Although repulsed by French atrocities, Goya pledged allegiance to Bonaparte, and painted members of the French regime. In 1811, he was awarded the Royal Order of Spain.

The Bourbon monarchy was restored with Napoleon's fall in 1814. But the new king, Ferdinand VII, son of Charles IV, did not share the enlightened views of his predecessor. He revoked the Constitution, reinstated the Inquisition, and declared himself absolute monarch. Not long afterward, he launched a reign of terror. Questioned about his loyalty to the occupiers, Goya demonstrated his allegiance by commemorating Spain's uprising against the French regime in two paintings: The Second of May 1808 ( Museo del Prado, Madrid, P00748) and The Third of May 1808 ( Museo del Prado, Madrid, P00749). In the first, Goya depicts a brutal scene in Madrid's city center, the Puerta del Sol, where Spaniards fought against French-led soldiers on horseback. The second work illustrates the execution of captured Spaniards on the Príncipe Pío, a hill just outside Madrid at that time. The paintings exemplify the dark tonalities and fluid brushstrokes representative of Goya's later period, as well as the stylistic influences of Velázquez and Rembrandt.

Goya continued his account of the atrocities of war in a series of eighty-five prints called The Disasters of War. Executed from 1810 to 1820, the series depicts the travesties witnessed during Spain's struggle for independence from France. Unlike the Caprichos, this series was never published during Goya's lifetime, probably because of its pronounced indictment of war. One Can't Look ( 22.60.25[26]), an etching from the series, is a powerful and emotionally charged scene of French occupation and Spanish retaliation that recalls the painting The Third of May 1808. The innovative composition-critical elements are placed outside the picture plane, and the immediate action is forced to the foreground-amplifies the overall impact. Although Goya's graphic work is grounded in the dramatic Baroque tradition of contrasting lights and darks, recalling Tiepolo's war scenes and Rembrandt's etchings, The Disasters of War etchings employ the tradition within a unique compositional framework.

Having no royal commissions during the tumultuous monarchy of Ferdinand VII, Goya became isolated from political and intellectual life in Madrid. Between 1820 and 1823, he completed a series of very private works in fresco at his small country retreat, Quinta del Sordo (the Deaf Man's House). Today referred to as the Black Paintings, they are compelling in their sinister and often horrifying scenes with dark, emotional undertones.

Dissatisfied with political developments in Spain, Goya retired to Bordeaux in 1824 under the guise of seeking medical advice. His final years were spent there and in Paris.

Voorhies, James. "Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment." In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/goya/hd_goya.htm (October 2003)

Hughes, Robert. Goya. New York: Knopf, 2003.

Ives, Colta, and Susan Alyson Stein. Goya in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. See on MetPublications

Voorhies, James. "Europe and the Age of Exploration." (October 2002)

Voorhies, James. "Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)." (October 2004)

Voorhies, James. "Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)." (October 2004)

Voorhies, James. "School of Paris." (October 2004)

Voorhies, James. "Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Naples." (October 2003)

Voorhies, James. "Elizabethan England." (October 2002)

Voorhies, James. "Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) and His Circle." (October 2004)

Voorhies, James. "Fontainebleau." (October 2002)

Voorhies, James. "Post-Impressionism." (October 2004)

Voorhies, James. "Domestic Art in Renaissance Italy." (October 2002)

Voorhies, James. "Surrealism." (October 2004)

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Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over the course of his long career, Goya moved from jolly and lighthearted to deeply pessimistic and searching in his paintings, drawings, etchings, and frescoes.

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1. Besides Frida Khalo, did you know of any Latin American women artists before reading the text? If not, why do you think that is?

2. Did any specific art piece catch your attention? Why?

3. What type of art composition tools do you see throughout the art pieces collectively? (Pattern, Color, Texture, etc.)

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Cover Image: Marta Minujiín, La Menesunda, 1965. Photo via Wikimedia Commons; Artist Maria Sol Escobar, known as Marisol, photographed in 1968. Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty Images; Unknown Photographer, Tarsila do Amaral, ca. 1925. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

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11 Radical Latin American Women Artists You Should Know

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Cover Image: Marta Minujiín, La Menesunda, 1965. Photo via Wikimedia Commons; Artist Maria Sol Escobar, known as Marisol, photographed in 1968. Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty Images; Unknown Photographer, Tarsila do Amaral, ca. 1925. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

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West Side Story, known for an adaption of the Romeo and Juliet trope and its harmful depiction of Puerto Ricans, is about to be rebooted.

1. Do you think West Side Story should be rebooted? Why or why not?

2. How do you think we should deal with insensitive pieces of entertainment (from the past)?

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The latest Broadway revival can't fix the painful way it depicts Puerto Ricans.

By

Ms. del Valle Schorske is a writer and translator.

Yesenia Ayala as Anita with Amar Ramasar, left, as Bernardo in the 2020 version of "West Side Story" at the Broadway Theatre. Credit... Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

SAN JUAN, P.R. - For many years I've avoided writing about "West Side Story." As a Puerto Rican critic, I resent the expectation that I have something to say about a musty old musical from 1957.

Just as the U.S. government bestowed second-class American citizenship upon islanders in 1917 without popular consent, "West Side Story" continues to recruit us as extras even when we never intended to audition for the show. The Puerto Rican writer Nelson Rivera once recalled studying abroad in Paris, where he was greeted by "Oui, 'West Side Story'!" at every turn, as if collecting stamps in the passport of an imaginary nation everyone else thought was real.

But the show remains one of the most enduring representations of Puerto Rican life in American pop culture, and the entertainment industry won't leave it alone. A new movie adaptation from Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner is coming to theaters this year, and a modernized production by the Belgian director Ivo van Hove is the latest Broadway revival.

So when my literary agent reached out with free tickets for a dress rehearsal in December - the show officially opened on Thursday - it felt like my long-delayed civic responsibility to bear witness. I clipped on my gold hoops and painted my lips red, as if for battle, tweeting a selfie before I left for the theater: "Always Anita, never Maria."

My mother taught me to resist the cartoonish stereotypes of macho teenage gangsters and hysterical lovers in "West Side Story." But I also know that when the 1961 movie version came out, she and her friends went to see it twice at the local theater in Washington Heights and cheered when the Sharks came onscreen. If this musicalis still our narrative ghetto, then the least we can do is make noise about what it feels like to live in it.

In 2020, it feels exhausting.

There's no doubt that "West Side Story" has long functioned as a vehicle for great performances by Latinx artists, despite the fact that the lead Puerto Rican roles of Maria and Bernardo in major productions have most often gone to white actors in brownface. Rita Moreno's best supporting actress Oscar for her brilliant turn as Anita in the 1961 film remains, to this day, one of only two Latinas to win an Oscar for acting. Though this distinction has grown bitter with time, it's still a thrill to watch her "sing of assimilation while dancing its undoing," in the words of the performance studies scholar Deborah Paredez. But whatever pleasure and power Puerto Ricans have extracted from "West Side Story"have been extracted against the odds.

The show's creators didn't know, or didn't seem to care to know, much about their own material. The lyricist Stephen Sondheim at first expressed doubts about his fitness for the project: "I've never been that poor and I've never even met a Puerto Rican." The initial concept, an adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" recast with teenage street gangs, didn't involve Puerto Ricans at all. The artists toyed with a number of ethnic possibilities - Jewish people? Mexicans? - before settling on the version we know now.

In the words of Leonard Bernstein, the show's composer, "the Puerto Rican thing had just begun to explode." For Mr. Bernstein, that "thing" was a fortuitous coincidence for his formal experiment, but in the real world, it was an enormous postwar migration from the island that had "nearly doubled" New York City's Puerto Rican population in just two years, as the scholar Lorrin Thomas notes in her book "Puerto Rican Citizen."

Right from the beginning, these recent arrivals didn't like what they saw on Broadway. New York's most widely circulated Spanish-language newspaper at the time, La Prensa, called for a picket at the premiere, and the Puerto Rican journalist and labor organizer Jesús Colón lamented that the show was "superficial and sentimental" and "always out of context with the real history, culture, and traditions of my people." In subsequent decades, this tradition of protest and critique has only grown richer and more collectively exasperated.

Mr. Bernstein's music and Jerome Robbins's choreography are often cited as the musical's redeeming features by its liberal defenders; a critical Los Angeles Times review of the 2009 Broadway revival nonetheless praised the "extraordinary variety and operatic fullness" of the score and the "ecstasy" of the dance numbers. But I've always been baffled by how the musical's creators squandered the opportunity to engage the genius of Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms. The gym scene "mambo" is not, rhythmically, a mambo, and the famous rooftop number "America" has the Sharks dancing a Spanish-from-Spain paso doble mishmashed with whitewashed showbiz jazz.

When performers like Ms. Moreno succeed in conveying distinctively Nuyorican ways of moving, they seem to strain to do so under inhospitable conditions. In theory, "West Side Story"should have something to say about the experience of assimilation. But in practice, the musicaldemands assimilation from its Puerto Rican performers, then capitalizes on the glorious virtuosity of their capacity to resist it.

Directors of more recent productions have made an effort to adapt "West Side Story" into something culturally relevant and a bit more politically correct. The 1980 revival was the first to cast a Puerto Rican performer as Maria, and the 2009 revival enlisted Lin-Manuel Miranda to render some of the dialogue bilingually. In the latest Broadway staging, Mr. van Hove dutifully follows their lead: The Sharks are played by Latinx performers, and there are snatches of urban Spanish patter between songs. The bodega looks like a real bodega.

And notably, the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker leaves behind the soaring lines of Jerome Robbins's original numbers in favor of loose, feral syncopations developed in collaboration with the dancers themselves. Of course, there's only so much Latin rhythm they can bring to the musical while maintaining a working relationship with Leonard Bernstein's score - perhaps an object lesson in the limits of reform, whether aesthetic or political.

Where Mr. van Hove diverges from previous stagings is in doubling down on the plot's brutality. I still can't shake the chill I felt watching the Jets attempt to gang-rape Anita in the show's third act. It's magnified on a giant screen onstage, captured by one of the Jets on his cellphone camera. The omnipresence of screens in this production should remind us how easy it has always been to reproduce, revive and restage scenes of spectacular violence. Yet I'm not sure how deeply Mr. van Hove understands the implications of his own choices here.

According to Scott Rudin, one of the show's producers, Mr. van Hove "doesn't direct revivals like they're revivals, because to him, they're not." Mr. van Hove may have "no iconic relationship" to "West Side Story," so he may not feel the oppressive repetitions of the history of violence against brown women bearing down on his body. But for many of us, it's the umpteenth time we've seen Anita assaulted for dramatic effect, each time under the guise of greater authenticity.

This production also renders the Jets as a multiracial gang, concocting a fantasy world in which bigoted whites form an alliance with African-Americans against Puerto Rican migrants - a bid, in Ms. De Keersmaeker's words, "for inclusion of the American population today." But it's unlikely black New Yorkers would seek (or find) security among white Americans rather than among their Caribbean, Middle Eastern and Central American neighbors. Mr. van Hove's casting misrepresents the real solidarities that form at the margins of U.S. citizenship - and perhaps more dangerously, shifts our focus away from the enduring problem of white supremacist violence. "Inclusion" here is code for willful colorblindness.

Mr. van Hove and Ms. De Keersmaeker are Belgian; we'll give them that excuse. But in 2020, most Americans - and certainly all New Yorkers - in the audience have "met a Puerto Rican" and should theoretically know more about our relationship to one another than "West Side Story"can reveal.

The United States has a compulsion when it comes to "West Side Story," restaging, again and again, the primal scene of the colony's incursion into American consciousness, the midcentury's "gran migración" of Puerto Ricans to New York City. Never mind all that has transpired since then: salsa, hip-hop, the Young Lords, the movement to demilitarize Vieques, Hurricane Maria, #RickyRenuncia, the new "gran migración" not to New York but to points south - especially Orlando, Fla., where the Pulse club massacre happened on Latin Night.

Mr. Bernstein's daughter, Jamie, celebrated this latest Broadway revival as "more timely now than ever" given "the story line involving the mistreatment" of Puerto Rican migrants. But the numbing persistence of such "mistreatment" - which has as much to do with colonial geopolitics as with garden-variety anti-black and anti-immigrant racism - is not necessarily a testament to the musical's insight. And these continuous revivals reinforce America's colonizing power to determine who Puerto Ricans get to be.

It might be nice for some to think that culture is not a zero-sum game, that we can sustain an outdated musical as a nostalgic artifact without precluding new narratives, which ultimately require new distributions of power. In a feature for The New York Times Magazine, Sasha Weiss wondered whether this current generation of Latinx dancers "will one day insist on staging 'West Side Story' for themselves."

I think of them when I go to my dance class at La Goyco, a school in Santurce, San Juan, that was abandoned because of recent austerity cuts but reclaimed by activists as a community center - the only place I could charge my laptop to write this Op-Ed in the blackouts after the island's recent earthquakes. In the Afro-Puerto Rican musical tradition known as bomba, the dancers are the ones who tell the drum what to do. They are the directors of their own performance.

Maybe the next generation of dancers won't want to adapt "West Side Story"anymore. Maybe what we want is independence, to shine within a tradition we've authored ourselves. I'm not above quoting Anita in my advice to the American entertainment industry and its many captive audiences: "Forget that boy, and find another."

Carina del Valle Schorske (@FluentMundo) is a writer and translator living between San Juan, Puerto Rico, and New York City. She is the author of the forthcoming book "The Other Island."
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Opinion | Let 'West Side Story' and Its Stereotypes Die

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The latest Broadway revival can't fix the painful way it depicts Puerto Ricans. By Ms. del Valle Schorske is a writer and translator. SAN JUAN, P.R. - For many years I've avoided writing about "West Side Story." As a Puerto Rican critic, I resent the expectation that I have something to say about a musty old musical from 1957.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat

Basquiat was a Haitian - Puerto Rican - American artist born in Brooklyn in 1960. He was the first Black international art star.

Take Your Kids to the Museum

As a child his mother often took him to the Brooklyn Museum.

Learn Another Language

Jean-Michel was a child prodigy. He read very early and everyone noticed his drawing abilities. While recovering from being hit by a car, his mother gave him a copy of the standard anatomy textbook Gray's Anatomy. You can see the strong influence of those medical illustrations in his work.

As a pre-teen Basquiat was already fluent in French, Spanish and English. He lived for a time in Puerto Rico.

SAMO©

Basquiat was first noticed as a graffiti artist. He lived on the streets. His most famous tag was SAMO© (for same old, as in same old shit). In 1976 it started showing up all over Lower Manhattan.

The late 1970s was a time when New York City almost went broke and disco, punk, hip-hop and graffiti art exploded to life. 1977, the year of the New York City Blackout, was the bottom, or the peak, depending on how you look at things.

"The Radiant Child"

While still an unknown, Jean-Michel once ran into Andy Warhol in a restaurant and impressed him with his directness and his work. They would later collaborate.

Basquiat was first noticed by the art world at The Times Square Show in 1980. That got him a solo show in Italy in 1981. At the end of the year, after seeing Basquiat's work in a group show at PS1, René Ricard published "The Radiant Child" in Artforum magazine.

In March 1982, Basquiat had his first American solo show at Annina Nosei gallery. His career blew up from there. He had another show in Italy and began working for Larry Gagosian (now the world's most prominent art dealer) in California. Basquiat brought along his girlfriend, a young woman named Madonna.

Between 1983 and 1985, Basquiat collaborated with Andy Warhol on a series of paintings.

The 1980s were a drug-fueled time and Basquiat struggled with that. He complained that people urged him to stay clean, but loved the work he did when he was high. Basquiat died of a heroin overdose in his New York studio in 1988. He was just 27 years old.

Boom For Real

Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat is Sara Driver's 2018 documentary about Basquiat and New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The film follows Basquiat's life pre-fame and how New York City, the times, the people and the movements surrounding him formed the artist he became. Using never-before-seen works, writings and photographs, director Sara Driver, who was part of the New York arts scene herself, worked closely and collaboratively with friends and other artists who emerged from that period:

and many others.

Drawing upon their memories and anecdotes, the film also uses period film footage, music and images to visually re-recreate the era, drawing a portrait of Jean-Michel and Downtown New York City -pre AIDS, President Reagan, the real estate and art booms - before anyone was motivated by money and ambition.

The definition of fame, success and power were very different than today - to be a penniless but published poet was the height of success, until everything changed in the early 1980s. This is New York City's story before that change.

Boom for Real is a Magnolia Pictures release.
#BoomForReal

Boom for Real Festivals

The film premiered at Toronto in 2017. It had its U.S. premiere at the 2017 New York Film Festival.

Boom For Real in NYC

Boom for Real opens at IFC Center in Manhattan's West Village on Friday, May 11, 2018. $15

Director Sara Driver and Basquiat friend Alexis Adler will do Q&A at the Friday, May 11, 8:25 pm show.

Director Sara Driver and Basquiat friend Lee Quiñones will do Q&A at the Saturday, May 12, 8:25 pm show.

In the week of June 1 - 7, Boom for Real is now playing at IFC Center.

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Basquiat was a Haitian - Puerto Rican - American artist born in Brooklyn in 1960. He was the first Black international art star. As a child his mother often took him to the Brooklyn Museum. Jean-Michel was a child prodigy. He read very early and everyone noticed his drawing abilities.

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The Smithsonian American Art Museum's leading Latinx art collection represents a profound commitment to building a great national collection reflecting the rich contributions of Latinos to our country, from the colonial period to the present.

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United We Dream is the largest immigrant youth-led community in the country. We create welcoming spaces for young people - regardless of immigration status - to support, engage, and empower them to make their voice heard and win!

We have an online reach of over 4 million and are made up of over 400,000 members as well as 5 statewide branches and over 100 local groups across 28 states. Over 60% of our members are womxn and 20% identify as LGBTQ. We are made up of fearless youth fighting to improve the lives of ourselves, our families and our communities. Our vision is a society which celebrates our diversity and we believe in leading a multi-ethnic, intersectional path to get there.

Whether we're organizing in the streets, building cutting edge technology systems, opening doors for LGBTQ immigrant youth, clearing pathways to education, stopping deportations or creating alliances across social movements, United We Dream puts undocumented immigrant youth in the driver's seat to strategize, innovate and win.

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United We Dream is the largest immigrant youth-led community in the country. We create welcoming spaces for young people - regardless of immigration status - to support, engage, and empower them to make their voice heard and win!

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Explore two pivotal moments in the Latinx rights movement in California: the East LA school walkouts and the first year of the Delano grape strike.

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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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How do we complicate, localize, and celebrate Latinx Heritage?

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How do we complicate, localize, and celebrate Latinx Heritage?

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Costa Rica

Ed Roybal: KPCC Story, Calisphere, Boyle Heights Museum

Sofia Hernandez

Great Wall of Los Angeles

Ana Maria Lopez

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Hispanic Heritage Month

1. Artists, Writers & Musicians

2. Cinema

3. Government

4. Law

5. Historic Court Cases

6. Business

7. Science

8. Social Justice Issues

9. Civil Rights & Activism

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'Puro Cash': Latinos are opening more small businesses than anyone else in the US

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'Puro Cash': Latinos are opening more small businesses than anyone else in the US

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1. After reading the article, why do you think that Latinx business owners (especially small business owners) face discrimination when applying for loans?

2.  How do you think Latinx small businesses were affected by the pandemic?

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Leer en español The USA TODAY Network series Hecho en USA, or made in America, focuses on the nation's growing Latino community. Roughly 80% of all Latinos living in the U.S. are American citizens, but media coverage of Hispanics tends to focus on immigration and crime, instead of how Latino families live, work and learn in their hometowns. Hecho en USA tells the stories of the nation's 59.9 million Latinos - a growing economic and cultural force, many of whom are born in the U.S.
SALINAS, Calif. - On the weekends, food truck owner Orlando Osornio, 30, and his wife, Denise, sell mile-high tortas, filled with California fusion-inspired ingredients: hot Cheetos, bacon, mango-habanero sauce, or pineapple. Some come for the birria torta, or the chicken-bacon-alfredo torta.

A line of customers winds its way around the side of his tent as meat sizzles on the grills. On the other side of the mesh, Osornio and his crew pack and stack toasted buns as fast as they can.

Two years ago, when Osornio, who is Mexican-American, was contemplating launching Tortas al 100, he knew one thing: He didn't want to apply for a loan. Osornio had racked up "about $30,000" in credit-card debt as a teenager and said when life smacked him in the face in his early 20s, he got serious about paying it down and fixing his credit score.

That experience, he said, was what prompted him to forgo applying for a small-business loan. Instead, Osornio estimated he and his wife spent at least $50,000 of their salaries on the burgeoning business, including food, four grills and a tent, during its first year of operation.

Latino small-business owners like Osornio are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the U.S. even as they battle systemic racism that has resulted in lower incomes and loan rates. Over the past 10 years, the number of Latino business owners grew 34%, compared to 1% for all business owners in the United States, according to a recent study from Stanford University. And more Latinos than ever are applying for small business loans to launch or grow their operations.

The growing success of Latino small business owners comes as Latinos are increasingly becoming an economic force in the U.S. The same Stanford study found Latino-owned businesses contributed about $500 billion to the economy in annual sales.

A 2019 report to Congress based on data from 2017 found almost 60 million Latinos in the United States already account for $2.3 trillion in economic activity in total, which on its own would rank as the eighth-largest economy in the world. And Latinos are projected to make up 30% of the U.S. population by 2020, meaning the group's contributions are only likely to grow.

Latino-owned businesses employ more than 3 million people, according to the 2019 State of Latino Entrepreneurship report by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI), a Stanford University research initiative centered around Latinos in business. All told, Latino-owned businesses account for about 4% of U.S. business revenues and 5.5% of U.S. employment.

However, Latino-owned companies remain smaller than white-owned firms, averaging $1.2 million in revenue compared with $2.3 million brought in by a white-owned company. That is a problem, said Jerry Porras, a professor emeritus of organizational behavior and change at Stanford Business School; co-founder of the Latino Business Action Network, a nonprofit out of Stanford University focused on empowering Latino business owners; and co-director of SLEI.

"I think that there's really a positive story when you look at Latino businesses across the country," he said. "The number is smaller as a base but it's growing very rapidly. Latinos are oriented towards starting businesses and are doing it at a significant rate."

If Latino-owned employer firms were given the same chances, Porras said, they would generate an additional $4 billion in revenue and 1 million jobs.

Latino small business owners tend to be younger

Across the U.S., Latinos are represented in all the major industry sectors, owning businesses in manufacturing, education, health services, finance, construction and more.

Latino business owners tend to be younger than non-Latino business owners. Roughly 33 percent of Latino entrepreneurs are younger than 45, compared to just 22% of non-Latino entrepreneurs.

For every 100,000 Latino adults in the United States, on average 510 became entrepreneurs each month in 2018.

However, research by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, an institute that studies economic opportunities for people of color, shows that historic disenfranchisement of people of color has led to those very people having less generational wealth than white people.

Furthermore, policies that favor the affluent have continued to widen the gap, particularly between white families and black or Latino families.

While the income gap between blacks and whites closed somewhat between 1970 and 2016, Hispanics fell even further behind at all income levels, the Pew Research Center think tank found in 2018. Even top-earning Hispanics earned only 65% as much as whites in 2016, down from 74% in 1970.

And Hispanic people on average continue to have lower salaries than white people, research out of Stanford showed.

In the end, this combination means Latinos typically have lower credit scores, which can mean higher interest rates or being turned down for loans.

According to a report submitted to the U.S. House Financial Services Committee in 2019 by UnidosUS, a nonpartisan think tank focused on the Hispanic community, banks originally had loan officers who determined the "trustworthiness" of a loan applicant. As such, people of color were often discriminated against.

In the following decades, banks lost their loan officers to the war effort, and soon invented credit scores as a stand-in. However, these, too, had their issues as they were built on longstanding disparities and have resulted in communities of color, young adults, people with low incomes and immigrants having disproportionately low credit scores.

According to the 2017 Small Business Credit Study by the Federal Reserve Banks, of applicants denied credit, 45% of Latino applicants were turned down for insufficient credit history and 37% for having too low a credit score. (Applicants could choose more than one response.) In comparison, white applicants were turned away at rates of 33% and 26%, respectively.

"I think the Latino story in some ways follows the story of why black families have less wealth than white people today," said Urban Institute research fellow Steven Brown. "There is a lack of the same kind of resources that help build wealth."

Brown cited restricted access to homeownership under policies such as "redlining" as a primary way Latinos were kept from building generational wealth. For decades, black and Latino neighborhoods were unfairly deemed too risky for loans and mortgages through redlining. That left people there reliant on speculators or private sales.

"When Latinos have been able to buy homes, they have historically been relegated to neighborhoods where the homes didn't have as much value, so they're unable to build as much wealth and pass it on," Brown said.

In more recent years, as Latinos have become more prominent in U.S. culture, their economic standing has risen.

A 2019 study of 61,000 small-business loan applications submitted to Biz2Credit's online marketplace found the number of credit applications from Latino-owned businesses rose 23 percent from 2018 to 2019.

And over the last year, Latino-owned businesses reported an average revenue growth of 14%, outpacing the growth of the U.S. economy, the Stanford report showed.

While revenues climbed, though, the average credit scores of Latino business owners dipped to 588 from 594 last year, according to Biz2Credit.

According to Biz2Credit CEO Rohit Arora, that could indicate business owners are using personal credit cards to fund their business growth if their companies did not qualify for loans. Furthermore, cost management can be difficult for young businesses, and that may factor into the dip in scores.

"When credit scores are less than 600, it is hard to get traditional bank loans," Arora said in the report his firm released.

Porras said the lack of credit can force Latino business owners to make riskier financial decisions, such as relying on personal credit cards to grow their business or taking out a loan on their accounts receivable.

"By and large, I think Latinos are very unsuccessful in securing loans from the more professional sources," said Porras.

"It's the smaller ones that are hurting the most," he added, referencing business size.

Less trust of financial institutions

In other cases, Latino borrowers may be less trusting of financial institutions as a whole, based either on past experiences or a general understanding of systemic racism by lending institutions.

"Latinos have to pay more for interest," said Fausta Ibarra, 59, who owns Tropical Cuts hair salon in Salinas, California. "We have to pay more for everything."

Ibarra, who calls herself a "cien por ciento" -- or 100% -- Mexican woman, had poor credit after issues with a house she and her sisters bought together in the early 1990s. When she applied for a loan in 1993 to open her hair salon, a brightly lit salon tucked into a small strip mall in Salinas, Washington Mutual Bank denied the loan. (The bank collapsed in 2008 during the financial crisis.)

She ended up borrowing nearly $30,000 from friends, family and coworkers, slowly paying them back one by one.

When Ibarra tried to purchase a home in 1996, her low credit still held her back. There was, however, another way, the real-estate agent told her. Ibarra ended up paying more than the house was on the market for, and she had to borrow from friends and family so she could put down a deposit of $10,000, twice what she was prepared to pay out of pocket.

Ibarra felt taken advantage of.

"Los Latinos tienen que ganarse el pan cada día," said Ibarra in her native Spanish. "Yo sí pienso que los Latinos pueden contribuir más si nos dan la oportunidad para sacar adelante a nuestros hijos. Yo pienso que todos tenemos las ganas de progresar pero no se nos dan las facilidades que se les da a una persona ciudadana de aquí."

That translates in English to: "Latinos have to start all over again, every day," Ibarra said. "I do think that Latinos can contribute more to this country if they give us the same opportunity to better ourselves and our children. I think we all want to progress, but they don't give us the same tools they give someone who was born here."

Discriminatory lending practices continue

Today, black people and Latinos continue to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans far more often than their white counterparts, according to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records analyzed by Reveal for The Center for Investigative Reporting in 2018.

The analysis showed black applicants were turned away at significantly higher rates than whites in 48 cities, and Latinos in 25, even when controlling for loan size, neighborhood and income.

In other instances, black or Latino applicants were steered toward higher-cost, riskier loans.

Bank of America, for example, agreed to a $335 million payout to the Justice Department on behalf of its mortgage lender, Countrywide. Prior to Bank of America's purchase of the lending institution, Countrywide purposely charged 200,000-plus black and Latino borrowers more for their mortgage loans than white borrowers with similar qualifications between 2004 and 2008.

The lender advised those borrowers of color to take out risky subprime loans, even when they qualified for prime loans, or simply charged them higher rates.

Other lending institutions, such as Wells Fargo, have had similar claims levied against them.

Latinos turn to friends, family for seed money

According to the 2019 Stanford report, Latinos get loans from local banks at a much higher rate than they do from national banks.

However, local banks are disappearing across the United States, potentially leaving Latinos out in the cold. According to data provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as of Dec. 31, 2001, 8,080 FDIC-insured community banks existed in the country. By Dec. 31, 2018, 5,406 remained.

"The local banks are tied to the community more tightly," said Porras. "If the community has more Latino businesses, the relationships are built up and they grow. National banks lag behind there because local banks work harder to network with the businesses in their communities."

When local banks are not available, instead of applying to larger loan institutions, many Latinos turn to friends, family and crowdfunding for seed money.

In Salinas, a small city surrounded by rich agricultural land, U.S. Census Bureau data shows 78.7% of the some-156,000 residents are Hispanic or Latino. While the city's agricultural industry thrives financially, thanks to the tens of thousands of Latino farmworkers that flow in and out of Salinas every year, the average farmworker takes home just $17,500 a year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. More than 17% of its residents live in poverty.

Still, Latino entrepreneurship is evident in Salinas. Latino-owned restaurants, barbershops, grocery stores, showrooms and more have risen out of the landscape all over town, tucked into plazas and surrounding big box stores. Nearly 30% of all businesses in Monterey County, where Salinas rests, are owned by Hispanic or Latino people, per data provided by the Monterey County Workforce Development Board from the 2012 American Community Survey.

Marlene Garcia, 29, is the proprietor of a homebrew operation turned commercial brewery that will open in Salinas in the spring. She borrowed $210,000 from her mother to start up her operation.

Salinas's downtown is just three blocks long, but Garcia's brewery, Brew & Krew, will open on the 100 block of Main Street, near four other Latino-owned businesses that have opened (or reopened under new ownership) in the past two years. The growth is notable on a side of town that is historically inhabited primarily by white residents.

"I am honestly so thankful for my parents, both of them," said Garcia, reminiscing about her parents' insistence that she help with the family businesses.

Her parents, Graciela and Gildardo, worked in fields after immigrating to the U.S. from Guanajuato, Mexico. Every month or so, they would go to Los Angeles, five hours away, to stock up on Mexican candy, piñatas and cassette tapes, Garcia said. Then, they would turn around and sell them at the Santa Cruz weekend flea market in central California, dragging their children with them.

It was there that Garcia learned the dedication it took to run a business, even as she told her parents she never wanted to own her own operation.

"Growing up, my entire life, we would go to the flea market," said Garcia. "We'd wake up super early, drive to Santa Cruz, and work. I remember telling my parents, 'I don't want this, I don't want to go into business.'

"Now that I'm older, I appreciate everything they did. I see why they did that."

The Garcias opened another stand in another flea market, then a taquería. Finally, they sold all their businesses and took out their first loan of $80,000 to open a liquor store in Gilroy, a small bedroom community 30 minutes south of San Jose. They named the store La Flor de Jalisco.

Marlene Garcia, 29, the proprietor of a homebrew operation turned commercial brewery that will open in Salinas in the spring

I am honestly so thankful for my parents, both of them. ... Because of them, because of the way they saved, because they saved, a lot of the money that has been invested came from my mom.

When Garcia wanted to open her own brewery, her mother became her silent business partner.

"Because of them, because of the way they saved, because they saved, a lot of the money that has been invested came from my mom," said Garcia.

Garcia is in the process of applying for her first loan - a Small Business Administration loan for $480,000 to open her business. She credits her mother's help in allowing her to so far not rack up debt and interest rates.

Although the space is still unfinished, Garcia has big plans for her small brewery. She wants large, stainless steel canisters in the back, behind a large pane of glass so brew enthusiasts can watch the brewers at work as they sip on suds.

She hopes to connect with other business owners in the area to cross-promote, whether it be with the cinema next door or the sandwich shop across the street.

"Hispanic parents are never excited to hand out money," Garcia said, laughing. "But she believed in it, she saw that people really do like my beer. If she wouldn't seen that reaction, it would have been harder to convince her."

'Puro cash'

Osornio's family has a saying whenever they have to pay for something. "Puro cash," they repeat, laughing, or pure cash in English.

The joke is based on Osornio's father. Years ago, when he was purchasing a car for his wife, the salesman asked him if he wanted to finance.

"No," said Osornio the elder. "Puro cash."

Despite the financial savvy his father displayed, Osornio said his parents rarely talked money management with him. All he recalls was being told credit cards were for emergencies only, a lesson that, like many teenagers, he immediately disregarded as soon as he got one of his own.

Jerry Porras, a professor of organizational behavior and change emeritus at Stanford Business School, co-founder of the Latino Business Action Network, a nonprofit out of Stanford University focused on empowering Latino business owners, and co-director of SLEI

By and large, I think Latinos are very unsuccessful in securing loans from the more professional sources. It's the smaller ones that are hurting the most.

The experience of wiggling out from under a pile of debt taught Osornio that he wanted applying for a loan to be "a last resort."

Years later, Osornio has managed to build such a successful business with his unique torta recipes that he routinely fields offers from locals to invest in or outright purchase his business -- and his recipes -- from him.

And that, advocates have said, is the hidden silver lining for Latino entrepreneurs: even more untapped potential.

According to a 2017 New American Economy report on the power of Hispanics in the U.S., Hispanic entrepreneurs own a large chunk of transportation and warehouse businesses, laying claim to more than 20% of the industry in 2012. They also owned about 12% of the country's construction firms.

Advocates say that, given a chance, Latinos could grow their portion of the economy even further. However, the "opportunity gap between Latinos or Hispanics and their white, business-owning counterparts is wide.

"Wealth is the missing ingredient in the Latino community," said Porras. "If we could add more wealth, people would consume more and grow the economy. How do we get more wealth? Grow businesses."

"It's a synergystic process," said Porras. "In the long term, it will benefit the whole country."

All Latinos need, Porras said, is a chance.
Kate Cimini is a multimedia journalist for The Californian. Call her at (831) 776-5137 or email kcimini@thecalifornian.com.

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'Puro cash': Latinos are opening more small businesses than anyone else in the US

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Leer en español The USA TODAY Network series Hecho en USA, or made in America, focuses on the nation's growing Latino community. Roughly 80% of all Latinos living in the U.S. are American citizens, but media coverage of Hispanics tends to focus on immigration and crime, instead of how Latino families live, work and learn in their hometowns.