{"id":10806,"date":"2025-10-06T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/?p=10806"},"modified":"2026-07-20T14:07:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T18:07:53","slug":"national-hispanic-heritage-month-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"National Hispanic Heritage Month 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebrating <\/em>National Hispanic Heritage Month<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From our Latin American and Latino Studies Archives: Celebration and Resistance<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Payton Phillips Quintanilla, Latin American & Iberian Studies Librarian and Curator<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2025 has seen various local and community-based annual public celebrations of Latino heritage scaled-down, postponed, or cancelled altogether out of fears for the safety of participants and community members. Other public celebrations have gone on as planned, with some organizers even rearticulating their yearly \u201cGrito de Independencia\u201d (the September 15th commemoration of the \u201cCry of Independence\u201d from Spanish colonial rule, specific to the Mexican context) as \u201cGrito de Resistencia\u201d (\u201cCry of Resistance\u201d). Both paths, however, are guided by a spirit of solidarity, and informed by a history of perseverance, that predate\u2014and are poised to persist beyond\u2014any formal federal recognition of the diverse cultures, accomplishments, and contributions of Latinos in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by that same spirit and history, we present three examples, preserved in Notre Dame\u2019s Rare Books and Special Collections, of historical moments when Latino communities organized celebrations of resistance\u2014both public and private, and throughout the calendar year\u2014in direct response to histories and realities of persecution, oppression, exclusion, and erasure.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1969: \u201cLa Fiesta de los Barrios\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cThe Fiesta De Los Barrios is the Fiesta of all of our people. For the first time the heritage of our cultural past and the richness of our cultural present will be expressed through the creative talent and skill of our barrio artists, writers and performers. [\u2026] It is this pride in ourselves and confidence in our future that has made this magazine and indeed the entire Fiesta possible.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name \u201cLa Fiesta de los Barrios\u201d carries multiple references: it was a community celebration, a literary journal, and an aspiration for the future. The actual \u201cfiesta\u201d took place in early May, 1969, at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the LA Walkouts: a watershed movement through which Mexican American students protested systemic racism, abuses, and neglect on their campuses, and demanded inclusive and unbiased curricula. (For an introduction to the Walkouts, we suggest you watch this Retro Report<\/em><\/a> hosted by PBS, or this excerpt from PBS\u2019s Latino Americans<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n

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The journal by the same name, or Fiesta Magazine<\/em> (MSH\/LAT 0099-61)<\/a>, memorialized select verse, prose, and drawings created by community members and event participants, representing a diversity of voices and experiences. And finally, it was the hope, as articulated by photographer Pedro Arias in one of the journal\u2019s opening essays, that all peoples of Mexican descent living in the United States could overcome generational and cultural divides to work together toward common goals: \u201cY entonces ser\u00e1 un d\u00eda de fiesta, ser\u00e1 una FIESTA DE LOS BARRIOS, pero una Fiesta de Los Barrios permanente [\u2026]\u201d (And then it will be a day of celebration, it will be a FIESTA DE LOS BARRIOS, but a permanent Fiesta de Los Barrios [\u2026]) (7).    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1984: \u201cA benefit for Casa El Salvador Farabundo Mart\u00ed\u201d  <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cCasa El Salvador Farabundo Mart\u00ed is a solidarity committee of Salvadoran refugees living in the U.S. Our goals are to inform people about the situation in El Salvador and Central America, to promote friendship with our people, and to discourage U.S. intervention in our country.\u201d  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 1984, the Chicago-based, refugee-led organization called Casa El Salvador Farabundo Mart\u00ed hosted a benefit dinner and invited allies and supporters to \u201cshare this season of peace with the people of El Salvador.\u201d El Salvador itself, rather than celebrating a season of peace, was deep in a brutal civil war marked by widespread human rights abuses: far from a conflict confined to fighting between armed factions, the government\u2019s military and paramilitary death squads\u2014trained and funded by the United States government\u2014broadly targeted civilian non-combatants. Meanwhile, only a minuscule portion of refugees fleeing El Salvador were granted asylum in the United States. This combination of domestic U.S. policies, enabled by controversial Cold War rhetoric, sparked passionate peace, solidarity, and anti-intervention movements across the country. A snapshot of those efforts, and the array of allies that were involved in them, are captured in this small poster (MSH\/LAT 0120 U.S.\/Central America Cold War Ephemera Collection). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(If this historical moment and its relationship to \u201csanctuary\u201d activism is unfamiliar to you, an article published earlier this year in The Conversation<\/em><\/a> is a good place to start reading.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2001: \u201cEncuentro del Canto Popular\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cA Tribute to 20 Years of Culture and Resistance\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco\u2019s first annual \u201cEncuentro del Canto Popular\u201d (\u201cGathering of Popular Song\u201d) was organized by volunteers from the community newspaper El Tecolote<\/em> in 1982. The event was inspired by the life and legacy of V\u00edctor Jara, a Chilean educator, activist, and singer-songwriter who was one of the founding figures of Chile\u2019s\u2014and, ultimately, Latin America\u2019s\u2014nueva canci\u00f3n <\/em>(new song<\/em>). This folkloric genre was imbued with such deep social commitment that it became an international movement (the Smithsonian offers an introduction to la nueva canci\u00f3n<\/em><\/a> in their Folkways<\/em> series). Jara was kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and executed by Chile\u2019s military just after the U.S.-backed coup that ousted the democratically-elected president, Salvador Allende, and which began the 17-year military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acci\u00f3n Latina<\/a>, a community organization based in San Francisco\u2019s Mission District that grew out of El Tecolote<\/em>, took part in U.S.-based protests against Pinochet\u2019s regime (as can be seen in this post from the Bancroft Library<\/a>, which now preserves a substantial Acci\u00f3n Latina archive), as well as later solidarity movements. The poster featured here<\/a> was created for the Encuentro\u2019s 20th year, celebrated in 2001 under the stewardship of Acci\u00f3n Latina. Its lineup of musicians from Nicaragua for this \u201ctribute to 20 years of culture and resistance\u201d was a nod to the protest and dissent expressed in both Nicaragua and the United States following the CIA-led formation in 1981 of the Contras (an umbrella organization of anti-Sandinista combatants), a covert project that ultimately culminated in the Iran-Contra Scandal. The musician wearing the symbol of the United Farm Workers on her shirt speaks to solidarity within and between Latino communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Previous Hispanic Heritage Month Blog Posts:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n