What are you doing to celebrate Hispanic Heritage this month? There have been a number of events in my area mainly fiestas. I'm on a listserv of Hispanic leaders in the St. Louis area and found that there is a "Bolivia 2003" celebration that will include speakers, art exhibits, and musical presentations. I did attend Our Lady of Guadalupe's Latina Festival. There was great food from Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guatamala, and Mex-Tex. (they had the longest lines). I'm trying to get something started here in St Louis for my university. We don't have a program this year, but there's momentum for a week of celebration for next year.
I was in El Paso, TX. this past week and visited the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso. The celebration has definitely started there with speakers from politics, history, art, music, literature, theatre and film. I was impressed with the Bilingual Reading of Cesar Vallejo's Poetry, Octavio Soliz‚ play "Santos Y Santos", and book presentation: Border Women: Writing from La Frontera by Dr. Socorro Tabuenca. PBS will be presenting files that might interest you. These include, "The Border", "Mexico, One Plate at a Time", "Flamenco: The Passion of Spanish Dance", "American Family", "Orozco in Gringoland", "The Glass Ceiling", and "Los Romeros: The Royal Family of Guitar". The last one is excellent! I enjoy the arts, so one of the exhibits that I thought would be very interesting to see were the 80 works by 26 different artists from the private collection of entertainer Cheech Marin.
What I saw and heard on my visit to El Paso was really exciting and rich with variety of speakers, ideas, and challenges. I'm envious and wishing that I could see that type of celebration everywhere.
I work at a Jesuit University so the focus for next year's Hispanic
Heritage week will likely have a social justice and maybe development
of a conscious for the needs of Latin America. I spoke to one
of the Jesuits, who is the VP for University Missions and Ministry,
a few weeks ago and he gave me the name of a priest in El Salvador
who I'm hoping to bring to Saint Louis University for a week.
He teaches at the university there but his work is in DNA matching
of children to families who lost children through abduction during
the Civil War in El Salvador. He works in collaboration with the
Asociación Pro Búsqueda. The group has 700 requests
to search for abducted children and have solved over 260. Of this
number, over 160 have been reunited with their families. There
are more than 60 whose locations have been identified and communications
have been made with these children and the adoptive families.
The organization does not intend to return these
children to El Salvador. This group only intends to provide an
identify for children and provide biological parents knowledge
of the whereabouts, safety, and well being of the children. These
children have been found in 12 different countries including France,
Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, UK, US, Honduras, Guatemala,
Spain, Sweden, and El Salvador.
I'm sure that the community of Latinos in St. Louis will be active in developing this event. I‚m looking forward also to celebrating the talents, gifts, and successes of Latinos in the US. I‚m just hoping that the events will broaden faculty and students‚ understanding of the largest minority group in the US. This definitely will be a time to celebrate and I can't wait!
Hope you spend some time celebrating and appreciating our Heritage Month.
