Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

Origins of Hispanic Heritage Month

Originally a week-long American celebration, Hispanic heritage was first officially celebrated in 1968 under President Lyndon B Johnson. Hispanic Heritage Month honours the contributions and influence of Hispanic and Latinx Americans.  It is now celebrated more widely and for an entire month from 15 September to 15 October each year.

While most celebrations coincide with a single calendar month, Hispanic Heritage Month spans both September and August in order to include the culturally significant independence days of several Latin American countries in Cental and Southern America, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mexico.  

There is much to celebrate

Did you know...

• Global Hispanic/Latinx communities are incredibly diverse, encompassing a range of cultures, traditions, languages, and customs. From the colourful festivals of Brazil’s Carnival to the rhythmic dances of the Dominican Republic’s merengue, there is a wealth of cultural diversity to explore and appreciate.
• Hispanic people and Latin Americans have excelled in the arts, sports, politics, science, and business.
• The culinary traditions of Hispanic/Latinx communities have introduced the world to many new flavours and dishes from Mexican burritos to Spanish tapas.  
• More people speak Spanish than English! Spanish is the second most widely spoken language worldwide, after Chinese, fostering common cultural understanding and unity.
• Hispanic/Latinx culture profoundly changed art and music – from the incredible imagination of Salvador Dali and the mesmerizing works of Frida Kahlo to the vibrant rhythms of salsa and reggaeton, Hispanic artists continue to captivate audiences worldwide.

Famous Hispanic people

Talking in generalities is all well and good but who are some of these Hispanic people who have changed the world?  Here's a few you might never have heard about but whose work has shaped our world.

Ellen Ochoa was the daughter of Mexican immigrants to the US who went on to become an astronaut with NASA.

Gabriela Mistral was a Chilean writer and diplomat of mixed Mestizo ethnicity, a term used to describe people of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry in Latin America, who wrote from her lived experience of intersectional oppression and discrimination.

Seveno Ochoa was a Nobel Prize winning biologist who studied at prestigious universities across Europe, including at Heidelberg and Oxford, where he developed his an interest in enzymology that led to his leading breakthroughs in energy metabolism, photosynthesis, and molecular genetics.  

Mario Molina was the Spanish Nobel Prize winning chemist who discovered how commonly used refrigerant and aerosol propellants of the time called CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) were damaging the ozone layer that protects us from the harmful ultraviolet light of the Sun and predicted the ozone layer's recovery if their use was restricted.

Celebrating Hispanic children's literature

Hispanic peoples have offered the world countless authors, poets, illustrators, opera singers, folk singers to boxers and a US surgeon-general (Antonia Novello).  Celebrating some of the great children's stories from Spain and South America.  We're celebrating by pulling together a display of some truly creative children's books in the Outside In World collection of Children's Books in Translation drawn from across Spain and South America and translated into English.  Stop by the Library café area and take a look!