Hispanic Heritage Month kicked off Friday, Sept. 15, at Queens University with its second annual Hispanic Heritage Festival. Representatives from 12 countries are showcasing art, entertainment, games and food indigenous to their native lands. For two Queens officials, the event has a personal meaning.
For Rosa Ramirez, the festival is an opportunity for people to learn more about the histories and varied cultures of Spanish-speaking countries.
"Typically in this country, we think of only a few big countries when we think of Latinos and so it was important for me to have representation from Peru and Panama that maybe students on our campus have never learned anything or seen pictures of what these places look like," Ramirez said.
Ramirez is the festival’s organizer and a diversity official at Queens, where she says 14% of the university’s students are Hispanic. Ramirez grew up in a New York City neighborhood where many, like her parents, were from the Dominican Republic. She can relate to many students from her own family’s experience. Her parents came to the U.S. on student visas — and today her mother is an English as a second language teacher; her father is pastor of a Spanish-speaking church in Durham.
Ramirez says the festival is a way to make Hispanic students feel valued — and an opportunity to showcase their cultures through music, art, dance and food. In addition, the university will have a speakers series on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. as part of the celebration.
"Myself and one of my colleagues will talk about being Latino at a PWI and what that experience is like, a predominately white institution," Ramirez said.
There will also be Latino speakers sharing their experiences in the sports, business and higher education arenas. Last year, the series included a discussion on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — a policy implemented to keep undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children from being deported.
There are about 24,000 DACA grantees in North Carolina. It’s something Queens professor Jose Badillo Carlos knows firsthand. Badillo Carlos, who participates in the festival, says his family came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1999 by illegally crossing the border in Arizona when he was 10 years old.
"I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and the neighborhood where I grew up was getting rough, too violent," said Badillo Carlos, a world language and Latino migration professor. "People my age, kids 10 years old and younger were already doing drugs, glue, gasoline to get high and I was starting to skip school in third and fourth grade and my mom couldn’t handle it and said 'we gotta go.'"
Badillo Carlos says when DACA became available in 2012, he applied.
"It was not an easy decision for me and my family because essentially we were giving up all our info — places where we lived, where my parents worked and we were very afraid by turning in all that information, they would come for us," he said.
Badillo Carlos says his DACA status allowed him to get an education, a driver’s license and work before he obtained full legal status. He says some of the students and those manning stations at the festival have similar stories, which can help educate others.
"Just by offering these opportunities they can learn and be more open-minded and more empathetic, enjoy the food and get to know the people and their stories," Badillo Carlos said. "Often those stories are so valuable and so powerful, just getting more of that humanistic aspect would be a huge advantage in being more diverse and accepting of others."
This past summer, Ramirez took 12 students to the border in El Paso, Texas, for a week to talk to migrants who had just crossed the border about their experiences. She says it was an eye-opening experience for them all and something they can discuss with others during Hispanic Heritage Month.
"I think it’s just as important for us in higher ed to continue to educate all of our students on the importance of people being able to achieve their dreams regardless of where they come from but to educate people on fact that our community is not a threat, we’re not here to do damage but we’re here to achieve the American dream and that’s what we learned when we went to the border. It’s people trying to do better for their children, for their family members and they want to be contributing successful citizens just as much as anybody else here," she said.
Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated worldwide through Oct. 15. In the U.S., it was expanded from a weeklong event to 30 days in 1998.
The Hispanic Heritage Festival at Queens ends at 7 p.m. Other events celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month include Latino Night at Veterans Park in Huntersville Friday night; next Saturday, Sept. 23, the Hispanic Heritage Festival of the Carolinas will be held at Truist Field and the Latin American Festival @ The Amp Ballantyne; and on Oct. 7, the Hola Charlotte Festival will be in uptown Charlotte.
