“It’s our Fourth of July, but in September.” – The Northerner

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According to Ana Rey Caldera, an international student involved in NKU’s Latino Student Initiatives (LSI), there’s often a celebration all year-round in Hispanic culture. The celebrations during the months of September and October, however, are “a little bit more special,” bringing all Hispanic cultures together to celebrate, both in the NKU community and outside of it.

The Northerner spoke with Rey Caldera, along with three other students involved in LSI to discuss the cultural significance of the month and what celebration at NKU looks like.

What is Hispanic Heritage Month?

Hispanic Heritage Month is recognized in the United States from Sept. 15- Oct. 15. The National Hispanic Heritage Month website states that the month celebrates the “histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.”

For NKU freshman Melanie Lucio, this month means celebrating Mexico’s independence, which is Sept. 16.

“It’s our Fourth of July, but in September,” she said.

As a Mexican-American, Lucio said that the months of September and October are the most celebrated months of the year.

“It’s not just one day for us. It goes on for two to three days,” she explained. “We take out the decorations, we do ‘El Mexican Grito’ at night, at 12, exactly 12, so it’s the next day.”

‘El Grito’ translates to ‘the cry’ and represents the call to the Mexican people to fight against the Spanish. Traditionally, those who celebrate will yell at midnight on Sept. 15, the day before the country’s independence was gained.

Lucio said that in Mexico, people will travel to the capital of Mexico City to watch the president yell at midnight.

“The second days are just to celebrate with your family,” explained Lucio. “It’s mostly family, eating, family, eating.”

Didi Davila, NKU junior and also a Mexican-American, said that bigger cities in the United States will often have similar celebrations with parades and the Mexican flag flowing from the backs of trucks.

“They do truck meets… blasting music,” Davila said. “That’s where everybody in the community kind of gets together, not just for Mexicans, but everybody as well.”

For Rey Caldera, Hispanic Heritage Month helps her to feel more connected to her roots. She said that moving from Chihuahua, Mexico to Tennessee at 10 years old sometimes left her struggling with her identity.

“Coming into this country, you’re bombarded with a new culture,” she explained. “You adapt yourself to this new culture, so there’s this, almost identity crisis. So when you come to an environment where there’s a lot of Hispanics and Latin American people, it’s kind of easy to find your way back and to kind of not forget that side of yourself.”

Although the dates vary slightly country to country, many other Central American countries also celebrate their independence during this time.

Sept. 15: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua Sept. 16: Mexico Sept. 18: Chile Sept. 21: Belize

Junior Dayna Bernardo said that celebrations last through the end of October and stop for Day of the Dead or ‘Día de los Muertos.’ This holiday is meant to celebrate family and loved ones who have passed. Altars or ‘ofrendas’ are created and decorated with photos, candles and other decorations.

“It’s like, ‘Stop partying, that’s for them,’” Bernardo said, referring to the holiday.

“I feel like a lot of Americans could relate, to a certain point, to what [Hispanic Heritage Month] is,” said Rey Caldera. “We all celebrate the same thing at the end of the day.”

How is it celebrated at NKU?

Lucio said that before coming to NKU, she was disconnected from her culture, but joining the Latinos Avanzado Mentorship Program (LAMP) helped her to reconnect.

“I wasn’t really the type to want to embrace my heritage in a way,” Lucio said. “Where I grew up, it was kind of like you want to hide that far away a little bit.”

She said that before being involved in LAMP and LSI as a whole, she didn’t know much about Hispanic Heritage Month.

“I didn’t know that everyone had their own independence the same as ours,” Lucio laughed.

The students explained that because so many countries with so many different cultures celebrate Hispanic Heritage month, a different country is chosen each year to be the “theme” of NKU’s celebration.

Davila said this year’s theme was Guatemala. A ‘barrilete’ or ‘kite’ was created by students to celebrate the country’s culture.

“It’s not the typical kite that we see,” said Bernardo, whose mother is Guatemalan. “It’s huge circular ones that have all different types of decorations.”

“There’s that stereotypical aspect of ‘It’s just Mexico,’ with the Mexican either flag or food and stuff,” Davila said.

“It’s not just us,” Lucio chimed in, referring to herself and the two other students with Mexican heritage.

“It’s everybody,” Davila continued. “We’re huge.”

This year, students were invited to join Thomas More University in their Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. Davila was in attendance and spoke with The Northerner about the event. She said both students with Hispanic heritage and international students from South America and Spain attended the celebration.

“They had kind of like a table about each country,” Davila explained. “Students would talk and embrace their culture, like famous artists from the country, popular foods; they had little snacks that they would have us try.”

Davila said there were also cultural dances performed at the event.

“A group of students from Guatemala, they did their traditional dance,” she said.

Rey Caldera said that because the community is so strong at NKU, it’s sometimes hard to break outside of that.

“It’s pretty cool to take the familiarity that we have here and kind of expand that to similar communities that want to share that with us,” she said.

How is celebration different without a director?

Tiburcio Lince came to NKU in 2022 and immediately began to make improvements within LAMP. He also worked to rebrand the Latino Student Recognition Banquet as the Alegría Latino Achievement Celebration, which to him meant bringing more ‘alegría’ or ‘joy’ to the banquet. Lince left his position as the director of LSI at the end of the spring 2024 semester.

In Lince’s absence, students took on the role of organizing celebrations this year with the help of other directors in the Center for Student Inclusiveness (CSI).

“We were everywhere,” Bernardo said about LSI’s presence on campus with the previous director. “But now, we’re nowhere.”

Bernardo said that because Lince was the one getting the funding to be a part of events, there are some things that are more difficult to do now.

Lucio said that Lince “made such an impact on how [LSI students] thought, how we processed things, how to adapt.”

She said that when the director was leaving, he told the students, “‘You have to adapt to the new director, you can’t be closed off because it’s somebody new.’”

“I think he trusted enough with what he taught us to know that we can use what he mentored us through to help the future students,” said Rey Caldera. “He knew that when he left that LAMP… wouldn’t disappear.”

According to Collin Jarrell, vice president of the Student Government Association, NKU is actively receiving applications to fill the role of LSI director and hopes to have the position filled by the start of the spring 2025 semester.

The students said that the experience of being without a director has brought them closer together and pushed them to keep the Hispanic culture alive on campus.

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