Why is Hispanic Heritage Month important? 

Because it celebrates not so much our past—as immigrants or descendants of immigrants from a myriad of nations from the Spanish-speaking world—but, more importantly, our present, and also our future, as part of the common American experience.

Hispanic Heritage in the U.S. is as old as the nation, even predating the formation of our republic here in Philadelphia in 1776 (that is, if one starts the history review not from the 18th century but the 16th).

St. Augustine, Florida, the first settlement in our nation, was founded by Hispanics in 1565, much earlier than our pilgrims that came to today’s Massachusetts to give birth to the municipality of Plymouth in 1620.

However, it wasn’t until 400 years later, in 1968, that our nation’s Hispanic Heritage was officially acknowledged by the federal government and celebrated for the first time in Washington, DC, after the dynamic expansion of our nation under the robust immigration of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Well before that, however, Hispanic Heritage had been influencing, enriching and transforming the U.S. society.

In return, that same U.S. society has changed, transformed and, no doubt, improved life for the over 55 million Americans that now proudly call themselves, more specifically and distinctly, Hispanic or Latino Americans.