In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership has been organizing the Latine and Caribbean Heritage Celebration 2024 — its annual month-long series of events. This year’s theme is “creative pioneers,” according to OPAL Latine and Caribbean student advisor Lucrecia Calleros.
National Hispanic Heritage Month is held over two calendar months — from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 — to honor the independence dates of seven Latin American countries. According to the OPAL website, this year’s celebration aims to highlight Latine, Hispanic and Caribbean artists, engage students with creative cultural techniques and showcase the diversity of these cultures through art. Calleros said events will incorporate the arts through dance, film screenings and painting.
“We want to highlight the festive and joyful character of the Latine and Caribbean people,” Calleros said. “Everyone is welcome, always, to all our spaces.”
Planning for LCHC began toward the end of the spring term and continued over the summer, according to LCHC 2024 co-chair Edgar Santana Guerrero ’27. After co-chairing the celebration in 2023, he said he has witnessed changes to programming over the last few months. For example, the events now feature more collaborations with campus groups, he said.
“One of the big problems we had last year was a lot of the student organizations for the Latin and Caribbean community weren’t really collaborating … but a lot of things have changed since then,” Santana Guerrero explained.
This year, the LCHC features a range of community collaborations, including the East Wheelock House Community, the Hopkins Center for the Arts, the Native American Program at Dartmouth and the LGBTQIA+ student advising area within OPAL.
“Something that we tend to do during all of our heritage celebrations is cross-collaborating across our advising areas [and] being mindful of the intersecting identities that students hold,” OPAL assistant director Jazmine Gittens-Roberts said.
The celebration began on Sept. 21 with the Latine & Caribbean Heritage Celebration Kickoff BBQ on Shabazz Lawn, according to Gittens-Roberts. More than 100 students attended the event, during which various offices and departments supporting the Latine, Hispanic and Caribbean communities on campus shared information about their resources, according to a poster for the event.
OPAL staff and students came together again for “Pillars and Pastries” on Oct. 2 to discuss their “intersecting” identities on campus, Gittens-Roberts said. The event was a “cross-collaboration” between the LGBTQIA+ advising area in OPAL and the Latine and Caribbean student advising area.
On Oct. 4, the Counseling Center and LCHC hosted “Brush and Bite Borders: Coming to the USA” with a focus on the international student perspective on campus, according to Calleros. Students painted and shared their perspectives on immigration with questions prompted and moderated by the Counseling Center. The event also provided handouts with student resource information for those experiencing identity-related anxiety.
“The focus of this event is having an artistic session with paint … to express our experience as Latine, Caribbean and international students — or generally speaking as Dartmouth students in the Upper Valley — on immigration, what is immigration for you, what it represents in your life,” Calleros said.
On Oct. 7, in a collaboration with the Black Mamba Dance Company, the LCHC hosted an Afro-Latin Dance Workshop. The event consisted of a two-hour workshop led by Black Mamba Dance Company instructor John Shider, along with refreshments.
Every LCHC 2024 event — whether that be painting or expression through dance — is unified by creativity, Calleros said.
“Creativity has been a component that we wanted to introduce in all of our programs and events for our heritage celebration,” Calleros said.
LCHC events are open to the community, with a particular focus on student perspectives. They are not, however, the only events on campus dedicated to National Hispanic Heritage Month. The Latinx Hispanic Caribbean Network — an affinity group aimed at unifying the Latinx, Hispanic and Caribbean employees on campus — screened “Cassandro” — a biopic about American-born Mexican luchador Saúl Armendáriz — on Oct. 4, Tuck School of Business recruitment manager and LHCN team leader Susan Pagan-Hilton said. In celebration, Pagan-Hilton said the group met for dinner following the screening.
Pagan-Hilton added that the LHCN builds “a sense of community” within the College’s employment network. Faculty of arts and sciences administrative assistant and LHCN team leader Cristina Tedman said the LHCN creates opportunities for staff to connect.
“[The] majority of activities and events here at Dartmouth are targeted toward the student body, so these [LHCN events] became an opportunity to create a space for the employees,” Tedman said.
According to Calleros, OPAL plans to hold a Latin dance party toward the end of October in collaboration with Collis After Dark, with more information yet to come.
