Hispanic & Latin American Community Resources

Honoring Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month 2022

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion offered a message of affirmation and hope to honor and celebrate our Hispanic and Latin American communities:

As we mark the beginning of Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month, Seattle University affirms this diverse and vibrant community. Officially designated National Hispanic Heritage Month, this month celebrates the vast diaspora of cultures, identities, and experiences with ancestral connections to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central, and South America, and the many Indigenous Nations and people that preceded. Notwithstanding geography, we acknowledge that no one word, phrase, or month can encompass the people and experiences that make up this dimension of the American story. To our students, faculty, staff, and administrators, we appreciate all you bring to our university and the larger community. 

Read the full message here.

Read reflections from community members:

  • Reflection by Dean Tony Varona, Dean and Professor of Law, School of Law
  • Reflection by Marissa Robledo, Associate Director, Center for Student Involvement

A family hugging their graduating student. Student's cap is decorated with the Mexican flag

horizontal rule

Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month Community Reflections:

 

Dean Anthony E. Varona

Dean Tony Varona, Dean and Professor of Law, School of Law shares:

I think often about my late parents, Eudelio and Edelmira Varona, during National Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month. They, like so many immigrant parents, bore enormous hardships as new Americans – principally for the benefit of their children. My mother gave birth to me in Cuba in 1967, at a very perilous time in that country. She and my father sought exile in United States so that they could raise me and any future siblings (they had my brother Eddie five years later) in the land of opportunity and freedom. We settled in Newark when I was three years old. 

Read the full reflection here.

Marissa Robledo, Associate Director, Center for Student Involvement shares:

“Mija, you’re a Robledo!” 

As we enter Latinx Heritage Month, I think about my family and the power of a name. I am Marissa Robledo (Ma-ree-sah Rro-ble-do) a PROUD Mexican American woman, born and raised in the Imperial Valley. You might be thinking – huh where’s the Imperial Valley? That is a great question, my hometown of El Centro, California is located 2 hours southeast of San Diego, California, 45 minutes from Yuma, Arizona and 15 minutes from the Mexican American Border. 

Read the full reflection here.

Long Arrow in SU Yellow

Resources

Celebrating the Diaspora

horizontal rule

In Xóchitl in Cuícatl: Floricanto

A group photo of the launch of In Xóchitl in Cuícatl in Spain with the editors and program leaders

Last year, the Heritage Plaza housed 20 poets out of the 66 included in the onehundred-year collection of Chicanx/Latinx poetry to celebrate 100 years of poetry. The anthology, In Xóchitl in Cuícatl: Floricanto Cien años de poesía chicanx/latinx (1920-2020) is a fully bilingual with over 700 poems by Chicanx/Latinx poets from all over the United States, published in Madrid, by Polibea Press. The Anthology was edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Ph.D. and Armando Miguélez, Professor at the Miguel Hernández de Elche University in Alicante, and a specialist on early Chicanx literature.

Watch Professor Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs announce the launch of this historic book of poetry on Mexico's Independence Day on KRONON TV .

Alumni poets featured:

  • Aldo U. Reséndiz
  • Alex Ziperovich
  • Carlos Sibaja-García
  • Joshu Holguín
  • Claudia Castro-Luna

Alumna Veronica Eldredge's art work was selected by Polibea Press in Spain to appear as the cover design of the anthology:

TEXT: In Xóchitl in Cuícatl: Floricanto Cien años de poesía chicanx/latinx (1920-2020) IMAGE: Green hummingbird perched on purple flower Text: Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs Juan Velasco Moreno Armando Míguelez Editorial Polibea. Colección

horizontal rule

Podcast, Playlists, & More

 

Long Arrow in SU Yellow

Students standing on a makeshift hill made of tires

SU students working alongside their Mexican neighbors to lay a foundation for a house in a Tijuana, 2019 Mexico Immersion to Esperanza. Image courtesy of Associate Clinical Professor Audrey Hudgins.

Events

To see your event posted on our site, send flyers and event information to inclusion@seattleu.edu. 

In the media and much of the official political discourse, the word “illegal” prevails over “undocumented” and the term “immigrant” over “refugee.” How would anyone who is stigmatized as an “illegal immigrant” feel “safe” and “happy”?

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions

Faculty Spotlight

Lemieux Library Celebration of Scholarship highlights:

Add your scholarship, interviews, articles to this list by emailing inclusion@seattleu.edu

Book Title: Surviving the Americas Garifuna Persistence from Nicaragua to New York City 

Surviving the Americas: This collaborative research project brought together researchers, including Associate Professor Serena Cosgrove, from Nicaragua and Seattle to research and write this book about the Garifuna people of Nicaragua, who form part of the Central American, Afro-Indigenous people descended from shipwrecked West Africans and local Indigenous groups on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. Read more from Global Engagement here.

 

This website is a living resource. We aim to keep it relevant and helpful. We invite you to share your ideas of a resource or other material for education and enlightenment here.