Duke Celebrates Latinx Heritage Month

Campus events mark Hispanic/Latinx Americans’ journeys and contributions to history

Latino students in front of the East Campus Bridge. Writing: "They Tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds"
During Latinx Heritage Month (also known as Hispanic Heritage Month), students are sharing the complex history of the Latinx and Hispanic community at Duke.

This week marked the beginning of Latinx Heritage Month (also known as Hispanic Heritage Month), a 30-day celebration of Latinx Americans’ contributions to this country’s culture, accomplishments and history.

“Our Roots, Our Future,” is the theme for campus-wide celebrations and observances during Latinx Heritage Month at Duke University, which ends October 15.

It was not without considerable challenges, both past and present, but by the late 1990s, Hispanics were the fastest growing segment of the American population.

Currently more than 65 million Latinx people reside in the United States. Here in North Carolina, 1.1 million Latinx residents account for 11 percent of the population, with just under 40,000 living in Durham.

That growth both nationally and locally is reflected at Duke, thanks in part to the 1999 hiring in the university’s undergraduate admissions office of a recruiter focusing on the Latinx population. It did so as “a positive step in realizing the future potential of this underrepresented population at Duke University,” wrote Veronica Guzman Pulido, assistant director of undergraduate admissions in a 2000 report.

In 1999, Hispanic/Latinx students accounted for five percent of the school’s undergraduate population. Today, they are 14 percent of Duke’s first-year undergraduate class.

Duke University has a long, complicated and difficult history of Latinx students on campus.

According to the groundbreaking exhibit, “Nuestra Historia, Nuestra Voz: Latinas/os/es/ x en Duke,” (Our History, Our Voices: Latinx at Duke), which was featured at the Jerry and Bruce Chappell Family Gallery at Duke University Libraries, the very first students “of Latin American origin stepped foot on campus in the early 1900s.”

“As we celebrate Latinx Heritage Month here on campus, our theme, ‘Our Roots, Our Future,’ is a reflection of our powerful journeys and desires.”

Olivia Encarnacíon and Natalia Harnisch

However, owing to the era’s racist, Jim Crow policies, “These Latinx students passed as white and came from wealthy powerful families.”
In an email late last week, Antwan Lofton, Duke University’s vice-president of human resources noted ‘“more than 4,100 of our colleagues at Duke identify as Hispanic/Latino.”

“As we celebrate Latinx Heritage Month here on campus, our theme, ‘Our Roots, Our Future,’ is a reflection of our powerful journeys and desires,” students Olivia Encarnacíon and Natalia Harnisch, cultural co-chairs with the Duke Center on Multicultural Affairs (CMA), wrote on CMA’s website. “We are reminded of the importance of honoring our historical roots that have shaped our identities while looking towards the future where our values, rich traditions, and learnings along with our journey will create and inspire change.”

They added that this year’s theme “encourages us to think about the role we play in creating a future for ourselves and our community.”

Campus-wide events this month include a dance workshop, a forum that highlights the power of voting and participating in the electoral process, soccer night in Cary, an art and sip mixer, along with a discussion of feminist eco-theology and indigenous rights.