Whenever ‘Hispanic Heritage Month’ comes around, I always get mixed feelings about the occasion. Now, I am Latine, and my feelings don’t come from any sort of shame or internalized self-hatred. Instead, it comes from the wording “Latine heritage.” Latin America has a diverse set of peoples that live there today: Afro-Latines, Asian-Latines, Indigenous Latines, white Latines and mixed Latines. 

There is not one Latine heritage that is the same across different races, ethnicities, countries and even continents. I understand that there are some traits we share as people from Latin America, but people usually don’t realize how vague the term “Latine” actually is. When the term is used to refer to heritage, it overgeneralizes the people in Latin America and their cultures. When people, particularly non-Latines, think of Latine culture, they think of white or mestizo culture. 

Mestizo was originally a colonial term to refer to those of Spanish and Indigenous heritage, but more recently has been used to describe the Mexican “race” — a mixture of cultures to make a new, uniquely Mexican people. Of course, racial mixture occurred because of colonization and the transatlantic slave trade, but to describe Mexico as a completely mixed country is not realistic.

Not all Mexicans are of mixed race, and there are many cultures and peoples who have maintained their traditions and continue to do so despite the pressures to assimilate, even with their mixed children. While my Mexican father is of both Indigenous and Spanish heritage, we don’t consider ourselves mestizo because we keep the two cultures separate; we make sure to preserve both independently.

In contrast, most people who identify as mestizo today have little connection to the Indigenous pueblos (Indigenous groups) they actually came from because of generations of assimilation. Mestizaje (the concept of mestizo-ness or mixed-ness) was not created to celebrate the interracial unions between Indigenous and white people; it was created by colonists as a way to take parts of Indigenous cultures as their own in order to differentiate themselves from their European counterparts, to make their “nation.” 

After settlers in Mexico fought against Spain for their independence, they wanted to create a nation-state. This state would have its own people, neither Spanish nor Indigenous, but instead a so-called mix of both. In reality, most of this nation-building was done by Indigenous people assimilating into whiteness. Through this assimilation, Mexico would become a country for mestizos where all citizens could take pride in their country and their race. It is from this idea of mestizo pride that the term “¡Viva la raza!” (Long live the race!) comes from. 

The creation of mestizaje was not successful: People continue to maintain their cultural distinctions from one another, but the pressures to decrease this diversity are still felt today. One of the most prominent examples of this is how Indigenous peoples and their cultures are seen.

Part of my family is from a pueblo called the Tepehuán del Norte or Ódami, and our pueblo is only one of the 68 nationally recognized Indigenous Mexican peoples. There are nearly 17 million Indigenous people and more than 360 dialects of Indigenous languages throughout the country today. Despite all of this variety among Indigenous peoples, we (with our cultures) get lumped together to create the idea of Mexican culture. 

Every fall, people regularly ask me if my family celebrates Día de los Muertos, mainly because they have been taught that it is a Mexican holiday. In reality, Día de los Muertos is an Indigenous holiday (with some Spanish influence) and is celebrated outside of Mexico, too. The customs that have been popularized, such as the use of marigolds or skeleton facepaint, are celebrated mostly by pueblos in southern Mexico, like the Nahua or Maya. As someone from a northern pueblo like the Tepehuán, while we do have festivals honoring the dead, our celebrations are much different, so much so that it wouldn’t be right to call them the same holiday. 

Along with blurring the distinctions between different traditions, calling the holiday Mexican overlooks the centuries of Indigenous history behind Día de los Muertos. Taking a part of a culture away from its origins, and then placing it into a national identity erases cultural ownership and allows those who are not actually connected to these communities to use their culture. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this is cultural appropriation as, from my experience, those who most often pull from this national culture are white or mestizo Latines.  

What makes these situations worse is that Indigenous people in Latin American countries still have the socioeconomic disadvantages rooted in colonialism. According to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 97% of the Indigenous population in Mexico experienced some level of poverty in 2020. Additionally, in order to escape assimilation, many Indigenous communities moved to rural areas to preserve their cultures, but, unfortunately, this means that these communities have difficulties accessing proper education and health services. 

Even with these efforts, Indigenous communities in Mexico have not completely escaped the effects of assimilation: Of the 16.9 million self-identified Indigenous people in Mexico, only 7.36 million are speakers of an Indigenous language. When looking at how Indigenous people live in Mexico versus how non-Indigenous Mexicans as a whole treat Indigenous cultures, I can’t help but get a feeling of discomfort in my stomach when the topic of Mexican heritage comes up. 

For all the love our cultures get, the struggles that Indigenous Mexicans face don’t get nearly enough attention. How can non-Indigenous Mexicans claim Indigenous culture when they do not support those who still live in Indigenous communities today? It gets worse when I remember that this issue regarding the treatment of Indigenous peoples isn’t limited to Mexico; it’s a problem that finds itself all across Latin America. 

So, does this mean I think there’s no real Latine culture or that ‘Hispanic Heritage Month’ shouldn’t exist? No, not at all. The main problem with ‘Hispanic Heritage Month’ is not that we celebrate a “fake” culture; no one can deny that being from Latin America is its own experience — just as the experience of being Indigenous in Canada or the U.S. is different from being Indigenous in Latin America. 

While there are connections that cross continents based on race and ethnicity, there’s also something that makes being from a certain group and from Latin America unique. Instead, the problem stems from not looking at the Latine world deeply enough. Too often the celebration of Latine culture only looks at that of white or mestizo Latines. Rather than pretending like there is only one Latine culture and thereby limiting the scope of our diversity, we need to recognize that there is no one people that makes up Latin America. Latine peoples, especially those of color, deserve to have their independence from one another and to be celebrated for their own cultures rather than a shallow blend of them. 

Everyone, every people and every culture should have a chance to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in their own way. Maybe some people will listen to the classic song “La Bamba” to recognize the influence of Black people in Mexico, or dress in the China Poblana, a style of dress brought over to Mexico by a South Asian woman. But for me? I’m planning to go home, relax with my family and make some of the best grilled nopales (prickly pear cactus) you’ve ever seen.