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Hispanic Heritage Month: September 15-October 15: Home

Hispanic Heritage Month is a month-long celebration of Hispanic and Latino history and culture. This guide provides resources to learn more.

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Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to recognize and celebrate the many contributions, diverse cultures, and extensive histories of the American Latino community. Beginning in 1968, Hispanic Heritage Month was originally observed as “Hispanic Heritage Week”, but it was later extended to a month in 1988. Since then, Hispanic Heritage Month has been celebrated nationwide through festivals, art shows, conferences, community gatherings, and much more. The month also celebrates the independence days of several Latin American countries, including: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua on September 15th, Mexico on September 16th, and Chile on September 18th. They also include holidays that recognize Hispanic contributions such as Virgin Islands-Puerto Rico Friendship Day that is celebrated in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Jefferson College Library has a wide variety of books by and about Hispanic heritage. Search Discovery @ the Jefferson College Library to learn more or contact us at refdesk@jeffco.edu for assistance.

Concerts En Pura Plena: Celebrating the Life and Loves of Tito Matos: Smithsonian Folklife Festival

The sudden passing of master plenero, percussionist, educator, and community leader Héctor René “Tito” Matos Otero left a void in Puerto Rican communities around the globe. Tito lived his life plenamente—every day he practiced, fought for, and rejoiced in plena, an Afro-Puerto Rican musical expression of drums that shares songs of collective community voice. His life’s work reimagined the landscape of plena both on and off the island during a forty-year career that included stops at the Festival and sessions recorded for Smithsonian Folkways.

This loving tribute is a journey through the many plena aesthetics Tito promoted. From Caribbean jazz fusion by Oakland-based John Santos Sextet and Friends to orchestrated plena by New York City-based Los Pleneros de la 21, you will hear how this twentieth-century-born genre plays with contemporary sounds and spaces. From the high-energy next-generation ensemble Los Pleneros de la Cresta to a collective of voices presented by Plenazo Cangrejero, you will get a glimpse of how plena continues to be celebrated on the island and in the Santurce-Cangrejo neighborhood—the place of Tito’s upbringing.

Fittingly, the evening’s host is Libertad Guerra, a community leader and long-time friend. Video clips featuring Tito’s wife and son, Mariana Reyes and Marcelo Matos, complete our affectionate tribute honoring the beauty of this Puerto Rican musical genre and the spirit of a man who loved it so. 

Library of Congress Recordings--PALABRA Archive--Available September 28th

The PALABRA Archive is a collection of original audio recordings of 20th and 21st century Luso-Hispanic poets and writers reading from their works. With recorded authors from all over Latin America, the Iberian Peninsula, the Caribbean, and other regions with Hispanic and Portuguese heritage populations, this archive has to date close to 800 recordings, a portion of which are available for online streaming.

Historically known as the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (AHLOT), PALABRA has been curated by the Library of Congress Hispanic Reading Room since 1943. It includes sessions with figures such as Nobel Laureates Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and with other noteworthy figures like Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende, and Julio Cortázar.

The majority of the recordings from this collection are in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, but the archive also includes sessions in Catalan, Basque, French, Dutch, Creole, and indigenous languages like Náhuatl, Zapotec, Quechua, and Aymara. The majority of the sessions have been recorded in the Library of Congress' Recording Laboratory, although a good portion have been captured abroad and in other venues around the U.S. and Washington, DC.