Hispanic Heritage Month, a national celebration running from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, highlights the history and culture of Hispanics and Latinos. This year, SHS’s Spanish Culture Club has scaled up its celebration efforts with a bigger focus on SHS as a whole. Due to new shifts in immigration policies affecting the Hispanic community, many community members said they feel the need to more greatly feature Hispanic and Latino culture.
Spanish teacher and Spanish Culture Club adviser Betsy Beveridge has run the club for around ten years. The club began celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month a few years back by decorating the hallways.
In the hallways around Comet Alley you can find information about fun cultural activities to do around Cleveland, restaurants to check out and highlights of Hispanic individuals in SHS, the greater Cleveland area and globally.
“We’ve just tried to make it better every year,” Beveridge said. “The newest editions this year are the trivia [on our Instagram] and then the focus on Hispanics in Solon High School.”
On their Instagram, the club posts daily trivia– with chances to win prizes–and spotlights of students and staff members with Hispanic backgrounds. Spanish Culture Club Vice President Fabiola Pulido Gonzalez, who came to the United States with her family from Venezuela when she was 2, wants to bring more exposure to Hispanic culture throughout the Solon community.
“This year, we’re doing more of an emphasis on local Latinos and we’re highlighting everybody who wants to be highlighted,” Gonzalez said. “We’re doing a lot so people know that there’s a Latino community in Cleveland, and there’s so many places you can go to appreciate our culture and learn about it. There’s nothing stopping you.”
In the Cleveland Hispanic community, Rafa Hernandez-Brito, the Spanish broadcasting voice of the Cleveland Cavaliers, was the first Spanish voice for multiple sports teams.
“When I started there were not many teams that did Spanish broadcasts,” Hernandez-Brito said. “I was the first voice of the Jets, the Nets, St. Johns, the Browns, the Guardians and the Cavs. I think the most important thing is that teams have learned that it is important for you to reach out to those communities in a more purposeful way.”
Hernandez-Brito, who is also a Cleveland Cavaliers Community, Impact, and Equity Ambassador, said it is important to acknowledge Hispanic culture year round.
“One of the things we have with the Cavs is that yes, we celebrate Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, but we want to be present in the community 365 days of the year because this community lives here for 365 days,” Hernandez-Brito said. “You don’t want to be doing something just to check the box. You want to be doing something because it’s the right thing to do, because it’s a meaningful thing to do and because you owe it to our fans and our community.”
Hernandez-Brito says being a representative of the Hispanic community requires reliability.
“Me, being Hispanic, especially in this country, just means carrying a banner that has to be done with a lot of responsibilities because it’s not just my image that I protect, it’s my whole community,” Hernandez-Brito said.
Gonzalez shared a similar sentiment and hopes to spread positivity throughout the community with the Spanish Culture Club’s efforts.
“I’ve struggled a lot with myself as Latina, “ Gonzalez said. “Especially when I was younger, I lived in the South. There was a lot of racism over there. And then back in the North, even right now, people can still be racist. I like to spread positivity with Hispanics and Latinos and make sure everyone spreads the love that we spread. I think that I just like when people come and I can tell them about Hispanic culture, and they get really immersed. Like they can see that it’s a very loving, happy culture.”
The SHS student body is 3% Hispanic. Beveridge said it’s important to reach out to and emphasize Hispanics in the SHS community.
“I think it’s important to bring it to the attention of everybody, because we have such a growing population,” Beveridge said. “When I started teaching here, we had very few Hispanics in the building, and now we have a lot more students, especially who are Hispanics. So I just think it’s important to highlight.”
Gonzalez said that much of this upscale in celebration efforts was because of recent increased anti-immigration sentiment in the United States.
“There’s been a lot with the scaling up of [anti-Hispanic policies] especially with the Supreme Court ruling that people who are brown and speak Spanish have grounds to be detained by ICE,” Gonzalez said. “Racism towards Latinos, brownskin people, and anybody who speaks Spanish has been [at] an all time high. I think it’s very important for us as Latinos to try to spread that there’s nothing inherently bad about Latinos. And, I guess there might be some bad Latinos, but the majority of us are really great people who are hard workers, and we just want to spread our culture.”
Hernandez-Brito shares a similar sentiment.
“The current president we have, the first time he went up for candidacy, the first thing he said was: [we’re going to get all these Mexicans who are drug dealers and rapists,]” Hernandez-Brito said. “Like, come on. We have done so much for this country that I think it is important for us to not only celebrate it, but to put it in front of people.”
Gonzalez wants to fight these stereotypes and bring greater awareness to the public about what Hispanic culture truly is.
“I really care,” Gonzalez said. “I really care about Latinos and everybody. I don’t want anybody to have any misconceptions about what Latinos are or think that they’re just like immigrants or illegal people. I don’t like that people think that. I don’t like any of the stereotypes. They really upset me, and I want to spread that Latinos are people who are just like you and with different culture.”
Hernandez-Brito said that modern political culture has fueled negative sentiments.
“We are living in a day, in a life, that we no longer have common sense or purpose because we don’t have shared experiences with everybody,” Hernandez-Brito said. “Politically, everybody says, ‘we’re not going to talk about politics.’ At the end of the day, politics plays a big role in everybody. I think the fact that our elector officials had taken that stand as well: [If you don’t think the way I do, you’re my enemy and we’re not going to work with you.]”
With a rise in political polarization, political animosity has skyrocketed and further divided the American public on partisan lines.
“We don’t have to think the same and we don’t have to eat the same food, but we should be able to converse and have some kind of shared experiences that will keep us together,” Hernandez-Brito said. “We don’t share anything anymore, we don’t connect, we don’t talk.”
Hernandez-Brito urges the community to be more compassionate to other cultures especially in the political world we are living in now.
“The majority of US citizens, I believe, want to know a little more about the Hispanic community,” Hernandez-Brito said. “I always say languages are just such a huge key about learning, just being more compassionate with people. You can talk about all the benefits of learning a language with the brain and with the fact that it’s more fun to travel and everything, but just what it does to you as a human, your compassion, to learn about other cultures. I think [it is] really important. And especially the days we [are] living now, it’s kind of like we have to be very strong about what we bring to this country. I think, yes, we were born in another country, we have roots in other countries, or we speak another language. But, at the end of the day, we are doctors, we are police officers. We have everything that every other community [has].”
Spanish Culture Club’s hallway decorations and club celebrations will end on Oct. 15. They will continue to celebrate and highlight Hispanic and Latino cultural events throughout the school year. The club’s next meeting will be in on Monday, Nov. 3. They will discuss Day of The Dead and decorate cookies.
“The Spanish Club is open to everybody,” Beveridge said. “You don’t have to be in Spanish class, or know Spanish or be Hispanic. Anyone is welcome to come.”
