Latinx Heritage Month: Connecting anti-racist scholarship to cultural identity
Photo illustration by Fernando Augusto
To honor Latinx Heritage Month 2022, we asked Latinx members of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health community what the month means to them. We will be posting the responses throughout the month, which ends October 15, 2022.
Today, we feature DrPH student and Graduate Student Researcher Andrea Margarita Jacobo.
As an Afro-Dominican woman, Andrea Margarita Jacobo feels that Latinx Heritage Month can highlight the diversity of the Latinx community.
“In essence, Latinx Heritage Month is an opportunity for us to dive into our history and appreciate the many ways Latine/x show up in the world,” says Jacobo. “ It is a way to share more about how Latine/x America is more than what is depicted in the mainstream.”
“This summer I went to the Dominican Republic with a group of writers, artists, activists, historians, and scholars to explore the Afro-Indigenous history of the Dominican Republic and the respective historical Afro-Indigenous communities of today,” Jacobo says. “We explored how music, food, dance, literature, and history have shaped the Dominican identity while addressing the issues of anti-Black sentiments that plague the community at large. This was the first time I went to the Dominican Republic without my family and was able to connect my anti-racist scholarship to my cultural identity.”
