Revisiting stories of us from the year: During Latine Heritage month, a local immigrant rights advocate shared her story of resilience, resistance, and pride amid the current political climate.
Author: Jacqueline Andrade
Being Latina has shaped every part of who I am. It’s not just a label or a box I check on a form. It’s in the way I move through the world, the foods that remind me of home, the music that fills me with energy, and the values that ground me. My culture isn’t something I bring out on holidays; it’s something I carry every single day.
Highlighting Latinidad during these times is not just about cultural pride; it is an act of resilience and visibility in a moment when our communities continue to face systemic inequities, political scapegoating, and erasure. To lift up Latinidad now is to affirm our dignity, to build solidarity across communities, and to demand that our future be defined not by marginalization but by power, presence, and belonging.
Growing up, though, I didn’t always see my culture reflected back at me with pride. On TV, Mexican people were usually the punchline or portrayed as background characters. At school, I remember kids wrinkling their noses at the lunches our moms packed, saying the food smelled “weird.” Some of us stopped speaking Spanish in public because we didn’t want people to stare and judge. Those moments made it easy to believe our culture was something to downplay in order to fit in.
As I got older, I began to see how wrong that was. Being Mexican, being Latina, is a gift. Our food isn’t “weird”—it’s history and love on a plate. Tamales wrapped in husks like our ancestors made, pozole that simmered for hours with patience and care, pan dulce that tasted like Sunday mornings at home with an abuelita cafecito. You can taste it in the horchata at Durham’s Nuestro Barrio Liberation or the café at Cocoa Cinnamon.
Our music isn’t just noise—it’s storytelling. Mariachi brings families together, corridos carry the weight of struggle and resilience, and reggaetón pulses with the joy of being alive. In North Carolina, Latino music runs deep, with artists like Rey Norteño, whose regional hit ‘Raleigh’ tells the emotional journey of an immigrant bidding farewell to the city as he returns home to his family. Groups like UNC’s Charanga Carolina also carry this legacy forward, blending heritage and heart into every performance.
Our traditions aren’t outdated—they’re a bridge between past and future.
What I’ve realized is that pride in being Latina is also pride in survival. We come from people who endured colonization, displacement, migration, and discrimination. And through it all, they carried their recipes, songs, and stories across generations. They built homes in unfamiliar lands, worked long hours, and sacrificed so much just so we could dream bigger. Their resilience flows in our veins, and it’s something no one can ever take away from us.
Being Latina also means valuing family and community above all else. It’s in the Sunday cookouts where everyone crowds around the table, in the cousins who feel more like siblings, in the tias who always have advice whether you want it or not. It’s the way we show up for one another, because we’ve had to. Community is survival, but it’s also joy—it’s how we make sure no one ever feels alone.
Of course, being Latina in the United States is complicated. Our culture is often politicized, reduced to headlines or stereotypes. Too often, we’re seen as nothing more than foreigners, workers, or problems to be solved, people to be fixed. People forget that we are leaders, doctors, artists, entrepreneurs, and teachers.
In education alone, out of the 8.1 million teachers in the country, approximately 9% are Latino, and in North Carolina, thousands have helped fill the gap amid an ever-growing teacher shortage.
They forget how much we contribute to the very fabric of this country. That’s why cultural pride matters. It pushes back against invisibility. It says: we are here, we are valuable, and we belong.
As we continue on with Latine Heritage Month, a time meant to honor the culture, resilience, and contributions of our communities, we cannot ignore the political realities undermining that celebration.
A government shutdown, fueled by partisan gridlock, threatens to cut off funding to vital programs while still propping up enforcement agencies like ICE that disproportionately target Latine families.
This crisis doesn’t exist in isolation—it’s part of a broader pattern where the voices and freedoms of Latine communities are sidelined, whether through censorship battles like the Kimmel free speech fight or through the absence of real representation in decisions that shape our daily lives.
To truly honor Latine Heritage Month, we must call on our leaders to stop treating our communities as expendable bargaining chips and start listening to the people most impacted.
By centering voices and contributions throughout this month and beyond, we remind the nation that Latine people are not a monolith but a diverse and essential force shaping the social, political, and cultural fabric of this country.
Jacqueline Andrade is the proud daughter of Mexican parents and a dedicated advocate for immigrant rights in Durham. Her work centers on uplifting immigrant voices, advancing equity, and ensuring that communities are seen, heard, and valued.
