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Showing posts from September, 2015

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage

The U.S. Congress has declared the period of September 15 through October 18 Hispanic Heritage Month. As a child growing up in Texas, I had limited world experiences. My family did very little traveling, and I grew up in a very homogeneous community. I was, however, aware that in Dallas in the 1950s there were three groups: the white majority, African-Americans who did service work in our communities, and somewhere in far north Dallas a growing group of Hispanics, primarily immigrants from Mexico. I was really unaware of cultures that were different from my “WASP” neighborhood. When I was eleven, however, I had a wonderful experience. Our neighbors, who were like surrogate grandparents, invited me to go to Donna, Texas, over 500 miles from my home but only a few miles from the Mexican border. The brother of my Uncle Schmitty, as I called him, had a citrus farm in the Rio Grande Valley. I was thrilled with this opportunity. I was more thrilled when on Saturday durin