Hispanic Heritage Month!

If you know me, you know I LOVE the fact that my two beautiful children have two great ethnicities to celebrate. Before I met Anthony, I always knew I would marry someone Puerto Rican..for real, I had a dream once and shared it with a few friends who used to call me Sharese Rodriguez! How fitting that my mother-in-law's maiden name is non-other than Rodriguez! LOL. Anyway, I sometimes see how children who are black & Puerto Rican are forced/criticized/ostracized to check one box over the other (example Lala Vasquez) but I pray that my children will value both cultures and that they will be proud to wave their flags at the Puerto Rican day parade yelling "Yo Soy Boriqua" and feel personally the pain of the slaves during black history month. But at this time, let us celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month!!!

Sept. 15-Oct. 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month so I wanted to share a few facts...

Hispanic Heritage Month is the period to recognize the contributions of Hispanic Americans to the United States and to celebrate Hispanic heritage and culture. The observation started in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week under President Lyndon Johnson and was expanded by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to cover a 30-day period starting on September 15th and ending on October 15. It was enacted into law on August 17, 1981 on the approval of Public Law 100-402.

September 15 was chosen as the starting point for the celebration because it is the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. They all declared independence in 1821. In addition, Mexico, Chile and Belize celebrate their independence days on September 16, September 18 and September 21, respectively.

Here is a link to the wikipedia page on Puerto Rican culture, which I suggest you all readhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico

but in the meantime, here are some highlights..

1. On July 25, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was invaded by the United States with a landing at Guánica. As an outcome of the war, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, along with Cuba, the Philippines, and Guam to the U.S. under theA 2002 study of Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of 800 Puerto Ricans found that 61.1% had Amerindian maternal mtDNA, 26.4% African, and 12.5% Caucasian.^[83] This suggests that the Puerto Rican genetic pool is a highly mixed and unique ethnic makeup.

2. In a study done on Puerto Rican women born on the island but living in New York in 2004, the ancestry proportions corresponding to the three parental populations were found to be 53.3% European, 29.1% West African, and 17.6% Native American based on autosomal ancestry informative markers. The study also showed 98% of the people sampled had European ancestry markers, 87% had African ancestry markers, 84% had Native American ancestry markers, 5% showed only African and European markers, 4% showed only Native American and European markers, 2% showed only African markers, and 2% showed only European markers