GW Students Emphasize Pride and Connection for Latin Heritage Celebration 2025

When Adriana Hernandez Jimenez’s grandmother was a child, she spoke both Spanish and Mixtec, an indigenous dialect from her home state of Oaxaca in Mexico. But “as the years went on, her dialect faded away,” remembered Hernandez, a senior criminal justice major at the George Washington University’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.

Hernandez is now chair of GW’s Latin Heritage Celebration (LHC), as well as director of alumni and professor relations for the school’s Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS). She grew up in Seattle, where her family stayed strongly connected to their Mexican heritage and traditions. As she’s grown older, Hernandez said, she’s also become interested in her grandparents’ specifically Oaxacan culture and increasingly conscious of the explicit and implicit assimilative pressures that led them to leave it behind.

“My mom never even learned the dialect, because being associated with being Indigenous was frowned upon,” Hernandez said. Thanks to another grandmother on her father’s side, she does know a few Mixtec vocabulary words. “But now there are these big movements to preserve [Indigenous] dialects, and I would love to go back and tap into that.”

Hernandez’s deepening connection with her family’s rich history resonates with the theme of this year’s LHC, “Raíces Que Nos Guían,” which translates to “Roots that Guide Us.” Running from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, the celebration is an opportunity to bring GW’s Latin community together and to spotlight its stories and accomplishments at the university and beyond.

“This month, we recognize and celebrate the remarkable contributions of GW’s Latin and Hispanic communities,” GW President Ellen M. Granberg said. “Their creativity, leadership and unique perspectives enrich our university and inspire our work locally, nationally and globally. I am grateful to the GW students leading the university’s Latin Heritage Celebration. In honoring the lasting impact of GW’s Latin and Hispanic communities, we reaffirm our dedication to fostering inclusion, celebrating lived experiences and advancing a future where every culture thrives and strengthens our shared mission of progress.”

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Seniors Chloe Blackburn and Adriana Hernandez Jimenez are among the student leaders organizing this year's LHC. (Courtesy Chloe Blackburn, Adriana Hernandez Jimenez)

Senior Chloe Blackburn, president of Afro-Latin campus organization ALIANZA, helped develop the “Raíces Que Nos Guían” theme. For her, the phrase is a reminder to reflect on ancestral knowledge and reaffirm her guiding principles. Knowing how the past shapes the present, from the foods she eats to the music she listens to, is a way of reconnecting not only with her lineage but with living traditions in the here-and-now, Blackburn said.

“We are advocating against the invisibility of our culture, the invisibility of our personhood, and we are going to use the roots that we have now reclaimed and learned about to then guide us in that journey,” Blackburn said.

Though Blackburn’s father’s parents were from Panama, she grew up seeing her father more through the lens of his identity as a Black man than his experience as a child of Central American immigrants, she said. The pressures of assimilation had already shifted her family’s culture, even for the first generation born in the U.S. She took Spanish for the first time as a required language class at her high school in Los Angeles. Blackburn remembers a teacher asking if anyone in the class was Latino—and her classmates’ puzzled reactions when she raised her hand.

“I definitely grew up around a lot of beautiful Black American spaces, but that represented half of who I was,” Blackburn said. “I didn't really see any Afro-Latino, let alone Afro-Panamanian communities.” After a difficult first year at GW, determined to make friends and connect with her community, she researched student organizations and came across ALIANZA.

“One of my focuses in my studies is race and ethnicity and culture within Latin America and how that relates to Blackness,” she said. “I want to have those conversations and those community fellowship moments through that lens.”

Both Blackburn and Hernandez said it is impossible to be unaware of the challenges facing members of the Latin community in the United States. But those challenges only amplify the need to celebrate who they are and explore the vast diversity of their stories, viewpoints and origins, Hernandez said.

“Regardless of how you identify yourself—I’m Mexican, I’m Oaxacan, I’m first-gen—in this country we are always clumped together as just Latinos, and the whole purpose of a lot of the work we do is fighting that,” she said. “With this year's LHC reaching back to people's roots, I just want us to be very loud and proud against everything that is pushing back on us. Pushing back with our presence. You can’t ignore us. Here we are.” 

Meet La Familia, Sept. 21 at 2 p.m.
Kogan Plaza
2121 H St. NW

NAHJ Mix and Mingle, Sept. 22 at 6 p.m.
School of Media and Public Affairs
805 21st St. NW

MXGWU Board Game Night, Sept. 25 at 6 p.m.
Potomac Square
2020 G St. NW

Cafecito & Crafts with SHPE, Sept. 27
National Mall 

Cartoneras Workshop, Sept. 30 at 5 p.m.
MSSC MPR

Un Baile Inolvidable, Sept. 30 at 8 p.m.
USC Grand Ballroom
800 21st St. NW

Follow participating organizations on social media for more:

• ALIANZA
• Association of Latinx Professionals for America (ALPFA)
• Casa Blanca
• Caribbean Student Association
• Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute
• FUEGO
• GW Association of Hispanic Journalists (AHJ)
• GW Folklorico
• Lambda Theta Alpha
• LATAM@GW
• Latinas Promoviendo Comunidad/Lambda Pi Chi
• Milken Por La Salud
• Multicultural Student Services Center (MSSC)
• MXGWU
• Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS)
• Puerto Rican Student Association (PRSA)
• Society of Professional Hispanic Engineers (SHPE)