Education the focus of Latino Heritage Month celebration

September 15, 2009

Education's power to create positive social change is the theme of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater's 2009 Latino Heritage Month celebration.

The month-long activities began this week with the documentary, "Whose Barrio?," by journalists Laura Fuentes and Ed Morales.

"Education is the foundation of our humanity and society," said Nelia Olivencia, director of UW-Whitewater's Latino Student Programs.  "It gives us the power to lead and to follow, to help create the changes that this world so badly needs."

Olivencia said she hopes people will make time to attend one or all of the events because education can give people knowledge and power to change their communities.

Activities take place in the Old Main Ballroom in the James R. Connor University Center.  All events are free and open to everyone.

Remaining Latino Heritage Month activities:

  • 4 p.m., Monday, Sept. 21:  Jose Carillo, “Hazards of Urban Life: Social Devolution.”  Carillo is president of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement in Rock County.  He will discuss Latino young people who choose to emulate negative stereotypes instead of breaking them.  A panel of students from the campus organization Latinos Unidos will follow Carillo’s lecture.
  • 4 p.m., Monday, Sept. 28: Felipe Rodriguez and Jesus “Chuy” Negrete, “Vision, Creative and Social Change: Musica de Julares.”  Rodriguez and Negrete will play Latino music that recounts the oral history of Puerto Ricans and Mexicans.
  • 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 30:  Film, “A Class Apart.”  The film looks at the experience of Mexican Americans in a civil rights case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • 4 p.m., Monday, Oct. 5:  Maria Josefa Canino, “Harnessing the Power of Educational Institutions to Create Positive Social Change.”  Canino is a professor emerita at Rutgers in New Jersey, where she was the founder of its Department of Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies. She will speak about how education helps people act within the many-cultured world. 

If you have a disability and desire accommodations, please tell us as early as possible.  Requests are confidential.  UW-Whitewater provides equal opportunities in employment and programming including Title IX and ADA requirements. Please contact Nelia Olivencia at 262-472-1913 or olivencn@uww.edu for further information.

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