Throughout my time as a student in Southern California I have only been taught once in the past seventeen years of my whole life on what Latin Americans have done in American History. Whenever the origin of the United States is taught in schools, teachers only touch upon where the United States started and not on who, at the same time, owned what is now the United States of America.

As a Mexican-American, I have always wondered who my ancestors were, and what they were doing during the American Revolution? Where were Latin Americans during World War One or World War Two, and did they help in the war some way? Were they being treated the same as African Americans during the Civil Right Movement? I had all of these questions and none of them were being answered.

When I was nine and my fourth grade teacher was teaching us about Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, I raised my hand and asked, “Where were all the Latinos?”, she was shocked, not because it was probably the first time a nine-year old had asked her this question, but that she didn’t know. She had told me that they were all in California and I was confused thinking, “So every single Latin America had lived in one state?” My junior year of high school has been the only year where I was educated on what Latinos had done in U.S History, and it was amazing. They taught us about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and how we joined together with Filipinos during the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The teacher had gone over the Zoot Suit Riots and the Bracero Program and I was astonished.

I was never taught about famous Latin Americans in history at school before, only at home. In Latin areas in Southern California I had realized that these historical figures were only ever seen by us. We have walls painted, streets named, statues engraved, to honor these brave people, maybe to not only do them justice but for us too.

Senior, Jocelyn Figueroa shared her opinion on the lack of taught Latin Americans in American History. “Hispanic historical figures should be taught in school especially since we live in Southern California, and the majority of the population is some form of Hispanic. I think it’s a matter of why are Hispanic figures being pushed aside in history, when a large amount Hispanics and Latinos help built many communities.”