Hello and welcome to Somos Hispanos, I'm your host, Christiana Malacara In this segment, we'll be diving into Hispanic Heritage Month, but specifically how Delta College celebrates it with the students and the community.

Pinata making is part of the annual celebration for Hispanic Heritage Month, and you'll hear from a local artist, Delta College student, and the Delta College Director of Belonging, Diversity, Equality and Inclusion.

As they share their perspectives on the celebration and its importance.

So stay tuned with us as we learn more.

Pinatas were created for like, the royalty families and their children and stuff like that, but then eventually it started dwindling into the community where everybody was felt special, that they got their own pinatas eventually.

Pinatas started off with, clay pots.

They, originally manufactured like a clay pot, and they decorate it, and filled it with fruits and vegatables.

and candy and toys or whatever that they could make at that time.

From that beginning of the clay pot has now been transformed into paper maché.

It's really important for the community to make sure that they are incorporating the culture of other, people that live in the community.

To make sure that the future of our past and our history, make sure that they're still prevalent to this day.

And then it also brings the kids together, the creativity that comes out of just creating something by yourself is amazing.

And then also just bringing back together the traditional family and making that you're a group of people that are creating something for the future.

It's important to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month for this community because representation matters.

We want to celebrate as many of our cultural identities for our community members as we can.

Specifically, centering Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates liberation.

That is the foundation of what Hispanic Heritage Month is about.

And so a celebration of many Latin American countries times of independence.

And so that is an opportunity for us to be able to give the historical context and then bring it into some timeliness for folks now.

And so with the programing we've been doing, has helped to be able to then bring some of the cultural ideas into current context for folks.

Pinata making was selected as an activity for this month to be able to make sure that it's something that's accessible for our youth because they can have a little bit of fun with it.

Our students also get the opportunity to do a little bit of research for themselves.

And so they were looking into what is the history of pinatas, what is the cultural connections beyond just their own experiences?

They might have seen them at a birthday party.

They might have seen them for Posadas, but if they don't know why they do those things, sometimes it doesn't have as much meaning.

So it gave an opportunity for our current Delta students to also then be able to share some of what they've learned.

The past two years, I've been part of Delta's planning for Hispanic Heritage Month.

That means to me that, you know, Delta wants to hear a voice from students perspective and what they think would be a good idea for having events and activities and it meant a lot to me because it meant they wanted the students voice to be heard.

My favorite part about making a pinata is like making sure that, like, the mold comes out, you know, from nothing from a flat piece of paper.

I'm creating something 3D that looks like, star.

That looks like a moon, that looks like a symbol from nothing.

the big, huge takeaway that I really love seeing is that the kid is happy with what they created.

To make sure that they keep thinking and started thinking outside the box.

So when they have like issues in life that they can go back to their creativity side and help them further on in their lives.

Mom and dad are going to have to help the kids because you're going to need to be supervised in there.

So it brings the family together.

So that's even better.

Even grandma comes along.

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