Happy Hispanic Heritage Month.

It’s that time of year again when we get the opportunity to celebrate our Hispanic friends and the cultures of Spain and… friends. Particularly, in the case you don’t have any Spanish-speaking friends, consider this month a reminder that other cultures exist and you probably should have been embracing that year-round, but what are Lent and Ramadan to those of middling piety if not reminders on the calendar they’ve got to be religious at least one month out of the year? 

Hispanic Heritage Month lies in an important place on said calendar, encompassing the independence days of many Latin American countries, including Grito de Dolores in Mexico on September 16, as well as Día de la Raza, or Columbus Day, a holiday which has evolved from a celebration of Columbus showing up with civilization to a more complex reckoning with “cultural exchange,” an expression that is now regarded is woefully euphemistic in describing the origins of “la Raza” as it is perceived in Spanish-speaking America. The inherently racial de-racialization engaged in by the Mexican government over the 20th Century, for example, undermines indigenous history in favor of homogenization and ignorance of the history of colonization and persistent racial hierarchies in Mexico and beyond.

CU Boulder probably feels a particular guilt around this month for entirely different reasons; those being more along the lines of needing a reminder that it has to smile and do some PR stunts this time of year so it can go back to covering up a history of repression of Chicanex activism on its campus, defunding every department that can’t pipeline graduates into defense contracts, and fighting antisemitism.

In need of an easy marketing win, CUPD stepped in to contribute, and what better way to celebrate Hispanic people and culture than tokenizing police officers of Hispanic background to soften the image of American policing within the context of the university campus?

Guillermo Gonzales, the ten-gallon hat toting cop you occasionally see driving various vehicles on CU sidewalks, was highlighted alongside officer Bianca Spires, whose dog can smell bombs, showing CU’s dedication to diversity and inclusion. Well, scratch the diversity and inclusion: culture and community involvement sounds better. 

Scratch that too—error, page not found—what Hispanics again?

As CU tries to erase all of its minority communities in order to project a sufficiently fascist face to the federal government, it seems almost a joke that we’re still getting these crumbs of inclusive rhetoric, trickling out of seemingly strategic places that need the most—or least, come to think of it—attention.

Stay tuned for upcoming appreciation months of other cultures, February being Shah-Approving Persian Diaspora Remembrance of the Nobly Former Shah of Iran Month and May being Yugoslav Mutual Hatred Month in honor of the death of Tito. Let’s see if CUPD brings out the kids of dispossessed oil barons and Serb guerillas who chose to join the esteemed CUPD in their alienation growing up in an intolerant America, for the diversity’s sake I sure hope they’ve got some representatives of these backgrounds lest we believe their institution is evil, through and through. 

Also on the calendar is women’s history month, which CU will be celebrating by showing off its robust percentages of women in things, like the police for example… which is proudly 15% women. 

CU is also proud to be getting its engineering program numbers up, but it will not likely be celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month because, according to CU’s Rights and Regulations Regarding the Maintenance of Demographic Excellence (R³MDE), “some minorities are not a priority at CU Boulder” and “no minority group can opine too loudly on white hegemony lest be placed in bad standing with the University and removed entirely from our digital and physical advertising materials.” 

This begs the question, will this month be our last Hispanic Heritage Month officially endorsed in one capacity or another by CU? Who really knows, so we should just shut up and enjoy it. As long as things can be worse, people will lecture us to the tune of “it can be worse… and here’s exactly how.” For fear they’ll give CU administration any authoritarian inspiration while they ramble, we’ll humor them and be grateful we haven’t literally been turned into glue yet.