Growing up, my elementary school celebrated Cinco de Mayo but ignored Hispanic Heritage Month. As a Latina of Guatemalan decent, I struggle to wrap my head around the big deal behind the holiday.

Littlerock, California—a hub for first-generation Latino immigrants and their children located at the edge of the Antelope Valley. There, I attended a K-8 school where Latinos are the majority. In my promoting 8th grade class, there were 59 students. 54 were Latino, two were black and two were white.

At this particular school, events and activities are inspired by Mexican culture—a folklórico dance group; tamales and horchata at PTA family nights; dances dominated by Mexican party songs; big school assemblies on the importance of Cinco de Mayo. This did not and does not bother me. I learned to dance with those party songs, and I remember feeling so special when I helped decorate a piñata for a school assembly. I even danced in a green, white and red dress for a folklórico recital in Kindergarten. Naturally, Hispanic-American culture in California is integrated with Mexican culture. Furthermore, Mexicans are the largest immigrant group in the United States

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Where this non-problem becomes a kinda-problem for me is at the fact that my old school’s student body painted paintings for Cinco de Mayo but did nothing for National Hispanic Heritage Month. An opportunity to teach impressionable children about the cultural vitality of Latin America is passed because, as my sixth grade teacher once tried to explain to me, "We have Cinco de Mayo." This holiday is important in the United States (probably more celebrated than Columbus Day,) but why? Mexican citizens just get the day off in Mexico.

There are no flags and no parades. Also, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. Why do we care so much about this holiday and erase a more inclusive celebration of Latino heritage? Is it the assumption that Latinos and Mexicans are basically the same thing? Salvadoran and Guatemalan students can probably tell you about the Battle of Puebla in 1862, but they probably cannot tell you about the civil wars that occurred in each of their parents' home countries.

Even though Mexican-American students continuously make up the largest chunk of the Latino population at my former school, I feel that only celebrating Cinco de Mayo blurs the cultural differences between different Latin American nations because they neglect to educate students about their ethnic backgrounds with Hispanic Heritage Month. It dulls the vibrancy and smears the diversity of Latinos to impressionable children who already face media misrepresentation.