Latino Sports is proud to commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month. This is one month of the year where corporate America pays a bit more attention to the growing Latino community in the United States. The reason is simple, since the Latino community is basically ignored throughout the year in many sectors of the American culture, the period between Sept 15th – October 15 makes the perfect time to demonstrate some sensitivity and respect for the largest ethnic community in the country with a consumer purchasing power estimated at approximately 1 trillion and estimated to reach 2.5 trillion by 2025.
During this month, we see more commercials, more videos, we hear more Latin music and are exposed to more Latino food than any other time of the year. Then on October 16th it’s back to the routine, ignoring and underappreciating a community that in many ways has been part of American history than most people think. People forget that much of the South-West was all Mexico. Tejas, Mejico, Colorado, Nuevo Mejico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. Anyone that visits the Southwest can Cleary see the Mexican influence everywhere.
Here is another interesting fact, The first foreign Language spoken in the American continent was Spanish. As the Spaniards had established St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 fifty-five years prior to the Pilgrims landing in Plymouth Rock in 1620.
Latino Sports is proud to celebrate nuestra latinidad every month of the year. We have been celebrating our culture since January 1989 when the idea to honor Ruben Sierra was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico and the first LatinoMVP award was given on April 1990 in the South Bronx, NY. Since that day we have celebrated our heritage by honoring the best Latinos in sports that defied the norm and achieved greatness. We have recognized baseball, basketball, football, mixed martial arts, boxers, scholars and many of the activist and leaders that have fought to defend our communities.
We are proud to have been instrumental in advocating for Spanish interpreters and for accents on Latino names in MLB decades before it became a norm. We are proud to be the first to introduce the New York Yankees and the New York Mets to their now monthly Spanish press conferences. We were instrumental along with Rainbow Push to draw attention to the inadequate conditions of many of the Dominican Republic baseball facilities to where they today are state of the art baseball academies.
Latino Sports produced, La Hora Deportiva the countries first bilingual radio sports program on WJIT and later WVOX. Latino Sports Clubhouse was the first and only sports memorabilia store that only sold items of, or about the Latino sports community. We were also in the forefront in helping local activist form the Retire 21 campaign to bring awareness to retiring Clemente’s #21. We have also been at the forefront of many issues like the 2000 All Century Baseball Team that did not include one Latino and many other issues affecting our Barrios.
We are proud that Latino Sports celebrates our Latino culture every day of the year.
