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12 September 2008
Latin Jazz Stamp Brightens Up Hispanic Heritage Month
Hispanic themes have been featured on more than 50 stamps since 1869
Washington — The sounds of Latin jazz almost seem to jump from the bold graphic design and tropical colors of the new U.S. stamp released just in time for Hispanic Heritage Month.
Latin Jazz, designed by San Francisco artist Michael Bartalos, is the first commemorative stamp to celebrate that vibrant style of jazz mixed with musical traditions from Africa, Europe and the Americas. It is the most recent in a long line of commemorative stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) honoring the contributions of people of Hispanic background to the history and culture of the United States.
The new stamp premiered on September 8 so it would be readily available during Hispanic Heritage Month September 15-October 15, said Marie Therese Dominguez, a USPS official who oversees the stamp program and also handles policy and legislative issues.
Hispanics are the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority — currently numbering around 46.7 million, or 15 percent of the U.S. population. This will jump to 30 percent by 2050, when Hispanics will total 132.8 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections. (See “U.S. Minorities Will Be the Majority by 2042, Census Bureau Says.”)
“Hispanics and Latinos are representatives of the beginnings of this country,” said Dominguez. “Take my own personal history. I am an eighth-generation New Mexican and can trace my family on my father’s side to Cabeza de Vaca.” (The Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca landed in Florida in 1528 and traveled across what is now the American Southwest and Northern Mexico.)
“Hispanic contributions are really important, and I think the Postal Service will continue to acknowledge that,” she said. “We like to look at it as one of many things that make the American culture unique.”
The Postal Service has issued more than 50 stamps celebrating Hispanic people and culture, said Dominguez. The first was issued in 1869 and commemorated the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World (although Italian-born, Columbus sailed on behalf of Spain with Spanish crews). Topics for the stamps range from the serious – Mexican Independence, civil rights and farm labor leader Cesar Chavez – to the seriously fun, such as Let’s Dance: Bailemos! featuring the merengue, the mambo, the cha-cha-cha and the salsa.
Baseball great Roberto Clemente and Civil War Admiral David Farragut both appeared twice. Several cultural icons have been honored, including artist Frida Kahlo, entertainer Desi Arnez and singer Richie Valens. Several stamps mark the Hispanic presence in North America, particularly in California, Florida and the Southwest.
Latin Jazz is the second Hispanic-themed stamp issued in 2008. In April, a series of stamps honoring U.S. journalists included Ruben Salazar, a reporter and columnist for the Los Angeles Times who was killed in 1970 while covering an anti-war demonstration in East Los Angeles. “He made an incredible contribution to American journalism in covering the Chicano civil rights movement,” said Dominguez.
She is also proud of the 2007 stamp dedicated to Mendez v. Westminster, a 1947 federal court case that successfully challenged racial segregation involving Mexican children in Orange County, California, schools. The case set a precedent used seven years later in arguments in Brown v. Board of Education, which finally struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in U.S. public schools.
“Mendez is a really significant case and a lot of people don’t know about it,” said Dominguez. “And what’s great about our stamp program is that we have the ability to highlight some of these significant accomplishments and achievements.”
“We’re so pleased that we had the opportunity with Latin Jazz to feature a unique art form here on a stamp,” she said.
“I told Michael [Bartalos] I didn’t know how he had the vision to take something that’s so beautiful and so rhythmic and so multifaceted and capture it in a piece of art that can then be shrunk down to the size of a stamp,” Dominguez said. “I think that’s a great credit to him.”
Bartalos said he has been a fan of Latin jazz for many years. “It has such an incredible spirit, it’s very uplifting, I love the rhythm, I love the beat. Most of all, I like how it really transcends cultural boundaries. It has a universal appeal and I was hoping to capture some of that in the artwork as well – and I think I’ve succeeded by the response I’ve been getting.”
“I’m extremely happy it’s being used for Hispanic Heritage Month,” he added.
National Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. The celebration began on a national scale in 1968 under President Lyndon Johnson as Hispanic Heritage Week. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan approved a bill to expand the celebration to a full month.
The dates September 15 to October 15 were selected because that 30-day period encompasses several important events, according to the Library of Congress: September 15 is the anniversary of independence for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua; Mexico declared independence on September 16 and Chile on September 18; and Columbus Day, or Día de la Raza, falls on October 12.
See also “Hispanic Americans Contributing to the American Mosaic”; and The Latin American Stream, an excerpt from the State Department publication American Popular Music; and Diversity.
Photo Gallery: Notable Hispanic Athletes