In 2025, Latinos in Heritage Conservation (LHC), a national network of heritage practitioners, advocates and scholars devoted to the preservation of Latinx history and stories across the U.S., introduced a slate of initiatives to further their mission of ensuring that overlooked sites and communities are recognized, protected and celebrated.

They included the first phase of an Equity Study assessing Latinx representation on the National Register of Historic Places and the barriers to recognition. Phase 1 revealed modest progress: since 2015, the number of sites tied to Latinx heritage has grown from 525 to 646, with locations in Puerto Rico accounting for most of the new inclusions. Yet those listings still represent less than one percent of the National Register. LHC advocates for inclusion on the National Register because it often leads to designation at the state and local level, providing legal protection from demolition, but also for the validation it brings.

Executive director Sehila Mota Casper, one of LHC’s founders, explained that many of the sites on the National Register considered “Latinx” reflect European colonial history rather than the contemporary history of Latinx peoples. “We would like to see that narrative to tell a deeper story, a more recent story,” she said.

As it has since its founding, LHC is taking action directly. This year, the organization launched the Nuestra Herencia (Our Heritage) Grant Program, which in its first year distributed $600,000 to 14 sites across the 48 contiguous states and Puerto Rico to support a variety of projects that align with their mission. And on September 9, LHC unveiled its inaugural Endangered Latinx Landmarks (ELL) list, spotlighting 13 sites at imminent risk of disappearing due to threats such as demolition, abandonment, gentrification and climate change.

Here is a look at some of the ways in which LHC is supporting and elevating Latinx history.

Centering Community Perspectives

The MACSA Youth Center opened its doors in East San José in 1995 as a dedicated space for Latinx youth. The center uplifted local families through health, educational, cultural and recreational services and programs. Its postmodern architecture symbolized pride in local culture and a commitment to neighborhood identity. When the center shut down two decades later, the vacant building quickly fell into disrepair, becoming a target for neglect and vandalism. A scheduled demolition was postponed in 2024 to give the community time to save it. Several local community groups are working to transform the center into a multi-use facility for East San José’s still predominantly Latinx population. In late August of this year, the building’s fate became even more precarious, however, when a three-alarm fire broke out.

Casper explained the MACSA Youth Center is a perfect example of the kind of place that is rarely on the radar of the National Register, which requires sites to be nationally significant and at least 50 years old to be considered for inclusion—criteria that create a barrier for inclusion, since many sites associated with Latinx heritage and more recent and hyperlocal. For LHC, however, its importance to the community makes preserving it essential, and why it made the ELL list. “Preservation isn’t just about a building,” said Casper. “Preservation is about people. A site like this is very near and dear and sacred to the community.”

Preserving Grassroots Murals

Painted in 1970 in South Chicago, the Our Lady of Guadalupe Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Mural honors twelve parishioners of a local Catholic church who lost their lives in the Vietnam War and stands as a powerful expression of remembrance, created by and for the local Latinx community. The mural was included in the ELL list, reflecting the organization’s effort to spotlight Latinx contributions that are often left out of mainstream narratives “[Latinx] veterans are often overlooked within the framework of military history,” notes Casper.

The mural is one of four featured on LHC’s Endangered Latinx Heritage List, alongside the 23rd Street Murals in San Francisco, the Grand Performance Mural in Oakland and Unity Mural in Washington, D.C. In 2025, the Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado Project also received support through the Nuestra Herencia Grant program.

Casper explained that LHC’s focus on murals stems from the limits of traditional historic preservation, which traditionally prioritizes architecture over cultural expression. “Maybe we didn’t own land or buildings, but we were able to express our own stories outside of history books through murals,” she said.

Protecting Cemeteries and the Memories they Hold

The Schertz-Cibolo Cemetery in South Texas is more than 100 years old and is designated a Texas Historical Cemetery. The majority of the people originally buried there were farmworkers of Mexican descent. In 2025, LHC awarded a Nuestra Herencia grant to the Schertz-Cibolo Cemetery Association to create interpretive panels that will educate visitors about the cemetery’s history, the region’s Indigenous peoples and local ecology.

Another Texas cemetery, the Elgin Mexican Cemetery, established in the 19th century, was included on the ELL list due to neglect—its only stewards are community members—and flooding. Development, Casper explained, also threatens many historic cemeteries.

“They are sacred locations,” she said. “That is someone’s mother who is buried there. That’s someone’s father who is buried there. That is someone’s aunt and uncle who are buried there. Those were people who existed and should not be uninterred because of something like a highway expansion, a road expansion, or in the case of Elgin, climate change.”

Celebrating the Full Latinx Story

Through Nuestra Herencia Grants and the Endangered Latinx Landmarks list, LHC highlights sites that preserve the full spectrum of Latinx experiences.

The Silver Platter, in Los Angeles’ Westlake neighborhood which opened in 1963 and is the city’s oldest extant Latinx LGBTQ+ nightlife venue, was an inaugural ELL Site, as was San Felipe de Neri Carriage House, an adobe structure in Albuquerque, New Mexico listed on the National Register of Historic Places where women’s history features prominently: within its walls, Sister Blandina Segale, a 19th-century Latina, built schools and hospitals for local Hispanic and Indigenous communities.