Numerous historic landmarks across the US recognizing Latino history and culture are in danger of being lost forever, according to a preservation group that has published a list of what it finds to be the most vulnerable to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month.
Many of the 13 sites named in the first Latinos in Heritage Conservation study have become rundown or fallen into disrepair through a lack of funds to maintain them, according to the group, which said they were largely “left outside of the mainstream narratives of preservation”.
The list includes several street markets, historic neighborhoods, churches, cemeteries and significant buildings, some dating back centuries.
Titled Endangered Latinx Landmarks, the list also features more modern installations such as wall art in Washington DC and California, and the Latinx LGBTQ+ Silver Platter bar in Los Angeles established in 1963.
“It has been a site of activism, mutual aid and survival through decades of homophobia, transphobia and white-dominated gay spaces,” the group’s website says of Silver Platter.
“Today, redevelopment, discriminatory preservation criteria and gentrification threaten its location, while rising rents and immigration enforcement endanger its community.”
The publication of the list comes against the backdrop of the first Hispanic Heritage Month – which runs from 15 September to 15 October – of Donald Trump’s second presidency as well as his administration’s plans to slash funding for preservation projects. Trump’s 2026 fiscal year budget included reducing the budget of the federal Historic Preservation Fund from $169m to only $11m.
Sehila Mota Casper, executive director of the Latino heritage group, said the list was intended to bring attention to sites that had been “overlooked”, and act as an urgent appeal to help save them.
“These stories are incredible, and yet they are at risk of being erased,” she said. “The places on our list are sacred and significant, holding generations of memory. Too often, however, they are demolished, neglected or left outside of the mainstream narratives of preservation.”
The list, she said, was “a call to recognize our landmarks as community anchors, living testaments to the Latinx experience, are deserving to be preserved with the same urgency and respect as any other part of our shared history”.
A commission of preservationists, historians and community leaders assessed almost 30 nominations of “lost, endangered or saved” sites from across the US, including in Puerto Rico. The final list of 13 comprises landmarks considered most at risk.
“Across the country, cities have overlooked the value of these sites and the stories they carry. In the US there has never been a focused attention on saving Latinx places,” Mota Casper said.
“We see it in the way resources are distributed, in which buildings are rehabilitated, and in which sites are celebrated by local and federal officials. The data makes it clear: Latinx heritage has not been prioritized.”