Hispanic Heritage Festival
celebrates Latino traditions
By Bret Schulte
Senior Reporter
If your idea of celebrating Hispanic Heritage
Month is leaving the line at Burger King to get a
taco, get ethnic this weekend at the Hispanic
Heritage Festival.
Taking place in Agricultural Hall at the state
fairgrounds, the 11th annual event will honor
Latino traditions, food, music and dance
Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For a $3 admittance fee, attendees will
receive a “Latino Spirit Button,” which allows
access to the festival for both days. Children ages
12 and under can attend for free.
Amateur and professional cooks will prepare
authentic food, offering attendees tastes of dis
tinct flavors from a host of Latino countries and
cultures. And you can dance away those calories
to a variety of ethnic and folk music that will be
featured both days.
Professional dancers will be swinging amidst
other light-footed participants to Lexington
mariachi band Los Cazadores Saturday night.
The dance will run from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. and has
a $10 cover charge. No alcohol will be served
during the festival.
Sunday the music continues with brass bands
and folk musicians playing a smattering of
Latin tunes throughout the day.
Children’s activities will play a promi
nent role in this year’s event, including
painting, crafts and skills from varying
Latino cultures, pinatas, puppets and
celebrity readers.
Expressing pride in culture as
well as language, the theme of this
year’s festival is Hispanic litera
ture and will emphasize the
importance of being bilingual
in a predominantly English
speaking country. Works by
such renowned and
respected Latino
authors as Pablo
Neruda and
Gabriel Garcia
Marquez will be
featured, as well as
writings for chil
dren.
Joel
Gajardo, direc
tor of the event’s
sponsor, the
Hispanic
Community Center, said it is difficult but impor
tant to maintain distinctive cultures in an ever
shifting and evolving society.
“We are going to help people recognize the
importance of language and try to counteract the
English-only movement in the United States,”
said Gajardo, also the festival’s organizer.
“English is important, no doubt, but there is no
reason for anybody to forget his or her own
tongue.”
Historically known as “the great melting
pot,” the United States recently has been called
“the great salad bowl.” It may be a comment on
the resurgence of ethnic identity in America,
compared to the former standard of
“Americanization” that so many immigrants
have endured.
Gajardo believes that celebrating ethnicity is
not anti-American, but rather promoting under
standing between people of different back
grounds and beliefs. He said the festival was part
of the process of helping people accepted gain
awareness of others’ cultures.
“I think that it is important to remind us that
we belong to a very important tradition,” Gajardo
said. “The United States has other streams than
European - people from Africa, Asia and Latin
America. Their roles should not be overlooked.”
Gajardo said that while the primary
purpose of the festival is to celebrate
the rich diverseness within the Latino
community and its place in America, it
may accomplish another equally
important task. That is, the on-going
pursuit of multicultural acceptance
and understanding between the
majority European cultures and
those of the Hispanic minority.
“We need to reinforce more
and more of what is positive,”
Gajardo said. “Our differences
shouldn’t keep us from learn
ing about each other. People
from the majority need to
learn to
respect
people
from different
b a c k -
groupds.”