JAMES LILLIN
Staff Writer
Each year from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, Fredonia’s Latinos Unidos (LU) has brought a litany of events to the campus for Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrating the achievements and contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans, while fostering an increased awareness and appreciation for their histories and cultures.
“Sometimes people forget where they’re from, even out here,” said junior international studies and theatre arts major and LU president Geraldo Celeste. “We live in a place that’s a more rural area, whereas normally in cities, there’s a greater multiculturalism, so we’re trying to bring that to Fredonia.”
Celeste wanted to place a renewed focus on immigration for this Hispanic Heritage Month, in part due to the current political culture that, to some, shows a renewed contempt and fear towards immigrants of Latino descent.
“We tried to design the History Month, in part, to get the word out about the importance of the political decision they have to make in this upcoming election,” said Celeste. “We have a candidate who, since the beginning of his campaign, has been promising mass-deportation of huge swaths of people who just want a better life, people who do nothing but work to provide better lives for themselves and their families.“
This year’s Heritage Month started out with a bang, bringing out Latina icon Rita Moreno (star of “The Electric Company” and “West Side Story”) for a rousing lecture titled “If You Quit, You Can’t” on Sept. 21.
“As a Hispanic woman, and especially as a Hispanic woman in the arts, I can honestly say that Rita Moreno is one of the biggest inspirations that I could ever have,” said senior acting and psychology major Casterline Villar, who helped to introduce Moreno before her lecture. “All throughout my life, people threw things at me saying, ‘Well, this isn’t something for Latinas. This isn’t a field for them,’ and to see Rita Moreno reminding me that it’s possible to break those social barriers inspires me to put the same level of effort and beauty into my work that she does in hers.”
Moreno’s lecture was met with four separate standing ovations, culminating in her being handed the key to the town of Dunkirk, a town in which 35 percent of residents are of Hispanic descent.
The lecture was followed by LU’s annual La Tomatina event on Sept. 24, where students were welcomed onto a giant tarp to pelt tomatoes at each other, and then enjoy an airbrush tattoo station, inflatable obstacle course, cotton candy and a live DJ performance.
“La Tomatina extends from an event they do in Buñol, Spain, where everyone in the town gets together to throw overripe tomatoes at each other,” said Celeste. “It’s like the running of the bulls but way, way safer.”
LU has also facilitated a showcase of work curated by the activist Marietta Bernstorff in the Reed Library until Sept. 30 titled “Nuevo Códice: Oaxaca Migración y Memoria Cultural” (“New Codex: Oaxaca Immigration and Cultural Memory”), including artistic works from the women of Oaxaca and talks by Bernstorff herself.
“One of the stories she told was of a boy who left when he was 18, but his family wasn’t ready to leave,” said senior public accounting major Nadia Fernandez, “and the next time he was able to return to Mexico was to see his mother in a casket.”
“There’s one piece that especially caught my eye, featuring red socks with spots on them,” said Celeste. “The woman who made it was told by her aunt, ‘When you go to cross the border, always bring extra socks,’ because of all the blisters and wounds that these people sustain on this long walk that they take to try to better their life.”
The next event LU is planning is a showing of the movie “La Misma Luna” (“Under The Same Moon”) on Sept. 29 in McEwen G24.
“It’s a movie about immigration,” said Fernandez, “telling the story of a mother bringing her child from Mexico, showing the journey that the mother and kid have to endure to get to the United States.”
LU is also working to involve students in a showing of performance art on Oct. 7 at Diers Recital Hall, in which students will read monologues and perform scenes from a play called “Watsonville: Some Place Not Here” by Cherrie Moraga, as well as reading poems from various Latino poets.
Ultimately, LU hopes that Hispanic Heritage Month will help educate and connect students with the history and contributions of the oft-misunderstood and marginalized Latino culture.
“Acceptance starts with the smallest inkling of understanding, and to have anyone learn even the smallest thing and pass it on creates a domino effect,” said Villar. “It spreads like a forest fire. I’ve seen it happen in this campus, speaking in a very ignorant way, and then a few weeks, or months, or a year later they’ll be speaking in a completely different way. It really is amazing to see.”