Hispanic Heritage Month emphasizes roots
Dominique Ramirez
Mesa Legend
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Photo by Casey Ferguson Mesa Legend |
| Tupac Enrique (left) and Lisa Lugo, members of the Tonatierran Tribe, perform a traditional Hispanic dance wearing colorful native dress. The dancers were celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. |
The celebration of art, music, and history for Hispanic Heritage Month will be observed on the Mesa Community College campus, Sept. 15 through Oct. 15.
This is a time for the Hispanic students and community to get involved in activities surrounding their culture. The Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan of MCC (M.E.Ch.A) club is sponsoring the Hispanic Heritage event calendar.
Sept. 15 kicked off the month with an Aztec Dance Opening Ceremony, held on the lawn near the clock tower about 6 p.m.
Approximately 10 dancers arrived with various drums, attire including elaborately displayed head dresses, and candles for the alter display.
The alter in the center of the ring of dancers contained the antlers from a deer, a glass container of water, some maize (corn), a corn pollen pouch and sandalwood incense on top of a thunderbird blanket.
An hour of dancing with a shamanistic blessing was held afterward.
Tupac Enrique was the group leader and spoke of the dances being older than most civilizations on earth. Proof of this would be songs written about the wooly mammoth.
Events began happening all over the Valley a week early.
Arizona State University Downtown sponsored the Concierto de Norma Talamamte y Peter Garcia; Sol del Oro. The concert covered the music of the Latino culture, specifically the Boleros.
Boleros also known as corridos, which means verses of a song, were historically sung around the campfires or gathering places for celebration. These songs were for the everyday worker, and were composed of haunting Cuban rhythms set to classical corridos depicting the way of life and love.
The strums of the guitar and la mujera’s singing told the legacies of this opulent people. Songs filled with triumphant happiness to the most desperate of love. Some women in the crowd were singing along with commemoration for the passion of the lyrics.
Demonstrations of dancing, happiness, and laughter were a constant presence in the lecture room. Regardless of the ethnic diversity, most of the audience knew the music.
Historically the Boleros came to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1940s and ’50s. Before that they could be found in all other Latin cultures. In Panama and Mexico City, the music was also found in the brothels — dancing, food and sex were all part of the euphemisms surrounding the Corridos.
“The tales of art and love are timeless, passionate and cannot be rewritten in other languages without losing the meaning,” stated Garcia during the Concierto Lecture intervals.
A Hispanic Cultural Revolution is what seems to be the agenda from all who are involved. The community of Mesa and all the surrounding areas of the Southwest are saturated with the Mexican culture and this month is an essential time to raise historic awareness and participation of carrying down the traditions of the culture to the youth.
For Arizona, the social, political, and community groups aren’t as strong as their potential.
Ethnic studies would provide a strong awareness and understanding for Latinos as well as others instead of the pop-culture icons and commercialization that the general American population capitalizes on.
Local off-campus organizations like the Mesa Association of Hispanic Citizens are geared more toward policy, education, and civic leadership. Organizations like Xicanindio lean toward the history of the arts and poetry. Then there is also a fledgling group called The Latino Republicans. There are also M.E.Ch.A organizations outside school.
M.E.Ch.A was founded in the late 1960s at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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