Increasingly visible Latino Center sponsors events for heritage month

    Tufts' Latino Center is finishing up a very busy Latino Heritage Month, which found the student group drawing on its constantly growing membership and an artist-in-residence from Pomona College to lead an assortment of programming.
    Every October, the Latino Center at Tufts sponsors Latino Heritage Month to educate the Tufts community about Latino heritage and culture. Month-long programming varies year to year, with a few mainstay events. A growing Latino community at the university has made the month increasingly significant, according to Director of the Latino Center Rubén Salinas-Stern.
    "Our population has grown; now, nearly three hundred students identify themselves as Latino," Salinas-Stern said, adding that less than 200 students self-identified as Latino in prior years.
    As the number of Latino students at Tufts increases, so does the center's visibility on campus. Added participation and attention allows organizers to bolster October's programming.
    "Since I've been a student at Tufts, there is more of an awareness that there is a month to celebrate Latino culture, and more people are excited about it," said Association of Latin American Students (ALAS) President Rafael Artiles, a senior. "As our visibility has grown, we have been able to do more mainstay events that people have come to expect."
    But Salinas-Stern said that Latinos are still looking to make their presence more strongly felt on campus. "We really want to have more visibility for the community to see the richness of our culture," he said.
    Administrators take heart in the increased interest they have noticed over the past several years, stressing that Latino Heritage Month is as much for non-Latinos as it is for members of the community.
    "Latino culture is a lively part of our American heritage, and this month provides the chance for Latino and non-Latino students alike to come together and learn about the culture in the United States," Director of the Latino Studies Minor Adriana Zavala said.
    Latino and Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated on the national level starting in mid-September, but Tufts' programming starts in October to avoid the beginning of the academic year.
    The month seeks to clear up a number of false conceptions that are often associated with the Latino community, said Zavala, who is also an associate professor of art history.
    "We often don't see positive representations of Latinos in the U.S., and this is an opportunity to showcase and celebrate our culture and, importantly, do so from our perspective," she said. "Most importantly … Latino Heritage Month provides the opportunity for the whole community to come together to learn about Latino heritage."
    One of the highlights of the Latino Center's programming this year was artist-in-residence Alma Martinez, a Mexican-American actress and an associate professor of theater arts at Pomona College in California.
    Martinez spoke to three classes last week, conducted a workshop on the history of stereotypes in Hollywood and worked with students to develop a short play, which was performed this past Saturday in a tangible culmination of the artist's week-long stay.
    "She's a strong Latina role model," Salinas-Stern said. "She has a long history of working the Chicano movement, and students can really relate to her story."
    The Latino Center and the American Studies department co-sponsored Martinez's program on campus. Each year, the American Studies Program receives a special grant from the Nat R. and Martha M. Knaster Charitable Trust to bring speakers to campus.
    Salinas-Stern said that Martinez's visit capped off a long list of programs the center has sponsored in its history.
    "The Latino Center started in 1993, and it really wasn't until 1994 that we had our first Latino Heritage week," Salinas-Stern said. "For the past fifteen years that we've been doing this program, we've had incredible speakers and programs."
    Other programs this month have included a weekly film series, food fairs, game nights and lectures on the history of Latino culture.
    Still, Salinas-Stern's broader goals — promoting leadership and social justice — reach beyond the scope of Latino Heritage Month. "Leadership development is very important to us," he said. "The Division of Student Affairs has been working on developing social justice workshops to educate students on what it means to be a leader in a socially just society."
    Documentary filmmaker Roberto Arevalo spent a week in September filming Tufts students for a project about being Latino at Tufts. The documentary will premiere at Tufts next semester.
    As part of the month's events, a Latino Poetry Café will be held tonight at 7 p.m. in the Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room.