LatinxFest 2024 Retrospective

The 15th LatinxFest 2024, came with a river of hugs and greetings, at least for me. Many people I hadn't seen for a long time met at the festival and enjoyed the celebration in the community.

I played at noon with my brother and my friend Audey. We played a set of Latin American folk songs, and a song that Noe and I made for the production of The Line in the Sand eleven hundred square miles (which is the size of the Arizona desert).

I was still singing when I saw Armando. Armando was one of the actors

in The line in the sand, he had the last part of the play, when Lucrecia's father finds the remains of his daughter in the Arizona desert, I remember that Armando played the role of Lucrecia's father.

From the platform, I saw colleagues who in the past had sacrificed hours and hours planning the festivals.

I saw Andres Gallan, well I saw him from afar, with the happiness that floated between the stalls and spread the joy that comes from being in a community.

I also saw Alejandra buying pupusas with “las piratas” , an exclusive business, open for the Latin Saturday people of the barrio and the occasional outsiders,  who, due to their community work, is lucky enough to know where and when to  get these exquisite pupusas.

I remember that Andre helped make the first LatinxFest possible. Andre wrote for the Flagpole and was doing a report on the community gardens that we were organizing in the neighborhood. That's how we met him, Andre made the promotional video for the first LatinxFest, he also wrote a review of the festival.

Andre helped spread the word about the festival without charging a single cent, instead donating a piece of his life to a project, that sought to create a safe space to celebrate a culture, that was not his.

Andre was a stranger to the language, but he was won over by the culinary richness of the Latinx community. Andre not only helped the festival for many years, but also helped create a mutual aid system, in which families devastated by deportations rebuilt themselves with fundraisers.

These fundraisers were prior to the pandemic and already practiced the principles of mutual aid. In these fundraisers, the community close to the family cooked and Andre, together with Athens Immigrant Rights Coalition (AIRC), spread the word about those fundraisers with their bases, in solidarity with these families.

AIRC supported the migrant community at difficult times, AIRC was also the organization in charge of organizing the LatinxFest for several years

Alejandra also participated in helping during those difficult times, helping to create an organization called Community Support for Families in Crisis. In addition, Ale conducted the first needs assessment of the Latinx community in the county.

Ale also helped organize the festival for several years and in 2016, which by the way, was the first year that the festival was held in downtown Athens, at the Creatures Comforts brewery, Alejandra was the Master of Ceremonies.

This year the LatinxFest was special for me, also because it was the first festival that I attended as a spectator. Like Andre and Alejandra, in other years I dedicated hours and hours to the planning and execution of the festival. I know the history of migrations of this festival, I saw it leave the barrio and move to the city. I saw him pass by the flea market and I saw him create alliances with ALCES and Casa de Amistad, who organized it in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

This year the LatinxFest was a quinceañera.

This year the LatinxFest was concerned about missing children.

This year for the first time I was able to fully enjoy the festival as a spectator and I could not help but admire the work of the organizers and volunteers who made possible the most important celebration of the Latiné community in Athens and its surroundings.

-Beto Cacao