| Latinos celebrate culture with feathers and flames (4/05) | | Print | |
| Written by Vanessa Mai | |||
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The school celebrated Hispanic culture with an assembly on April 18 for the first time in two years. Planning the assembly was difficult since La Raza Unida Club members had no examples to follow from the previous year. “It was hard because we didn’t have any guidelines,” club member junior William Castillo said. “If there were an assembly last year, we’d know what to do. It was like a free for all.” Co-presidents senior Tania Gonzalez and junior Mayra Lopez started the assembly with welcoming remarks and were followed by a group reading of a poem about Latino stereotypes by Ana Castillo, titled “We Would Like You To Know.” Members of the club were careful of what they said because a poem recited in the Black Student Union assembly had caused much controversy. “We didn’t want to insult anyone or cause any problems in school,” La Raza member sophomore Kristina Peralta said. Castillo said she felt that “the poem wasn’t as strong as the one from the BSU assembly.” However, students like freshman Lupe Rodriguez believed the poem conveyed a very important message. “We’re just trying to tell people how Latinos are,” Rodriguez said. “Some of us have blonde hair and blue eyes, but we’re still Latino. The poem just shows how people discriminate against us.”
Mixcatl Anahuac, a well-known Bay Area professional dance group, consisting of four dancers and a drummer, was invited to perform an Aztec dance. Wearing special costumes decorated with golden beads, shakers and giant feather headdresses, the dancers illuminated the stage. During the second piece, the dancers lit a small fire in a statue and began to dance around it. Lead dancer Francisco Duran, who is sophomore club member Rodrigo Duran’s father, played with the fire during the dance; he put his foot, thigh and knee into it. In the end of the dance, Francisco stomped out the fire with his foot. The members of La Raza Unida and the school faculty were unaware that the fire was going to be part of the assembly. Some members like Peralta were surprised by the fire. “I was shocked it might set off the fire alarm,” she said. Though the fire was quite small, the ritual was long enough to let the smoke reach the sprinklers, however, they did not go off. Vice principal Peter Van Court, concerned with the fire alarm system and the fact that no regulations or procedures have been made in the instance of a fire. “I’ve asked SFUSD management why we didn’t receive a trouble signal from the smoke and am going to have someone check on that,” Van Court said. “We’re going to need to make a list of restrictions to be sure this doesn’t occur again.” The performers were professionals with experience and the fire was fairly small, but clearly against regular regulations according to Cheng. “We should have been notified ahead of time, and if we were, perhaps we would have asked the fire marshal for permission for the small ritual flame,” Cheng said. “My first thought of the fire was that it was a very confined, ceremonial, ritual fire, and when I saw it, I thought, I hope no one gets hurt.” For safety reasons, Van Court went backstage with a fire extinguisher. Some students were not as worried. “I wasn’t really worried because they were professionals, so it was cool,” sophomore Kenneth Ng said. For many students, the dance by Mixcatl Anahuac was the most interesting performance of the assembly. “The La Raza assembly was a new experience for me; the Aztec dancers were the most intriguing,” freshman Samson Mai said.
Students also performed four different types of Latino dances: salsa, punta, merengue and reggaeton. These active, vibrant dances are native to Latinos. The salsa is danced to a recurring eight-beat pattern with three steps per four beats. It is usually danced by pairs on a fixed area on the dance floor. The traditional punta dance was once a courtship dance considered inappropriate for children to perform, but now is open to people of all ages. Today girls usually wear short skirts while dancing the punta. The merengue, the national dance of the Dominican Republic, which has many different versions. The reggaeton, has no specific dance moves, is a fairly new and modern genre. The club next had a slideshow of famous Latinos who have made significant differences. These included, Cesar Chavez, Frida Kahlo, Rudolfo Anaya and Selena Quintanilla. Chavez was a civil rights leader who worked to unionize farm workers; he also was the creator of the saying “Si se puede” meaning ‘yes we can.’ Frida Kahlo was a famous creative artist who enjoyed exaggerating her unibrow in her self-portraits, believing it symbolized her uniquness. Rudolfo Anaya, a pioneer of the Latino literary movement, was the author of Bless Me, Ultima. Singer Selena Quintanilla, a famous Tejano singer revolutionized Latin music with her Billboard hit, Dreaming of You. Towards the end of the performance, junior Rigoberto Canchola and Downtown High School senior Juan Carlos Gonzalez came onto the stage and rapped about the Latinos’ stance in the world. Ng said he enjoyed the rapping the most. “The rap was clear,” he said. “Overall it sounded really good.” Finally, three musicians, junior Jose Oviedo on saxophone, freshman Grace Koyama on trumpet and freshman Misu Minhaz on drums ended the assembly by playing “La Bamba.” Members of the club wanted the assembly to be entertaining as well as insightful. “I hope that the audience received the message,” Peralta said. “I think they got the basic idea of it.” Club members felt La Raza Unida assembly was a success because students received a message. Mai said, “Even though there are a lot of stereotypes because of the illegal immigrant border crisis, the assembly provides a different view of how Latinos really are.” |
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to listen.
