Celebrating its tenth anniversary, The Latino Festival of Hightstown and East Windsor continue to honor Latin traditions and heritage. NJ RISE, a nonprofit community center, hosted the annual festival at the Hightstown High School on Sunday, October 1.
This festival provides opportunities to increase awareness for many Latino-owned small businesses as well as exhibitors in the NJ Latino community. Co-founded by Juan Cobos and Carlos Fernández in 2013, the event attracted over 5,000 participants.
Fernández, who is also the director of the Center of Latino Arts and Culture at Rutgers University says, “A large production requires resources in terms of funding, volunteers, and organizational know-how.”
He continues, “[For vendors], it’s good business to engage in relationship building and be able to engage new audiences, or promote their company and opportunities for employment at the festival.”
Among the guests at the festival was Cristina Gonzalez, owner and operator of New Age Innovation, a lifestyle brand, hoping to promote their small business. A lifestyle brand is a brand that tries to embody values or attitudes from a culture for marketing reasons.
Gonzalez says, “[This festival] means everything, as far as the pride, what I want to spread to the community, to uplift and inspire my fellow Latinas. This is definitely the place to be.”
Sebastiana Tajiboy, owner of Articulos Guatemaltecos, set up shop at the festival to sell her Guatemalan-inspired merchandise. Everything was handmade: including straw hats, handbags and purses styled with the intricate weaving patterns made of bold reds, blues and yellows of the Mayan culture and rings and necklaces adorned with colorful jewels.
Tajiboy says, “Many people from Guatemala live here and we help our people. Our inspiration is our culture.”
Aside from the vendors, the festival showcased a diverse variety of cultural and music performances.
There were a variety of featured music and dance groups that portrayed the diaspora of Latin culture. La Sonora Dinamita, a band specializing in cumbia, a Colombian genre with tropical inspirations, took to the stage. Led by Charlie Alvarez, the internationally recognized orchestra consists of an ensemble of brass instruments and female and male vocalists.
Recordando Mi Tierra, or Remembering My Land, is a Costa Rican dance group that also performed. The group’s vibrant colors and folkloric displays represented the pride and values of their country.
Aside from the stage performances, many Latin small-business owners used the festival as an opportunity to connect with others and share their traditions.
Oscar and Mayra Cruz, agents for Goldstone Realty, were one of many at the festival representing their heritage.
Myra Cruz said “It’s good because you can keep those roots with your kids. As you raise them, they’ll know where their parents [came from].”
Oscar Cruz added “To be able to have the community come together in a safe, family friendly environment, to be able to see people you haven’t been able to see in a while because you’re running up and down, it’s great to be able to come together and celebrate; our heritage is beautiful.”
Although, not everyone shared the same perspective of community and inclusivity at the festival.
Patricia Vera, who is Colombian and Venezuelan, brought her two kids to enjoy the festival but said she had trouble finding things that portrayed her culture.
She says, “As an Afro-latina, I feel a little left out. We are a big community, and that should be represented here.”
Similarly Guyanese chef and entrepreneur Mike Ranjit, owner of Chef’s Rotisserie in East Windsor feels a lack of representation of his culture at the festival.
Ranjit says, “I’ve been here for 15 years. I only see Guyanese people when I go to New York.”
Regardless, the chef found a way to represent his culture to the participants at the festival by selling Guyanese inspired dishes. Some meals included: jerk chicken, chicken curry, and falafel which were all made using Halal meat.
Besides Ranjit, other foods served at the festival included a Kona Ice truck, which serves shaved ice drenched in colorful fruity syrups, and Chic Gourmet Empanadas, a Trenton based restaurant serving over 65 different flavors of empanadas.
With plenty of food, music, and traditional merchandise, the festival was a success, bringing members of all different communities together to celebrate Latino culture.
Fernández says, “This year we’ve had a lot of non-latinos supporting the festival organizing committee and its great to see how they engage and are interested in learning from [Latinos], and share in the experience in ways that allow them to be more aware of the cultural issues, but also appreciate and understand people’s experience.”
