Put on some salsa shoes and get ready for a week-long fiesta.
Latino Coalition, the umbrella group for all Latino groups on campus, is organizing the 26th annual Festival Latino from March 30 to April 5.
Packed with events designed to entertain and educate the Penn community, Festival Latino is "a way for Latino students to bond and illustrate the diversity and richness of their cultures," said Wharton sophomore and chairman of the Latino Coalition Rami Reyes.
The festival also gives the Latino community - which composes 6 to 7 percent of Penn students - an opportunity to interact with one another, Reyes said.
The week-long festivities started with a kick-off party last night at the Hall of Flags in Houston Hall.
At the party, students participated in Sancocho, a tradition in which each group under the Latino Coalition offers food, often from their respective countries, to Penn students who wish to explore different Latino cuisines.
Students from MEChA, the Mexican American students organization, also organized a 24-hour fast and vigil for Cesar Chavez that began last night at 7 p.m. Chavez was a Mexican-American human rights activist from California. Along with the vigil, students petitioned to have Cesar Chavez day declared a national holiday.
As a new inclusion, Alianza - the Jewish-Latino partnership group - is organizing a talk about the differences between Easter and Passover while sampling Sephardic (Spanish-Jewish) cuisine on Wednesday, said College junior Angel Jacome, chairman for admissions and recruitment for the Latino Coalition.
College sophomore and vice chairwoman of Latino Coalition Mayra Garza said she hopes the week will bring together some of the 22 groups under the Latino Coalition which might not normally work together.
To that end, three student groups - the Puerto Rican Student Association, the Latino fraternity Lamda Upsilon Lamda and Onda Latina, a Latino dance group - will co-host a Penn version of popular Spanish game show Sabado Gigante, the final event of the week.
The festival also aims to educate the Penn community about the differences within the various Latino cultures.
Although the entire community is identified as Latino, students are still very different and diverse - Mexican culture is different from Portuguese culture, which is very different from Argentinean culture, Jacome said.
Students say they are excited about the festival and its events.
"It's a way of remembering home since they have all our typical foods and activities," said College freshman Francis Udler.
