The Multnomah County Boardroom transformed – temporarily – into a 1980’s discoteca on Oct. 9 as the County kicked off its annual Latinx Heritage Celebration. A psychedelic video projection danced across the walls of the board room as Joaquin Lopez performed in his unique style that blends disco and Mexican folkloric music. It didn’t take long for most of the employees and visitors in the packed room to be out of their seats clapping along.
Lopez is a Mexican-American musician and performance artist from Portland whose work is committed to “personal freedom, Latino queer identity, self expression and community transformation.” He is also the Unid@s for Oregon program coordinator for the Latino Network, an educational services organization based in Portland’s Latinx community.
Michael Cavazos, a theater producer, DJ and founding member of the all-drag sketch comedy troupe, the Gender Offenders, danced with Lopez as part of the performance.
After Lopez’s set, as attendees sampled fajita-style chicken and sopes, Karla Alaniz, management analyst at the Department of County Management, followed up with a land acknowledgment. The acknowledgement paid respect to the Indigenous peoples who have resided in what’s now Multnomah County since time immemorial.
Building Bridges
The theme of this year’s celebration was Construyendo Puentes, No Barreras – which translates to ‘Building Bridges, Not Walls’ – and was organized by three of the County’s Employee Resource Groups: Multnomah County Employees of Color, Immigrants and Refugees, and Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPOC). Andrea Archuleta, Department of Community Probation and Parole Officer and member of the Employees of Color Resource Group, emceed the event.
Multnomah County Chief Operating Officer Marissa Madrigal spoke at the event about her own family ties to Mexico and the resilience of the greater Latinx community despite the Trump Administration’s policies on immigrants, refugees and incarceration at the southern U.S. Border.
“It has been a tough year in the Latinx community. We’ve had a lot of negativity directed our way,” Madrigal said, while reminding the audience that even in the face of adversity, there is cause for celebration.
“I want to center a little bit on the wonderful things that are happening in our community right now,” she said. “The love and connections that we’re making, and the bridge-building that we’re doing.”
District 3 Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson shared a similar sentiment: “We have an ineffectual wall that's being built just to keep us out and otherize us,” she said, but “We are here today to celebrate. We are here to uplift...We will continue to stand up and fight back.”
A few minutes later, the County board room again transformed, this time into a concert hall, featuring two ensembles of Latinx community members using music to heal.
Violines de Oro is a collaborative partnership between the Metropolitan Youth Symphony and Bienestar de la Familia that offers free violin lessons for children aged 10-12, some of whom performed at this year’s Latinx Heritage Celebration.
As a short video played to introduce the group for the audience, some of the young violinists giggled from the back of the room at their friends on-screen. And then it was showtime. The crowd erupted in applause after the group’s rendition of De Colores, a Spanish language folk song known almost universally in Latin America and often heard at United Farm Workers rallies during the 1960s.
The hum of the group’s violins were replaced by the twang of acoustic guitars as a second group of musicians-in-training took the stage: a group of Latinx women learning guitar as a form of music therapy through a separate Bienestar de la Familia program facilitated by mental health professionals and a music instructor.
They played a slow, barebones version of Mexican folk song La Bamba, and dedicated a final song to el continente America – the entire American Continent.
Paraguayan Harpist Antonio Centurion also played at the event, and the paintings of Dominican artist Hampton Rodríguez adorned the Boardroom walls.
Latinx Diversity
The celebration also highlighted the diversity within the Latinx community.
Dr. Carlos Castro Jo is a Nicaraguan-American poet, author and professor of Sociology at Clark College, and was one of the celebration’s keynote speakers. “We come from many different countries. We belong to many different races,” Castro Jo said of Latin American communities, tracing his own family history to Africa, Europe and China.
“There is racism and there’s colorism and there’s sexism and homophobia in the Latinx community as well,” Castro Jo continued. “And if we are going to build bridges, we are going to have to remove all those barriers and start to work together.”
Reyna Lopez, Executive Director of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon’s farmworker union and longest-standing Latinx organization, gave the celebration’s final keynote speech. She stressed the importance of learning history. Lopez spoke about growing up in Salem as the daughter of Mexican immigrant farmworkers, and her struggle t
“The moments I started to love and value myself were the moments when I learned and understood who I really was,” Lopez said. That includes learning Latinx history, from the Farmworkers and Chicano Civil Rights movements of the 1960’s to the flamboyant zoot suits of the pachucos and lowrider car culture in California.
Lopez also made a point to mention the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which officially turned what is now California, Nevada, Utah – along with parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and most of Arizona – from Mexican territory into U.S. territory in 1848. “Once you understand that history, you understand that Latinx heritage is American heritage,” she said.
As attendees finished their sopes and before the Boardroom transformed one last time into a nightclub to close out the event, Reyna Lopez ended on an empowering note.
“Continue to celebrate yourself, your cultura, your familia, your espíritu,” she said. “And continue using your story as your source of power, because for the longest time, they tried to use it against us – but now we’re using it to change the world.”