A sea of red, green, blue, and every other color of the rainbow decorated the standard red brick and concrete of City Hall Plaza last Sunday as community members gathered to celebrate the festival of Fiesta en la Plaza. 

Attendees’ eyes and ears feasted as the plaza brimmed with vibrant costumes, dynamic performances, and upbeat music. The dancing atmosphere infected the whole crowd as individuals’ bodies were soon swaying and snapping their fingers to the beat of the music. Others stood nearby taking bites from tacos and other cultural dishes they had gotten from food trucks that bordered the sides of the plaza.

Celebrating Latinx Heritage month, the festival has become a local tradition, organized by Ágora Cultural Architects, a woman-owned cultural business created to empower the voice of Latinos all over the United States. Now in its third year, the event was originally started by Ágora co-founder Elsa Mosquera, whose objective was to showcase underrepresented Latino artists, and expand the one dimensional view of Latinx culture that is present in most media. 

The festival focuses on highlighting Boston-based Latinx artists. This year’s lineup included Grammy winning flamenco dancer Nino de los Reyes, and dance group Salsa y Control, among a diverse array of salsa, merengue, samba, and various other dance styles. In addition to the dance performances, the festival also involved poetry readings, film screening, and a panel discussion.

The festivities incorporated assured that those who performed got just as much joy as those who attended. 

Robert Wasoski, a performer from Salsa y Control said that, “performing is super exciting. It’s a rush—like you just get out there, and then the world kind of disappears and you just focus on the moment. It’s been really nice to perform it like this venue and be so entrenched in local Boston.”

According to Aneesh Kumar, the community concerts manager of the Celebrity Series of Boston and one of the co-sponsors of the event, the salsa dancing class was a highlight. The class consisted of an instructor pulling random spectators in the crowd on stage as he boomed commands from his megaphone. College students, the elderly, and toddlers alike packed the stage, while spectators lined the sides of the stage clapping as children cheered on top of their parents’ shoulders.

Kumar emphasizes how supporting people from different backgrounds is crucial to the involvement of the community.  

“This is a beautiful celebration of Latin art, and we like to just find any way that we can support in any means possible,” Kumar said. “I think it’s really great that there are already so many organizations here doing incredible work and we find ourselves humbled to be able to work with a lot of these people.”

Reflecting on prior years, Mosquera said that the Fiesta en la Plaza has grown compared to its beginning, from having a variety of food and drinks, to sponsoring one of the most prominent Latino breweries in Boston: Roundhead Brewery. These are the accomplishments that Mosquera said “fill her with pride.”

Despite the success of this event in previous years, Mosquera admits she faced extreme conflict on whether she should host this event at all this year. With the Latino population making up approximately 20% of percent of Boston, Mosquera reflected how taxing this past year has been for the Latino community during the current political climate due to the increased ICE presence throughout the city. She described the fear that has engulfed not only her, but so many other Latinos dispersed across the city, due to the threat of the life they spent years building being uprooted. Ultimately, she decided to hold the event anyway.

“I said, you know, no, we cannot cancel it,” Mosquera said. “We still need to celebrate who we are. The fact that we’re here celebrating together, it’s an act of resilience and an act of believing that we are doing the right thing, by just joining our community and celebrating our heritage.”

While Mosquera intended to showcase the intersection of diverse traditions in Latino culture, she also wanted to recognize the distinctions within each one. More importantly, she stressed that it was critical that Afro-Latino heritage would properly be represented, since her goal was to “elevate the different cultures among Latinos.”

“We’re very different, like from Mexico to Argentina,” she said. “We’re completely different, but we share a [commonality] right? Spanish, let’s say heritage, but with that, we come from all different blends.”

Wasoski expressed his gratitude towards Boston for creating spaces of inclusion and community, especially since so many cities throughout the United States don’t view it as a priority. Although Latinx representation is improving, Wasoski believes it is usually through a limited perspective that doesn’t showcase the range in culture and subcultures. 

After dancing on stage and experiencing the festival, Wasoski said he sees this festival as one moving in the right direction as a celebration of humanity where cultures from the Caribbean all the way down to South America could be displayed.

“I think being able to just dance whatever here, dance to any kind of music, any kind of style, from bachata, marenge, salsa, all of this really kind of pulls in the Latin family,” he said. “This level of acceptance is what brings us all together in these events. For Boston to do this, I think, is a really powerful thing for the city, and I think helps bring the city closer together.”