USC marks end of Latinx Heritage Month with Noche de Cultura

As many students were leaving campus Wednesday and heading into their Fall Recess, the carne asada was just heating up at the Latinx Student Assembly’s Noche de Cultura, the lively and festive closing ceremony to USC’s month-long celebration of Latinx Heritage Month.

The program displayed many aspects of Latinx culture, pride and history. Mariachis Los Troyanos de USC, USC’s official mariachi band, opened the night on the center stage with deep, harmonizing ballads that brought the crowd together in various forms of dance, and Break on 2, USC’s premiere Latin Fusion dance team, carried the celebratory momentum well into the night with a series of mesmerizing performances. 

Jessica Jimenez, a junior majoring in public policy, started attending events hosted by the Latinx Student Assembly to become more involved with USC’s Latino community and to find people with a similar background and upbringing. 

“It honestly makes me feel like I’m still connected with my community,” Jimenez said. “Growing up, it was so hard for me to find Latino friends, so being able to find this community easily at USC feels very welcoming.”

“Growing up, it was so hard for me to find Latino friends, so being able to find this community easily at USC feels very welcoming.”

Jessica Jimenez, a junior majoring in public policy

Bringing together such a big community required immense support from several Latinx organizations on campus. Among the clubs present, there was La CASA, the Latino Alumni Association, the Association of Latino Professionals for America, the Spanish Undergraduate Student Association and the USC Prison Education Project as well many Latinx multicultural fraternities and sororities. 

The event was catered with a spread of traditional Latin foods, sweets and drinks. Birrieria Gomez and El Pollo Inka were among the local vendors feeding line after line of ecstatic guests, and the Latinx Student Assembly also maintained a constant supply of aguas frescas — jamaica, pina and horchata — as well as paletas, traditional Mexican popsicles made with fresh fruit, to cool everybody down in the afternoon heat.

Recognizing the intense diversity of the Latinx identities, histories and cultures on display, there were many installations and presentations that not only emphasized the stories within Latin culture but also celebrated what binds and differentiates people within the community. 

President Carol Folt also took the center stage to join in on the festivities, as well as to provide insight into the power of the unique identities in the USC Latinx community.

“Stories really go to the heart of what makes us human. It is something we do across cultures, it’s the way we share our ideas, get to know each other, hold our memories and share our truth … we learn a lot when we do our stories,” Folt said. “Latinx Heritage Month is the first of our cultural heritage months of the academic year. It is wonderful, and we have many more to come. We have a chance, every single time, to learn together. So, in this case, we learn on, while also fighting on.”

Dancing, cooking and performing music were just a few of the ways the individuals present shared their stories through art. Others used language and poetry to communicate their unique experiences as Latinx people. 

One of the most impactful stories of the night was that of keynote speaker and former Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez. He spoke about the current situation within the L.A. City Council, after recordings of ex-councilwoman Nury Martinez verbally disparaging members of the Black, Indigenous and Asian communities in a closed-door meeting Oct. 9. Rodriguez went on to criticize the council members implicated for using their language to put other marginalized communities down. 

“This is a time for new words, new ways of thinking, new ways to heal. This is an opportunity in this crisis to say ‘Can we create a new and better Los Angeles?’”

Former Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriquez, keynote speaker

“I have seen the power of language and words, being able to change people’s lives, being able to reconfigure how you think…. words can hurt people, words matter,” Rodriguez said. “This is a time for new words, new ways of thinking, new ways to heal. This is an opportunity in this crisis to say ‘Can we create a new and better Los Angeles?’ We need it, and we’ve been fighting for it for a long time.”