A weeklong celebration of Latino culture has returned to Iowa City after six years, bringing with it a collection of pop-up exhibits, performances, and workshops celebrating Latino culture in Iowa during this year’s Hispanic Heritage month.
Semana Cultural Latina returned to Iowa City after the pandemic caused a six-year hiatus since the weeklong celebration was initially organized in 2019.
The week of celebration began Sept. 25 with a screening of short films at FilmScene provided by the Mexican Film Institute and continued throughout the week with pop-up art galleries and workshops at Public Space One, The Englert Theatre, and the Iowa City Public Library. Concluding with a final performance “Entretejiendo Corazones: Música, Danza, Poesía y Memoria,” a performance, featuring various dance forms, music, and poetry and which featured a pop-up exhibit by Miriam Alarcón Avila.
Titled, “Iowa nICE, Make Iowa Nice Again,” the pop-up exhibit involved Alarcón Avila speaking to people through a sheet of ice to demonstrate how narratives of fear can distort our perception of people and lead to physical harm.
Originally from Hidalgo, Mexico, Alarcón Avila is an artist and photographer who works on projects throughout the county. She is also one of the co-founders of Semana Cultural Latina and hosted an ofrenda-making workshop that over 30 people attended in collaboration with the Weaving Our Community Network and the Stanley Museum of Art in the days leading up to Semana Cultural Latina.
“I make an ofrenda with the intention for people to have a moment to honor their loved ones and to have some type of closure,” Alarcón Avila said. “Creating things like these, it helps not only to heal the past but to heal the present that we’re living in.”
The ofrenda, which has Indigenous origins, serves as a way of remembering and honoring ancestors and are typically made up of different tiers of photographs of deceased loved ones and decorated with papel picado, or cut paper, cempasúchil or marigold flowers, sugar skulls, candles, and incense.
For Alarcón Avila, the ofrenda connects her with both her culture and her family, especially her father, who passed away when she was 6 years old.
She recalled sitting with her sisters at her family’s ofrenda and waiting for any sort of sign that her father had visited during Día de los Muertos: a bite being taken out of the pan de muerto or a glass of water being half-drunk.
As she grew up, she realized that her father’s spirit as well as the spirits of everyone’s loved ones returning to visit on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, wasn’t consuming the food, but the love family members also offered through the labor of making an ofrenda.
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By continuing to make ofrendas and teaching others about this tradition, Alarcón Avila sees this as not only helping people heal and remember their deceased loved ones but also to remember where they’ve come from.
Remembering where one comes from is especially important, Alarcón Avila explained, as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, continues to aggressively arrest members of the immigrant communities across the U.S. This includes the recent arrest of Jorge Elieser González Ochoa at Iowa City’s Bread Garden and Des Moines Public School Superintendent Ian Roberts.
“People forget that in order for you to be here, there were generations who made paths for you to be able to be in this time,” Alarcón Avila said. “We were all immigrants at some point, or our ancestors came from someplace else, so by remembering that, I hope it will give people empathy. We cannot forget where we come from because it’s the only way for us to know where we’re going.”
As Alarcón Avila explained, both the ofrenda and Semana Cultural Latina serve as a form of resistance to the fear incited by the threats of ICE arrests under the Trump administration. The celebration is a way of refusing to live and share their culture in fear, she said.
“Semana Cultural Latina is resistencia, pure resistencia,” Alarcón Avila said. “We’re showing the most beautiful things. Art, love, so many beautiful ways that immigrants have spread to this country from all around the world.”
Seso Marentes is a multidisciplinary artist from Des Moines who taught a printmaking workshop at Public Space One as a part of Semana Cultural Latina.
"We were all immigrants, at some point, or our ancestors came from someplace else, so by remembering that, I hope it will give people empathy. We cannot forget where we come from because it’s the only way for us to know where we’re going."
Through his work, Martenes explained, he hopes to encourage more Latinos to make art, regardless of the resources they have, and his workshop with Semana Cultural Latina was one way he could showcase this, alongside celebrating the Latino community, though he said he wishes it were longer than a week.
“Really, that’s what it’s all about, just shining the light on our community and hopefully opening doors for other Latino artists, but also finding doors to knock on so those can be open too,” Marentes said. “I’d like to see it happen more than just that time of the month. I want to see it happen every day, every week, every month, we’re celebrating something about our accomplishments, and we’re really solidifying that idea that we can do anything that we want to do.”
Similarly, Sam Hernandez, the lead dance instructor for Fuerzas Culturales Ballet Folklórico, which performed at the Iowa City Public Library on Oct. 2, spoke about the importance of celebrating culture through art because people who watch a performance are able to connect with and appreciate a culture simply by watching.
“Especially right now, I think being proud of our culture or just culture in general, and expressing it through dance, it’s a very beautiful and creative way to express it,” Hernandez said. “Showing people we’re here, we’re proud.”
The library also hosted West Liberty-based Eulenspiegel Puppets’ performance, “Nacho and Yoyo’s Escapades,” as a part of Hispanic Heritage month and Semana Cultural Latina, which tells the story of an escaped circus monkey and a chihuahua, with Iowa City’s first Mexican neighborhood as the backdrop.
The barrio, which first appeared along the railroad tracks located between South Dodge Street and South Van Buren Street, was made up of boxcar homes that housed the initial inhabitants of the neighborhood, primarily men who worked on the railroads and their families.
The neighborhood was eventually destroyed in 1936 after the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific Railway began removing the boxcar homes after facing complaints from residents, according to the University of Iowa’s Migration is Beautiful project.
Monica Leo, a puppeteer with and founding member of Eulenspiegel Puppets, remembers the neighborhood. The history of the neighborhood and its inhabitants became a vehicle for the performance, she said.
“Where would we be without our Latino immigrants?” Leo asked. “When you travel around Iowa, you can tell which towns are the ones that have embraced their immigrants because they’re the ones that are alive and thriving.”
Though Semana Cultural Latina has concluded, many of the pop-up exhibits are still open through October.
“Going and celebrating, dancing with neighbors, sharing food and tacos, learning guitar in the workshop, or writing your stories, that is resistencia,” Alarcón Avila said. “Our culture is powerful because it comes from the love from all our abuelitos — or grandparents — generations and generations that gave their lives to give us this life. And we cannot waste it, we have to enjoy it, and if we enjoy it together, it’s even better.”
