October's Latino Heritage Month events will kick off next week and center on the arts, offering students the opportunity to celebrate and learn about Latino culture.
A Tufts University Art Gallery exhibition, a Latino poetry café and a documentary film series are among the events commemorating the heritage month, led by the Latino Center and the Association of Latin American Students.
Latino Center Director Rubén Stern hopes to use these events to educate members of the community about Latino culture, which he said is a topic too often neglected.
"Latino Heritage Month is about Latinos in the United States," Stern said. "Latinos here in the U.S. generally do not know their history because it is not taught in school."
The programs are designed to appeal to all members of the community, Latino and non−Latino alike, Stern said.
An opening reception, featuring food and a live performance by a student musician, will take place at the Latino Center on Monday.
The Latino Center will host a three−part documentary film series beginning next week and screening at Sophia Gordon Hall on Thursdays.
The first film, "Animas Perdidas" (Lost Souls), directed by Monika Navarro, gives the audience an inside view of Navarro's family story and her journey to Mexico. Navarro will be in attendance to present the film on Oct. 7.
"Latinos on Campus," a documentary film by Roberto Arevalo, will be shown on Oct. 14. The documentary delves into some of the difficulties and opportunities Latino students encounter and includes Tufts students, Stern said.
Deborah Pacini, a professor of anthropology and American studies, helped bring the final film, Adam Taub's "El Duque de la Bachata," to Tufts, Stern said. It will screen on Oct. 21.
The movie explores bachata, a genre of music originally from the Dominican Republic. In the United States, bachata is now as popular as any other genre of Latino music, according to Pacini.
Meanwhile, the art exhibition "Mexico Beyond Its Revolution," which provides a comprehensive collection of 20th century Mexican art, is on display in the Tufts University Art Gallery until Nov. 14.
Director of the Latin American Studies Program Adriana Zavala is the curator.
The exhibition borrows works from the Harvard University Art Museums, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, the Tufts permanent collection and four private collections, according to Zavala, an associate professor of art history.
"The idea is to teach people the way the visual arts contributed to the process of social revolution in Mexico," she said.
The gallery and an accompanying symposium tomorrow were designed to honor the November 2010 centennial of the Mexican Revolution and the September bicentennial of Mexico's independence from Spain.
"We are very happy that [the gallery] coincides with Latino Heritage Month, so that students and faculty members that are interested in the events that we're organizing can both come to the film series and to the art exhibition," Zavala said.
Latino Heritage Month will conclude with the annual Latino Poetry Café on Oct. 28 in Hotung Café.
