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Fest highlights Hispanic flavor
On Saturday, they were at the University of Pittsburgh's Latin American and Caribbean Festival exhorting tales of how different that community has become.
"It was a small community," said German Matos, 55, president of Coro Latinamericano, a Pittsburgh-based, 26-member Latin American choir. "Now it's very impressive."
Yesterday was the 24th annual festival, held for the past 10 years at the William Pitt Union. It started as a small affair, with a few booths in the bottom floor of what is now Posvar Hall. It has since catapulted into a one-day event that draws up to 2,500 annually, said Rosalind Eannarino, outreach coordinator for Pitt's Center for Latin American Studies.
Yesterday's festival -- part of Pitt's International Week -- was a celebration of Latin American arts, crafts and food. It included art and handcrafted work by artists hailing from Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil and Mexico. There were tangos and sambas, and food vendors from Pittsburgh businesses specializing in fare from Argentina, Mexico, Cuba and Colombia.
Hispanics are now the nation's largest ethnic minority. And the festival's growth has nearly mirrored that of Allegheny County's Latin American population.
Census figures from 2000 show 11,166 Hispanic or Latinos in Allegheny County, up from 8,731 in 1990. Similarly, Pitt's Center for Latin American Studies jumped from 196 students in 1990 to 247 in 1994. They now count 305 students in both undergraduate and graduate programs, Eannarino said.
Matos, who moved to Pittsburgh to study at Pitt, said the region's Latin American community was once centered around the region's academic centers. Now it has grown to include members of the service industry, specifically hotel workers, he said.
While the community remains small, "we are the only ethnic group to grow," said Cathy Bazan-Arias, chair of a group working to bring a Latin American room to join the 36 rooms among Pitt's Nationality Rooms program in the Cathedral of Learning.
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