Fiestas en la Calle showcases vibrant performances, highlights Latino community

On Sunday the streets of Carrboro were packed with people for the ninth annual Fiestas en la Calle, an outdoor festival of music, arts, food and community that celebrates the Triangle’s diverse Latin American population.

The festival is a project of El Centro Hispano, the longest-serving Latino nonprofit in North Carolina, which opened in 1992 and added an office in Carrboro in 2010.

From 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., West Weaver Street was closed to traffic, transformed into a stage for Latin music and traditional dance performances, as well as marketplace with a range of artisan vendors, food trucks and community engagement booths.

“This is our ninth year doing this event in Carrboro, and every year we have more people coming,” Pilar Rocha-Goldberg, president and CEO of El Centro Hispano, said. “It’s a very diverse crowd that comes to enjoy the music, the food, but also we still have information in different areas.”

Tents from El Centro’s partners offered ways to connect with the Latino community in the area, and some provided free services and information regarding health and educational resources. 

El Centro operates a Hispano’s Mobile Health Unit that travels across North Carolina to make health care more accessible to Latino communities. On Sunday it parked on a side street, offering health exams and referrals to local healthcare providers.

Freddy Medina, co-founder of Boricuas en NC, said he expected some of the Puerto Rican community across the state to travel to Carrboro for the festival. Cumberland County, particularly Fayetteville, has the largest Puerto Rican population in North Carolina.

Boricuas en NC started as a social media movement to connect the Puerto Rican diaspora in the state, but it expanded to include community outreach and resources. Notably, Medina said that many nonprofits targeting Latin Americans are geared toward undocumented immigrants, which excludes Puerto Ricans.

“We’re trying to create an equitable approach for nonprofits locally that also develop products that serve the Puerto Rican community, which currently is severely underserved,” he said.

Medina is also the lead singer of Medio Pocillo, one of the bands that took Fiestas en la Calle’s stage on Sunday. The group mainly plays Puerto Rican rock music, Medina said, but the entire lineup spans genres and cultures across Latin America.

Avery Comellas, a Carrboro resident, said she learned about the festival from her mom, who works at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School, a bilingual school in Chapel Hill. 

“We have some friends playing in the band from my church, so we just decided to come and watch,” Comellas added.

The live music, which played through the entirety of the festival, had many festival-goers dancing, but the dance groups that practiced traditional dances from various countries, including Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico were the main event.

“When you look at the lineup, it really is representative of the communities that really live in the area, especially the concentration of each of the Latino groups represented on Sunday,” Medina said.

El Centro also brought latin music and dance to Carrboro with its fourth annual Orgullo Latinx, a Hispanic LGBTQ+ festival, in June, which had about 500 people in attendance, according to El Centro Hispano. 

Fiestas en la Calle is just one of El Centro’s many community events throughout the year. The organization regularly hosts health outreach events and collaborates with local schools to assist with English and Spanish-language learning. 

Focused on community participation and support, El Centro Hispano’s events are free to the public and family-friendly. 

Sunday’s festival, Rocha-Goldberg said, was intended “to share the diversity we have in Carrboro and in Orange County.” 

@carlybreland

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