 "Photo: Erik Reyna/The Daily Texan")
A line of singers, guitar and conch shell players, and instrumentalists with red cloth tied around their heads marched into the center of a full auditorium.
The performers sang and danced as part of a ceremony Monday night at the Mexican American Cultural Center at the 24th annual Día de la Raza celebration.
The United East Austin Coalition and the Friends of the MACC organized the event as an alternative to Columbus Day.
Columbus is often inaccurately portrayed as the first European explorer of the Americas. In fact he established Spanish colonization and set a precedence for future European colonization of the “New World,” which left a legacy of violence and ravaged much of the continent’s indigenous population. Día de la Raza was created as an opportunity to praise the Mexican “mestizo race,” or the mixture of Spanish and indigenous cultures.
“Día de la Raza is celebrated all over the world by native people who were exploited by the Spanish conquerors,” said Lori Cervenak-Renteria, co-coordinator for Friends of the MACC and secretary for the coalition. “Natives all over the world celebrate it as an alternative to Columbus Day.”
The coalition and friends use the event to recognize the individuals, groups and companies who provided time and money to the center.
This year’s event is the third held in the new MACC building. Cervenak-Renteria said the organizations have, in the past, held the event at The Scoot Inn and an old maintenance barn where they held the celebration from 1998 to 2000.
“We cleaned it up as best we could and declared it our Mexican American Cultural Center until we could raise enough money and support,” she said.
She said the organizations ultimately aim to turn the Día de la Raza celebration into a week-long citywide event that would involve many groups around Austin.
Raul Alvarez, member of the Austin Community College Board of Trustees and sponsor of the event, said the celebration stands as testimony to how the indigenous, Latino and Mexican communities have kept their culture alive.
“It is important that we take time once a year to remind ourselves of the past and how we can pull together to overcome obstacles before us,” he said.
The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts focusing on getting people to read, partnered with ACC to sponsor the celebration for the first time this year.
Christopher Smith, an ACC student who attended as a representative of the Big Read, said the initiative and ACC chose to promote “Sandstone and Shadows,” a book of Mexican short stories, to draw a connection between Mexican American culture and Austinites at the event.
Following the celebration, the organizations presented the Raza Awards — framed certificates recognizing those entities who provided the most money, time or talent to the cultural center.
The Center for Mexican American Studies at UT also received a Raza Award recognizing their monetary contributions to the cultural center in the form of funding for events.
The studies center, however, did not participate in the event this year. Luis Guevara, program coordinator for the center at the University, said they have built a good relationship with the MACC over the years, but they were too stretched.
“We have a major event going on at the end of the week,” Guevara said. “There is only so much time and there are only so many dollars going around.”
America need to be abolished is the illegal alien immigrant.
They need to be rounded up like dogs and cows and shipped home.
We in the United States of America honor Columbus. The ilelgal come to steal
and plunder our medical system, our schools, our food stamp programs with their
little illegal bas tards for us US of A citizens too support.
Colum bus never ask for a dime of my tax dollars can you say the same for the da mn
illegal hispanic who just happen to be primarily mex icans or wet ba cks as we know them.
I thinK La Raza like the KKK should be disbanded and any wishing to carry the dirfty outfit
on in their sheds need to be jailed or shot.
Frank Bowers