After six years, Semana Cultural Latina returns to Iowa City on Thursday. The week-long event celebrating Latino culture and art starts with an evening of family friendly short films from the Mexican Film Institute (Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía) at FilmScene.
The week continues with programs and exhibitions at the Iowa City Public Library, Public Space One, the Stanley Museum, the Englert Theatre and UIHC’s Fountain Lobby Gallery.
“We felt like we were ready to launch again,” Manny Galvez told Little Village.
Galvez, the publisher of El Trueque Latino Magazine, had long been one of the leading advocates for Iowa’s Latino communities, and in 2021, he received the Robert D. Ray Award for Equity and Justice for his work. He organized the first Semana Cultural Latina in 2019, with award-winning photographer and multimedia artist Miriam Alarcón Ávila. The two were joined by Eloy Barragán, associate professor and director of Dance Production at the University of Iowa, in creating this second edition of Semana Cultural Latina. The organizers plan to make it into an annual event.
The idea for Semana Cultural Latina goes back to the early days of the Iowa City Latino Festival, which Galvez first helped organize in 2011.
“When we’re talking about Latino culture and Latino arts across Iowa, the one day of the festival wasn’t enough,” he explained. “The idea is to try to create a new space, where all the Latino/Latinx/Chicano artists can show what they are doing, to show the diversity in a different way.”
“We are talking about writing, we are talking about film, we are talking about dance. This is a more robust and bigger picture of what is Latino and Latinx artists in Iowa are creating.”
The second edition of Semana Cultural Latino comes as immigrant communities cope with fear caused by the Trump administration’s policies and ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics, and as Latinos in the United States face hostility and racist stereotyping sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We cannot stop living our lives,” Galvez said. “We are part of Iowa communities, we are part of this country. We need to keep going with our projects, our dreams — everything — as usual.”
“We need to keep building our communities, we need to keep producing art and life,” he continued. “Because we are part of something bigger than the Latino community. We are part of Iowa City, we are part of Iowa and we are part of the United States. And regardless of the political environment — which personally I believe is going to be temporary — we need to keep sending a message to everybody: We are here, we are going to keep flourishing and we are going to keep doing amazing things.”
A full schedule of events and exhibitions is available at Semana Cultural Latina’s site.
