Festival celebrates Cuban culture

IU recieved a Caribbean splash when the University's third annual Cubafest kicked off Monday with an inaugural song and dance celebration at the Willkie Quad Auditorium. The festival, the brainchild of junior Jessica Hernandez, is all about advancing knowledge of Cuban culture and providing a deeper understanding of Cubans in the community. The festival was started while Hernandez was a Community Educator in Eigenmann Hall.\n"I began Cubafest as a freshman through my position as a Community Educator in Eigenman," Hernandez said. "I thought that organizing a fest would be a good way of increasing understanding of Cuban culture."\nThe event was continued as a project for a class taught by assistant professor of Afro-American Studies Daniel Walker.\nUnder Walker's leadership, a group called the Latino Enhancement Cooperative, a Hispanic advocacy group of students, faculty and staff, began organizing a larger Cubafest for this year.\nWalker, the CubaFest coordinator, said the celebration will include dancing, culture and reviewing the history of Cuba. Many of the events are about things that are not the typical impression of Cuban history. \n"We are not trying to do things that are so obvious," Walker said. "Cubafest is about places, history, art, life, but we are going to examine it too, it's not just a celebration." \nJunior Mercedes Rodriguez, a Cuban-American, will be a part of the town hall meeting Wednesday about U.S./Cuban affairs. Rodriguez is enthusiastic about Cubafest and its possible results. \n"For me, this is one way of getting into Cuban culture," she said. "I used to live in Miami, Fla., where a little over half the population is Cuban or Cuban-American. You come to a place like Bloomington where there's none of that -- (Cubafest) is a way to alleviate a little homesickness or isolation." Rodriguez comtinued, saying, "For the average college student out there this is a great opportunity to learn about a culture that doesn't get much exposure up here. The public should know more about Cuba."\nHernandez has bigger plans still for Cubafest. The opening celebration had more than 350 people in the audience, and the organizers of Cubafest expect even more people to attend as the week progresses, with the culmination being a party at the international center, featuring performances by the African-American Dance Ensemble and the newly created Latino Dance Group. The Latino Cooperative is also working with IU to take a trip to Cuba as a class. If the effort for the trip is successful, it will be the first large IU group to go to Cuba. During the trip, students will present a community mural to students at the University of Santa Clara in Cuba. The mural will be created from 1-4 p.m. Friday at La Casa.\n"Next year, we are hoping to make this thing even bigger," Hernandez said. "We want to establish this as an annual tradition here at IU"