Rain fails to hinder Festival Latino's flame

Junior Luis Beverido didn't mind the rain Saturday at Festival Latino. He was already drenched from being repeatedly soaked in the dunk tank at the event hosted by La Casa Latino Cultural Center in celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which began Sept. 15.\n"(The rain) added a little bit of Latino spice to the whole thing," he said. "It reduced the flame, but it kept burning because Latinos are a tight family."\nMany activities, including a sumo wrestling on a mat from Lambda Upsilon Lambda fraternity, kept people busy through the spotty showers that started at about 3 p.m. and continued on and off through the afternoon. \nWhen it wasn't raining, music and dancing entertained a crowd of as many as 120 people at a time. \nThe steel drums band Pambasso, made up of members of the Jacobs School of Music, played songs like War's "Low Rider."\nThe group Cumbia Pies Descalzos presented a Cumbian dance -- originating from Colombia -- performance on the stage in the middle of the meadow and after that taught dance lessons to more than 15 young men and women. \n"The girls are always running, so you try to catch them," said Eduardo Wolf, a member of Cumbia Pies Descalzos, explaining the male role in the dance. The volunteers learned a flirtatious, hip-shaking dance and then performed their new skills to live percussion before the sprinkles began again. \nThe Break Dance Club also put on an exhibition to raise awareness of the group. \nSenior Chino Jeng, a four-year member and chair of the club, spun, kicked and danced with three other members of the club. \n"We're here to help support our friends' Latino organizations," he said. \nDunn Meadow was transformed by the more than 20 booths spread through the field and balloons tied to the fences. The booths were staffed by many different organizations and groups, from several Latino fraternities and sororities to community organizations like Girl Scouts and Head Start. Many of the booths offered interactive opportunities to festival attendees, from the dunk tank and sumo wrestling to educational activities the Mathers Museum of World Cultures provided. \nThe Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies' booth offered people a chance to try the South American drink yerba mate, a tea served in decorated gourds with a metal or wooden "bombilla" or straw. \nPam Sanders, a graduate assistant with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, explained that the tradition of drinking yerba mate was more concentrated in the "southern cone" of South America, particularly Argentina, but is also part of the culture in southern Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. She explained the social tradition where the mate is filled with tea and hot water, and the first person to have the mate drinks all the water. The mate is refilled and passed through the group of people drinking the tea, until the leaves are too diluted to make a strong tea. Then the process starts all over, she said. \nThough the rain might have discouraged some from attending Festival Latino, many people said they felt the show of support was heartening. \n"People just staying here shows a lot of support," said senior Lupe Arroyo, student chair of the Latino Enhancement Cooperative. \nFor more information on upcoming La Casa events, see www.indiana.edu/~lacasa.