Coffee hour offers Latin American Spanish culture

The International Latin American and Spanish Students Association began the semester with its usual coffee hour Friday, which included enchiladas and flautas from El Norteno, Latin American music and an introduction by the executive board members.

ILASSA President Jose Toledo said that the main purpose of the organization is to create an environment where every Latin American and Spanish student has the opportunity to contribute to the IU community.

“The idea is to promote and create this volunteer feeling in all our members,” Toledo said. “The second idea is to create the opportunity to open different task forces, like environment work, social work, academic issues, human rights and gender
equality.” 

Sophomore Jeannette Heusca, the vice president of ILASSA, said she wants to get the word out about the organization so others can feel welcome to join as well.

“My parents are from Mexico,” Huesca said. “I grew up here in the United States and you kind of get disattached from your culture, and knowing from other cultures in Latin America, everyone has their own culture. You can learn so much from different people. You would think that since you speak the language it would all be the same, but it’s not.”

After Toledo, Huesca and other executive board members introduced themselves and the organization in Spanish, Toledo explained why they were in Teter Quad. They don’t have a permanent residence place.

“It’s difficult for us,” Toledo said. “The Leo Dowling International (Center) is no more. They closed down. We don’t have physical space to meet.”

The international student organizations are now located in the Office of International Services in the Poplars Building. Toledo said if international students want to have a meeting or event, they have to rent rooms in the residential halls. Toledo said he feels the center was closed due to the University’s efforts to equate education with business.

“For me, it’s sad that education equals business, and when education is equal to business, you have this difficult situation,” Toledo said.

Toledo said he believes international organizations like ILASSA need to have more discussions about this issue.

“We need to not only have happy hours or coffee hours but we need to speak about our reality for students and because we are a minority,” Toledo said.

For some, this coffee hour was the first time they heard the Leo R. Dowling International Center had closed.

“I think it came as a surprise to a lot of people,” group member Alexandria Toledo said. “They didn’t know about it closing over the summer, so some people are pretty upset about it and they would like to see a space on campus for international students to meet — if not there, then somewhere else.”

Alexandria Toledo said she thinks students aren’t sure what measures to take concerning the closing of the center.

“I think a problem is that people don’t really know what happened, or they aren’t opportunities to show that, or international students might not know the system for doing advocacy or for kind of protesting the decision,” Toledo said.

Mintzi Martinez-Rivera, former co-president of ILASSA, said he remembers the coffee hours held at the Leo R. Dowling International Center.

“Everybody knew that every Friday of the month, there was always going to be a coffee hour between 4 and 6 p.m., and all the student organizations would have a coffee hour,” he said. “The idea of the coffee hour was to have some form of cultural and educational event ... and you would have food and music education”.

Martinez–Rivera said without the international center, all the student organizations are scattered throughout the campus without a central place to gather and learn about different cultures around the world. Even though she said she sees this as a great loss for IU’s international community, Martinez-Rivera said she believes last Friday’s coffee hour was beneficial.

“Hopefully for ILASSA this would be a good jumping point for having the strength we once had when we were in the international center,” Martinez-Rivera said.