By Jasmine White
THE scents of savory dishes and the sounds of a vast array of Hispanic cultural music filled the air and streets outside of the Student Recreational Center.
On Oct.7, students in the Bachelor’s of Social Work program, led by its director Irma Sandoval-Arocho, hosted a Hispanic Heritage tabling event, Mercado Central, sponsored by the Center of Community and Belonging and accompanied by music courtesy of 107.7 The Bronc.
BSW provided and served tacos de birria and flautas with horchata and Agua de Jamaica beverages to accompany the Latin flavors. A series of artists, creatives and organizations partook in tabling; mixing Rider with its neighboring communities.
Two Indigenous artists and co-owners of Jamm Gallery, an art gallery in Morganville, New Jersey, Sonia Tepas and Miguel Martinez, brought their artistry to the event to show off their gratification in their cultural backgrounds.
“[Martinez] is from Mexico, and I’m Salvadoran, so we’re very prideful in our work,” Tepas said. “We try to translate [our culture] into our work.”
Martinez used T-shirts as his canvases and created street wear, using airbrush paints on clothing as a way of freeing his creative side and circling back to his Mexican roots through the imagery.
“I’ve been doing art forever and I really kicked off around 2020 when I started airbrushing during lockdown,” Martinez said. “I feel like my art is a message and I’m really just a vessel toward something bigger.”
On the painting side, Jazmyn Jones, an artist from Puerto Rico, presented her childhood experiences and expressed her love for Puerto Rican Culture through her work. Jones captured intergenerational practices and key pieces of her life on canvas and in photography.
There were tables with stunning jewels, displaying bracelets and necklaces, along with hands on tables, where students decorated miniature pots, painted rocks and created kites that were flown around the Campus Mall.
Additionally, there was a face painting station, attracting a number of students to their table with a plethora of paint colors, sparkles and designs.
Club de Español, a newly established club on campus, served a Salvadoran dish called pupusas, filled with cheese and chicken and an assortment of blue and white decorated cupcakes.
Junior elementary education major and Public Relations Chairman Stephany Mendez and sophomore biology major and treasurer Natalia Hernandez explained the premise of Club de Español.
“We basically have little events representing every Latin American country, like today we are representing El Salvador,” Stephany Mendez said. “We hope to see people like us embracing every culture, understand what their values and purposes are.”
“Pretty much,” Hernandez added. “Don’t forget to practice your Spanish too!”
Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, Incorporated also tabled along with other identity-based organizations: Latin American Student Organization, Puerto Rican Association for Human Development and Mercer County Hispanic Association, Incorporated.
Trenton Area Soup Kitchen representatives Thalia Mendez and Ana Reyes collaborated with Rider’s event, emphasizing their love for getting involved with the community. TASK is an organization that allows for people to come together and serve the Trenton community.
“We love working with the community, especially being employees of [TASK], but just citizens of Mercer County,” Thalia Mendez said. “We love coming together, something like especially being Latina, something like this, bringing us together.”
Yanuel Santos is multimedia editor of The Rider News and is the president of Club de Español. He had no part in the writing or editing of this story.
