Latin American festival returns to St. Augustine with Grammy-winning band
Co-founder, from Colombia, said she wants to share culture and help bring people together
Sheldon Gardner
With Grammy-winning salsa band Grupo Niche on tap, a Latin American festival will return to the heart of St. Augustine on Saturday with cultural events, food and more.
The festival came from the founders' desire to share Latin American culture and to connect with what they saw as a growing Latin American presence in the area, said Erika Quintero, who founded the event with her husband, Michael Weitz.
Unidos En La Música: A Latin American Festival will be from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday at Francis Field at 25 W. Castillo Drive.
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In addition to Grupo Niche, performers will include Baba Caiman, Los Ineditos del Vallenato and Fuisha Funk from Mexico. The festival will also offer Latin food vendors, a mural competition, cultural exhibitions, historical re-enactors, representatives from the Castillo de San Marcos and craft vendors, according to an event press release.
Details are at unidosenlamusica.com. General admission tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the gate. Children 13 and under are free.
The event is under the umbrella of the nonprofit Latin Community Services, which seeks "to promote education and change the conversation while fighting stigmas within the Latin American Community," according to the event website.
'Latin heritage to me is my entire identity'
Quintero, 37, who is also a leader of the nonprofit, said the event grew out of conversations with her husband Weitz and friends. And the decision came in part because of the birth of their son, Ayden, 4.
The family has lived in St. Johns County for about 10 years. Quintero came to the U.S. as a child.
"Latin heritage to me is my entire identity," she said. "I was born in Colombia. I came here when I was 4 years old with my mom as an undocumented immigrant, much like many others. We crossed the border in Mexico. I lived in this country for 14 years undocumented while going to school. I was accepted to Rutgers University while being undocumented, so I got my green card kind of in that time period and subsequently became a U.S. citizen. … It's who I am. It's who my family is. It's our struggle. It's our plight. It's our desire to overcome."
After moving to the U.S., Quintero said her mother made it a priority for the family to keep Colombian traditions.
"She didn't want us to lose the language or the culture or the customs, so she like cooked for us and taught us everything the Colombian way," Quintero said. "She really didn't want us to lose that part. There's so many people in our Latin American community that do the opposite because they want to fit in."
Quintero and other organizers held the first festival in 2019. Because of COVID-19, the festival didn't take place in 2020 or 2021, she said.
Amid a "really charged" political environment and misinformation being shared about the Latin American community, Quintero and her husband questioned the world they brought their son into, she said. They wanted him to experience a world with diversity and inclusivity.
"That's why we though the festival was this just great idea because we not only want to tap into the Latin American market … (we want to show people) who we are authentically, who we are in our culture and how many connections we have with American culture," she said.
The festival focuses on highlighting those things in a fun way, through things such as salsa and bachata workshops and authentic food and games, Quintero said.
Quintero will be a part of the musical lineup, too, as the lead singer for Baba Caiman. Among other things, the cover band fuses popular songs with Latin American styles.
"For example, we'll play an Adele song as a bachata, so it's still an English song, but we play it with different rhythms. We kind of just play around with it," she said.
Connecting with the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine
The event is being held in partnership with the Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas national monuments with support from the National Park Foundation’s Latino Heritage Fund program, according to a park service news release.
As part of the festivities, the National Park Service will host a free screening of the Disney movie "Encanto" on Friday on the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument lawn. Children's activities start at 5:30 p.m., and the movie will start at 7:45 p.m. People should bring jackets, blankets and snacks, according to the release.
“Through the spirit of music and culture, we join Unidos En La Música to celebrate St. Augustine’s rich Latino heritage and community and the role of Latino heritage sites within our national parks in preserving and telling these stories," Gordie Wilson, superintendent of Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas national monuments, said in the release.