Alina is an Americorps volunteer who has lived in Milton-Freewater for the past two years, working as the director of the M-F Downtown Alliance.
The Cinco de Mayo festival just happened in Milton Freewater. Are there other places where you see arts and culture organically happening in town?
I think all of Cinco de Mayo was probably a huge one, but there were probably very few of us Anglos involved with it– or even attending.
Do events like that create division in the community?
That’s why we changed the title of the event to “Cinco de Mayo Community United”– instead of just “Cinco de Mayo.” But I think a cultural event like that can’t be bent to be some amalgamation of two cultures– it has to be their cultural thing that we (as non-Latinos) just have to learn to enjoy. I loved being in Mexico for two days. That was awesome.
I hadn’t spoken Spanish in a really long time and by the end of the day Saturday, contextually and everything, I was like “I know what she’s talking about! I remember all of this!” And even if you don’t understand everything, you can still experience everything.
Like stepping into someone else’s shoes.
I imagine that probably a lot of Americans who aren’t native to here are making a lot of compromises in terms of the values and traditions they were raised with. They probably find a lot that’s intimidating. So for white people to at least give them one thing that feels like it belongs to them, and is recognizable to their heritage and their community thing is fine! And hopefully it can grow to where non-Latino people can love it. And at least love the food. The food’s delicious! But yes, I realize it is intimidating. And I think probably for white people it feels somewhat unfriendly, and so we assume that these other people will be unfriendly to us as well.
Are they?
It’s the exact opposite.