On the University of Missouri's homecoming Saturday, football fans and families assembled for Mizzou’s 115th Homecoming. But across town, a handful of locals gathered at Columbia’s Open Door Church for a very different celebration — one with Panamanian dancers and a mariachi band.
It was the Hispanic Heritage Fiesta, a new tradition in Columbia.
Mexican banners, known as papel picados, hung from the ceilings, and flowers decorated the wall above a colorful map of South America. In another room, guests played lotería, a game similar to bingo.
Idalia Marisol McNulty was leading a dance lesson. McNulty and her team, el Grupo Folklórico Panameño, celebrate and teach Panamanian culture through dance. At the festival, they laid their colorful dresses on tables and they walked through dance movements, which almost always involve a dancing session with the audience.
"We love to invite everyone to dance," said McNulty, "and not only watch us dance, but come dance with us. Share with us our happiness."
Spanish immersion programs like Escuelita Alegría and CóMo Estás were also presiding over festival activities, keeping kids busy painting monarch butterflies, a symbol of migration in Mexican culture.
Jaymes Schrock is the co-founder and president of Como Comunidad, a nonprofit serving Hispanic communities in Missouri.
"You had food, you had fun, you had music," Schrock said. "You had everything that you needed to have a fiesta."
"I had a number of people come up to me," said Schrock, "some even crying, saying how much they appreciated having that event and being able to celebrate their heritage and their culture with other people who were maybe from a different nation or from the same nation. It was just wonderful to hear that over and over and over again of people saying this felt like home. This felt like a celebration. This felt like a loving community."
Back at the fiesta, the sounds of Mariachi Flor de Missouri fill the room. A selection of cultural foods and snacks are on offer, including a Puerto Rican-owned bakery, a stand with Mexican snacks, and a market selling Central American products.
Rosa Herrera is demonstrating how to make a Mexican salsa. Herrera is Guatemalan, but learned how to make the salsa from ladies at her church.
Herrera has lived in Columbia for eleven years. She says the community has always done things for the Hispanic community, but there hasn’t been a gathering this big.
The population of Hispanic residents has increased by more than a quarter in Columbia in the span of five years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Rebecca Roberts and her mom Rachel are both originally from Texas, where there’s a distinct Hispanic population. This fiesta, they say, feels like home.
"It’s growing," said Rebecca Roberts. "I'm coming from Texas; it's a little more sparse. However, it is definitely growing, and I feel like we're starting to come together more in these difficult times. But you know I feel like the camaraderie, and just the warmth and openness that our culture is, you know, everything. I mean it just makes such a difference in the world now."
Fiesta-goers say they plan to continue building and celebrating culture through events like this, and they're already looking forward to the next fiesta.
Missouri News Network Data Editor Mariia Novoselia contributed to this report.
