Cooler but still well above normal this week

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

The Latino community in the Twin Cities has a long history, dating back to the 1920s and 30s when Mexican immigrants moved to 

the West Side neighborhood of Saint Paul 

to work in meat packing plants and sugar beet fields.

Over the past ninety years diverse groups of Latino immigrants have continued to settle in Minnesota in waves, from Mexico, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, and Colombia among others.

The result is a community in which some are third and fourth generation Minnesotans, while others are still adjusting to a completely new culture.

Recently we invited a group of Latino artists to MPR's UBS Forum to share their own perspectives. Susana de León is both a lawyer and the director of the 

. De León says with the latest waves of immigrants there has been a revival of traditional culture.

calls herself a "SotaRican." She is one of those younger Latinos who embraces her cultural traditions while simultaneously creating contemporary music. Isa, the child of Latino activists who moved to Minnesota from New York, says she worries about the history of her community being lost.

Maria Isa is in her mid-twenties; author 

 has been living in the Twin Cities suburbs since long before Isa was born.

Benitez says this new resurgence in Latino culture in the Twin Cities comes is a welcome change. The daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and an American father, at the age of fourteen her parents sent her from their home in El Salvador to be "Americanized" on her grandparents Missouri farm.

While the artists we spoke to all referred to a dynamic Latino cultural scene, many also expressed frustration at a lack of coverage, and at not having better access to funding.

Ricardo Levins Morales was a co-founder of the Northland Poster Collective, which for thirty years provided the visual imagery for labor movement campaigns. Now he runs his own studio, 

 He says funders need to do a better job of reaching out to diverse artists.

Photographer Xavier Tavera admits sometimes getting access to funding is simply a matter of overcoming one's own insecurities - something he learned first hand after moving to Minnesota from Mexico.

Unfortunately one thing many Latino Americans share in common is the less than warm welcome they receive once they leave their predominantly Latino neighborhood.  As a lawyer, and in her own personal experience, Susana de León is all too familiar with such experiences.

Perhaps as more Latino art makes its way into Twin Cities galleries and performance venues, the people it represents will find greater respect and understanding from their fellow Minnesotans.

Arts and Culture

State of the Arts Blog

Marianne Combs

Author

A group of artists share their perspectives on a vibrant Latino community in which some are third and fourth generation Minnesotans, while others are still adjusting to their new home.

A new wave of Latino artists come into their own

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox