A Celebration of San Jose’s Afro-Latino Roots — With Empanadas

This weekend, San Jose’s History Park will waft with salsa music and the intoxicating smell of deep-fried empanadas. But while food will be abundant, Saturday’s inaugural Afro-Latino Festival also aspires to go beyond the usual fun and games associated with this kind of cultural celebration. It wants to teach visitors how Afro Latinos have been part of the city’s fabric since its earliest colonial days.

All in all, it’s one more reminder that Silicon Valley is so much more than just the home to our region’s high-tech overlords.

The festival is being organized and hosted by San Jose’s African American Heritage House (AAHH), a nonprofit community center dedicated to educating the public about the history of African Americans in Santa Clara County — an often overlooked history that goes back nearly 250 years. And so, in addition to celebrating Afro-Latino culture through lively music and delicious food, the goal of the festival is to make visitors aware of how much of that history is specifically Afro-Latino: When El Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe was founded in 1777, the first batch of settlers included five families of mixed Mexican and African descent.

“It really goes back to just what we were taught in school and what we were not taught. Everyone knows about the transatlantic slave trade, to an extent, but they think in terms of where we are in the USA, right? But before those slave ships came here, they went to Cuba first,” AAHH president Susan Rigmaiden explains. “[The festival is] just to raise awareness on that. There’s a lot of cultural diversity within what people see as African or Black descent.”

Rigmaiden says she’s actually not certain herself of the exact size or scope of the Afro-Latino and Afro-Caribbean communities in Silicon Valley today. Santa Clara County’s Black population, on the whole, sits at around just 2.9%, and the readily available data doesn’t break down how many of those folks also identify as Latino. As Rigmaiden notes, a city like San Jose doesn’t really have a “Black side of town” these days, much less a specific Puerto Rican or Afro-Dominican neighborhood.

Part of the hope in launching this festival, then, is just to see who actually comes. “This is like a call to all people of Caribbean and Latin descent to come and join with us,” Rigmaiden says. “The South Bay community is just so interested in the whole diaspora of African descendants.”

Of course, the Afro-Latino Festival will boast no shortage of fun and games too — and, especially, of good food. Confirmed vendors, most of which are run by folks of Afro-Latino descent, include Nuyorican Empanadas, a Vallejo-based Puerto Rican food business known for its arroz con gandules plates. Doña Aida’s Empanadas, a Cuban-Puerto Rican pop-up based out of San Leandro, will be on hand to sell its trademark array of crispy crab, cheese and beef empanadas. There will also be a taco truck and a churro vendor, and Rigmaiden says she’s in the process of trying to add a Guatemalan food truck and a Salvadoran food truck to the lineup as well.

The festival will also feature the mix of clothing and jewelry vendors typical for this kind of cultural event, and a musical lineup headlined by Mio Flores’ SalSazz AllStars. Meanwhile, inside the Heritage House, an array of art exhibits and short films will allow visitors to delve more deeply into the region’s Afro Latino history — as well as more current topics, like one film that addresses the challenges that Blaxicans (Americans of Black and Mexican descent) still face today.

The Afro-Latino Festival will take place on Saturday, March 29, noon–6 p.m., at History Park (635 Phelan Rd.) in San Jose. Admission is free, but organizers are asking visitors to pre-register online.