On Saturday, Sept. 22, the Hispanic community came together for the 24th annual HoLa Festival to celebrate the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month.
The festival was organized by HoLa Hora Latina, a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote unity in the community by creating art, cultural and communication bridges between the greater Knoxville and Latino communities.
Angela Masini, the former president of HoLa, attended the festival to sell her family’s Puerto Rican coffee.
“Most Americans don’t know Puerto Rican coffee is good, so I wanted to bring it here for them to try,” Masini said.
According to Masini, her family immigrated from the Mediterranean island of Corsica to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico almost 200 years ago when Spain began giving land grants to Europeans who settled in the island. Her great uncle answered the call and in 1850 established a farm there. That farm was passed down to Masini’s grandfather, then father, and now to herself and her son.
They continue to run the farm where they grow and process Hacienda Masini coffee. Masini’s coffee prides itself on its lack of industrial processing. It’s naturally sun-dried, skillfully processed and carefully roasted in small batches on the family farm.
America Cerone also attended the festival with her family to sell jewelry and other objects like crucifixes, water fountains and paintings. The family business started in Morristown around five years ago.
“The Morristown (Latino) community is like a little town and we all know each other. And it’s growing,” Cerone said. “People kept asking for jewelry and I guess what people say, we’ll sell it.”
“This is the second year we came, and we like it. It’s good to come and see different cultures,” Cerone said. “There’s a lot in the Hispanic community, and there’s a lot of culture that we don’t know about but want to learn more about.”
The HoLa Festival attracted Hispanic people from different Latin American countries from Cuba to Puerto Rico. Food vendors from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico were all present to serve their authentic dishes to the people of Knoxville.
The festival also attracted more than just people within the Latino community. Thousands of people from the greater Knoxville community attended the festival as well.
Patrick Riggen and Delena Feliciano, a young Knoxville couple who attended the festival, talked about what the festival brings to the community.
“(The festival) brings together different communities to build one community and allows us to share our culture with the Knoxville community as well,” Feliciano said.
Riggen explained that about a month ago, the two went to the local Irish festival and got to celebrate his Irish background. Now it was Feliciano’s turn to connect to her Puerto Rican roots. To Riggen, the HoLa festival made it possible for him to see other cultures he has yet to experience.
Events like the HoLa Festival not only connect people of the same background, but also build bridges between different communities. It allows people to celebrate the things that make them who they are and share that with the world.
In the words of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, “To celebrate life is to celebrate the diversity that makes it beautiful.”
