On April 28, the Latinos Unidos club led their sixth annual assembly for PHS students in celebration of Hispanic heritage and culture. Students gathered in the gym to watch dances and songs performed by Latinos Unidos, Spanish class students, as well as PHS Studio Band.
This year, students played an active role in deciding which aspects of their culture they wanted to showcase. Suggested by Annelise Narvaez-Salgado ’28, the club put on a Mexican Folklorico dance inspired by her culture. While performances like Narvaez-Salgado’s were more traditional, other musical performances like the Dominican Bachata and Panamanian Reggaeton added more modern aspects to the assembly.
“Our Hispanic culture is very diverse. Celebrating the uniqueness of that [is] important and it has to be recognized and valued,” said Spanish teacher and event organizer Señora Idania Rodriguez-Mejia. “The assembly is for all of us to learn, including us Latinos and Hispanics, we’re learning from each other as well.”
Members of Latinos Unidos at PHS aimed to create an assembly not only for PHS students to learn about the different traditions of the Hispanic world, but also as an opportunity for different students to participate and perform.
“I think my favorite part is definitely seeing people from different parts of things come together. We have the band, we have people who maybe are not so familiar with the club [that] want to be a part of this. Seeing everybody come together, it’s nice to see that,” said Latinos Unidos club President Valeria Trujillo ’26.
Along with uniting the community, Latinos Unidos integrated a Bad Bunny theme at the end of their assembly, inspired by his recent performance at the Super Bowl half-time show. They centered their performance around his message: The only thing more powerful than hate is love.
“I was in my friend’s car and her dad was listening to Bad Bunny,” said Latinos Unidos leader Aimy Solares ’26. “He [said] ‘I love Bad Bunny’s music,’ and ‘I want to go to Puerto Rico.’ I was so happy that Bad Bunny is bringing all these different kinds of people together.”
Student performers were also excited to learn more about Hispanic traditions and to show their classmates what they had prepared. The student organizers like Trujillo tried to make each assembly different from the last in order to recaptivate the audience.
“This year we definitely [wanted] to make it more inclusive. We were trying to keep that balance of entertaining and showing how beautiful the culture is, but also educating and familiarizing people with our culture,” says Trujillo. “We [wanted] to include people from the crowd [to] be more interactive … like a game from our culture that we could bring people down to play.”
Michelle Donis ’29, like many others who attended the assembly, expressed excitement in seeing the Latino representation at the assembly.
“Hispanic heritage [is] my family and culture and how I embrace everything around me,” said Donis. “[I was] excited to see what the club had prepared for everybody and to show what our culture means to us and how we embrace it.”
In addition to fostering understanding about Hispanic culture, Rodriguez-Mejia hopes that students in the assembly can become more comfortable in expressing their identity and that the audience feels supported enough to do the same.
“It’s my identity that creates me. It is extremely important to be allowed to wear what you want, to speak the language that you feel comfortable with,” said Rodriguez-Mejia. “That doesn’t mean that you’re going to put away or push away other cultures. We’re all learning from each other.