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.

Photo: Katherine Chen

Inspired by Bad Bunny, students from Latinos Unidos hold up the banner to close off the assembly.

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