March 2000

OUR WORK:

The Resource Center has teamed up with the Mercado Central to sponsor educational fieldtrips for students. We call them the Encuentros Latinos. Since November, we have held encuentros with hosted high school Spanish language students from Hopkins, Cambridge and Wayzata, and older students from Bethel College and Brainerd Community College, just to name a few.

 The encuentro theme is the marketplace, which is more than a place to shop. In almost every pueblo across the Americas, the market is a major cultural center. It’s a place for meeting friends and finding out what’s happening in the neighborhood.

Each encuentro begins at the Resource Center for songs and a puppet show about markets with Emiliano Silva; stories about new Latino immigrants in south Minneapolis by Rosita Balch; or a presentation on why people leave Latin America and why they come to Minnesota by Meredith Sommers.

Most encuentros then move a mile west to the Mercado Central, a cooperatively owned market of 40 Latino small businesses at Bloomington Avenue and Lake Street. Most Mercado products—food, clothing, crafts, CDs and much more—come from Latin America. One Encuentro activity is searching for all the uses of corn in the Mercado. It soon becomes clear why many Latin American indigenous groups refer to themselves as the "people of corn."

Another encuentro activity is a "scavenger hunt" that guides students through the Mercado’s maze of shops and helps them find photos of Emiliano Zapata, statues of Pacha Mama, shrines to Our Lady of Guadalupe and crafts that support the modern-day Zapatistas of Chiapas.

To schedule an Encuentro Latino or get more information, call Meredith Sommers 612-276-0788 (ext. 13).