Trinity Students Experience Central American Culture in Hartford

Trinity students recently stepped outside of their classroom to experience the sights, sounds, and flavors of Central American culture in downtown Hartford.

Students in the first-year seminar, “The History of Food in Latin America & the Caribbean,” and students in the History and American Studies course, “Central American Immigration to the U.S.,” attended several events away from the traditional learning environment with their professor, Dario A. Euraque, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History and International Studies.

The Taste of Central America on September 13 at Hartford City Hall was a part of the larger Central American Celebration of Independence. Each year, the event highlights five Central American countries that gained their independence from Spain around the same time: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

This year’s independence celebration in Hartford spotlighted Honduras, with the raising of the Honduran flag, singing of the Honduran national anthem, traditional food and dances, and messages from prominent members of the local Honduran community. The program was organized by the Central American United Committee of Connecticut and Trinity’s Center for Caribbean Studies, which is co-directed by Euraque.

Euraque—who is originally from Honduras—spoke to the crowd, which included many of his Trinity students. He said that there is great value in connecting students to learning environments beyond the classroom. “Learning happens wherever one is critically conscious of facing something and engaging in something that you’re not familiar with,” he said.

“Food is something that is closely linked to memory, and they’re reading about it,” Euraque added. “I want students to be thinking: where did this food come from? And what does that have to say about the people who are serving it, as opposed to the people who are consuming it? And what is it that we share about food?”

Nora Butterly ’29 said that she was grateful to have this hands-on experience as part of her first-year seminar. “It makes you realize that culture and history is around you every day,” Butterly said. “I really liked being able to meet people and to see this culture, identity, and history being in our present environment.”

The other two events that students attended took place on Trinity’s campus on September 14. One was a screening of the documentary, “The Banana Grower in his Labyrinth,” at Cinestudio. The film, directed by Hispano Duron, is based on Un hondureño ante la Modernidad de su País: la Vida de Rafael Lopez Padilla (1875-1963) (A Honduran and the Modernity of his Country: the Life and Times of Rafael Lopez Padilla), Euraque’s biography of the banana plantation owner from Honduras. Some of the students also were able to meet Duron when he visited Euraque’s “Central American Immigration to the U.S.” class before the screening.

Following the screening, Euraque’s students and the public were invited to a reception at the Poon Family Gallery in the Crescent Center for Arts and Neuroscience for an exhibit of paintings by Honduran painter Javier Sanchez. Images created by Sanchez were featured on the cover of books written by Euraque, and the paintings in the exhibition were associated with Euraque’ s historical work on Honduras.

After the events, Euraque gave students an assignment to reflect on what they learned from their experiences.

Alex Carbonaro ’29 connected her personal and classroom experiences with what she encountered at the events. After attending the Taste of Central America celebration, Carbonaro considered her own familial cultural experience. “I come from a big Italian family, and food is also a huge part of our culture, so it’s fun to learn about it from other cultures as well,” she said.

Nate Weston ’29 said that he learned a lot by connecting the classroom to real life. He said, “I learned how different cultures love food and how they use a variety of different food that they grow, or they get from other cultures and use it in their own ways to express themselves.”

Euraque added, “I think given the College’s mission and learning goals for students to live transformative lives, these events are instantiation of that rhetoric.”

See more photos in the gallery below.