If you missed this Sunday’s annual “Fiesta DC,” you missed a lot. It’s an annual celebration of Latin American culture, organized by a smorgasbord of DC Latino groups. But the delicious food, great music, and lively dance do far more than just celebrate the region’s diverse cultures. They also provide an open window to Latin America for DC residents who are unfamiliar with the continent and its people.

Now more than ever, this is a window that we need. Even if you’ve never tasted an empanada or danced merengue, you surely have a mental image of Latin America. Whether it’s drug cartels in Mexico or guerrillas in Colombia, our society today has created a dark characterization of Latin Americans: vicious, warring peoples who resort to human smuggling, drug trafficking, or violence in order to make a living.

From drug violence in Mexico to undocumented immigration in the United States, this is a time of ever-growing concern about the southern half of our hemisphere. The chance for me to see the “other” human side of these issues at this critical time was incredible. I realized that in all the public discourse about crime and immigration, we have a horrible way of making our neighbors an “other”—seeing only a brown face, instead of a common humanity.

For me, Fiesta DC was a nice way to begin to break down this caricature. Perhaps the best way to experience a culture is to listen to that culture’s music and eat that culture’s food. The festival was the opportunity to just that. The tasty eats made for plenty of smiling, happy people in the crowd, and the fantastic music brought people closer through the common language of dance.

The festival was a great opportunity for me to get a glimpse into the beautiful cultures of Latin America. It’s clear that this wasn’t an event put on for outsiders like me—most of the crowd was Hispanic. But the crowd’s willingness to share their culture has opened my eyes to a vibrant and rich new world. For a small taste, check out the video footage I took:

Photo: Fiesta DC 2007. Flickr / jessabean