{"id":477919,"date":"2026-09-28T03:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T03:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/477919\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T03:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T03:04:10","slug":"lsa-event-spotlights-central-american-culture-at-usc-annenberg-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/477919\/","title":{"rendered":"LSA event spotlights Central American culture at USC \u2013 Annenberg Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/usclsa.wordpress.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">USC\u2019s Latino Student Assembly (LSA)<\/a> will host Centroamerica Vive Aqu\u00ed this upcoming Tuesday, September 29, bringing four Central American professors together for a panel discussion on culture, and their experiences as Central Americans in academia. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The event will take place from 5 to 6 p.m. in TCC 227 and will feature food and activities for students. According to the organizers, the event is intended to highlight the Central American communities and encourage students to learn more about cultures beyond their own. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Yaretzi Hurtado, a junior majoring in anthropology and Co\u2013Advocacy Chair of Cultural Affairs, pitched the idea for Centroamerica Vive Aqu\u00ed as part of her efforts to create programming that highlights Central American communities. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cMy role is to plan events, but also to make sure that people are represented,\u201d Hurtado said. \u201cI want to work on getting people to be more comfortable with learning about other cultures, because I know that sometimes it\u2019s a little intimidating to be presented face to face with something that you don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The panel will feature four professors from different universities, all of whom are Central American. They will discuss their experiences as academics and what it means to maintain their cultural identity while living in a different environment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Fernanda Morales Soto, a junior majoring in political science and LSA\u2019s Co\u2013Executive Director, began her journey with LSA her second semester of freshman year as a programming assistant, and worked her way up from there. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s very much just a celebration of the culture,\u201d Said Morales Soto about the event, \u201cI would say we feel like there just needs to be more representation for [the Central American] regions. They\u2019re often overlooked in American society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">According to Morales Soto, LSA held a census over the summer to learn more about students\u2019 backgrounds and what they wanted to see from the organization. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cWe were able to see that there [were] a lot of different students [who have] never seen Salvadoran tradition,\u201d said Morales Soto, \u201cSomebody mentioned that they\u2019ve never seen their homelands festival.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Centroamerica Vive Aqu\u00ed is part of a broader effort by LSA leadership to diversify its programming and create more events focused on different Latine communities. Yarely Martinez, LSA\u2019s assistant director, said that Morales Soto, and her co-executive director Ben Nava, ran on a campaign of expanding the organization\u2019s programming to include a greater focus on Central American communities. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cOur school is predominantly a specific region,\u201d said Martinez, a junior majoring in legal studies, \u201cI still think it\u2019s important for everyone to be heard and seen and know that the school still appreciates them. [&#8230;] [To] have an event specifically for Central Americans just kind of opens that up and makes them feel more welcomed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Hurtado said she hopes the event will encourage students who are not Central American to learn about the culture and connect with other members of the Latine community. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI think that culture becomes richer when we take time to learn about each other\u2019s stories,\u201d Hurtado said, \u201cThis event just invites everybody, whether you\u2019re Central American or not, to become curious about Central American culture and leave more connected to other Latinos.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI just think it\u2019s important to expand our vision of Latinidad.\u201d She continued, \u201cA lot of us are immigrants, whatever country we came from, a lot of us speak Spanish, a lot of us are first gen, and I think this is a great opportunity to just connect on our similarities.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USC\u2019s Latino Student Assembly (LSA) will host Centroamerica Vive Aqu\u00ed this upcoming Tuesday, September 29, bringing four Central&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[187537,64636,48,52,51,187535,187538,47,50,49,187536],"class_list":["post-477919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-central-americans","tag-hispanic-community","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-latine-student-assembly","tag-latines","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-usc-lsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}