Creating a Latino Identity in the Nation's Capital : The Latino Festival

First published in 1999 in this study the author uses the annual Latino Festival as a framework for focusing the action and integrating many important informal and formal aspects of the Washington D.C. Latino Community. She demonstrates how the festival became a stage where relationships were defined, networks established, and identity enacted, and provided my window into the history and development of the community. For this study, she was interested in an interpretative framework appropriate to festival which would reflect the multiple voices and points of view found within the community. Seeking the voices of leaders and community members in interviews and in Spanish- and English-language newspapers. An ethnographic study of the Latino community in Washington, DC, centering on the annual festival. Cadaval looks at the social and cultural contexts of the beginning of the community, the community history of the festival, the participants, foodways and the Kiosko, and framing cultural identities in the parade.