Diamante puts spotlight on variety and creativity in Hispanic and Latino culture

The annual Latino Diamante Awards are styled after big-time red carpet awards ceremonies – think the Grammys or Oscars. A chef is hired for the reception, and the evening begins with hors d’oeuvres. And then everyone transitions to the theater for an evening rich with musical entertainment. The schedule looks like this: performance, speech, performance, speech, performance, award, etc. In showbiz lingo, they keep it moving.

Yet there’s more to the Diamante Awards than a good party each October. Each award honors a person or organization that has made significant contributions to North Carolina’s Latino and Hispanic communities, while the programming celebrates the sheer diversity of the Spanish-speaking world. There are more than 20 Hispanic countries worldwide, says Roberto Perez, chair of Diamante Art and Cultural Center’s board of directors, and each one has a different culture. The five musical acts at each year’s awards ceremony represent just a sampling of the remarkable variety of the Spanish-speaking world.

The Diamante Awards are only one of Diamante’s annual offerings. This is also the organization behind the Ritmo Latino festival every May, December’s Tree of Hope and January’s Three Kings Day Parade, all held in Cary. Throughout the year, too, it organizes talks and gatherings to explore cultural (and culinary) diversity. Diamante’s mission is tied directly to the promotion and celebration of North Carolina’s Hispanic and Latino communities. And anyone can contribute, says Perez – so long as they have some art in them.

“We are very diverse. You don’t need to be Hispanic to be on the board,” he says. “We do request that you are inclined to art and culture to be on the board. Art comes in many shapes, from music to visual arts to writing. Everybody has somehow a little bit of art in themselves. Everybody.”

This emphasis is especially meaningful to Melinda Wiggins, executive director of Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF), a Durham nonprofit that won Diamante’s 2017 Art and Culture Award. She appreciates that the farm worker-oriented nonprofit was recognized in terms of arts and creativity. Not everyone thinks of social justice and advocacy organizations in those terms, she notes. But Diamante noticed.

“We do a lot of documentaries where we interview workers about their stories,” Wiggins says. “We do collaborative documentary projects where workers can share their different experiences with each other.” SAF also curates visual arts exhibits, such as a retrospective now on display at UNC’s Davis Library.

Wiggins’ relationship with Diamante goes back a long way. She knew Diamante founder and former executive director Lizette Watko before Diamante’s 1998 founding, when Watko was owner of North Carolina’s first Spanish newspaper, La Voz de Carolina. Wiggins recalls that Watko’s paper, like the nonprofit she would start, lifted up the contributions of Latinos statewide.

Now, nearly two decades later, Diamante continues to highlight the arts and culture of Latinos who, as Wiggins points out, are sometimes generalized or thought of as one homogenous group.

Part of this mission is January’s upcoming Three Kings Day Parade, where people dress in the custumes of their countries and parade.

“A lot of businesses and a lot of people come,” Perez says. “We give out a bunch of toys to needy families and a lot of food.”

Like the Diamante Awards ceremony, it’s a good time. And like the ceremony, it has a deeper purpose. The world is changing, says Perez, and the United States’ influence means many Caribbean and South American countries that used to give gifts on Three Kings Day rather than Christmas are now moving their focus to Christmas as the gift-giving day – that, or they’re celebrating both. Yet get away from big cities and into rural towns and Three Kings Day is still celebrated on Jan. 6, true to tradition. Diamante is exposing people who may not have heard of this holiday or experienced it to the sheer variety of Hispanic and Latino culture, right here in North Carolina.

“They ask us, ‘what is Three Kings Day?’ ” says Perez. “I was brought up with Three Kings Day. We never received gifts on the 25th!”

This story was originally published November 22, 2017 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Diamante puts spotlight on variety and creativity in Hispanic and Latino culture."