Americas Latino Festival asks Hispanics to back environmentalist cause

Under the slogan “Uniting diverse communities for a sustainable future,” dozens of Hispanic artists, entrepreneurs and educators of the United States and the rest of the hemisphere will take part over the next three days in the Americas Latino Festival, which, starting Saturday, will be held simultaneously in Denver and Boulder, Colorado.

“This festival is an educational project to build communities through a growing network of alliances and cooperation at the international, national and local levels,” the executive director of the festival, Irene Vilar, said Saturday during the inauguration ceremony at the Boulder Public Library.

“The festival unites these diverse communities through a dialogue on the environment, health, education, culture and small businesses,” she said.

Eminent speakers at the festival include producer and writer Ray Suarez, author of a PBS miniseries about the history of Latinos, Mexican writer Laura Esquivel, author of the bestseller “Like Water for Chocolate,” ArgentineAmerican writer Sonia Nazario (“La Travesia de Enrique”), and DominicanAmerican writer Junot Diaz, professor of creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT.

The festival will also offer films, concerts and expos, all aimed by the organizers at highlighting the fact that the Hispanic community across the Americas is committed to saving the environment.

“This festival promises to be a comingtogether to create a fertile atmosphere for sharing ideas on subjects that affect the environment, and seeing how we’re going to work together to deal with those environmental problems,” festival spokeswoman Natalia Berry told Efe.

“If conservation projects are not given importance in our cities, or don’t win the participation of young people, our ability to shape the future of our planet will be totally undermined,” Berry said.