Frida Fest celebrates Latino heritage, family pride in Highlandtown
Highlandtown’s Casa de la Cultura turned into a vivid Latino showcase, with Frida Kahlo art, food and family programming anchoring the neighborhood’s identity.
Butterfly wings, Frida Kahlo-inspired artwork and the smell of tacos and pupusas filled Casa de la Cultura on Gough Street as Highlandtown marked the third annual Frida Fest, a free evening celebration that turned one block into a statement about who lives here and what the neighborhood values.
The event ran from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, May 1, inside the Latino cultural center at 3403 Gough St., where organizers layered face painting, cultural attire, music and public art into a single space. The result was less like a typical festival and more like a neighborhood showcase, with families moving from one display to another as the building became a visible expression of Latino heritage in Baltimore.
Alejandra Martinez, who led the event, said Kahlo remains a lasting influence and said the festival gave children in the neighborhood a way to see pride in roots that connect them to Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia and other places across Latin America. That message carried extra weight in Highlandtown, a community that is about 15% Hispanic and has long been one of Baltimore’s most recognizable Latino enclaves.
Casa de la Cultura opened in August 2022 after Nuestras Raices transformed a former parsonage on Gough Street into what it calls a House of Culture. The space has become a home base for the organization’s year-round work, which Angelo Solera said is centered on preserving and educating around cultural richness. Nuestras Raices says its mission is to reconnect Hispanic and Latino U.S.-born children and parents to native culture and heritage through educational, artistic and cultural programs.
Solera pointed to free youth offerings that continue beyond festival night, including sports, dance, capoeira and Afro-Latino music. Those programs depend in part on outside support, including a $25,000 grant Nuestras Raices received from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund’s President’s Fund in December 2023. BCYF was established in 2020 and is financed by a dedicated Baltimore City property tax of three cents for every $100 of assessed value.
Frida Fest also landed at a moment when immigration enforcement fears have sharpened across the region, giving the celebration a deeper emotional edge for families looking for a place that feels unmistakably theirs. In Highlandtown, Casa de la Cultura has become that place, and Frida Fest showed how a single building can hold art, language, memory and daily community life at once.
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