Utah dance group taking part in New York parade aims to promote Colombian culture

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Carnaval de Barranquilla en Utah, a dance group, will take part in New York's Hispanic Day Parade.
The group promotes Colombian culture in Utah and takes inspiration from the annual festival held in Barranquilla, a city on Colombia's Caribbean coast.
Participants perform traditional Colombian dances, and the Utah group will be one of many representing 21 countries at Sunday's parade.

TAYLORSVILLE — Those in Utah's Colombian community may have left the South American country behind, but it's hardly forgotten.

Wanting to hold on to some of the traditions of Colombia, Mayra Rincon teamed with Marilyn Gallardo in 2022 to create Carnaval de Barranquilla en Utah, a dance group inspired by the largest annual festival in the country that goes by the same name. Both are from Barranquilla, a city on Colombia's northern Caribbean coast.

"Our purpose is to teach people a little bit about our culture. … We want others to understand our culture. Not all Latinos are Mexicans," Rincon said, alluding to the predominant Hispanic group in Utah and the United States as a whole. Beyond that, participants aim to recreate a piece of their country here in the United States and impart Colombian culture to their U.S.-born kids.

They travel around Utah, also making forays to other adjacent states, but now group members will be performing on perhaps the largest stage they've ever graced, the Hispanic Day Parade in New York City on Sunday, Oct. 12. The Carnaval de Barranquilla en Utah is one of the numerous groups from around the country that will be taking part.

"We are so excited," said Rincon, who lives in Taylorsville. "It's the most important Hispanic parade in the United States."

They've been preparing with performances around Utah all summer, she said, and 23 dancers from the group will make the trip to New York for the mile-long parade along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. They'll be grouped with several other Colombian dance groups from around the United States that also took inspiration from the Carnaval de Barranquilla. A total of around 3,000 dancers representing 21 countries will participate.

Dancers from Carnaval de Barranquilla en Utah, composed of Colombians now living in Utah, will take part in the Hispanic Day Parade in New York on Sunday, Oct. 12. (Photo: Carnaval de Barranquilla en Utah)

"For us, it's very significant," Rincon said. The parade comes as Hispanic Heritage month, which goes from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, winds down.

The Utah group will don masks and costumes representing Marimonda, the emblematic figure of the Carnaval de Barranquilla, characterized by a long nose and oversized ears. They dance and move to cumbia, mapalé, garabato and other musical rhythms and styles typical in Colombia.

Participants in the parade are covering their own costs, though the Utah group has launched a GoFundMe* fundraising drive to help defray costs. But as Rincon describes it, taking part in Carnaval de Barranquilla is a labor of love for participants.

"What motivates us? Being able to do something apart from work or study and sharing a little of our culture, doing something that we normally do in Colombia," she said.

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