Speaker: Sacramento Bee reporter Steve McAnini has covered a variety of
cultures and ethnic issues around the world and here at home.

Steve McAnini: The senses tracks are the most integrated far more than say Los
Angeles. And that’s what makes Sacramento unusual.

Lina Fat: If you want to retain the best of the culture, people have to believe
in it. And then you have to seek out, you know, the way of how to
retain this type of culture. And I feel that to retain a culture
through music and dance is the best medium.

Speaker: To celebrate the region’s wealth of diversity, Jose and Roxana
Verego decided to open the Sacramento Cultural Dance Center.

Jose Verego: Right now, the center has a lot of Latino-based dances everything
from Salsa to Mexican traditional dance more commonly called for
political, for kids and adults.

Speaker: Learning dance at the center is coupled with the additional bonus
about lesson in history.

Jose Verego: The way dance styles from Mexico are divided are into regions
which, basically, represent a some type of historical period. The
regions that I will be showing you are customs from Jalisco, which
is the home of the Mariachi, the Mexican charro, the horsemen.
Whereas the hat that everybody thinks about when they think about
Mexican dance, right, which also has a practical use of course. So
you keep the sun and the dust off of that rider. So, these are really
fancy charro suits. They’re topped off with a nice leather belt and
a corbatin or a nice tie to impress the partners in the dance.

(Music playing)

Folk dance of Mexico basically is a representation of the lifestyle
of people. For instance, when you’re talking about a charro,
you’re talking about basically a horse rider suit, which is what
Jalisco is about, ranches, cattle, working on the farm, on the
ranchos. And that sort of everyday thing that people see is
reflected in the dance.

Roxana Verego: And it teaches our children how to be gentlemen. And it teaches
our women to have respect for themselves and more importantly it
teaches them to be proud of who they are and see the beauty of
their own culture so that my hope is that our students and my
children will go on and see the beauty of other cultures as well.

(Music playing)

Speaker: Roxana teaches Mexican folkloric dance. It’s a tradition handed
down from her family especially from her mother.

Myrna Garza: When I hear Mexican music and Mariachis, I mean, it reaches way
deep into my heart and it just kind of flutters because it takes me
away back to when my parents were living.

(Music playing)

Speaker: As her daughter Roxana performs, Myrna Garza remembers the
days when she too taught Mexican folkloric dance.

Myrna Garza: You cannot believe how I feel. I think it’s just like I’m out there
dancing. I’m out there dancing because my heart just grazes how
nice these children. When they dance, my heart swells but you
know because I think that’s another generation that’s going to
teach their children about how wonderful it is to know who you
are, where you’re from and with pride and dignity.

(Music playing)

Male Child: I learn in years Jalisco is a region in Mexico. And it’s important
because a lot of people appreciate it.

(Music playing)

Female Child: You can understand a lot of where you come from and where your
family comes from and what their customs were a long ago.

(Music playing)

Lina Fat: I was born and raised in Hong Kong. And we have, in Hong
Kong, it’s a melting pot. And I just took it for granted until I came
over here and I thought that you know, it’s not just quite the same
to a lot of people born in here. And they just want to be, no
planning in the society. And they forget about their own language
and culture. And I thought that it’s really important. And just like
history, you need to know the past in order to plan for a better
future.