FOCO

Columbia College Chicago’s Latino Heritage Celebration - FOCO 2008
 
Columbia College Chicago’s Office of Latino Cultural Affairs is pleased to announce the start of FOCO, our annual celebration of Latino heritage. Foco is the Spanish word for focus. We encourage you to attend these programs and events dedicated to the exploration of Latino cultures and identities around the world.
 
This year’s FOCO theme is La Raza Cósmica (The Cosmic Race). The theme is based on an essay published in 1925 by philosopher and educator José Vasconcelos which expressed an ideology of embracing all the different cultures that make up Latino America. Vasconcelos predicted a future in which joy, love, fantasy, and creativity would prevail over rationalism -- and ethnic differences would give way to a fully mixed race, a "cosmic race," in which all the better qualities of each race would persist and create a cultural synthesis.  Beginning in the 1960s, ethnically-based political movements for civil rights shortened the term to "La Raza" to distinguish Spanish-speakers and Latin Americans and to break down the national and  enerational barriers between the various segments of the Latino population. We will
explore this theme and others in a variety of presentations and activities throughout our FOCO celebration.
 
Please see the attached calendar detailing this fall’s FOCO programming. We hope you will join us as we seek to build community and create change (crea cambio) here at Columbia College Chicago. ¡Te Invito!