Co-Op High School | Culture & Community | Immigration | Arts & Culture | Hispanic Heritage Month
Top: Layla Travers, a senior studying theater, helps finish setting up. Bottom: Students in Spanish classes pose at the end of the night. Rojas, of ceviche fame, is in the blue fleece at the far right. Lucy Gellman Photos.
In the cafeteria at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, students were ready for a feast. Arepas sat beside a pot of pozole rojo, the broth the color of terracotta bricks with a shimmer of oil on top. By the wall, flan and sheetcake shared counter space with browned, sugar-rolled churros and dainty cups of fresas con crema. Across the room, friends Mariely Maldonado and Camila Carreon laid out a new set of dominoes, a rainbow of primary colors peeking out from the tiles.
Just then, sophomore Alison Rojas burst through the doorway, a ceramic dish of ceviche and tray of potatoes balanced in her hands. She beamed as teacher Odalis Mercado peeled back the tinfoil, exposing a bowl filled to the brim, and topped with chopped onions and bright, neon-colored lime slices. Rojas was exactly where she needed to be.
That scene came to Co-Op Wednesday night, as a tight-knit group of students closed out Hispanic Heritage Month with a celebration of food, culture and artmaking from across Latin America. The brainchild of Mercado, a Spanish teacher at the school, the event was designed to amplify the breadth and beauty of a diaspora, from arroz con grandules and carne asada to Día de Muertos-inspired face painting. Each student brought a different dish from Latin America, based on a unit in diet and culture in Mercado’s Spanish IV class.
It marks the school’s inaugural Hispanic Heritage Month dinner, although Co-Op has celebrated the month with an all-school arts assembly for years. This year, it also comes amidst a national landscape that is increasingly violent toward immigrant families, from a Supreme Court that effectively legalized racial profiling to a growing culture of fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) among both citizens and noncitizens in New Haven.
Wednesday, that apprehension remained palpable, as the event took place only hours after eight people were disappeared in an ICE raid of a car wash on Dixwell Avenue in Hamden.
Spanish teachers Odalis Mercado and Laura Capo.
“I just think it’s important to acknowledge what people have been through, and [let them know] to never give up,” said Mercado, who has taught at the school since 2018, and was inspired by a unit around food that she saw while student teaching in Greenwich several years ago. “Especially now, with the climate of the world.”
“I think it’s very important as a school community to make it clear that we celebrate culture here,” added fellow Spanish teacher Laura Capo, who has taught at the school for 11 years. As if on cue, sophomore Lisandi Monter came over with a rose-tinted cup of fresas con crema, a plastic spoon already propped amidst the chopped berries.
For Mercado, it’s both personal and professional: she is from Puerto Rico, and Spanish was her first language at home. Her mom, who helped cook for Wednesday’s celebration, is from Humacao; her dad is from Aguadilla. She grew up learning to be proud of her heritage, including the spirited Spanish they spoke at home and the dishes they cooked and ate to help bridge the distance.
But she also knows that nights like Wednesday’s can make a little bit of magic. In and outside her classroom, she hears her students talk about current events. They know what's happening in the country, and many of them are afraid. She wants them to know that they are safe and respected at school.
Top: Mariely Maldonado and Camila Carreon, both sophomores studying visual art. Bottom: Rojas' ceviche.
Motioning around the cafeteria—which students had transformed with crepe- and construction paper flowers, she pointed out the stations she had set up in the hours after school, from a table with mosaic art inspired by Antoni Gaudí to a game of Latin American trivia that went largely untouched during the night.
On a table near the front of the room, she and students had put together a buffet, complete with dishes from Puerto Rico to Paraguay to Peru (many of her students have familial roots in Tlaxcala, a Sister City to New Haven, and the table was heavy with Mexican food throughout the night). Once the party got started, she buzzed between students and an electric griddle, warming up the arepas until they were fragrant and just-browned on both sides.
Throughout the night, many of the students noted how grateful they were for the space. Monter, who is studying strings with educator Henry Lugo, jumped at the chance to bring fresas con crema, a sweet, creamy dish that she and her six siblings grew up eating at family gatherings (“If I heard it was there, I would run to get it,” she said with a smile).
Top: Lisandi Monter. Bottom: Senior Dejanay Cammock, who is studying theater. Born and raised for the first seven years of her life in Jamaica, Cammock appreciated the chance to learn more about Hispanic Heritage Month as both a curious student and as an immigrant herself. “I definitely would say it feels empowering because you’re rejecting the systems [that discriminate against immigrants]," she said.
The dish, like tres leches cake, features a thick, sweet cloud of evaporated, condensed, and regular milk and vanilla, with chopped strawberries that taste like the final, bright notes of summer. For Monter, it’s a chance to talk about Mexico’s contributions to the world, which also include the history of color television and the growth, cultivation, and harvesting of cacao that leads to chocolate.
“It feels really nice, because you don’t really see any events at school,” she said. This year, Monter clocked the parades for Mexican Independence Day and Hispanic Heritage Month that were taking place in other cities. It felt like that could never happen in New Haven, despite the fact that it is now a plurality Latino city. “It’s honestly really relieving. A lot of schools don’t allow you to express who you are.”
Across the room, sophomore Alexandra Thompson soaked it all in. Growing up, Thompson learned to be proud of her heritage, which reaches generations back to Puebla, Mexico. As she got older, she was excited to pick up culinary traditions from her mom, from the perfect elotes (her favorite food, she said) to tacos with thin, marinated strips of meat. Before Wednesday, she’d branched out to churros, which have origins in Spain, at the behest of her teacher.
“I almost burnt them,” she said, before turning her attention back to the sheer joy of the evening.
Top: Alexandra Thompson, who values school being a safe place to express her Mexican heritage.
Wednesday, that felt needed: Thompson’s recently much more fearful of expressing her culture outside of her home. She lives in the Hill, which in June was one of the first New Haven neighborhoods targeted by federal ICE agents. Even though she’s a U.S. citizen, she thinks about whether she needs her passport and documents every time she leaves the house. Wednesday, following news of an ICE raid at a Hamden car washand (unconfirmed) rumors of ICE agents near the New Haven Green, she was especially on edge.
“It’s terrifying,” she said. Then looking around, she added that “it feels amazing to be myself and show my true colors” at the school. 
Anica Edwards, a sophomore in the visual arts department who is especially interested in ceramics.
Meanwhile, sophomores Mariely Maldonado and Camila Carreon began to set out dominoes, chatting with each other about the pozole that Maldonado had made. Before Wednesday, Maldonado said, she hadn’t really experimented with the dish, a stew made from nixtamalized corn kernels, pork and a rich, spiced broth (usually with chile peppers) that has its roots in pre-colonial Mexico.
Because she didn’t grow up eating it—Maldonado is Puerto Rican, and the dish is Mexican (her mom, who hails from Ponce, is her biggest culinary inspiration)—the event gave her the chance to flex her culinary skills.
“I think a lot of people forget their roots,” mused Carreon, whose family has roots in Tlaxcala, before getting up to get a bowl of the soup that she brought back over to the table. When she’s speaking in Spanish, she feels a sense of being at home that doesn’t exist anywhere else. “There’s a different way to express love. The humor, the music, the culture.”
This year, she added, she plans to build an ofrenda at home for the first time, to commemorate a friend of her mother’s who passed away last year. Nestled in the school’s cafeteria, “it feels very safe,” she added. “It’s nice to see that people aren’t afraid to be themselves.”