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Six students from Undergraduate Mariachi Véritas de Harvard, a student organization centered around Mexican culture and music, traveled to Washington D.C. earlier this week to perform at the White House on Tuesday.
The performance took place during the ¡Adelante! Summit, an event centered around combatting increased rates of HIV among Latino people in the United States.
Organized by the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, the summit convened to address new data showing a large increase in the rate of HIV among Latino people. Despite representing 19 percent of the U.S. population, the group accounted for nearly one-third of all new HIV diagnoses in 2022.
The event aimed to “raise greater awareness of HIV among Latinos and foster multidisciplinary collaboration, coordination, and commitment to strengthen efforts addressing the HIV epidemic,” according to a press release from the White House’s ONAP.
Mariachi Véritas received an invitation to attend the summit on Sept. 12 — just 12 days before the performance. The short timeline forced the club into action, according to President Diamante C. Balcazar ’25, who said travel plans and last-minute rehearsals “happened really, really quickly.”
“We received an email from Francisco Ruiz, who was a former tutor at Pforzheimer House, and he just left last year to go work at the White House,” Balcazar said. “We just received an invite from him.”
In preparation for the summit, Mariachi Véritas selected a repertoire that focused on “vocals” and “harmonies,” practicing almost daily for two hours upon receiving their event invitation.
“Even though it was very stressful in the moment — like, ‘Oh my goodness, we’re rehearsing every single day, this is taking up my whole life,’ — in the end, it was all worth it, because it was just a phenomenal performance,” Balcazar said.
Balcazar said that Mariachi Véritas’ event at the White House differed from their usual performances at Harvard and East Boston, where the group has appeared at retirement parties, birthday celebrations, and nonprofit events.
“We’re one of the many bridges here on campus that brings the East Boston community into Harvard,” Balcazar said. “It’s all about bringing people together, singing songs, listening to music that you can really relate to.”
He added that the performance at the White House was especially “meaningful” because of the representation it provided for Latinx people.
“Not only are we representing ourselves and Harvard College and the thriving Latino community on campus, but we’re also representing the entire Latino community in East Boston and in the greater Boston area,” he said.
“I’m still in disbelief, still super excited that we had this opportunity,” Balzacar said.
—Staff writer Hiral M. Chavre can be reached at hiral.chavre@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.
