The 1970s and 1980s saw increased Latin American immigration to the United States, and to D.C. in particular. At the time, there was limited access to Latin American performing arts, something that Rebecca Read and Hugo Medrano sought to fix when they founded Grupo de Latinoamericanos Artistes (GALA) in 1976. They never expected, though, that GALA would take off and eventually become the National Center for the Latino Performing Arts. 

When a vastly undercounted Latino population decided to make itself impossible to ignore, thousands marched from Mount Pleasant to Kalorama Park on August 1, 1971, filling the streets with music, food, and colorful kioskos—an act of cultural pride that launched an annual festival and helped reshape Washington’s civic life.

A bold 1977 mural in Adams Morgan—painted by Chilean brothers who fled dictatorship—has survived fading, earthquake damage, restorations, and gentrification to remain the city’s oldest living Latinx public artwork and a vivid record of a changing neighborhood.