CLAIRTON, PA. - A few miles up the road from the US Steel Works on Old Clairton Road sits an old Mormon church nestled among a large yard and trees. The Mormon church looks like many churches in the Mon Valley, except today something unusual is happening: a Brazilian Festa Junina.
Growing up in the Mon Valley when the steel mills were closing in the 1980s and 1990s, I never had the opportunity to experience Festa Junina. As the Brazilian population has grown by 70-80% over the last decade in the Pittsburgh area, Brazilian immigrants searching for good, affordable housing have begun to populate the vacant communities of the Mon Valley.
Five years ago, the Mormon church in Clairton, which provides space for Brazilian Mormons, started hosting an annual Festa Junina. People dress up as peasants and dance in quadrilhas, a Brazilian form of square dancing.
“Festa Junina has become a celebration of the simple countryside people. It's like the people that really farm, the people that live in simpler conditions and don't need all the luxury and big things of the city,” says Lais Alexander, a native of Santarém, Pará, who immigrated to Pittsburgh 12 years ago from Brasil.
Picnic tables are full of Brazilian sweets like bolo de milho (corn cake), pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread made from the tropical root vegetable tapioca), Brazilian hot dogs with mashed potatoes, and a plethora of Brazilian fruits and vegetables hard to find in most grocery stores around Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Hispanic Development Corporation even holds a raffle full of prizes from local Brazilian small businesses.
Lais leads the crowd in assembling a quadrilha, a Brazilian form of square dancing. For Lais, it's crucial that many Brazilian immigrants, particularly children, experience the joy of Festa Junina she felt as a kid growing up in Brasil.
“We know how much sensory-right music, smell, and taste can teleport us everywhere,” says Lais. “For me to be like, in a day-to-day living in the US, way more embedded now in the American culture, every single piece of opportunity of being around my language, being able to talk without thinking more freely, knowing that I know this food that I eat, reminds me of these moments.”
Local community members, largely white, show up to attend the party, including two carloads of young Mormon missionaries wearing name tags bearing the official logo of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One missionary from the Dominican Republic gets his friends to join in the singing, dancing, and joy of Festa Junina.
“I feel like it makes us closer, and it reminds us that our roots are very important, and even if we are so far away, we can still feel connected, and a party celebration is a great way to feel connected,” says Lais. “Any possibility of us trying to get more of our culture doesn't only help us to feel connected, but it helps the locals in Pittsburgh and young Americans to learn a little bit and get a taste of what else is out there beyond the US.”
Watch our segment from Pittsburgh’s Festa Junina and understand the importance of this Brazilian holiday to many immigrants in the Mon Valley.
