Rooted in the Latin American and Caribbean diaspora in the United States, La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, CA collaborates with and unites historically marginalized communities by preserving cultural traditions, producing creative new works, and nurturing global grassroots social justice movements with artists, activists, and allies. La Peña originated in the diaspora of Chilean exiles after the coup in 1973, and was inspired by the “peñas” then popular in South America, which served as gathering places for artists and thinkers — offering food, music, intellectual exchange, and popular education to revolutionary artistic and political movements. It was with this ethos that the La Peña Cultural Center was founded in 1975, exactly 50 years ago. Since that time, La Peña has presented a wide range of cutting-edge public programming that centers and celebrates Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) culture bearers and audiences, with deep connections across the pan-Latinx, Afro-Caribbean, and Indigenous diasporic communities from across the Americas. Today, La Peña continues to be a center of transformative gathering. Committed to being a brave and welcoming space for all, La Peña brings together an annual audience of 10,000+ artists, educators, activists, and students of diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds and ages from, all Bay Area counties and beyond. La Peña honors and empowers local and global BIPOC communities by sustaining pathways for creative exploration, political organizing, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.