La Peña Cultural Center
La Peña is a vibrant community cultural center with a
national reputation and a global vision that promotes
peace, social justice and cultural understanding through the
arts, education and social action.
The main idea, developed especially by Chilean
composer and singer Violeta Parra, was to have a
gathering place where artists of all disciplines could share a
space. The mission of the peña was to provide good food,
music and an overall aesthetic response to an institutional
culture that did not provide the space for other creative
forms to exist. Peñas in Chile became a major backbone of
the cultural program during Salvador Allende's government
from 1970 to 1973. It was where artists - poets, musicians,
painters, cooks - gathered to preserve cultural forms and to
create new ones.
Our Center was modeled on that specific cultural
history. La Peña Cultural Center was started by a multi-
racial group of Latin Americans and North Americans as a
response to the military coup that overthrew the socialist
government of Salvador Allende. The coup happened on
Sept. 11, 1973 and was aided and abetted by the U.S.
government. La Peña incorporated on September 11,
1974, one year after the military coup and opened its doors
in June of 1975.
http://www.lapena.org/index.php?s=27
__________________________
Centro Cultural La Peña
La Peña es un centro cultural comunitario sin fines de
lucro cuyo objectivo es dar a conocer el arte y la cultura
popular de los pueblos del mundo. También es un preciado
recurso en donde grupos de la comunidad, a un bajo costo,
presentan eventos culturales y educacionales sobre temas
nacionales e internacionales. En La Peña se cultivan las
semillas de creatividad y cambio que hacen posible la
transformación social.
La Peña fue fundada en 1975 para ofrecer información
sobre las condiciones politicas y sociales en Chile y
América Latina y para compartir la rica historia cultural de
los pueblos de Norte y Sur América.
Después del golpe militar de1973 en Chile, muchos
chilenos exiliados llegaron a los Estados Unidos trayendo
consigo su arte, su música y su poesía. Ellos, junto a
latinoamericanos y norteamericanos progresistas ayudaron
a formar La Peña de Berkeley para apoyar las luchas por la
justicia social en Chile y América Latina. El nombre peña
proviene de los espacios culturales alternativos que
surgieron en Chile y en latinoamérica durante la década de
los sesenta.