BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – LATIN FEVER will heat up in St. Kitts as the hosting of the annual Latin Festival is just over a month away.
This will be the third annual event and will be held under the theme, ‘Brazilian’s Carnival’.
Organizers are hoping to make the event bigger and better this year with added nights and a new venue.
This year’s celebration will last for three days beginning Thursday, October 18, with a Latin American Movie presentation at Caribbean Cinemas and on Saturday October 20 at the St. Kitts Marriott Hotel’s Plaza, there will be a Latin Flavour event featuring Latin Fusion.
The main event will be held at Carambola Beach Club on Sunday, October 21, at 2 p.m. featuring Ritmo Brazil and Batukealo.
A press conference was held yesterday (August 29), at the Carambola Beach Club, where media and sponsors were briefed about the event and thanked for their continued support.
The event is being hosted by Kajola Kristada LTD. and Carambola Beach Club.
Michelle Demming, the Event Co-ordinator of the Latin Festival LLC Organization said that the previous two events were successful and they are expecting a much larger event at this year’s festival.
She extended gratitude to the sponsors for their kind patronage and thanked the former venue Spice Mill for making the first two events a huge success.
She said the Festival’s main objectives are to enhance overall exchanges between Kittitians and Latinos on the island, to emphasize the similarities between Caribbean and Latin American countries and also to promote tourism and economic activities on St. Kitts and Nevis.
In addition it is envisioned that the Festival will create a consistent interchange of cultures between the people of different nationalities present at the events.
“It is my belief that we should take advantage and get together and increase our relationship, and understand that we can have many traditions, music heritage and history left from our ancestors that we can share and have in common,” she said.
Minister of Tourism, Richard Skerritt, gave brief remarks and said that it is good to be part of something like this.
“It is in its infancy stages but everything starts as an infant and grows overtime; what makes this unique is it’s a private sector enterprise that will not bring financial profits to the promoters but will be a good investment and will bring significant economic returns down the road as long as it continues to grow and establish itself,” he said.
He also said it brought local opportunity for explosion and hopefully overtime there will be more Latin-oriented talent developing.
Christopher Evelyn, General Manager of Carambola Beach Club said that they were involved as sponsors last year and even before the business was open they saw the potential of hosting the event at their venue.
He said the event is not only a tourist product but a showcase of Latin culture and food stating that there will be three types of tickets sold for the event which includes VIP, Reserved and General Admission.
Tickets will be available at Carambola and Kajola Kristada.
Chairman of the event, Jose Rosa said that he is excited about hosting the event and said it was one way of pulling together diversity in the cultures.
Featuring in the Latin Fiesta on October 21 will be a Cigar Roller, salsa competition, hand craft and a Rotisserie pork chef.
The event is predicted to be a multicultural experience of a lifetime.
For more information persons can visit their website www.latinfestivalstkitts.com
