Reviving tradition: Santa Fe’s Posada Latina Southside weaves together community, culture and generosity

Santa Fe residents are celebrating the holiday season with the spirit of giving.

Local Santa Fe small businesses — Latinos Unidos Mini Market, Latino Small Business Association, Panadería del Valle, Bella’s Fashion Boutique, Gemma’s Beauty and Barber Salon, AR Transmission and El Paisano Supermarket, teamed up to give back to the Santa Fe community.

When the businesses realized how big everything became, they reached out to Santa Fe officials for support.

“We asked the city to partner with us for the posada event, because we’re trying to stay on the south side and be able to work on that end, because we feel that it was underserved,” said John Paul Granillo, chief of operations for YouthWorks and a community facilitator. “The city gladly partnered with us and Brian Stinett (recreation division director for the city of Santa Fe), was an instrumental individual because he gave us permission to use the teen center.”

Santa Fe city councilors Alma Castro, Pilar Faulkner, Lee Garcia and Amanda Chavez were also pivotal in providing support and resources to the event, Granillo added.

Together, the community created the Posada Latina Southside, a new event aimed to support the community and bring them together in a traditional way. It will take place from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 19, at the Santa Fe Teen Center, 6600 Valentine Way, in Santa Fe.

“(Las Posadas) was a dying tradition and in some areas they want to celebrate it and others don’t, but we’re trying to revive it to make new traditions and add on new history to it,” Granillo said.

Everybody in the Santa Fe community can benefit from the posada. The event will begin with a light precession of eight-to-20 cars decorated with twinkling lights for the holiday season and the cars will be filled with over 300 toys from the northern New Mexico toy drive, ready to be handed out to children on Santa’s nice list.

Throughout the four-hour event, several groups will entertain in various ways. Performers include folklorico dancers, a ballet troupe, musicians and youth groups.

Santa Fe Valet has partnered up with the posada to provide transportation to and from the posada and Interfaith Community Shelter for unhoused individuals.

At the posada, unhoused individuals will receive food baskets filled with nonperishable items like canned cranberries and stuffing. To make sure everybody gets a protein, each basket will be filled with grocery gift cards, so recipients can pick out their own food at no cost.

Granillo hopes the posada becomes a tradition for Santa Fe residents to continue helping each other out.

“If a mom’s working two jobs, or a dad’s working overtime trying to figure things out just to survive, they need these necessities, and they need to understand that they’re part of a community, and the way for us to do that was to create a space for them,” said Granillo. “With the posada ... I think giving and unity is the most important part and (we’re) saying we’re all (in this) together and everybody’s suffering, and everybody is in a predicament, and we’re not here to judge that.”