Mexican Heritage Plaza

History:-

The Mexican Heritage Corporation serves the Silicon Valley and Northern California by presenting and advancing Mexican and multicultural performing arts. We accomplish this through:

The San Jose International Mariachi Festival and its related concert and education programs.

Mariachi Youth Education and Pee Wee Mariachi, arts education programs for grades K-12 modeled after the Festival.

Presenting Los Lupeños de San Jose, Northern California's premier ballet folklorico company, in concert.

Special events: Visual arts exhibitions, community festivals and concerts, workshops, symposiums, lecture/demonstrations, special receptions, and master classes

MHC has been presenting, producing and promoting the dance, music and visual arts traditions of Mexico for over twenty-five years, creating opportunities for individuals and communities to celebrate, share, and sustain the vitality of Mexico's ethnic and traditional cultural arts and multicultural arts within the region. Our work promotes the importance of cultural heritage for strengthening ethnic identity and community.

MHC celebrates, promotes and preserves the beauty of Mexico's culture and showcases multicultural arts in the region

MHC is a resident arts partner of the Mexican Heritage Plaza, a 200,000 square-foot cultural center with state of the art theatrical venues, a Smithsonian-affliate gallery space and luscious thematic gardens that serve as a regional resource for cultural programming and education. Built in association with the City of San José and the San José Redevelopment Agency, it is one of the largest Latino cultural centers in the nation.

The mission of the MHC is to affirm, celebrate and preserve the rich cultural heritage of the Mexican community and showcase multicultural arts within the region.

The Plaza is in the heart of San José's oldest and largest Mexican-American community. Our goal as a resident arts programmer for this center is to:

Capture the spirit of the Mexican-American community

Present and showcase the work of other ethnic performing arts companies and visual artists

Provide education programming focusing on our history and culture that also complements the curriculum of our neighboring schools.