Her shooting schedule for “Modern Family” conflicted with her ability to visit.

Student Union approved the Association of Latin American Students’ (ALAS) appeal to bring Vergara to campus to speak at one of the group’s 20th anniversary events, but according to Speaker of the Treasury Julian Nicks, no contract was ever drawn up to bring Vergara to campus.

Student Union Treasury allocated $32,251 for Vergara’s appearance on Sept. 21.

“Sofia Vergara’s contracts never came in…a lot of her coming was contingent on whether they were filming for ‘Modern Family.’ So they ended up filming this spring so she couldn’t come,” Nicks said.

He learned on Thursday that Vergara would not be coming to campus.

Edward Poyo, president of ALAS, says the group was looking forward to bringing a popular public figure for its 20th anniversary.

“All of ALAS is very disappointed; I think she would have been a very good speaker. From ALAS’ perspective, it would have attracted a lot of people to our event,” Poyo said.

According to Nicks, the money that was set aside to fund her visit has been put back into the Treasury appeals account, which now stands at a bit more than $150,000.

Earlier this year, the College Democrats’ attempt bring former Vice President Al Gore to campus failed as well, after SU allocated $92,350 for the event. Gore was unable to come due to scheduling difficulties.

Nicks says that the multiple speaker cancellations are unusual but may be due to the particularly high-profile speakers SU funded this year.

“It has never happened before, but we’ve never funded speakers of this size before. This initiative to bring big speakers is new, so we’ve never seen problems like this,” Nicks said.

Last year, Harry Belafonte and Richard Gephardt also cancelled their speaking engagements on campus. Gephardt was not funded by SU.

“Of course it’s sad—[Vergara] was one of the ones that Treasury and the student body was really excited to see come to campus, but these kind of things happen on other campuses all the time. It happens, and hopefully we try to change the structure to make it less common in the future,” Nicks said.

Treasury funded two other major speakers for this year: Amy Chua and John Legend. They are booked to come to campus later this semester.

According to Poyo, ALAS may organize another event to replace Vergara’s appearance.

“We’ve been brainstorming and trying to figure something out, but with time constraints it is going to be pretty hard to get anything in. I would like to bring someone else in or replace the event with something else,” he said.

As Isabel Acevedo stood before the Washington University campus, one thing struck her—the trees. Despite the fact that it was April, the trees loomed naked over her. Bare, exposed and vulnerable without their familiar leaves to protect them.

“I was a little scared,” she said, now from the comfort of her desk in the Central West End. “I’m from Puerto Rico [and] seeing…the trees—they still didn’t have any leaves—and I had never seen how that looked before.”

That moment standing before Brookings was the end of a journey of almost 2,000 miles, leaving behind the known to enter boldly into the unclothed forest of the unknown. “I really didn’t know where Wash. U. was, where St. Louis was,” she said. “[My mother] motivated me to apply to Wash. U. because of the Annika Rodriguez scholarship.”

Her host that weekend, Elizabeth “SiSi” Beltran, was already a Rodriguez scholar, selected as one of the first business school recipients. More importantly though, she was president of the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS). During the next two days, she showed Acevedo the strength of the Wash. U. Latino community, topping off the weekend with a trip to Carnaval, the now-annual showcase of Latin American culture.

Acevedo still remembers it well: “That year [2002], Carnaval was in the Quad…it was just a medley [of different acts].

“The experiences I had that week with SiSi as a member of ALAS, with the other members of the Latino community, made me come here.”

Though serendipitous for Acevedo, ALAS’s presence on campus is far from it. ALAS exists as the result of hard work from countless generations of students, all done to increase the Hispanic community at Wash. U.

This past weekend, ALAS celebrated 20 years of Hispanic fellowship at Wash. U. Friday night.

ALAS welcomed back its former members with a reception in the DUC Formal Lounge. Saturday morning, current students, alumni, Top Care employees and Chancellor Mark Wrighton gathered for soccer games and barbeque at Amistad. Later that evening, ALAS hosted its 20th anniversary gala at the 560 Music Center with guest speakers, Nicaraguan food, a salsa performance by WUSauce and music from Mariachi Cuicacalli. More than 60 people, including 15 alumni, attended the gala. Sunday morning, ALAS saw off its visiting alumni with a farewell brunch.

In the coming month, ALAS will host El Mercado, an open-air market, during Parent & Family Weekend. SU Treasury also recently approved funds to bring Sofia Vergara, of “Modern Family” fame, to campus in the spring.

But ALAS hasn’t always been the thriving 60-members-strong group it is today. Until about 2000, no one is sure exactly what happened to ALAS. What they do know is that ALAS was founded in the fall of 1991, and Annika Rodriguez was one of its founding members, later its president. In 1993-94 a man named Ernesto served as president, and he wrote letters to the University stressing the importance of having Hispanics on campus. “A lot of what he [wrote],” Beltran said, “kind of planted the seed of what the Rodriguez scholarship would become.”

Five years later, the University created the Annika Rodriguez Scholars Program to honor a woman crucial to the development of the Hispanic community.

“We wanted to have more Latino students,” Edward S. Macias, provost and executive vice chancellor of academic affairs, explained. “We wanted to have a scholarship to help us attract [Latino] students. But we also wanted students who cared about Hispanic culture, whether they themselves are Latino or not.”

By 2002, when ALAS hosted its first Carnaval, the group had entered into a renaissance. “The kind of leadership that the Rodriguez program brought…the cohesion…[helped] bring this larger group [ALAS] together,” Macias said.

Under Beltran’s lead, the group began actively recruiting: “Our strategy was if we made the freshman believe ALAS was big, it would be big,” Beltran said. “We had our ‘Somos ALAS’ t-shirts. We were present at orientation activities. We put welcome signs on every Latino freshman’s door, so to them it [ALAS] was a big deal.”

That was in 2001. Now, 10 years later, the enrollment of Hispanic students has roughly quadrupled. In the last two years alone, the population of Latino students at Wash. U. has risen from 2 percent to just under 4 percent.

But the numbers aren’t all that’s important. What’s more important is the community.

Acevedo, a 2006 graduate, said, “The biggest legacy in my life [from ALAS] has been the friendships…the ALAS group is really my family. We see each other a few times a year. We’ve all been getting married. We go to each other’s weddings, and it’s like a big ALAS formal at the wedding.”

For the current generation of ALAS students, these connections remain. For some members, ALAS provides a place to connect with an already existing identity. For others, ALAS is where they discover their cultural roots or explore Hispanic culture for the first time. It acts as a home away from home, a family for students where commonalities abound.

Sophomore Andrea Bennett joked, “[ALAS is where] I could complain about not having pastelitos to eat, and everyone understood the pain I was in.”

The 20th Anniversary Gala on Saturday was part formal, part family reunion. Three generations of Maciases encircled one table. ALAS advisor and director of the Annika Rodriguez Scholar Program Julia Macias Garcia and her father, Provost Macias, watched her two energetic children hop around chairs. But throughout the hall another family was gathering, one 20 years in the making. Old friends reconnected and shared stories of the changes in their lives. New friends snapped pictures of each other with disposable cameras. Friends who couldn’t be present themselves emailed videos recalling their fondest ALAS memories.

It’s this family that has made all the difference for Isabel Acevedo.

“From not knowing where St. Louis was on the map to falling in love with the place and staying here for 10 years, [the ALAS community] really made me come [to Wash. U.],” she said. “When I got here, of course, ALAS was really a part of my life…Without ALAS, I think, no, I know my life would be a lot different.”

Crowds of students and community members filled Edison Theatre Friday and Saturday nights for Carnaval, the cultural dance performance put on by the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS).

Carnaval is performed annually and showcases cultural dances. It also features a skit that deals with topical social issues.

While the Meringue, a dance that was new last year, and Zapateado, another dance, were excluded from the show, this year’s choreographers added two new dances to the lineup— the Caporales and West African dances.

“I think they were probably two of our best dances,” Poyo said. “I was pleasantly surprised, because I’d never seen them before. When I saw the final product, I really loved them.”

ALAS gives the proceeds from the event to a charity.

According to Carnaval Co-Chair Edward Poyo, the event raised several hundred dollars. This year the money will benefit Casa de Salud, a clinic that provides basic healthcare for uninsured low-income and minority St. Louisans, many of whom are immigrants and refugees.

Poyo says that the show ran smoothly.

“I think it was a pretty good success, and I haven’t heard anything bad so far. The past few years have also been pretty big shows, but this show probably went further, in terms of feedback that I’ve gotten,” Poyo said.

Rehearsals for the cultural show started in late January when open auditions were held.

Students were selected to perform in Belly Dance, Flamenco, Caporales, Cumbia, Hip Hop, Salsa, Tango, Mambo, Lambada, Samba and West African dances.

Audience members said that they appreciated the talent of the dancers and the upbeat vibe of the performance.

“I thought the music was exciting; all the people were smiling,” sophomore Zoe Leyh said.

Audience members praised the aesthetics of the show, as well as the skits that accompanied the dances.

“I really liked the costume designs,” freshman Nay’Chelle Harris said. “I thought the in-between acts were really good. They broke up the dances really well.”

Overall, the audience enjoyed the cultural experience of the show.

“The dances were an incredible fusion of different cultures from all over the world in a unique format,” junior Elana Nemitoff said.

An after-party open to all students followed the performance at Jade Lounge.

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The upcoming production marks the 11th year of the show, and its growth is evident just by looking at the changes in venue: Carnaval has moved from Brookings to the Gargoyle to, most recently, the Edison Theatre.

Despite the exponential rise in both popularity and the number of performers, the main attraction of the event has stayed true to its educational purpose: the dances.

“The dances are the most involved with the whole campus,” sophomore and Carnaval Co-Chair Edward Poyo said. “[They] are our biggest outreach to show people our culture and the different things that we do.”

While the dances are indeed the biggest draw for most people, the other half of the show, the skit, remains important. Within the skit, ALAS can emphasize the message they want to send to audience members each year, such as exploring and exposing stereotypes of the culture and relating these to other cultures. This year’s show, according to Poyo, specifically focuses on issues Wash. U. students can connect with.

“One of the things in this year’s theme is class differences, which we sort of touched on last year, but this year, it’s slightly bigger,” Poyo said. “The main character [of the skit] lives in the slums in Brazil, and she is trying to fight for her people, who get taken advantage of by the upper class and rich politicians. Wash. U. is pretty diverse, so, by being aware of class differences there, you [can] think about where you came from, what you do, what you spend your time on, and who you help.”

Carnaval hopes to ignite more community involvement among students after they reflect on the skit. A recent example of such service comes from within this year’s Carnaval cast, where one group of dancers took the initiative to go to nearby middle schools and teach the students their dance routine. That way, the students could enjoy some exercise and have fun in an unusual fashion.

Carnaval continues this theme through its collaboration with the Niños y Cambios program this year. The group tutors Hispanic elementary and high school students in the St. Louis community for whom English is a second language. The program also works toward its main goal of providing scholarships for the students to go to college.

“We wanted to do something more St. Louis-based [this year]; that way if people wanted to get involved, they would know that we are trying to change things here too and work with groups here,” Poyo said.

Tickets for Carnaval are on sale now for $10 at the Edison Theatre box office. Showtimes are Friday, April 9 and Saturday, April 10 at 7 p.m.

The Association of Latin American Students (ALAS) is coordinating El Mercado for the third year, after a one-year hiatus. Many other student groups will participate in the event, including Global Medical Brigades, Female Association of Business and Ashoka.

“The idea of really collaborating with as many student groups as possible across campus, bringing in many interests [is a benefit of El Mercado],” said Julia Macias, ALAS advisor, assistant director of campus life and assistant dean of the College of Art & Sciences.

Global Medical Brigades will be offering blood pressure checks, and other groups will be selling food.

In past years many student groups sold baked goods. But many groups will be selling restaurant food this year, due in large part to the University’s new ban on baking in dorms.

“I think it definitely takes away from [the event] just because a lot of the cultural groups…have to offer their own cultural dishes that you can’t really go out and buy,” said Edward Poyo, the coordinator for the event.

Local businesses such as Fitz’s, Blueberry Hill and Meshuggah’s are donating food for the event. Others are offering discounts to student groups.

“I’m hoping because of really good planning and outreach with different restaurants, it may not be the same things that the students will have created themselves, but [El Mercado] will still have neat and unusual things that you won’t get all the time, and we’re hoping it will be equally great,” Macias said.

Despite the food changes, Macias said he feels the spirit of El Mercado remains intact.

“The mission and the idea behind [El Mercado] is still the same,” Macias said. “It’s really promoting collaboration on campus, raising awareness and raising money for a really good cause.”

This year’s event will raise money to fund a Peace Corps project. ALAS is hoping that the fundraising will pay for stoves in Peru.

The idea to fund stoves comes from the experiences of 2008 alum Claudia Romeau.

Romeau is serving in the Peace Corps near Ancash, Peru. Upon arriving there, she realized that the absence of stoves in many households was the cause of several major, and fixable, problems. Families cook on the floor, which causes health and sanitation issues.  By installing a stove with a chimney, the fumes will go outside the house and the cooking will be more hygenic.

Since each stove costs only $50, Poyo anticipates that the event’s fundraising will make a big difference.

In past years El Mercado has raised almost $2,000. Macias hopes that this year’s event will raise similar amounts of money.

ALAS President Cristina Woodhouse said she feels that community service is an important aspect of this event. She said service is a new focus for ALAS this year.

“As a student group, it’s important to have events that impact our members, the WU community and WU staff, but it’s also something I think we should be trying to do to influence the [outer community],” said Woodhouse, a senior.