Oscar Molina Jr. – Hispanic Heritage Festival

A Community-Driven Life

“I was looking for opportunities, and I came from Guatemala to Goshen in 1992,” says Oscar Molina Jr., a volunteer for the Hispanic Heritage Festival in Goshen. “I think because I’m someone who went through a lot of challenges to get here—someone who experienced firsthand what it’s like to move to a new country and basically start from the beginning—I’ve always felt the need to help others in the Hispanic and Latino community.

I’m helping again this year with the Hispanic Heritage Festival. This will be the third year for this event in downtown Goshen and I’m happy to help Manuel Cortez from Radio Horizonte 104.3 FM and everyone else involved in putting on this festival; it’s been really nice. The past two years we’ve had a lot of people come out. I think it’s so popular because it really gives the Latino community a taste of home in a lot of different ways. This year we’ll have some great music and food, and we’ll also have vendors and local businesses with booths, including banks and realtors to help people with information. It’s like a combination between a street market and a party; we’ll have a roaming Mariachi band, Mexican bands from Goshen, South Bend, and Michigan, and we’ll have a headlining band from Chicago.

Since I’ve lived in Goshen I’ve wanted to try and improve the experience here for members of the Hispanic and Latino communities; to do whatever I can to help people get oriented. When I was in Guatemala I studied Engineering, but I took some journalism classes just so I could be involved in the school newspaper.

When I came here to Goshen I saw there was a need for more news outlets for Spanish-speaking members of our community. I had experience, and so in 1999 I helped my late father, Oscar Molina Sr., to start a newspaper called La Prensa Hispana. We started in 1999 with 16 pages and in a little over five years it had grown to nearly 50 pages. My father passed away in 2005, and I took over in his place, but then I had some health problems of my own that resulted in having to stop putting out the newspaper.

I’ve just always felt strongly about working hard to make sure the Hispanic community here has its needs met; in 2001 I started planning the first festival in this area dedicated to the Hispanic and Latino community.

For me, there are a lot of reasons to be involved in helping people and serving the community. There are always people who need help, and it’s just a good feeling to be the kind of person who tries to provide it. It makes you feel good to know that you have the ability to help someone else.

The second thing is that when you carry yourself this way—as someone who is trying to make things better for others—it sets a strong example and inspires other people to do the same. So, yes, it feels good to volunteer, and help people, and try to make good things happen for others. But more than that, it sets off a chain reaction of others following your lead. It can lead to helping a lot of people with their lives, and then they’ll want to help others, also.”