CHARLOTTESVILLE (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — Cville Sabroso, a Latin American Cultural Festival, is set to return for its 13th annual event this Saturday at the Ting Pavilion from 1-10 p.m.

The event is organized by Sin Barreras. a Charlottesville-based non-profit focused on providing assistance and community to immigrants with a focus on the Latinx community. This year’s event will feature 12 performances with artists representing various Latin American countries, as well as eight food vendors with cuisine representing Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Festival Director Andrea Jacobs said the festival’s aim is to showcase Latino art, cuisine and music that many local immigrants and their families have come to know and want to share with the community.

The event was started by Sin Barreras’ founder, Fanny Smedile, in 2012 with help from the Church of the Incarnation, which she attended at the time. Since then, the festival has grown from a smaller artistic event held at sites like the McGuffey Art Center and IX Art Park into the cultural program that Sin Barreras as a showcase for Latin American culture. This year will mark the festival’s second at the Ting Pavilion, with last year’s event drawing over 4000 people.

All the proceeds from the festival will go toward funding Sin Barreras’ other programs directed toward helping immigrants in the area. These include low-cost legal assistance, education and other events like seminars and workshops where participants can discuss sensitive topics like physical and mental health and family relations.

“Fundraising in the non-profit space can be challenging,” Jacobs said, “so the fact that we’ve been able to create such a fun-loving space and an environment in which it adopts so many of our Latino traditions of family and unity and help each other out has been really just a learning experience for myself, but also, I don’t want to say prideful, but just very motivating and inspiring.”

Still, this year’s festival will come at the backend of a challenging year for the immigrant and Hispanic communities as a whole. As the Trump Administration and ICE have continued their efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants across the country, Jacobs says holding an event like Cville Sabroso speaks to how resilient Sin Barreras has and will continue to be in supporting its community. She also expressed gratitude toward the community in Charlottesville and Central Virginia for how accepting they’ve been of the organization and the festival.

“The fact that we’ve been able to grow it over the past decade,” she said, “I think it speaks volumes about the growth of our community and its acceptance.”

Jacobs said it makes her happy to think about the festival will be able to provide children like her daughter, a second-generation Guatemalan American, an opportunity to share and take pride in her Latin American ancestry and traditions. She said the energy the festival staff wants the event to embody this year is hope.

“There’s greatness still in challenging times,” she said, “and we just have to continue to stay hopeful and resilient.”