La Peña Cultural Center

Our teaching artists have been teaching at La Peña for many years as well as working in public schools in the Bay Area. They are beloved by the community for developing engaging and authentic curriculum that creates a love of learning, culture, music and art.

Hector Lugo is a percussionist, singer, songwriter, and educator of Latin and Caribbean music, history, and culture. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, he moved to the Bay Area in 1989 to pursue graduate studies in sociology at UC Berkeley. Hector is the founder and director of the Latin-Roots band La Mixta Criolla, a founding member of the Bomba ensemble Grupo Aguacero and the co-founder of the Bay Area Bomba y Plena Workshop. His compositions and arrangements have been featured in the documentary film “Dolores,” the compilation “Salsa de la Bahía,” as well as two theatrical productions. He has designed and implemented educational and cultural arts programs in collaboration with SFJAZZ, the San Francisco Symphony, Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, Stern Grove Festival, the San Francisco and Berkeley Unified School Districts, Oakland Youth Chorus, San Francisco Community Music Center, La Peña Cultural Center, Mission Cultural Center, and Youth Art Exchange, to name a few. Hector has also lectured on the sociology and history of Puerto Rican music at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, City College of San Francisco and Humboldt State University. He has an M.A. in Sociology and has conducted extensive research on the history, sociology, and culture of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Ernesto Hernandez Olmos was born and raised in Oaxaca, Mexico. He is a multi-talented artist, specializing in many cultural art forms of the pre-Columbian peoples of Meso-America including music, dance, storytelling, sculpture, painting and making traditional instruments out of wood and clay. He contemparizes the traditional music forms from Oaxaca in addition to creating his own compositions and makes instruments based on Meso-American design including flutes, drums and whistles fashioned from wood, clay, gourds and bone. His music/dance group, Besh Beni (Jaguar of Light) creates Toltec, Zapotec and Mistec inspired performances for schools, cultural events and traditional gatherings throughout California and internationally. Ernesto is a stimulating and interactive teacher; he educates youth and adults about native cultures as they create enjoyable art with a cultural message. He is an inspired painter and has created hundreds of paintings in oil, acrylic, pastels – virtually any media that he can find he enjoys exploring. He has created three murals in Oakland, including one at the MacArthur Bart Station specially commissioned by the City of Oakland, and one mural in Berkeley. He has been based in the Bay Area since 1997.

Juliana Mendonca-Espinoza is a Venezuelan Contemporary Dance performer, choreographer and teacher specializing in Latin dance, contemporary dance, as well as yoga and body expression for children. She graduated with a degree in dance from the University Institute of Caracas, Venezuela in 2005 and is also a certified Yoga instructor. She taught in the Performing Arts Department of the University of the Andes in Mérida, Venezuela 2012-2015 and at the Traditional Dance Program of the National University for the Arts in 2008. In 2005, Juliana co-founded Raíz de Agua, a music and dance company, which is her principal artistic endeavor. Since then, she has performed mostly as a solo artist with the Company and through dance has found a way to connect her creativity to spirit and nature, compounded with a unique feminine and artistic self-awareness. Juliana has worked in collaboration with other artists and companies such as Sarta de Cuentas, an Afro- Venezuelan contemporary dance company, Fundación Andróginos, a physical theater company and played the leading role in Xarop, a movie about Venezuelan Llanero music and dance. She has also worked in a wide variety of projects and events in conventional and non-conventional spaces such as plazas, galleries, museums, parks and national and international festivals. Juliana is currently based in Oakland, California.