About
The Bay Area Maya Festival celebrates the living presence of the Maya community in the San Francisco Bay Area. The only event in the region to bring together Maya people across languages, regions, and traditions: Yucatec, Mam, Kʼicheʼ, Kaqchikel, and more.
The festival is a free, annual gathering for cultural celebration, community healing, and transnational exchange. Through music, dance, poetry, art, food, and workshops, we connect Maya families with their heritage and with one another, while inviting the broader community to learn from and stand alongside their Maya neighbors.
Mission
The Bay Area is home to approximately 30,000 Maya people, and for many years, their living culture, contemporary concerns, and voices remained largely invisible in public life. In 2019, a small group of community organizers and educators came together with a shared vision: to create a free, welcoming space where the Maya community could gather, celebrate, and be seen.
That vision became the Bay Area Maya Festival, co-founded by Pedro Tuyub of the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA), English Professor Steven Mayers of CCSF, and Rita Moran of Maya Women in Art. The festival has been held every year at the Mission Campus of City College of San Francisco, in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District.
Our inaugural 2019 festival drew an estimated 600 people from across the Bay Area. After a pause during the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival returned in 2023 with renewed energy and has grown every year since. What began as an all-volunteer effort has become a community institution, with support from partner organizations including Asociación Mayab, Acción Latina, Radio B’alam, Voces Maya, and the Movimiento Cultural de la Unión Indígena.