Multicultural Times’ Katherine Tomaylla talks briefly to Mariano Tonelli and Marcelo Eichelberge (from Sudaka), and Marcos Augusto Rivero (from The Latin Club), who are joining hands to launch Latin Power next year. What’s that? Read on.

Marcos, how you started in New Zealand?

I came from Venezuela six years ago, and only spoke Spanish. So I started from scratch, working as security, dishwasher, bartender, chef and what not. Then I studied for human resources post graduation in the Auckland University.

While studying, I also worked as security agent with a group of venues in Britomart. I worked hard and became the operation manager. I was in charge of the security team. After this I worked as operation manager in a bigger company, where I managed 28 bars and parties. In this way I started to do parties in venues because I had a contract with them.

The main reason to do parties was because I was missing my culture. I was thinking what can I do to bring the Latino parties to New Zealand? And in this way we started the Latin Club. When I was doing these parties I heard about Sudaka. I always was fan of this kind of parties (organized by Mariano and Marcelo).

I contacted them and we decided to have a stronger alliance to create a bigger Latino party. Now we work with a wonderful and organized team and everybody knows what to do. We are a loyalty family, an entity; we are friends. And we are growing fast. Our strengths is networking and digital marketing.

Now we have envisaged a big project for next year, named Latin Power.

What is your main goal within the Latino community?

Mariano: We are very interested to create a community. That’s why we created and organised Latino parties like the Independence day of Venezuela, Argentina, México, Perú, etc.

Doesn't matter wherever you come. If you are from Latin America, you come to our parties and you will have a great time. We also want to share our culture with other communities, and our parties are a big help in that. We welcome everyone – all communities – to experience Latin Power parties once.

We have two different products. The Latin Power, which is big parties and festivals. And The Latin Club, which are smaller parties in different venues.

Marcos: I work as recruiter and all that networking helps us give work to Latinos and help them to integrate in New Zealand.

Marcelo: Our first party The first party in Sudaka began as a new year party for the football team, as I manage a football team as well. We got together to play football and socialize in a park, and people loved it. It was a great success. With this we realized that there was a high demand for Latino social events. And now we can say that we are the largest producers of Latino events in Auckland. Now, our goal is to expand to Christchurch.