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       Aubrey Danielle Alexander, 6, was born for this moment.

       The little girl bounced along to the rhythms booming from the speakers Sunday at the Afro-Latino Festival in Silver Spring, her feet barely contained by a pair of bright pink sandals.

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       “The beautiful thing about salsa is you mix!” dance instructor Stephen Jackson yelled. “Some people mix tomatoes, onions and garlic. You’ve got to put yourself in there.”

       Aubrey wove her way through the crowd until she was at the very front. She stepped, swayed and jumped through the merengue and the bachata, looking back every so often at the people who brought her here: her grandmother, Lynda Butler, and family friend Vince Robertson, a grandfather figure.

       “She started out with me, but then pushed me away,” Robertson said, laughing. “She said, ‘I can do this by myself.’ ”

       When the lesson was over, Aubrey came back to them, panting. “I’m going to practice at home,” she said, her tongue sticking out. “I love to dance. It makes me happy.”

       This kind of unadulterated joy was on display throughout the festival at Veterans Plaza, where hundreds of people came to eat, dance and connect with African and Latin cultures. Color burst from dozens of vendor stalls: dresses from Cameroon, fans from Ghana, Kenyan rings made from the horns of a bull. Smells and smoke intermingled from food stalls selling everything from grilled lamb to plantains to cotton candy.

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       “The DMV area is a melting pot, but not every community has been visually celebrated,” said Narger Joseph, who co-organized the event. Afro-Latinos — Black people with Latin American ancestry descending from enslaved people — are rarely highlighted as an intersectional group, he said. A Washington Post analysis found that the 2020 Census largely undercounted this group.

       “Is it Afro or is it Latino?” said Jackson, who taught dances to festivalgoers. “No, it’s an amalgamation of both.”

       “We have no idea where our ancestors originated,” his wife, Adea Jackson, said. “It would be so important to know. But this feels like home in my heart — a merge of African Latino culture.”

       Slavery destroyed any specific knowledge of their homeland, she said, but sometimes there are little hints. When the couple attends cultural events such as the Afro-Latino Festival, they often encounter African immigrants who tell them they look like they are from a certain region or country.

       “It’s as if they’re confirming,” Stephen Jackson said. “There’s nothing like being embraced by someone who doesn’t know you, but they know your soul.”

       They stopped by a slew of vendor stalls, including Vanessa Nijchoum’s the Kulture Vibes. The 31-year-old designs kaba, colorful dresses from her home country. When she travels back to Cameroon, she has locals make the one-of-a-kind dresses.

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       “I came here when I was 7,” Nijchoum said. “It’s always been important to me to go back and support the local people from my country.”

       Nearby was Daijah Fletcher’s stall with homemade soaps, incense and specialty oils. A flurry of ingredients — gardenia, sage, patchouli, jasmine buds and sweet almond oil — promised protections and blessings. Many recipes are inspired by a recent trip to South Africa, where she met with traditional healers called sangoma.

       Fletcher, 27, traces her roots to Jamaica and Hoodoo spirituality from the Deep South. Sometimes, she said, the ancestors visit her in her dreams and inspire her to add an extra ingredient to her oils. When her son can’t sleep, she puts frankincense on his forehead to ease his nightmares.

       “I am carrying on the traditions and practices from my ancestors,” she said.

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