LA FIESTA POST FALLS, IDAHO |
Celebration's coming of age
This story was published Thursday, May 5th, 2005
Copyright TriCity Herald
By Andrew Sirocchi, Herald staff writer
Vanessa
Gomez tugged the hem of her quinceanera gown level with her high heels
to keep the rose-dotted dress from hitting the ground and leaned to the
side while her grandmother fixed one of her straps.
The fitting capped a busy few weeks for Gomez, trying on dresses and formal wear.
"I never had my quinceanera," said the 19-year-old recent transplant from Los Angeles, adding that her family didn't adopt the Latino tradition of celebrating a girl's 15th birthday as a day of blossoming into adulthood.
On Saturday, she'll get another chance.
This year, during Pasco's Cinco de Mayo celebration, Gomez and a half-dozen other girls will commemorate their womanhood during a first-ever fashion show at the event.
Not only will the festival celebrate the day when a ragtag army of Mexican peasants and farmers beat the French in the May 5, 1862, Battle of Puebla. It also will celebrate 15 consecutive years that the cultural event has been held in the Tri-Cities.
"Cultural awareness is part of Cinco de Mayo, not only for the Latino community but also for other cultures," said Gloria Garcia, who has helped organize the Tri-Cities' celebration for nine years.
This year's quinceanera theme is appropriate for a number of reasons. Not only does the event turn 15, it also has come of age.
Since beginning in 1990, the Tri-Cities' festival has grown to such a degree that it is annually featured in travel magazines. Last year's event was estimated to have drawn about 6,000 people.
"The committee has spent a lot of hours in meetings, planning this event for a few months now," said Gabriel Portugal, the Cinco de Mayo Committee chairman. "It's slowly taking shape, but now it's on the final stages and I think it's going to be a good event."
These days, planning begins in earnest in January. Volunteers, about two dozen of them, still are too few, Garcia said. But, the numbers have been growing and more volunteers are helping to plan the event.
Meanwhile, newcomers to the area frequently join in the activities to learn about the community and advertise their businesses or organizations to passers-by.
The Cinco de Mayo Committee also takes the opportunity to advertise the Mexican culture, its foods, music and songs.
"We have all these different traditions, and this is an opportunity to bring everyone back into the fold," Garcia said. "It really is a good opportunity for the community to celebrate itself."
Cinco de Mayo is more celebrated in the United States than Mexico, partly because the event became traditional shortly after World War I. Military men with Mexican heritage returned home and found they needed a way to show the United States they were proud of their ancestry yet still patriotic Americans.
"The folks of Cinco de Mayo were fighting the French -- peasants, merchants from all over. A lot of them got together to defeat the French army, but only on Cinco de Mayo," Portugal said. "This is a way of saying: 'Together, we can do it. Everybody can be a Cinco de Mayo soldier by getting together with your neighbor and changing something.' In the Tri-Cities, it's been like that."
Those who have attended past years' events will recognize the celebration, but this year they'll also see plenty that's new.
The La quinceanera theme will be everywhere, embedded in the floats, cars, trucks and horses that will take part in the parade through downtown Pasco.
The fashion show coordinated by the Cinco de Mayo Committee and the Pasco Downtown Development Association will feature the traditional dresses worn during quinceanera celebrations as well as other formal gowns for proms, weddings or other occasions.
This year's event also will offer up many of the standard traditions, including dancing horses and a boxing show. It also wouldn't be a Cinco de Mayo celebration if it didn't kick off the Pasco FarmersMarket.
Veronica Yzquierdo, executive director of the Pasco Downtown Development Association, said the Farmers Market will take a back seat to the parade, but at 8 a.m., vendors will open shop for the year, likely with plenty of asparagus and some early cherries.
Parade-goers will come later, when the floats begin to make their rounds at 10 a.m.
Garcia said she sees Cinco de Mayo as an opportunity to teach her granddaughter and others about the Mexican culture, whether or not they are Latino. Even U.S.-born Hispanics need to be reminded of their heritage, she said, although no matter how many generations removed from Mexico, they all share one thing.
"We never lose what you call el corazn del Mexicano -- the Mexican heart," Garcia said.
www.quinceañera.us
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History, Games, Postcards and more about Cinco de Mayo 
Quinceañera.US Register your own Quinceañera 
MyTiendita.com 
All Star Cinco De Mayo Books, CD's and more SuperAmigo.com |
