BY LOUIS MEDINA, Californian staff writer
e-mail: lmedina@bakersfield.com | Sunday, Jun
25 2006 9:30 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Jun 26 2006 7:42 AM
ARVIN -- Traditional music and dances, tasty regional
foods and colorful arts and crafts from the Mexican state of Oaxaca graced
Arvin's Veterans Memorial Building and Dolores Huerta Plaza on Fourth Street
Sunday during the fifth annual Mixteco Festival.
Rosy Niño and Noe Granado were among dozens of dancers who graced the
stage Sunday with folk dances from Oaxaca, Mexico at the fifth annual
Mixteco Festival in Arvin.
The celebration honors San Juan Bautista (Saint John the Baptist),
Patron Saint of San Juan Mixtepec, a town in the heart of an indigenous Mixteco
region of Oaxaca and the birthplace of many Mixteco immigrants in California's
Central Valley, according to event organizers.
Despite stifling three-digit temperatures, about 500 people attended the
festival, according to event spokesman Fausto Sanchez. The colorful dancers,
most from Grupo Folklorico "Se'e Savi" (Children of the Rain), braved the
heat as they jumped, spun around and stomped their feet to music by Banda
Lideres, whose members played behind an altar erected to the patron saint in
the plaza's gazebo.
Avelino Guzman, a native of Oaxaca who lives in Bakersfield, was there with
his family for the first time.
"This event is like a reminder to us," he said. "In Oaxaca we could witness
these types of festivities several times a year. Here we only get to see them
once a year."
Vendors were selling tamales, mole (meat served in a spicy sauce made with
chocolate), tostadas and other regional dishes, and goods including straw
baskets and hats, pottery, handcrafted rosaries, bracelets made out of beads and
Oaxacan music CDs.
Public service providers such as the California Highway Patrol, the Mexican
Consulate General, the Arvin Branch of the Kern County Library and medical and
legal aid organizations were also there with information in Spanish and English
for attendees.
The annual event is organized by Unidad Popular Benito Juarez, which works to
promote Mixteco culture and to inform Mixteco immigrants about labor and housing
rights, health, education and other social and political issues.
