East L.A. Latinos Show Pride in Colorful Heritage

Judging from the reactions of the crowd that lined 1st Street in East Los Angeles Sunday for the annual Mexican Independence Day parade, pride in the Mexican heritage comes in many different forms.

Jammed five or six deep on the sidewalks, the largely Latino audience cheered Mexico’s cast of colorful revolutionary characters, portrayed by an array of Mexican celebrities and actors. They waved amiably at a bevy of television personalities and politicians. They called warmly to hometown luminaries, like movie actors Cheech Marin and Esai Morales, and nodded knowingly at a hometown phenomenon, a 1964 Chevrolet Impala “low rider” belonging to Clemente Fuentes, who can make the car rock and wobble like a conga dancer. (“But not with people in the back seat,” insisted Fuentes, who was chauffeuring officials of the East Los Angeles Lions Club.)

They also responded lustily to a group of feathered dancers dressed in brilliant, beaded costumes. These were members of the Lincoln Heights-based group Xipetotec, dedicated to keeping alive for the Latino community a connection with their Indian past.

“The dances we do have been passed down from generation to generation,” said Virginia Carmelo, dressed in a resplendent green sequined outfit depicting Tonatzin, the Aztec earth mother. “They’re probably 600 or 700 years old.”

The parade commemorated the so-called Grito de Dolores, the call by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla on Sept. 16, 1810, to his peasant flock in the Mexican town of Dolores to break the chains of Spanish domination, a feat which was at last accomplished 11 years later.

For a variety of reasons, the observance has generally played second fiddle to the Cinco de Mayo festival, in the minds of most Los Angeles Latinos. But the fervor for things Mexican was stronger than ever Sunday, parade organizers said. “This event is getting bigger and bigger,” said Jess Saldivar, owner of a medical supply company and vice president of the Lions Club, watching the colorful collection of floats, balloons and flags, poised to flow down 1st Street from Lorena Street to Belvedere County Park.

For Carmelo, whose husband, Lazaro Arviza, founded the dance troupe nine years ago, the parade was as much an occasion to reaffirm Mexican pride as to observe a historic occasion.

“It’s difficult sometimes in a dominant Anglo culture,” she said. “The main thing that everybody can learn from our dances is that we’re all different but we can still respect each other.”

She said that at events where the dancers appear, audiences are often quick to identify with their Indian ancestry. “People will come up to us and say, ‘My grandfather’s from Mexico and he’s a pure Indian.’ ”

“It brings out a pride in people to see us,” added Roberto Canchola, a mechanic from San Fernando, in a handmade costume of tiny yellow beads, his head bristling with pheasant and macaw feathers. “A lot of Mexican people, all they know is that they have a little Indian blood in their veins. Some even deny it.”