April Kickoff Set for Giant L.A. Street Party : Festival: Broadway celebration of Latino culture will feature 60 musical acts, plus food, arts and crafts.

L.A. Fiesta Broadway, being billed as L.A.’s biggest street festival and a celebration of Latino culture, will be held next month as a “warm up” to the celebration of Cinco de Mayo.

The festival, which will take place downtown on April 29 and will span 10 blocks along Broadway, is scheduled to feature 60 musical acts, plus food, arts and crafts. Some of the entertainers to be featured include popular norteno group Los Bukis, pop singer Martika and Brazilian pop star Xuxa along with traditional mariachis and dance troupes, it was announced Tuesday at a press conference hosted by comedian Paul Rodriguez at the historic Million Dollar Theater on Broadway.

The day-long Fiesta Broadway, modeled after Miami’s successful “Carnaval Miami/Calle Ocho,” was unanimously approved last Wednesday by the Los Angeles City Council and is expected to cost about $1.3 million, said festival coordinator John Echeveste.

The fiesta will be the first major street festival since the yearly L.A. Street Scene was cancelled in 1987. The Street Scene was cancelled after the 1986 festival, which attracted about 750,000 people, was marred by violence. One person was fatally shot and at least 40 others injured during a riot.

Fiesta corporate sponsors include Procter & Gamble, AT&T;, Kern’s Juices and Acapulco restaurants. Organizers hope that the festival will make a profit. If it does, proceeds will benefit Miracle on Broadway, a nonprofit partnership of public and private organizations aimed at the revitalization of Broadway, considered the busiest Latino shopping district in the country.

Spanish-language television station KMEX Channel 34, a Univision affiliate, is co-sponsoring the event and will broadcast portions of the festival live. The station will also tape a television special to be aired nationally on an estimated 400 Univision network affiliates on the weekend of Cinco de Mayo. The special will also be shown in an estimated 13 Latin American countries, said Emilio Nicolas Jr., KMEX general manager.

“We want to bring back the nostalgia of the great era of Broadway and demonstrate that this is still a vital street,” Nicolas said. “This is a great day. Los Angeles will now have what we hope to be the largest Cinco de Mayo celebration in the country.”

Seven stages will line Broadway between 1st and 10th streets and auto traffic will be barred from the busy thoroughfare. The festival is scheduled to begin at noon and end at 8 p.m., Echeveste said.

Fiesta organizers said they would be taking heavy security precautions to avoid outbreaks of violence. Plans include an allocation of 350 Los Angeles police officers and 220 private security guards to manage the event, which is expected to draw some 300,000 people, Echeveste said.

“We’ve taken a lot of precautions and really learned from Street Scene,” Echeveste said. “All the acts will be family-oriented so they won’t attract the wrong element. And it will be limited to the daylight hours.”

Said Estela Lopez, executive director of Miracle on Broadway: “There was a lot about Street Scene that was done right, but there were obviously some things that were not executed as well. . . . You grow from that knowledge. There’s a lot in the preplanning that will play into the safety of this event.”