Thousands Celebrate Latinos’ Day of Pride

Robert Rodarte was with the Air Force Reserve in Oklahoma last week when he received an unexpected telephone call from his wife in Garden Grove about a great idea for the weekend.

“I’d never been to a Cinco de Mayo fiesta before, and I didn’t want to go alone,” Rejoice Rodarte said Saturday, smiling sheepishly as she stood amid a whirl of holiday festivities in Centennial Park. “I’d heard so much about it, and it sounded like fun.”

So husband Robert, 31, dutifully bought a plane ticket and flew home Friday, in time to accompany his wife and two young children to one of several Cinco de Mayo festivals that attracted thousands throughout the county this weekend.

Hundreds of residents joined the Rodartes in Centennial Park to celebrate the Mexican national holiday, which commemorates the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when Mexican troops valiantly fought off a French expeditionary force headed for Mexico City.

On Saturday afternoon, festival-goers basked in bright sunlight as they stopped to listen to mariachi bands, sample tacos or toss rings, coins and baseballs in an attempt to win a crazy variety of prizes. Families sat to watch the goofy antics of clowns. And carnival rides that shimmied, zoomed, spun and swooped awaited more adventuresome celebrators.

Rejoice Rodarte took her chances on “The Zipper.”

“Everyone in the whole park heard her screaming,” Rodarte’s friend Michael Rudner said with a laugh, ignoring her protests. “She screams at everything.”

Four-year-old Eric Rodarte clutched a tiny stuffed animal and tugged on his father’s jeans. “Are we getting candy?” the toddler asked.

Across the field, past a sound stage and scores of booths advertising products from kitchen cleansers to potato chips, Joe Navarro was busy gathering men, women and children willing to try their luck at a bingo game sponsored by La Tapatia, Southern California’s largest tortilla producer.

Clad in a white La Tapatia cap and USC-insignia shorts and socks, the husky 59-year-old barker reflected on the evolution of Cinco de Mayo festivities in the United States.

“Ten years ago they had one festival, and that was on Olvera Street” in downtown Los Angeles, Navarro said, his eyes smiling in remembrance behind his dark sunglasses. “In the last few years, it’s spread all over because of the Hispanic growth. It creates goodwill.”

Now, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated more by the Latino population in the United States than in Mexico, Navarro said.

At another Cinco de Mayo festival in Santa Ana on Saturday, a street fair filled 4th Street for several blocks. Both Santa Ana celebrations continue today.

Among the throng on 4th Street was Alfredo Amezcua, 41, a Santa Ana attorney and president of the Orange County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Amezcua said the celebration serves an important cultural purpose for the thousands of Latinos who live in Orange County.

“You have two types of communities: recent immigrants and those born here,” he said. “For the recent immigrants, it’s a chance to socialize. For the native Hispanic Americans, it’s an encounter with their roots.

“These kinds of events bring us all together--to recapture the sense of unity, the historical background and, most of all, to promote the language and the positive elements of Mexican culture.”