Mexican Music Draws Crowd for Final Day of Fair : Entertainment: Fiesta Day events are geared toward Ventura County’s Latino community.

Clad in black jeans, baggy white T-shirts and cowboy hats, dozens of Latino teen-agers literally kicked up their heels and stirred up some dust at the Ventura County Fair on Sunday.

Before a grandstand full of families and elderly people, the youngsters moved to the tune of traditional Mexican accordion music to show off a new dance that looks a little like the Texas two-step.

Called quebradita , it is a recycled version of an old dance step once popular among farm workers in Mexico, adult organizers said.

But some older people in the audience shook their heads in bewilderment at the newfangled moves. And some of the younger folks doing the dancing insisted that their moves bear little resemblance to the quebradita done by their Mexican ancestors.

“It’s not the same thing,” said 14-year-old Merari Avalos of Oxnard. “Because you do it faster.”

The young dance groups were among a variety of musical events geared toward Ventura County’s Latino community on the fair’s Fiesta Day on Sunday, the final day of the 12-day festival.

After reviving Fiesta Day a few years ago, fair officials expanded it this year to include about two dozen acts that played nearly continuously throughout the day on all three fairgrounds stages.

Julio Alvarez, a disc jockey for Spanish-language radio station KTRO (910 AM), said Fiesta Day has given the county’s Latino residents and music groups a reason to make the trip to the fairgrounds.

“A few years back we didn’t have the opportunity to be part of the Ventura County Fair,” said Alvarez, whose station sponsored some of the bands Sunday.

Alvarez said fair officials were smart to hold Fiesta Day on Sunday because it is the only day off for many of the county’s Latino farm workers.

“Everybody enjoys a fiesta,” he said.

Many Latino fair-goers said Sunday that they purposely put off going to the fair until the last day so they could enjoy Fiesta Day.

“The other days we can’t relate to as much,” said Rachel Rybicki, as she and her 94-year-old father sat in folding chairs enjoying the sounds of an Oxnard band called The Estrada Brothers.

“The atmosphere is much better when there’s Latin music and there’s Latino people around,” Rybicki said. “They party better. It’s just a lot more festive.”

Some fair-goers Sunday said the Mexican music that rang through the fairgrounds stirred up memories for many immigrants.

“A lot of people feel like they’re closer to home when they hear this kind of music,” Oxnard resident Martha Barragan, 34, said. “When you are here and you’re away from home, you appreciate Mexican music more.”

Partly due to such enthusiasm, Fiesta Day was the busiest day of the fair last year.

Although Sunday’s attendance at the fair was not going to be released until this morning, the total number of visitors through Saturday was 239,495, which is about 3,400 more than for the same period last year.

Fair workers and volunteers will spend today tearing down exhibits, packing up concession stands and dismantling carnival rides. Some workers said they have mixed feelings about the final curtain dropping on another fair.

“Yay and boo,” said Valerie Ulmer, a volunteer coordinator.

In her 18th year with the fair, Ulmer said she has been working 12- to 15-hour days at the fairgrounds over the past couple of weeks.

“I’m glad the long haul’s over and kind of sad that it’s all coming to an end.”