Mexican Culture Pride Day celebrates heritage and folklórico at Bethany Park

*Dancers from KCK-based folkloric dance group Itsï-asuli performed in Bethany Park as part of the celebration.*

Mexican Culture Pride Day brought families, dancers, and longtime community leaders to Bethany Park in Kansas City, Kansas, on Saturday, May 2, drawing a crowd that reflects how deeply Mexican heritage runs through KCK.

The Central Area Betterment Association (CABA), organized the kermes, a Mexican community fair traditionally featuring food, music, and games. The free, family-friendly event ran from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Bethany Park, at 11th Street and Central Avenue, with dozens of vendors selling Mexican food and drinks alongside clothing, toys, and souvenirs.

A cabalgata, a traditional Mexican horseback procession, was scheduled to set out from Soccer Nation on 55th Street at 10 a.m., and ride to Bethany Park to join the kermes. KCK-based folkloric dance group Itsï-asuli performed at the park as well as Omar Cano and Banda La Conquistadora de El Terre.

*Angela and Tony Martinez posed together at the Mexican Culture Pride Day celebration.*

A community in ‘the house’

District Court Judge Tony Martinez, a Wyandotte County native, said the festival was a reminder that Mexican and indigenous roots stretch further into the region’s history than many residents realize.

“Roots. It’s our roots,” Martinez said. “People don’t know the true history of Mexico and the United States, and how much of the United States was part of Mexico before the happenings in the early and late 1800s, when a large part of Mexico became the United States.”

Echoing a phrase commonly heard in Mexican-American communities, Martinez added, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”

He pointed to indigenous heritage on both sides of his family. “My father’s Indian. My mother was Mexican,” he said. “We’re rooted here, and I want everyone to remember that. It’s so important that we never forget where we came from and how this place all began.”

Martinez described his upbringing in what he affectionately calls “the house,” a triangle of historic KCK neighborhoods.

“When I’m in the house, that means Argentine, Armourdale, and Rosedale,” Martinez said. “Those are the triangle I grew up in.”

He said the diversity visible at the festival, with black, brown, and white residents gathered together, reflects what has long been true of working-class KCK. After the historic floods that devastated the area, he said, it was “largely the black, the brown, and the poor white folks” who cleaned up the damage and rebuilt.

“It’s important that we remember we’ve always been together, and we have got to stay together,” Martinez said.

He also credited Hispanic residents and businesses with driving the recent revitalization of the Central Avenue corridor.

“The resurgence here on Central Avenue has to do with the Hispanic people, and that’s a wonderful thing,” he said. “We can’t push away from that, because it keeps it going.”

*Several vendors offered authentic Mexican food, and the enticing aroma filled Bethany Park.*

Tradition, color, and education

For Martinez, the holidays remain a primary way to pass Mexican-American identity to the next generation. He said his daughter insists on a traditional menu each Christmas.

“Every Christmas, my daughter, we will say, ‘What do we want to have? You want to have ham, you want to have turkey?’ No, she wants to have mole and chicken, a chicken mole and enchiladas, and anything that’s Hispanic,” he said.

The vibrancy extends to the walls of his home, he said.

“You come into my house, you’re going to see blue, reds, greens, whites on the walls and every place else,” Martinez said. “That’s important, I think, because it shows the vibrancy of who we are as a people as far as Mexican Americans, Hispanic Americans.”

Martinez emphasized one priority above all for the next generation: education.

“We can’t keep our culture alive if we don’t become educated and keep moving forward with strength and positivity, but it has got to be through education,” he said. “We’ve always been educated people, but we have got to make sure we keep pushing that forward.”

Folklórico as a living classroom

Folkloric dance instructor Lugarda Rodriguez Andrade, speaking in Spanish through a translator, said her work centers on children of Latino families born in the United States.

“The importance for me is that the children who are Latino, whose parents are Latino and who were born here, know where their parents’ roots came from, and that they learn the culture that exists in Mexico and the roots they bring from their parents, and that they learn traditions, dances, culture, food, everything, everything that means to their parents, their place of birth, and that they pass it on through dance, through folkloric dance,” Rodriguez Andrade said.

She said the children in her classes embrace that mission.

“They are excited to know about their parents’ roots,” Rodriguez Andrade said. “They love that through the dances, they learn the stories of each state and place of the folklore of Mexico.”

Asked which tradition from her own childhood most stayed with her, Rodriguez Andrade pointed to the Danza de los Viejitos, the dance of the old men.

“When I would watch them dance the Danza de los Viejitos, because I’m from Michoacán, and I would watch the traditional dances near my town, all the colorful things and the food, which was, well, enchiladas, corundas, everything that was in our region of Michoacán,” she said. “So it’s something that stayed within me, and that’s why I teach it to them.”

Rodriguez Andrade said she is approaching 28 years of teaching folkloric dance. Her group, Itsï-asuli, takes its name from a phrase she translated as “place where the blue water is born.” The group is from Michoacán and posts on Facebook and Instagram, where it is identifiable by a logo of four small dance figures.