The festive sights and sounds of Mexico filled Sams Memorial Stadium on Monday as elementary school children from nine Brownsville Independent School District campuses performed traditional Mexican dances before an adoring crowd of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles at Fiesta Folklorica.
The choreographed medley of folkloric dances marked the beginning of Charro Days week. Most of last year’s celebration was canceled because of the pandemic, and participants in this year’s Fiesta Folklorica said they were glad to be doing what they usually do during Charro Days.
Students from Garza, Ben Brite, A.X. Benavides, Burns, Villa Nueva, El Jardin, Champion, Skinnner and Pullam elementary schools, all wearing traditional attire of the Mexican state they represented, performed, as did estudiantina groups from Pace and Veterans Memorial early college high schools, dancers from Brownsville Early College High School and a Folklorico group from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
The fiesta continues Thursday afternoon with the BISD Children’s Charro Days Parade down Elizabeth Street, followed on Friday by Hands Across the Border, a ceremony recognizing ties between Brownsville and Matamoros and celebrating this year’s Mr. Amigo, Broadway and television actress and singer Bianca Marroquin, who was born in Monterrey, grew up in Matamoros and went to high school in Brownsville.
The Illuminated Night Parade sponsored by IDEA Public Schools follows at 7 p.m. Friday, followed at 12:30 p.m. Saturday by the Color Guard Parade. The Grand International Parade follows at 1 p.m. and goes down Elizabeth Street to International Boulevard. It is always the biggest and best and marks Charro Days’ grand finale — but not before Sombrero Festival has its annual three-day run in Washington Park from Thursday-Saturday.
Monday morning the nine schools in this year’s Fiesta Folklorica were practicing their performances one last time before the evening’s show. Each group stepped off its entry from the visitor’s grandstand onto the dance stage at the center of the field.
Florencio Torres, a second-grade bilingual teacher at Villa Nueva Elementary School was helping choreograph a Fiesta Folklorica performance for the seventh time since going to work for BISD 27 years ago. He’s been at Villa Nueva for 15 years and was at Del Castillo before that. He had a background in university folkloric dance at what was then UTB-TSC, and has helped with Fiesta Folklorica through the years. He’s retiring after this year, he said.
“There’s a lot of preparation, with the makeup and accessories for the girls, the tranzas, or braids, that we have to buy, too. COVID didn’t affect us much because we got the masks to match in Monterrey,” he said.
“Fiesta Folklorica has come a long way because we have connections at Mercado Juarez and Garcia’s in Matamoros” who help supply the costumes and accessories, Torres said. “It used to be very rustic, very simple, but it’s gotten a lot more organized.”
Villa Nueva performed “La Costilla,” from Michoacan.
Erica Fernandez and Chelsea Blanco,” special education teachers from Champion Elementary, helped teach 30 second-graders to perform “Pichito Amoroso” from Campeche. They said it was sometimes difficult because the children are so young.
At Pullam Elementary, 52 students from second to fifth grades volunteered to perform “El Lloron” from Chiapas and have been practicing since December.
“With so many kids and with social distancing, it was a bit of a challenge,” Cynthia Guerra, the dean of instruction, said. “It made the kids feel like the pandemic was a little bit over. Everyone was anxious to participate.”
That included fourth-graders Manuel Torres and Marikose Cardenas, who said their parents were coming to see them perform. When asked if she was looking forward to the evening’s events, Marikose said, “Yes, very much.”
To see more photos of this year’s Fiesta Folklorica, view Brownsville Herald photojournalist Miguel Roberts’ full photo gallery here:
