Republic file photo A Mexican dance ensemble performs at Fiesta Latina on Fourth Street in Columbus.
The popular Fiesta Latina, an annual celebration of Latino culture and Hispanic Heritage Month, is moving from its limited space on Fourth Street in downtown Columbus where it sometimes has attracted 2,000 to 4,000 people over an entire day’s time.
It will relocate to the larger Mill Race Park, 50 Carl Miske Drive, a few blocks away and unfold from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sept. 14. Organizers said the move will allow for more clubs, organizations and businesses to have booths at the gathering featuring food, music, and more. The move also will allow for a beer garden at the festival for the first time.
“This event is a wonderful opportunity for the entire community to come together and enjoy the beauty and diversity of Latino culture,” said founder and coordinator Luz Elena Michel, director of the Community Education Coalition’s Latino education group TuFuturo, hosting the event with Su Casa Columbus.
She said attendees can look forward to live music, including mariachi and Colombian bands, folk dance, and Zumba street sessions in addition to food booths, activities from community organizations, children’s activities and more.
This year’s gathering features a Columbian theme.
For the beginning of the new space, Michel said she would love to see the attendance this year grow to perhaps 6,000 people. The event began modestly at the Columbus Learning Center in 2015 to mark Mexican Independence Day, and drew about 150 people. It has grown ever since, though the founder said she never quite imagined this measure of popularity.
“I think it has grown because Fiesta Latina is a festival where everyone is clearly welcome,” Michel said. “It has a very good ambience and atmosphere. It’s a place where you can dance. You can eat. You can listen to music.
“And really, for one day, we are together and are all the same.”
At past Fiesta Latinas, Indianapolis’ Mexican consul Daniel Aguado-Ornelas has visited and proclaimed a similar sense of unity over the gathering by early evening.
“Tonight,” he said from the stage microphone in 2022, “we are all Latino.”
