For the South Sound Latino community, September typically has been a month to honor the heritage of their families and their ancestors, to share their cuisines and their cultures with neighbors who might not look like them, and to showcase the power of — as Tony Gómez, chief engagement officer of Tacoma Arts Live, put it — “multiplicity.”
But 2025 has been far from a typical year in the United States of America.
This weekend, three events in Tacoma and Puyallup will offer differing approaches to the start of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), which overlaps with the official independence day celebrations of countries including Mexico, Chile, El Savador, Costa Rica and Guatemala.
Washington State Fair hosts its Fiestas Patrias event on Sunday, Sept. 14, with two concerts at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., folkloric dancers, mariachis, art and more (free with fair admission). Latinx Unidos del Sound, with the support of Tacoma Arts Live, will celebrate Saturday, Sept. 13 at Tacoma Armory, while Taco Street at the Waterfront Market in Ruston will host a quieter but still resonant event.
‘Celebrate … when it means a lot’
The Armory’s Festival Herencia Latina brings together an arts marketplace featuring local makers and various interactive experiences, including screenprinting with artist Edgar Martinez, a two-hour tango session, bilingual story time with Tacoma Public Library and various workshops with visual artists and dancers. They include Mexica (Aztec) dancing with Huehca Omeyocan, traditional Oaxacan “dancing devils” with Diablos Tierra Mixteca, the 13-piece Banda Sierra Azul and Afro-Puerto Rican bomba with Hijos de Agüeybaná.
New to the 9-year-old event for 2025 is a Cadena de Cuentos, or chain of stories: a bilingual storytelling circle to be led by Jesica Vega and former Washington state poet laureate Claudia Castro-Luna.
“This festival has always been a celebration of the diversity within the big-tent identification of Latindad, and I think now more than ever it is essential to manage our narrative about who we are and what we contribute,” said Gómez in an interview on Thursday. “My invitation to the larger South Sound community would be: Step out in solidarity. Celebrate your hardworking neighbors at a time when it means a lot.”
Caña Dulce, the traditional dance of Costa Rica, is one of many celebrations of Latino culture that will be showcased at Festival Herencia Latina on Saturday, Sept. 13 at Tacoma Armory.
The theme for this year’s event is dignidad — decided upon, noted Gómez, many months ago.
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that federal agents can use ethnicity as a factor in immigration stops, overturning lower court decisions that had found tactics used in California had amounted to racial profiling. Both event organizers The News Tribune spoke with this week referenced the case.
As immigration raids have upended life for many Los Angeles residents — nearly half of whom are Hispanic, according to Census data — and millions of others across the country since spring, Latinos in Western Washington have adjusted. This summer, organizers canceled several major events out of fear that they would be targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, many of the nonprofits and arts groups have lost or expect to lose essential federal funding due to the White House’s attempt to cut off diversity initiatives and the recent Congressional budget bill, The Seattle Times reported in July.
The fear is not lost on Gómez. He faults no one for making those difficult decisions, but he worries what might come if it became an unbendable pattern.
“If we continue to cancel all of our events,” he said, “we’re doing the work of omission ourselves. It is important now more than ever, in a time of exponential scapegoating and stereotyping, that we speak with our own voices. Who does that better than our artists and our small Latino businesses? We need to manage our own narrative.”
Festival Herencia Latina ffers resource booths as well as performances, a mercadito and more to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in Tacoma.
‘When celebration becomes resistance’
Near Point Ruston, Taco Street, which has hosted a Fiestas Patrias event since opening at the Waterfront Market in 2020, hasn’t given up either.
“Instead of a noisy celebration,” wrote co-owner Elonka Perez on Instagram just after Labor Day, “we are asking you to stand with us and witness our resilience.”
The accompanying video showed footage of people dancing — in folkloric dresses and jeans and T-shirts, in cowboy boots and sneakers — at prior events at the market. There’s music in the background and shouts of joy. Then an image of a joint American and Mexican flag appears, waving on a lowrider, and the sound cuts out.
“Listen to the silence. This is what happens when celebration becomes resistance,” the narrator says.
In a phone call this week, Perez told The News Tribune that the free event will swap music and performances for resource booths and informational discussions with immigration attorneys, the Northwest Immigration Rights Project, Mi Centro and others, anchored by a headlining speaker at 3 p.m.
It’s “a moment of silence — not because we want to be silent,” said Perez. “What we are attempting to do in our community is to pause and gain allies. There’s many people that I talk to that make comments like, ‘I had no idea,’ or, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize, or, ‘How does that affect me?’ Things like that,” she explained. “Our point-of-view is: You’ve come to eat our tacos, you’ve come to our celebration, you listen to our music and you consume our art in whatever form that is, and now we need something from you. This is what the act is.”
Taco Street serves fresh Mexican food daily at the Waterfront Market in Ruston. Co-owner Elonka Perez saw this year’s Fiestas Patrias as an opportunity to speak up for the immigrant community and invite others to access the resources and confidence to do the same.
Taco Street has hosted other events this year in more standard celebratory fashion, she said, including a lowrider festival in June with Unidas Por Vida. That one went well, but it occurred just days after protests erupted in L.A., sparked by a wave of immigration raids and then National Guard troops sent by President Donald Trump. In early September, a federal court in California ruled that the National Guard deployment was illegal.
“We were all holding our breath,” said Perez. “There are a lot of people who — really, they are afraid.”
Fiestas Patrias for all
With her husband Martin, Perez also operated a Taco Street in Seattle’s University District. They closed the restaurant in June in favor of using the kitchen as a commissary and expect to open a new location at Tacoma Mall this fall. Knowing the greater Seattle-Tacoma community, Perez, who spearheaded a Hispanic Business Association at Point Ruston, expressed hope for a brighter future.
“People want to be allies. They want to hear your story and they want to be with you,” she said.
Her family — with the platform of their small business, their food and their staff of 16 people — feels comfortable speaking out. But not everybody does.
“I hope and pray, as we all do, that by standing up and talking and bringing light to these things, and being very public, we hope that nothing happens to us,” she said. “But it could, and I think that instead of sitting in fear, instead of allowing things to just, ‘Oh maybe it’ll pass, we just need to wait’ … That’s just not an OK thing to be for any of us.”
The cascading events of this year have “had a chilling effect on our community in terms of our readiness to gather and celebrate publicly,” added Gómez. “We have right now a challenge, and we also have a responsibility to speak assertively and proudly about what our community contributes … There’s plenty of sources that are trying to frame who we are, and we are saying: ‘This is who we are.’”
The Tacoma Moon Festival, a celebration of Chinese culture this year with the theme, “One Moon, One People, One World,” also happens this Saturday, 1-6 p.m., at Chinese Reconciliation Park on Ruston Way. It’s also free and family-friendly with plentiful food vendors, makers, performances and activities.
Hispanic Heritage Month – Tacoma
Festival Herencia Latina at Tacoma Armory
1001 S. Yakima Ave., Tacoma
Free event with music, dance, visual art, storytelling, food and a mercadito (secure building w/ controlled entry)
Fiestas Patrias at Waterfront Market
5101 Yacht Club Road, Tacoma (free parking at Point Ruston)
Free event with resource booths with local nonprofits, plus a collaborative message-board to be shared at the end of the month
Fiestas Patrias at Washington State Fair
110 9th Ave. SW, Puyallup
Sept. 14, all day — shows at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., thefair.com
Free with Fair admission ($15-$18); art, live performances and food celebrating Mexican culture