The 101st annual Mexican Independence Day parade went on peacefully Sunday in East Chicago in the face of heightened federal immigration enforcement nationwide.
“Can’t nobody steal our joy,” Mayor Anthony Copeland said just as he hopped into a parade car. “This country is made of immigrants.”
Along the route, Mexican flags lined the streets. One float had Ballet Folklorico Yolotzin dancers and was followed at the end with horses.
“As a Mexican, it’s like a family reunion,” said Rolando Ruiz, 48, of Valparaiso.
Sitting at his parents’ home on Parrish Avenue, he said they were going to a neighbor’s cookout. He estimated since the late 1990s, the crowds have become “less and less,” he said.
A lot of that had to do with East Chicago’s population gradually shrinking over the years.
“People are traveling,” he said. “They are afraid of the situation with ICE.”
Opinions varied on crowd size, whether more people stayed home than last year. Others said the crowds were about the same.
Those who can come out and celebrate their culture should show up and be a “voice for the voiceless,” Unión Benéfica Mexicana President Marino Solorio said afterwards by phone.
The current immigration climate was his generation’s “call to action,” he said. When the parade began a century ago, the community was organizing as they faced deportations. It shouldn’t be taken for granted, Solorio said, hoping a future UBM leader was somewhere “in that parade.”
Also known as Fiestas Patrias, the parade in East Chicago was only cancelled a few times in the past century — during World War II, after 9/11 and early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Solorio told the Post-Tribune previously that being a city in a Republican state may help.
“We cannot let our voices be silenced,” he told the Post-Tribune last week.
Lizette Magallanes, of Valparaiso, lined up in a car for her second year as Queen of Fiestas Patrias.
“We were not sure we’d do it,” said Elvia Franzese, a UBM trustee, sitting with her. They made the call to “go ahead.”
Nearby, Iman Tenorio, dressed as La Catrina – clad with flowers in her hair in a traditional red, green and white dress with Día de los Muertos makeup – said it was her first year, coming down from Chicago.
“I’m always ready to represent our culture,” she said.
Down the parade route, mom Marie Alcazar, 44, waited for her favorite — the horses — as her daughter Amara, 17, carried a Mexican flag. Alcazar said she’d been coming to the parade almost her whole life.
“It makes you appreciate it more,” the mother said.
Just over half of East Chicago’s roughly 25,000 residents are Latino, according to the U.S. Census.
Notre Dame Assistant History Professor Emiliano Aguilar, an East Chicago native who has written extensively on the parade’s historic and cultural importance, noted E.C. has the highest Hispanic population percentage in any city in Indiana.
“East Chicago and the regional Mexican community have, with a few years serving as an exception, long continued this tradition in the face of threats like repatriation, urban renewal, and deportation,” he wrote in an email. “For East Chicago, Fiestas Patrias is not just a celebration of independence, but a way of highlighting their resilience.”
He credited Indiana Historical Society curator Nicole Martinez-LeGrand for helping to bring into the forefront that the 100th anniversary was last year.
As a kid, he recalled his grandparents, UBM members Francisco and Rosalia Aguilar, lining up for the parade. Later as an academic, he was motivated to research the history of Latinos in the Midwest that he hadn’t learned much of in school.
“I remember in high school, when the festival was moved to Tod Park, my grandfather sat in his pickup truck overnight to watch the stalls, stages, and equipment being set up early,” he wrote. “I remember going through photos with my aunts at family events, and the number of photos they had of the family at the parade showed a story of the importance of this tradition for our family.”
Elsewhere in Illinois, Mexican Independence Day parades in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood and suburban Waukegan were scheduled to go on as planned Sunday, according to media reports. By contrast, El Grito Chicago, a two-day Mexican Independence Day festival at Grant Park that drew 24,000 in 2024, was postponed as the Trump administration appeared to target the city for immigration raids, per the Chicago Tribune.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced “Operation Midway Blitz” last week in Chicago, targeting illegal immigrants. That came days after President Donald Trump posted in a meme on social media that the city would become “Chipocalypse Now.”
“I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” he wrote. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
He later backtracked on the comments, saying he wanted to fight crime. However, since the National Guard were sent last month to Washington D.C. to do the same, the Associated Press estimated over 40% were immigration arrests.
Trump recently told Fox News last week he wanted to send National Guard troops instead to Memphis.
Trump said Friday he “would have preferred going to Chicago,” where local politicians have fiercely resisted his plans, but suggested the city was too “hostile” with “professional agitators.”
The Associated Press contributed.
mcolias@post-trib.com
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