Small US towns cancel fairs celebrating Latino culture: ‘climate of fear is real'

The Guardian

3 days ago

Harrisonburg, Virginia, a town of 50,000 people in the Shenandoah Valley, should have been alive with the color, sound and smells of local Latino culture. Soccer tournaments, taco trucks, Salvadorian chanchona musical bands and about 4,000 visitors were last month set to attend the town's Hispanic Festival held at a sports complex outside the town.
But this year, it's not happening.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have been active in the Harrisonburg area for months, prompting organizers to cancel the festival.
'There have been instances of raids targeting immigrant families and workplaces in the past. While we had no confirmed reports that Ice planned to target the festival, the general climate of fear is very real,' says Crimson Solano, executive director of the Coalición Solidaria Pro-Inmigrantes Unidos (COSPU), which runs the festival.
'This fear undermines the purpose of the festival, which is to create a safe, celebratory space for our community.'
Festivals and fairs are a mainstay of small-town American life. But now from rural Indiana to a tiny village in Washington state to cornerstone Appalachian towns such as Harrisonburg, Latino and other international festivals are being cancelled this summer due to fears of raids by Ice agents.
In its first five months, the Trump administration detained about 109,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom have no criminal records, as part of the administration's sweeping deportation effort. About 150,000 people were removed from the country by Ice between January and June.
'Our polling shows 43% of Latino voters fear they could be arrested by immigration authorities – even if they are citizens or have legal status – which has disrupted the daily lives of the Latino community,' says Rita Fernández, director of immigration policy project at UnidosUS, the country's largest Latino civil rights organization.
'We urge our community to know their rights, stand united and demand an end to profiling – because no one should live in fear to celebrate their contributions to this country.'
Aside from the damage the targeting does to community relations and other social capital elements, the cancellation of festivals hits local authorities in their pockets: food trucks, vendors and other businesses pay thousands of dollars to local authorities for permits to sell their wares in front of the large audiences attending the festivals. Sponsors contribute thousands of dollars more.
Solano says that most of the Harrisonburg Hispanic Festival's $40,000 budget would have gone straight back out into the community, paying the local police department, audio engineers, tent and restroom facilitators and a host of others.
'The cancellation also hurts vendors, many of whom are small immigrant-owned businesses,' he says. 'Some vendors can make the equivalent of two to three months' worth of income in just one day at the festival.'
While communities in larger metropolitan areas such as Chicago and Pittsburgh have also seen cancellations, their large size means that both the local authorities and the vendors can generally take the financial hit, since they have in place populations to sustain them year-round.
But for small towns such as Crookston, Minnesota, population 7,250, and Madras, Oregon, population 7,750 – where Latino festivals in summer and fall play a key economic role – the cancellations are far more damaging.
In Carnation, Washington, population 2,100, organizers at Thing have cancelled its Latin Day event scheduled for 16 August in part due to uncertainty around securing visas for performers and slow ticket sales prompted by fears of raids by Ice agents.
'We're very aware that with so many Latino cultural events being cancelled out of care for community safety, this is also having a significant economic impact on the musicians, artists and vendors,' says Laura Vilches, manager of Latin and immersive programing at the Seattle Theatre Group, which oversees the festival.
'We are committed to finding opportunities for these bands and local artists at other events throughout the year and will revisit the concept of a Latino music festival when the time is right.'
All this is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of foreign-born residents in America are in the country legally. Beyond their labor, immigrants in recent years have played a major role in reviving and sustaining small towns that have struggled to hold on to their residents.
According to the American Immigration Council, the number of immigrants living in rural areas increased 5.5% between 2010 and 2022, while the US-born population shrank by 3.1% in that time. Many immigrants have filled back-breaking blue-collar jobs on farms and at food production and manufacturing facilities, which in turn pay millions of dollars in taxes to local authorities.
That's just how life has been playing out in Huntingburg, a town of 6,500 people in rural south-west Indiana, where nearly one-third of residents identify as Latino or Hispanic.
This year, it too cancelled its Festival Latino event that had taken place every fall for a decade due to fears of being targeted by Ice, to the anger of many.
In Indiana, a federal military installation 100 miles from Huntingburg is set to be converted into a deportation facility due to overcrowding at other locations used to hold detainees, contributing to the sense of fear among local immigrant communities.
Emails by the Guardian sent to the chair of the Dubois county Republican party seeking comment on the cancellation of the Festival Latino event went unanswered. Dubois county incorporates Huntingburg and saw Trump win 70% of the vote in last November's presidential election.
In the past, Republican party leaders in rural America were broadly supportive of local international and Latino communities, in large part due to the key economic role they played. Now, some are beginning to openly voice opposition to the Trump administration's indiscriminate deportation program, which has targeted thousands of people with no criminal records.
'I've been clearly on record: the worst, first,' Mike Braun, the Republican Indiana governor, said recently, referencing his unease at the indiscriminate nature of the deportation operation.
Others, however, remain steadfastly in line with the White House. In February, the Virginia state police signed a cooperation agreement with Ice, at the behest of the Republican governor, Glen Youngkin.
'It's heartbreaking for our Hispanic festival to be canceled. It's by far our largest and most anticipated festival,' says Deanna Reed, the mayor of Harrisonburg, a town whose Hispanic population is more than double the Virginia average.
'Our Hispanic community lives in fear every day. As soon as the Trump administration took over, Ice was running rampant in Harrisonburg. So, I understand why they canceled – out of fear and safety – and I agree with them.'