Why Detroit held a 2025 Cinco de Mayo parade when Chicago, Philadelphia canceled theirs
The event kicked off at the intersection of Vernor and Woodmere, as the sounds of Latin music filled the air and Mexican flags breezed across a lineup of cars and trucks at the start of the parade.
This year represents a milestone for the Cinco de Mayo Parade, as attendees marked the 60th year of celebrating Mexican heritage, community and resilience in southwest Detroit, and inviting attendees from across the state and beyond.
Maybe it was due to the weather or fear from the tense political climate, local officials, business owners and community members noticed that fewer people attended this year's festivities compared to previous years. Though an organizer estimated the parade crowd to be about 8,000, and parade goers showed up, eager to celebrate and pass along the tradition to future generations.
Beth Reyes, a 52-year-old southwest Detroit native, noticed a different tone at the parade this year, which she attributes to the Trump administration's policies.
'It seems more quiet,' Reyes said. 'It's usually more cheerful and I've been to the parade in the rain before.'
She came to the parade from Warren with her husband because she felt it was more important this year than ever to show up. Many of her older family members — uncles, grandparents and others of older generations — decided not to attend for the first time ever, she said.
'I'm here to represent and stand here for my people, rain or shine,' Reyes said.
The Cinco de Mayo Parade honors the 1862 Battle of Puebla, when a Mexican army defeated French forces, and is celebrated more in the U.S. than in Mexico.
Cristian Rubio, the assistant general manager at Armando's, a Mexican restaurant on West Vernor, said as he looked out his window he saw fewer Latinos watching the parade this year.
Rubio, a 30-year-old southwest Detroit native, is part of a few Latino social media groups that he said were raising the alarm about the parade as a potential site for immigration raids.
'People were warning each other about not being around possible raids,' Rubio said.
More: Amid fears of immigration raids, Detroit's Cinco de Mayo Parade will still go on
More: Metro Detroit bars, restaurants celebrate Cinco de Mayo, Kentucky Derby
Others say the lower turnout was due to the weather.
Omar Hernandez, owner of Mexicantown Bakery, did notice smaller crowds at the parade, but said he believes it's because of bad weather, not the political climate. As a business owner, he said he supports President Donald Trump's efforts to bring jobs back to America. Hernandez says lower turnout for the parade hasn't noticeably lessened traffic to his bakery.
Over at the Patton Park Recreation Center, a Bad Bunny song blasted from speakers at the Cinco de Mayo festival, but not many were around to hear the boastful beat.
Alma Cruz, president of the Mexican Patriotic Committee of Metro Detroit, which plans the annual Cinco de Mayo parade and festival, said the Sunday festival usually brings up to 250 people.
This year's Sunday festival, however, saw significantly fewer attendees at any given time, she said. Around 3 p.m., there were about 20 people walking around the shops and food trucks. The weather forced some vendors to go home because the strong wind damaged their tents, Cruz said.
The parade, overall, still had a sizable showing given the weather, according to Cruz. She estimates close to 8,000 people still showed up to the event.
'It was a beautiful representation of who southwest Detroit is,' Cruz said. 'We show up and show out.'
Rosendo Ortehua, a Lincoln Park resident who was working the Galindo's Taste of Mexico food truck, saw fewer sales this year during the Sunday festival — just 15 by 4:30 p.m. Last year, he made around 300 sales.
'We brought a lot of food, expecting 300 people,' Ortehua said in Spanish.
At the festival, Herlanda Orozco, 53, said she knows her community and it wasn't just the weather that kept crowds small.
'Latinos don't care,' Orozco said. 'If it's raining or snowing, they still come. These next four years, they're gonna be like 'no'.'
Despite the lower turnout, rain and worries about immigration enforcement, parade goers said the Cinco de Mayo festivities are an important way to celebrate heritage and resilience.
Mauricio Hernandez has attended the parade for the last 10 years, ever since he and his family moved from Chicago. He was going to skip this year's because of rumors that federal immigration enforcement officers might attend the event.
But he didn't want his son to miss out on the parade.
'I want to bring my child out here," Hernandez, 33, of Detroit said. 'He's a 4-year-old. So I really wanted to come out here, have fun, see the parade.'
Inside Rodriguez Vaquerita, a store on West Vernor selling hand crafted boots, hats and apparel, 30-year-old Noel Morales said he's been watching the parade since he was 4 years old, when he moved from Mexico to southwest Detroit. It's a tradition he wants to pass on to future generations.
"The Cinco de Mayo parade here, we use it in Detroit as far as us celebrating our culture, bringing something back to community, and not only that, but showing the new generations a little bit of something about where we come from. Maybe they haven't had an opportunity to go home and visit, so that's what they're seeing here," he said.
José Hernández, 72, stood in front of Chilango Bakery, his sister's business, under an awning protecting him from the rain.
Hernández, who's originally from Mexico, moved to Detroit 12 years ago. Before moving to Lincoln Park, he lived in southwest Detroit but this is only his second time attending the Cinco de Mayo parade.
He anticipated fewer people would attend because of the intimidation and fear he says the Trump administration has instilled in many community members.
'Even those that follow the law perfectly,' Hernández said in Spanish. 'There will be less people who want to expose themselves.'
Hernández said he sees the parade as more than a daylong celebration.
'I see it as a rebellion,' he said. 'To make us feel that here we are, that they need us, that we are not dispensable.'
The theme of rebellion was apparent during the event. One car displayed a green poster taped to a side window that read: 'DERROTAR DONALD TRUMP,' which translates to Defeat Donald Trump. It belonged to By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, which has participated in the parade since 1985. Kate Stenvig, Detroit national coordinator for the organization, said part of the group's mission is to defend immigrant rights and stop the administration's attack on immigrants.
Local leaders in Philadelphia and Chicago canceled their parades, citing ongoing immigration crackdowns.
In Detroit, there was disagreement among community leaders about whether the parade should go on, with some saying the risk of gathering publicly is too great amid the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. But one organizer said the thought of canceling the parade was never considered. Doing so would be standing down, one supporter said. And canceling would ignore those who want to celebrate Latino heritage, the organizer said.
Tonia Patino, a business owner in southwest Detroit and board chair of the Southwest Detroit Business Association, said she was torn on the idea of canceling this year's event.
'It's kind of a double edged sword, just because we want to be sensitive to the undocumented and those who fear ICE deportation,' Patino said. 'But at the same time our businesses in this business corridor have suffered tremendously, just from the lack of patrons being in their stores, in their restaurants. Sales are down. And so events like this draw people outside of the community.'
Contact Nushrat Rahman: nrahman@freepress.com. Follow her on X: @NushratR.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit held a 2025 Cinco de Mayo parade as Chicago, Philly canceled
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Epoch Times
6 hours ago
- Epoch Times
Flow of Fentanyl Down After ‘Titanic Effort' by Mexico, Say Experts
The flow of fentanyl from Mexico to the United States has reduced since U.S. President Donald Trump took office earlier this year and threatened Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum with tariffs unless she squeezed the cartels, according to analysts. On July 31, after a 'very successful' call with Sheinbaum, Trump said he was giving Mexico a 90-day extension before imposing a 30 percent tariff on imports.
17 hours ago
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will again get less Colorado River water in 2026
DENVER -- Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will again live with less water from the Colorado River as drought lingers in the West, federal officials announced Friday. The Colorado River is a critical lifeline to seven U.S. states, 30 Native American tribes, and two Mexican states. The cuts are based on projections for levels at federal reservoirs — chief among them Lake Powell and Lake Mead — released every August by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Arizona will again go without 18% of its total Colorado River allocation, while Mexico loses 5%. The reduction for Nevada — which receives far less water than Arizona, California or Mexico — will stay at 7%. California won't face any cuts because it has senior water rights and is the last to lose in times of shortage. Decades of overuse and the effects of long-term drought worsened by climate change means there's far more demand for water than what actually flows through the river. Low reservoir levels at Lake Mead have triggered mandatory cutbacks every year since 2022, with the deepest cuts in 2023, which hit farmers in Arizona the hardest. Meanwhile, the states are working to reach agreement by next year on new long-term rules to govern the river in dry years. The Trump administration gave a mid-November deadline for states to reach a preliminary agreement, or risk federal intervention. Negotiations have faced delays as states push back against how much water they should each give up. The original 1922 Colorado River Compact was calculated based on an amount of water that doesn't exist in today's climate. That leaves the Upper Basin states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah to share far less water after the required amount is sent to the to the 'Lower Basin' states of Nevada, Arizona and California. Lots of water is also lost to evaporation and leaky infrastructure. Fairly splitting the river's water in the era of climate change has been vexing for years, with all of the major users hesitant to give anything up as they anticipate a drier future. There has to be enough water in the reservoirs to reach the tunnels that usher water downstream, and ideally, even more water for hydropower generation. Key infrastructure like the Hoover Dam rely on certain water levels in Lake Mead to generate electricity. Mandatory cuts and emergency water releases are 'reactive," said John Berggren, a regional policy manager at Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit focused on climate change. 'If we are going to be able to have a sustainable Colorado River and not just be responding to crisis after crisis, we need large amounts of flexibility built into this new set of guidelines," he said. 'We can and must do better. Nature isn't waiting for us,' said Becky Mitchell, Colorado's commissioner in the Upper Colorado River Commission. States are considering a so-called natural flow approach to managing the river — where the Lower Basin would receive a certain percentage of the average natural flow from the prior few years. The Lower Basin states have helped stave off deeper cuts by coming up with voluntary conservation plans. 'Absent all of those measures, the river would be in a very bad place,' said J.B. Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River Board of California and a board member for the Imperial Irrigation District, the largest user of the river's water. Still, he knows California, like others, will likely have to give up more in the negotiations. Dozens of conservation projects along for Upper Basin states and tribes are in limbo. President Donald Trump froze yet-to-be-distributed Inflation Reduction Act funds on his first day in office, which included nearly $400 million for those projects. The entire Colorado congressional delegation signed a letter earlier this month urging the release their portion of those funds. ___ This story has been corrected to remove a reference to the third year of cuts in the headline. The cuts announced Friday are set for 2026, which will be the fifth year. ___ Associated Press journalists Amy Taxin in Tustin, California, and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed to this report. ___
17 hours ago
Mexico and Guatemala presidents meet face-to-face for the first time to talk key regional projects
GUATEMALA CITY -- From mounting cartel violence, border security and a mega project to extend a controversial train line across their borders, the presidents of Mexico and Guatemala talked common goals and concerns in their first face-to-face meeting on Friday. The two regional allies, who met in Guatemala's northern Peten region, agreed to strengthen coordination on migration, law enforcement and economic development. But top on the agenda for both was a proposal to extend the Mexican government's Maya Train from southern Mexico to Guatemala and Belize. The idea was first floated by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum's predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but was met with skepticism by Guatemala's Bernardo Arévalo. The Guatemalan leader has said he sees the economic potential of the project to the jungle region but remained adamant that the construction should not come with the kind of environmental damage that it inflicted in Mexico. The train, which currently runs in a rough loop around Mexico's southern peninsula, was López Obrador's mega-project, with the purpose to connect remote jungle and rural areas in Mexico's south. However, it has for years has fueled controversy and legal battles as it's sliced through large swaths of jungle and damaged a delicate cave system in Mexico that serves as the area's main source of water. Arévalo said after the meeting with Sheinbaum that extending the train "is a vision we share' but that the project must not encroach on any protected ecosystems in Guatemala, especially the dense jungles of Peten. He said there would also have to be careful environmental studies and the two presidents looked at an alternative proposal that would have the train loop instead of directly cut through the jungles of Guatemala and Belize. 'I've made it very clear at all times that the Maya Train will not pass through any protected area,' Arévalo said. His stand is a sharp contrast to that of López Obrador, who fast-tracked the train project without environmental studies. Sheinbaum and Arévalo also spoke about about mounting cartel violence along the Mexico-Guatemala border where the cartels have long fought over control of lucrative migratory routes. Earlier this week, a group of around 100 Mexicans fled across the border because of a burst of violence in their communities. Later Friday, Sheinbaum and Arévalo were to travel to Calakmul, in southern Mexico, and meet up with Belize Prime Minister Johnny Briceño to continue the talks. 'Today, Mexico and Guatemala are demonstrating the will of two sister nations, with governments committed to justice and their peoples, to move forward together toward a more dignified, equitable and free future,' Sheinbaum added.
