Fiestas Primavara returns to Benicia City Park for its second year

BENICIA — The Fiestas Primavera, or Spring Celebrations, will return to Benicia City Park for its second year on Saturday for an educational cultural event that aims to create community and understanding through cultural immersion. 

This year’s live music offerings will span genres from reggae pop fusion to R&B and Latin dance classics, and dance performances will include Aztec, Pomo, traditional Mexican Ballet Folklorico and the African traditions of Cuba and Peru. 

The event will also feature youth poetry, a raffle, and cuisine from different cultures. It will host exhibits by multicultural artists, and a cultural and educational pavilion that will highlight some of the struggles of immigrants and people of color.

Event organizers said that 2,000 people attended last year’s event, which helped boost the economy in Benicia by attracting visitors. It also sought to bring  awareness about a dangerous game played by Benicia students called “La Migra,” which is Mexican slang for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

In the so-called game, high school seniors pose as ICE agents and chase younger and minority students, the “migrants,” and may shoot at them with pellet guns. If the students are caught they are “deported” to a remote location such as Lake Herman without a mobile phone, and left to find their way home alone.

Monica Gomes, one of the founders of Fiestas Primavera, said that the event performers expressed a deep desire to join with the mission because they feel that it's critical and impacts the city’s youth. “They are our future,” Gomes said, “so we really have to be able to support them, protect them and develop them.”

Gomes said she was motivated to do something after her 17-year-old son was assaulted during the game in 2022. She hosted a community meeting and got support from the Benicia Unified School District, the City of Benicia and the Benicia Police Department to discourage participation in La Migra, and formed a group of five other women called U.N.I.D.O.S. for Change. 

Gomes partnered with Solano Aids Coalition president Mario Saucedo, who has produced many cultural events in Vallejo, to organize the first Fiestas Primavera in 2023.

Gomes said their efforts were successful, and that there was little to no participation in La Migra last year.  

This year, however, she said there is concern that the “game” will have a resurgence under the Trump administration. “We want to protect the community from any of these criminal elements or these violent acts, or these racist and hateful acts, most especially because it involves the youth” she said. “We want to be able to help the youth lead in their communities and feel safe in their communities.”

Saucedo also expressed alarm about increasingly negative attitudes towards Hispanics and Latinos under the second Trump Administration. “Look at all the injustice this administration is doing,” he said, and decried deportation of people because of the color of their skin or because they have a tattoo. “It’s an attack on democracy. They don’t even respect the Constitution of the United States.”

Saucedo was referring to the recent deportation of over 200 migrants to a prison in El Salvador, in spite of a judge’s order to turn the planes around. Attorneys for several of the men have asserted that they were in the U.S. legally, had no criminal records, and have been imprisoned in an extremely dangerous environment without due process.

Saucedo said that white people are now attacking their own gardeners, people who had been working for them for years. “This administration is giving people a free ride to do whatever they want,” he said.

But Saucedo also expressed hope for the future. He said that Benicia is a beautiful town and that he thinks the people of Benicia have received the event well. “They are really happy that we are there,” he said. “They are very thankful that we bring in that diversity.”

“I think that love can conquer everything and love can heal anything. That's why I fell in love with what these six women from Benicia are doing,” Saucedo said. “The reality of this is that we are only one race, and it is the human race.”