At Shute Park in Hillsboro, La Guelaguetza attracted thousands to the open grassy park and concrete staging area to watch Oaxacan musical and dance performances. In Woodburn, the city’s annual Fiesta Mexicana had its second largest gathering yet, welcoming over 25,000 attendees over three days.
From Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, Latino nonprofits, city governments and other community organizations are preparing a slate of festivals, performances, exhibitions and storytelling events to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.
Read more: Where to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2025 in Oregon
Yet despite recent large-scale successful events celebrating Latino culture, some organizations are pulling back or canceling events entirely due to safety concerns and budget cuts. Events affected include Latino Fest in Madras, El Grito in Hillsboro and ¡Viva Salem!
For organizers, the decision hasn’t been easy.
“We’ve had a lot of mixed feelings, both internally and externally,” said Jairo Rodriguez, marketing and communications director for Centro Cultural, which organizes Hillsboro’s popular El Grito Celebration.
The organization supports underserved communities in Washington County by providing multigenerational and culturally specific services including educational programs, workforce development, civic advocacy and community events.
Centro Cultural decided around late May to transition from an in-person event to a virtual format and make a video showcasing some of the performances. Organizers hope to bring community into people’s homes, highlight the organization’s work and share key information on staying safe in the current climate.
Centro Cultural’s 30-minute El Grito video will be live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube showcasing local talent and sharing community resources at 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 15. Rodriguez said organizers feared the risks associated with immigration enforcement were too great to move forward with an in-person event.
“I think given the density of our Hispanic community in Hillsboro and in the rural parts of Washington County, we feel like there is more of a target on our backs,” Rodriguez said. “It may be more of a feeling than a reality, but things change every day.”
Organizers for Central Oregon Latino Fest, another long-standing Hispanic heritage event, decided last spring to cancel their fall event for the same reasons.
In April, Catalina Sánchez Frank, executive director of the Latino Community Association, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that there were worries immigration authorities might attend the event and attempt to arrest or intimidate participants.
“Even if there were no possibilities of a raid, just maybe harassment towards the public … our population being targeted,” Sánchez Frank told reporter Yesenia Amaro. “That would put individuals and families at risk just by showing up to the Latino Fest. … That was our main concern.”
The cancellations are part of a larger trend across the country. Despite the decisions being made months in advance, organizers said the climate has not improved enough to bring back the events.
“We want to ensure that as we approach the new reality that we lead with caution first before we start making very concrete decisions on public events,” Rodriguez said. “Because this new reality is not temporary, it’s for the next three and a half years.”
Centro Cultural’s role as an advocacy and community organization has made staff and volunteers more cautious while other city events have continued without incident.
Woodburn’s Fiesta Mexicana ran smoothly, said Maricela Guerrero, public information officer and communications manager for the city of Woodburn, which organized the event.
“We didn’t have any issues come up during the whole three days, which was a really good thing,” Guerrero said. “I know there’s concerns and there’s fears out there, and each organization has to make that call for themselves. And for us, we’ve just have such a long history, and we were prepared. And thankfully, everything worked out and was a great, great event.”
According to Guerrero, the festival only slightly increased the number of security personnel for the 2025 event.
Budget limitations forced the cancellation of ¡Viva Salem! Todos Unidos, a city-run Hispanic Heritage Month celebration, said Irma Coleman, neighborhood program manager with the city of Salem. A $10,000 grant from Salem’s transient occupancy tax initially gave the city funding to organize the festival.
According to Coleman, the festival, which debuted in 2023, attracted around 3,000 attendees in its second year and was a large source of pride for the Latino community.
“I was doing about 90% of the work myself,” Coleman said. “Recent staff levels are just so slim. They have been for years at the city that it was very, very difficult to continue the festival with such a small number of staff support.”
While the cancellation overlaps with recent immigration-related tensions, city officials emphasized that safety was not a factor in the decision. They hope to bring the festival back in the future.
“I’m very optimistic that we will bring it back,” Coleman said. “I actually have already been in conversations with management about the possibility of bringing it back in the very near future. That is something that’s very important to our city mayor and upper management as well.”
In the meantime, Woodburn will continue to hold Latino celebrations. On Sept. 12, the city will host its Heritage Celebration for Hispanic Heritage Month, coinciding with the popular Fridays on First downtown series. The event will feature a procession of flags, a civic ceremony and the Mexican Consulate’s traditional Grito de Dolores, a traditional reenactment of Mexico’s 1810 call to independence.
“This is pretty local,” Guerrero said about the upcoming event. “We invite the community to come in. We invite others to come in. But again, we will have our police making their rounds downtown. And we just had our coronation downtown in the Plaza, which went very smoothly.”
According to Guerrero, city officials have no significant safety concerns and hope the event will be as successful as Fiesta Mexicana.
“To see the families there, see kids playing, to see people enjoying the music and the dancing,” Guerrero said, “it truly is celebrating culture, tradition and community.”
Other cities are continuing Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations with weekend events, including Portland’s El Grito festival at Rose Quarter Commons on Sept. 14-15, North Clackamas Park’s Fiesta Latina en el Parque and The Dalles’ Tardeada Mexicana, both on Sept. 13. Find a full list of upcoming events here.
— Chiara Profenna covers religion, faith and cultural connections. Reach her at 503-221-4327; [email protected] or @chiaraprofenna.
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