If you are scratching your head and looking for something fun and interesting to do for Cinco de Mayo, make it a plan and visit Pueblo. Other cities in Colorado have their own Cinco de Mayo celebrations scheduled, but no one does it quite like Pueblo. The festivities begin on Thursday evening and carry over to Sunday night. The four-day fiesta has something for everyone.
“This is the first year since before the COVID-19 pandemic that Pueblo has had such a wide variety of dif- ferent events centered around Cinco de Mayo,” said Noah Commerford, President and CEO of Pueblo’s Latino Chamber of Commerce. With the city’s health and safety protocols lifted, he said, “Pueblo and Southern Colorado are ready for a fiesta!”
Those celebrating Cinco de Mayo—literally May 5th—will not be celebrating Mexican Independence Day. That commemoration is September 16th. This celebration honors the memory of the Battle of Puebla, when in 1862, a smaller and lesser trained group of young Mexicans led by General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated a better trained and armed army of French soldiers. An estimated one thousand French soldiers were killed that day.
While Cinco de Mayo has grown each year and now boasts a celebration as grand as any in the entire state, its first celebration, in 1970, was a modest affair. A group of local activists, including students and Brown Berets, held a parade through the city’s downtown and, later, a small festival at the city’s Mineral Palace Park. The late Rudolfo ‘Corky’ Gonzales was the keynote speaker.
The Cinco festivities begin on Thursday, May 4th, with the Latino Chamber’s After Hours Professional Mixer at Game Knight Games at 1839 South Pueblo Boulevard. Friday will feature another golf scramble at the city’s Elmwood Golf Course. That evening at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center there will be the 18th Annual Tostada, a roast of one of the city’s well know business leaders. This year, Andrea Aragon, will be feted.
Pueblo’s Ray Aguilera Park will be the site of the biggest family celebration. Aguilar, a vocal proponent of his city and a city council member, passed away in May of 2021. Plenty of Pueblo food, including its famous chile, will be served. There will also be games for children. Park festivities will go from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Perhaps one of the highlights of this year’s Cinco weekend will be the official unveiling of three statues of early Pueblo pioneers. The three, Charles Autobee, a trapper, scout, interpreter and entrepreneur, Marcelino Baca, a trapper and trader, and Teresita Sandoval, a businesswoman, will be officially dedicated. The three are prominent in the founding of Fort Pueblo, the earliest settlement in what is now Colorado’s eighth largest city.
It has now been more than fifty years since the earliest incarnation of Pueblo’s Cinco de Mayo celebration. With the exception of the two years of the pandemic, it has grown incrementally to now become the biggest Cinco de Mayo celebration in all of southern Colorado. The celebration, said Commerford, is important. “It allows us to express our cultural diversity and bring people together.”
The 2023 version of Cinco de Mayo, said Commerford, is an early indicator of what the Latino Chamber has planned in future years. “The Latino Chamber, he said, will be working on developing a multi-cultural arts and music festival” for future celebrations. “Pueblo is rich in culture, diversity, history and has a great arts and music scene,” he said.
The drive from Denver to Pueblo is a two-hour beeline south on I-25, an easy escape from the city. Any time between Thursday and Sunday, the city promises there will be something for everyone.
