Rose City Fiesta celebration kicks off Hispanic Heritage Month in Tyler

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - To kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, the Tyler Hispanic Business Alliance hosted the Rose City Fiesta Sunday afternoon in Tyler.

Vibrant colors, music, and performances were just part of the celebration at Bergfeld Park. Nancy Rangel is the President and CEO of Tyler Hispanic Business Alliance and said this is their fourth year organizing the largest event like this for the area.

“We have a lot of other smaller events that happen, but nothing to this scale. And we were actually the very first to organize a celebration to our Hispanic Heritage Month in all of East Texas a couple years back,” Rangel said. “So we’re very honored to do that and we’re very excited to partner up and collab with other groups that are starting to do events such as these.”

Emily Pinal is a co-founder of Este Poder, a non-profit focused on civic engagement. Recent U.S. Census data shows that Hispanic residents make up more of the state’s population than white residents.

“So we want to make sure that they have the resources available and they know what to do, especially with the election coming up, we are making sure they’re registered to vote, they know where to go, and what important dates are near. I know a lot of people are going to be here today so we wanted to make sure we put our information out there,” Pinal said.

People were able to get information, enjoy the sights, sounds and tastes of Hispanic and Latino communities. This year at the festival was the first time that Tyler ISD students got to showcase their talents through song and dance.

“This is the whole reason why Rose City Fiesta was established because not only do we want to embrace people like myself that are older, embrace our heritage, but we want also to be able to teach our younger children, Hispanic or Non-Hispanic about what are our traditions, what is our culture about. We want to be able to showcase that with them and be able to pass a legacy onto our generations to come” Rangel said.

In November they’ll be hosting an awards luncheon to recognize Hispanic leaders and business owners in our community.

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