Monarch Butterfly Festival celebrating Mexican culture Aug. 2-3
The Monarch Butterfly Festival, a two-day immersive and transportive sensory experience, will be presented by Immigrant Solidarity DuPage from 2 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Aug. 2-3, at Camera Park, 101 E. Fullerton Ave. in Glendale Heights.
It will showcase the creative fire of the growing local Mexican community’s culture, identity and a celebration of community. Dancers in traditional regalia, the high stepping of Mexican “jinete” horsemen, intoxicating drum beats, smells of handcrafted festival foods, history and community fuse with modern folk, Salsa and rock music to create a fiery festival experience, peppered with both history and forward-facing ingenuity.
“True culture must raise the fist of the soul against the often banal status-quo of suburban life, subordination to technology and suburban alienation. The DuPage Monarch Festival with its radical, people-centered, colorful, community approach counters this banality very much,” Cristobal Cavazos said. “Beyond entertainment and ‘taco art’ — kitschy art made to sell tacos and or commodities — the Monarch Festival seeks to overthrow the suburban, boring comfort zone, building culture, artists and community instead.
“Surrounding festivalgoers with smells, sounds and sights here, we create new sensibility, create new relationships, invest in the arts and break racial divides,” Cavazos said. “Maybe it's as easy as the dance — this is the festival where people get up out of their seats and move!”
Gabriela Hernandez Chico said, “In our Monarch Festival, we celebrate the local Mexican community’s culture with love, celebrating our language, traditions and customs in unison with the singing of our hearts. We nourish our roots with this festival — roots that allow us to grow and bloom and share with everyone in our community. We celebrate our culture so as not to disappear in history, because culture — even after death — is our continuity in life. Our culture is the sum of all forms of art, of love, of unity in our people by tearing down walls and building bridges.”
The concept of the Monarch Butterfly Festival is imaging the monarch opening its wings and revealing its fiery display of children revolutionizing the west burbs in the fields of:
• Culinary delights including deep cuts into Mexican food, delving way beyond the taco. There will be food vendors surrounding the park to provide fuel and sustenance for a day’s worth of dancing and singing.
• Dance and music including an array of Indigenous dance, folkloric dance, salsa and a whole day of Mexican rock. Festival headliners this year, Sones de Mexico Ensemble, will incorporate mariachi, folklore and dance at 8 p.m. Friday. Festival organizers also will introduce guests to DuPage County's “rocking” Rock en Español scene.
• Showmanship including — new to the festival this year — dancing Mexican “jinete” horsemen.
• Mexican artistry featuring vendors in a large area of colorful, dazzling handmade jewelry, clothing and crafts sold by the artists personally (no middlemen here).
Local nonprofits who empower the local Mexican community economically, environmentally and socially will have a presence at the festival, including Casa DuPage Workers Center, one of the most active worker centers in Illinois; OSHA and The DuPage Monarch Project with whom Immigrant Solidarity DuPage has worked creating Monarch Waystation Gardens around DuPage.
On Friday, Aug. 2, the festival schedule includes: Iza de Bandera Mexican songs with Maricela Suarez; Cuadra el Fierro, dancing “jinete” horses; Aztec Dance Calpulli Ocelot-Chihuacoatl; Mexican Folkloric Ballet; and Banda Super Ranchera. Headliner Sones de México Ensemble will perform at 8 p.m.
On Saturday, Aug. 3, the festival continues with TOXI-KA Rock Band, Amnesia Rock Band, Zeus Rock Band, Project 7, Salsa Orchestra, Rock Band Los CORB, Endorphyna Rock Band, and Rock Band The Circus-Tribute to the Damned Neighborhood.
For information, visit www.immigrantsolidaritydupage.net/es/events.