Las Vegas Latino Parade and Festival growing

It’s amazing to see how much a child changes — in size, personality, temperament — from age 3 to age 4.

And it’s no different for the Fiesta Las Vegas Latino Parade and Festival, which celebrates its fourth year this weekend showing a few changes from years past.

■ A change in days. Although the celebration’s parade and festival were held on the same day last year, this year will see the parade scheduled for Saturday and the festival scheduled for the following day, on Sunday.

■ A change of locale. Although last year’s festival was held at the Fremont Street Experience, this year’s festival will be held in the slightly less urban expanses of the Clark County Government Amphitheater, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway (although the parade again will follow its traditional downtown route).

■ A change in admission fees. Although admittance to last year’s festival was free, tickets this year are priced at $5 in advance or $7 at the door, with children 12 and younger admitted free.

None of this year’s, let’s call them growing-pain tweaks, will alter the mission of the Fiesta Las Vegas Latino Parade and Festival to preserve Latino heritage and traditions, said Anastacio Del Real, the event’s co-founder and executive director.

The changes guests will notice this year stem partly from “the growth of both events individually and being able to staff them properly,” Del Real said.

Now, in just its fourth year, both the festival and the parade “are in growth mode,” Del Real said, and its organizers are experimenting with various ways in which both events can be made more fun and more accommodating to patrons.

The Fiesta Las Vegas Latino Parade and Festival each year is scheduled to coincide with Mexican Independence Day on Sept. 16 and the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month. Holding the parade and the festival on different days this year will, for one thing, allow parade participants to more fully enjoy the festival’s offerings.

“Surveying our parade participants, they would tell us it was really hard for them to attend the festival or spend a lot of time at the festival because many of them were up overnight (beforehand) working on floats or entries,” Del Real said. “Then, by the time they were done in the afternoon, to go and spend a couple of hours at the festival was just taxing.”

Now, parade participants can take a breather after their parade duties and return the following day to enjoy the festival. Meanwhile, the two-day schedule offers other attendees a double-dose of affordable family fun.

And that new admission fee?

“We’re doing that to offset some of the costs,” Del Real said. “We’re bringing in more talent and more activities this year.”

Still, he added, festival guests will get bang for their buck.

“(Admission is) still nominal compared to other festivals,” he said. “We want the audience to have a good time and feel like it is a value and that it was well worth it.”

The celebration begins Saturday with a 10 a.m. parade along Fourth Street, from Gass Avenue to Stewart Avenue. Gov. Brian Sandoval will serve as this year’s grand marshal, and the parade will feature more than 70 units, including floats, marching bands, equestrian entries and dance and cultural groups.

Although most of the parade’s participants are local, Del Real said groups from Utah and Southern California also are scheduled to participate. Cox Communications-Las Vegas, a sponsor of the celebration, will tape the parade for a two-hour show that will run several times in late September and early October on Cox Cable Channels 96 and 1096 (visit www.cox96.net for times).

Also during the parade, Otto Merida, president and CEO of the Latin Chamber of Commerce Nevada Inc., and Lynnette Arvelo Sawyer, founder and executive director and CEO of the Hispanic Museum of Nevada, will be honored for their service to the community.

On Sunday, the Fiesta Las Vegas festival will run from noon to 10 p.m. at the Clark County Government Center Amphitheater. Offerings there will include performances by musicians, dancers and cultural groups, craft vendors, food stands and rides.

At 8 p.m. Sunday, Julian Adem Diaz de Leon, Mexico consul in Las Vegas, will be special guest at a celebration of Mexican Independence Day on the amphitheater’s main stage.

“We really like the amphitheater, with the trees and grass,” Del Real said. “The space has allowed us to have some extra seating, and we’re going to have a family section.”

Del Real said the venue also allows festival sponsors greater opportunity to offer attractions for guests. For example, Cox Communications-Las Vegas is partnering with cable networks Discovery Familia and Discovery en Espanol to offer “Destino Discovery,” a family activity area.

This year’s music headliner will be Mexican singer and recording artist Diana Reyes, who has earned three gold records and performs a style of Mexican music called Duranguense. Other scheduled performers this year include Luis Enrique, Rocio “La Dama de la Cumbia” y Su Sonora, La Irresitible Banda Ausente, Conjunto Amenaza and Gravedad Rock.

Del Real noted that while the Fiesta Las Vegas Latino Parade and Festival is well-attended by members of the valley’s Latino community, “the diversity of the crowd is growing.”

In 2013, the festival drew about 20,000 guests, while the parade drew about 8,000, he said. Although moving the festival from the downtown tourist corridor may reduce the number of tourists who, even if by chance, happened upon it in previous years, Del Real still expects tourists to make up part of this year’s crowd, too.

“We have actually gotten calls from folks who were here last year,” he said, who wanted to “double-check the date and time, just to make sure.”

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.