A video of the entire parade can be seen here.
By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Del Rio welcomed the Chinese zodiac’s “Year of the Horse” with a parade that featured city elected leaders and dozens of local schoolchildren in colorful costumes.
Businesswoman Diana Stern, wife of Del Rio attorney Jack Stern, created the annual parade as a way of sharing her beloved Chinese cultural heritage with the community more than 20 years ago. Stern and her husband planned and funded the event, an effort that included buying hundreds of richly colored and embroidered costumes for men and women and boys and girls, as well as bringing from China two authentic large dragon puppets that are the centerpiece of each year’s parade.
Stern has stepped back slightly from her close involvement in planning each year’s event, but the organizational torch is being carried by Esme Esparza, Nancy Khan, Linda Webb, Jessica Guanajuato, Claudia Lopez and others.
Saturday’s event took place under an overcast sky, the neutral gray providing the perfect backdrop to the bright costumes worn by the adults and youngsters of all ages who walked in the parade.
Original plans were for the parade to begin at Canal and South Main streets and proceed north on South Main, but organizers said they were unable to get city approval for this change in the route, so it began shortly after 10 a.m. Saturday at Garfield Avenue and South Main Street and proceeded south to the Sterns’ building in the 700 block of South Main.
Among the dignitaries participating in this year’s parade were Mayor Al Arreola and his wife Myrella, who were dressed in the vibrant robes of Chinese nobility; Councilwoman Ernestina “Tina” Martinez and Councilwoman Carmen Gutierrez.
Students from the Heritage Academy and members of the Queen City Belles carried the two dragon puppets, and Little Mr. Fiesta de Amistad Nathaniel Diaz kept up the rhythm on a huge Chinese drum called a tanngu. Diaz and the drum rode the parade route in the bed of a pickup truck.
After the parade, many of the students who walked in it made their way to the local public school district’s Student Performance Center, where they entertained the audience with a number of traditional Chinese dances.
This year, the actual Chinese New Year fell on Feb. 17, and, according to the Chinese zodiac, this is the Year of the Horse — specifically the Year of the Fire Horse, a rare confluence that occurs every 60 years.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
in Saturday’s annual Chinese New Year Parade on South Main Street. (Photo by Karen Gleason)
