It’s called Old Spanish Days Fiesta, but the annual five-day extravaganza in Santa Barbara is fueled by Mexican heritage found in both the vendors and their products at the downtown event.
MaryLou Huerta and her family have been selling traditional Mexican clothes at Fiesta for more than two decades.
Their pieces span from huipil blouses made out of cotton and worn traditionally by women in Mexico to linen guayabera shirts from Yucatán for men, Huerta said.
Even though the event downtown celebrates Santa Barbara’s old Spanish days, the origin of many of the products being sold lie deep within Mexico.
“We go into some of the smallest towns and work with the people creating this,” said Huerta, 40, who did folklórico dance when she was a child in kindergarten.
Many of the items like Huerta’s seen at dozens of pop-up shops along State Street on Fiesta weekend have a story that can be traced back to Mexico. And many of the vendors themselves in Santa Barbara also have ties to Mexico.
Vendors, food trucks and mariachi bands line the streets of downtown Santa Barbara for four days in the year to celebrate the city’s Spanish history.
Before they started selling at Fiesta, Huerta’s parents met at Santa Barbara City College after immigrating from the neighboring country.
It’s a tradition more Mexican than Spanish.
Huerta’s family travels to Mexico every year to meet with vendors to find authentic products to sell at Fiesta. They communicate through Whatsapp and plan to find the best items to sell.
It’s one of the few times of the year Huerta’s parents raise enough money to support themselves financially.
“We just do it for my parents,” Huerta said. “It helps them throughout the whole year.”
Many of their products come from different states in Mexico, including Chiapas, Oaxaca, Yucatán, Jalisco and Guerrero. Their purchases help the vendors’ families in Mexico too, Huerta said.
On the 800 block of State Street, it’s Marcela Torres’ first time selling at Fiesta.
Torres, who is from Oxnard, typically sells her jewelry and clothes from Mexico to people at the Ventura swap meet on Saturdays and Sundays.
But this year she and her husband found that people at Fiesta value the work they put into their products more than other places. Some of those products were also made entirely by Torres.
She started making her own bracelets in 2018 through watching Facebook videos while pregnant.
To prepare for Fiesta this year, Torres, who also works full-time, made rings, bracelets and earrings in her spare time. Each takes about an hour to make, she said.
Besides what she makes, all of Torres’ products come from Oaxaca and Chiapas in Mexico. But she orders all of it online, and rarely interacts with the vendors.
Her dream, however, is to go back to Mexico where she started selling and learn from the artists themselves on how to make each product.
Further down on the 600 block of State Street, Lovena Leon, 16, and her siblings are helping their mother sell hand-crafted, interwoven shoes made from family in Mexico.
They have been selling at Fiesta for the last five years.
For Leon’s mother, Maria Charco, Santa Barbara becomes more like Mexico on this four-day Spanish celebration than anything else
“Aqui es Mexico,” Charco said, translating to, “This is Mexico.”
