Three women lead the 60th Cinco de Mayo parade down West Vernor

The Mexican Patriotic Committee of Metro Detroit ran its 60th Cinco de Mayo parade down West Vernor Highway on Sunday, May 4, putting three women at the front of the 2.4 mile route from Patton Park to Clark Park.

This year's theme was "Past, Present and Future" (Pasado, Presente y Futuro), and the committee built the lineup of grand marshals to match it, according to the parade's own announcement carried by EL CENTRAL Hispanic News. Maria Guadiana, daughter of committee founder and first president Jose Guadiana de Campos, stood for the past. Alma Cruz, the committee's current president, stood for the present. Alexandra Cruz-Velasco, Miss Mexico-Detroit 2023 and a former vice president now running the parade registration sub-committee, stood for the future.

The committee tied the all-women slate to Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, who was sworn in on October 1, 2024 as Mexico's first woman president. Behind the marshals came the rest of the parade Southwest Detroit knows: charros on horseback, folklorico dancers, mariachis, lowriders and family floats, with kids lining the curb in cold rain.

The timing gave the day extra weight. The same week, organizers in Chicago and Philadelphia canceled their Cinco de Mayo celebrations, citing fears that immigration enforcement would target large public Latino gatherings. Chicago organizers said nearly half their sponsors had dropped out, per ABC7 Chicago.

Detroit went ahead, and an organizer told Outlier Media the committee "never considered canceling." Some Detroit residents raised the same enforcement worries their counterparts in Chicago and Philadelphia did, but the parade stepped off on schedule.

Turnout ran lighter than usual. A parade official put the crowd around 8,000, a figure several outlets attributed to committee president Alma Cruz, and local business owners and attendees noted thinner crowds than past years. Omar Hernandez, who owns Mexicantown Bakery on Vernor, pointed to the weather rather than politics and said traffic at his shop held steady. Cold rain ran through the day, the kind of weather that has soaked this parade before without keeping it from happening.

The route is the same one the committee has organized since the mid-1960s. The holiday it marks comes from the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when an outnumbered Mexican army turned back a French invasion. France would win the broader war, but the Puebla victory held in memory as a stand against a colonial power. Six decades into running the West Vernor parade, the committee marked the anniversary with Guadiana, Cruz and Cruz-Velasco leading the way.