Young people bearing the flags of countries in Latin America and Africa, along with girls dressed in traditional folkloric skirts, walked under the banner of a Latino civic organization in the recent Beardstown Fall Fun Festival parade, although it may be the last time the longstanding group participates.
Claudia Zabala, an ESL middle school teacher, helped lead Amigos Unidos Committee’s (Friends United) entry in the parade of about 100 people. For 28 years, the group has walked in the parade and organized the annual Fiestas Patrias festival. The festival, held in Art Zeek Park in the Cass County town, typically takes place in mid-September to coincide with Mexican Independence Day.
Originally from Sinaloa, Mexico, Zabala said she’s very loyal to her roots.
“Wherever I go, I take with me my culture, my music and my traditional dances,” she said.
Over the years, she’s collected the items the young people wear for the festivities.
“We are who gives color to the parade,” she said.
Zabala stood out in her elaborate makeup as a “catrina,” a skeletal figure associated with the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday. Gems adorned her face, and she carried a crown of bright, colorful flowers on her head that matched her long, fuchsia skirt.
Several groups walked under the committee’s banner, including one from the local Catholic church. Amigos Unidos also invited two new teams to join – families from the Dominican Republic, and another representing the Congolese community.
Some students carried a banner that read “Celebrate Diversity.”
Zabala said participating in the event is about visibility, “that the people of Beardstown notice we are here.”
“We have a lot to contribute, a lot to teach them, just as we learn a lot from them,” Zabala said.
Zabala said it’s a lot of work organizing their place in the fair and the festival, and that’s why this will be the last year.
“Just five people, we can’t do it all,” she said of the current group of volunteers.
Members of Amigos Unidos Committee (left to right) Claudia Zabala, Jesús Gómez, president Marisela Chávez, Lidia Márquez and Armando Trujillo pose with girls in folkloric dresses at the start of their entry in the Beardstown Fall Fun Festival parade on Sept. 26. Credit: PHOTO BY SERGIO N. PEREZ
The committee’s president, Marisela Chavez, is a parent educator for the Beardstown School District and has been involved since Amigos Unidos’ inception 28 years ago.
“We wanted to bring the folkloric dances, the musical groups, bring our foods so that everyone would come – all the community to show up and participate,” she said.
Chavez remembers arriving in Beardstown when there were only 10 Mexican families in town. Latinos now make up 40% of the town’s population, according a 2024 U.S. Census estimate. Mexicans make up the largest portion of the Latino community, but it also includes people throughout Latin America. The community grew rapidly during the 1990s, drawn to jobs at the meatpacking plant.
Regarding the group’s retirement, Chavez said, “I think I want to leave space for other people to come along and form a committee, so that they, too, can bring a piece of Mexico to Beardstown.”
At this year’s Fiestas Patrias, Chavez organized a display of pictures of past festivals for participants to take if they recognized themselves or someone they know in them.
Juan, a 27-year resident of Beardstown who declined to provide his last name, looked closely at the photos. He said he’s been attending the festival for a long time. It gives him an opportunity to “spend time together with Mexican people,” he said.
“That’s the main point… to appreciate the culture, to know who we are and where we are from,” he said.
Regarding the announcement this will be the committee’s last time hosting the festival, he said, “It’s a bit sad that they’re not going to do it again, perhaps because of what’s happening in the country and the problems facing Hispanic people.”
Beardstown United
Prior to the Amigos Unidos Committee, a group called Beardstown United formed in the mid-1990s. Made up of Latinos and white Americans, the group sought to reduce racial tensions between longtime residents and new arrivals working at the slaughterhouse, Zabala said.
She recalled shopping at a grocery store and an older white man yelling racial profanities behind her “that at that time I didn’t understand, but can hear.”
A grocery store attendant followed her to her car and apologized.
Zabala said relations between Latinos and white residents improved over time.
“Little by little we went by softening things, until now where there’s interracial marriages,” she said.
Beardstown United first participated in the Beardstown Fall Fun Festival parade during that time. The group carried a large piñata on a pickup truck and children were dressed in folkloric Mexican clothing.
“It was a matter of representing ourselves in the community as people who want to integrate ourselves, and not as people who want to cause problems,” Zabala said.
She remembers that first time participating in the event because she took her children, including her 5-month-old son. They won first prize for best parade entry.
“If you see the newspaper at the time, there are (pictures of) my kids and the town’s oldest residents,” she said.
That group disintegrated and several years later Julio Flores, a community liaison at the Beardstown School District, led the formation of a new group called Amigos Unidos, or Friends United.
The Salvadorean native led the group for 20 years until he decided to return to El Salvador, and Chavez took the role of president, she said.
The group’s focus has always been on cultural events. Amigos Unidos initiated a celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, akin to a patron saint for Mexico, until nuns at the local church took charge. It also hosted a Cinco de Mayo event for a couple of years.
Zabala said the group initially hosted an annual Mexican Independence Day festival, back when the majority of immigrants in town were Mexican. The annual event, now known as Fiestas Patrias, is still coincides with Mexican Independence Day as well as several independence day celebrations for countries in Central America.
Declining participation
At this year’s Fiestas Patrias, held on Sept. 13, Chavez read excerpts of “El Grito de Dolores,” the famous call-and-response speech by Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla proclaiming independence from Spain.
Despite warm and pleasant weather during the festival, crowds this year were noticeably smaller compared to previous years.
Zabala attributed the low turnout to changing demographics of the immigrant population in town. She said initially the dominant immigrant groups were from Mexico, but over the years they’ve arrived from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, parts of Central America, and South America, Haiti, and some countries from Africa. Several Beardstown residents Illinois Times spoke with credited the demographic changes to immigration policies and shifts in recruitment at the town’s largest employer, JBS USA, a pork meat packing plant that is the largest of its kind in the state. Illinois Times reached out to JBS for comment, but did not receive a response.
A group representing the Dominican Republic walks in the Beardstown Fall Fun Festival parade under the Amigos Unidos Committee banner. Credit: PHOTO BY SERGIO N. PEREZ
With less immigration from Mexico, Zabala said interest in the festival has waned.
“Mexicans who arrive from Mexico bring the drive to host festivals more than those born here – not so much,” she said.
She said now it’s not uncommon for someone to say, ‘Well, that’s a Mexican celebration, and I’m Dominican. So, why am I going to go?’”
Osmelany Bovea and her husband sat on lawn chairs under the shade of a large tree as they watched their children kick a soccer ball around.
Bovea said she attended the festival in part because her mom works at one of the immigrant social service organizations that had a table promoting its programs.
She tied the low attendance to fear among the immigrant community of getting caught up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportations.
Bovea said just four years ago, the festival “was on fire” with not much room to maneuver in the park because there were so many people.
“Attendance has gone down because of the persecution that exists,” she said. “The people carry a lot of fear and don’t want to go out. While the situation appears to have cooled off, the people haven’t let their guard down,” she said. “They go out less and with precautions.”
She added, “As Latinos, it affects us. Even if we have papers, we’re affected by it.”
Immigration-related arrests have skyrocketed across the country since Congress approved $85 billion for the Department of Homeland Security under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025.
Reports say previously the department’s annual budget was around $10 billion. Over the summer, the department received another $70 billion to fund its operations until 2029.
The funds aligned with Trump’s mass deportation goals, which was a key part of his campaign for a second term. While the president claims immigration enforcement targets “criminals,” reports find the majority of individuals being arrested have no criminal record. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an online database, finds “many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”
The Trump administration steered away from attention-grabbing immigration arrests after ICE agents killed Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. But even though tactics have changed, the number of deportations has hit record numbers. Cases of federal agents killing immigrants in pursuit of immigration enforcement continue to occur.
In July federal agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, a Mexican national and 35-year Houston resident, and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national, in Maine. Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, a Mexican national vacationing in Florida, died as he ran away from agents and was hit by a tractor trailer.
Last month, a video circulated of a man in a northern suburb of Chicago being pinned to the ground as he pleaded with federal agents for his release, yelling that he’s a citizen.
In another video, a Venezuelan man and DoorDash driver in Austin, Texas, is shot by ICE agents and arrested while a bullet is lodged in his back.
“Unfortunately, social media helps us to stay informed but also enters us in a cycle of anxiety and depression,” Bovea said.
She added, “It really is a difficult situation that we hope in God that it can change.”
Several attendees told Illinois Times there was a report of ICE’s presence last year in Beardstown, but no arrests were confirmed.
Zabala said last year the committee canceled their festival and didn’t participate in Beardstown’s annual fall parade out of precaution.
“We didn’t want to put someone at risk standing along the parade route looking and waiting for their child in the parade and that an ICE raid happens and takes them away,” she said.
This year the fear of federal agents showing up at the festival was still there, “but we decided this will be our last one and we’ll just pray that immigration agents don’t show up,” Zabala said.
Zabala has dealt with “la migra” immigration agents herself, having been deported during President George H.W. Bush’s term.
She was living in California at the time with her husband, who worked in the fields picking crops.
“Around the whole town, ‘la migra’ was present, and I was always hiding and running from them,” she said.
When she returned and several years had passed, they moved to Beardstown.
After she received her permanent residency status, Zabala began working in the school district as a teacher’s assistant in 1998.
“Since there were very few Latinos that helped in the classroom, and with the little English that I knew, they gave me work and little by little my English improved,” she said.
After eight years, she sought her teaching degree at Western Illinois University.
“I would see the need of the students who needed a bilingual teacher,” Zabala said. She would eventually earn master’s degrees in bilingual education and linguistics.
Dwindling sponsors, young people
Beardstown is where Zabala raised her three children. She said they are all university graduates, and one is enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and her daughter serves in the Illinois National Guard. But her adult children no longer live in Beardstown, having found work elsewhere.
“There’s very few young people that stay in the area,” she said.
Zabala said another reason the committee decided to dismantle is due to the challenges associated with raising funds for their activities.
There were fewer girls and young women participating in the competition for queens of the fiestas, which is an important fundraising avenue, she said. The contestant who sold the most tickets was crowned queen.
This year, Ayelen Gabriel won the juvenile title for Fiestas Patrias Queen 2026. Her poofy dress and earrings featured monarch butterflies, which is a symbol for the immigrant rights’ movement. She was taking a break from dancing with a juice blend of beets, watermelon and strawberries that she bought from one of the vendors lined up around the park.
Gabriel said she participated in the competition to follow her sister, who held the title years ago.
“I want to represent my culture, and I want to help in all of the ways that I can,” she said.
She sold tamales in lieu of tickets. Whether another group will take the place of the committee, Gabriel said, “Well, I hope there is, but I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Zabala said economic support from businesses has also dwindled. She said a bank patronized by many immigrants only donated $25. When soliciting donations from a car dealership, “They gave us a hat instead of money,” she said.
“Like this, we can’t go on,” Zabala said.
She chides the small donation from JBS, the multimillion-dollar meatpacking company, as insignificant, like “taking a hair off a cat.”
That donation covered the cost of a northern Illinois band, Estilo Versatil, that performed at this year’s festival.
Several pairs of people frequently danced on the square. Among the dancers was Aidelyn Cline, who drove up from Decatur with her son to attend the festival.
Cline said the festival was an opportunity to be together and show solidarity, not just as Mexicans, but as Latinos.
“In these times with the administration that we have, we are seeing more discrimination, seeing more persecution,” she said. “And so, it’s important for us to maintain unity and stay informed about our rights, because independent of the situation of every person, we all have human rights,” she said.
Among the dancers were several young men wearing traditional masks of a bull from Michoacan, Mexico, that are usually showcased during their Carnival celebration in the spring. The members had family ties to the area, and they called themselves “El Carratero.” Kids eagerly broke the two piñatas they brought during the festival.
“It’s just a pleasure we have to celebrate our traditions,” said the family patriarch, Antonio Zelaya Pérez.
“The committee has a lot of respect from the community, because since I can remember they’ve been holding these beautiful events,” he said.
Zelaya Pérez said he’s skeptical the committee will actually retire.
“That’s what they say, but they won’t retire,” he said.
Zabala’s role in the committee has been to run its social media and organize the committee’s parade entry.
She said she is willing to pass on the responsibility of organizing the festival to another person or group, but is hesitant to give up the parade entry.
“Well, I’m thinking that next year I want to organize it, but I’m not sure if it will be in the same capacity as this year, since I won’t have the support of the committee,” she said.
Nicole Ramos carried a large cup with shrimp ceviche she purchased among the dozen vendors at the festival. She wore a shirt with the colors of the Honduran flag, white and dark blue.
“We came to celebrate as a family, representing my country,” said the Honduran native, who has been attending the festival for 11 years.
Zabala, one of the founding organizers of the committee, said, “We hope two years from now, the community will miss it, and perhaps other people will come around wanting to revive the committee.”
“And we’re available to tell them how it’s done,” she said.
Maria Gardner Lara is a staff writer for Illinois Times. She has a master’s degree in journalism from the Public Affairs Reporting program at University of Illinois Springfield and served as a corps member with Report for America at the NPR station in DeKalb.
This article appears in October 8-14, 2026.
