Xavier Montes was a young guitarist, experimenting with “blues and rock and all sorts of crazy stuff,” when he first saw a Mexican harp played. The experience, he says, changed him forever. In the 30 years since, the musician and artist has released three CDs featuring harp instrumentals. April 5, he will perform at the 16th De Colores Festival, an annual celebration of Latino art and culture that he helped organize.
This year marks the festival’s second in Ventura after residing for several years in Santa Paula, Montes’ hometown. But space constraints made last year’s show at the Bell Arts Factory difficult, and with the city’s support it will now move to California Street’s Artists Union Gallery and the plaza and promenade immediately outside. The new location should provide greater visibility to passers-by and boost interest, Montes says. “I would like to extend it outside the barrio.  I’m hoping that many, many non-Hispanics attend this thing.”
The festival, whose name alludes to a famous Mexican folk song describing the varied hues of spring, aims to be equally colorful. The gallery will feature paintings, photography, and sculpture, while the plaza will host an array of dance, music and poetry, a mercado for craft booths, and El Rincon de Niños for children. The Ventura group Danza Mexica Cuauhtémoc will open the festivities with a traditional Aztec blessing, followed by the Ballet Folklorico Mestizo de Oxnard College, the family ensemble Conjunto Hueyapan, and guitarist and singer Carmencristina Moreno, whose parents were a famous composer-singer duo known as El Dueto de Los Moreno. Roberto Vargas will emcee.
Though the festival aims to be celebratory, Montes stresses that the artists will be appearing primarily as representatives of their cultural heritage, not as entertainers. The distinction can be fine. Danza Mexica Cuauhtémoc in particular, with its brilliant headdresses and vivid dress, has struggled to avoid being labeled as a performance dance troupe.
“It’s like a religion to them,” Montes says. “When they dance, it’s coming from the heart, and they’re connecting to the earth, the spirits, their ancestors. They’re not there to entertain.” Recognizing that many observers are unaware of these subtleties, Montes says a special effort will be made this year to explain the significance of various performances.
With that comes an opportunity to educate not only Ventura’s non-Latino population, but also Latino young people who may not have been exposed to their own cultural history. The open-air format will showcase a quality of performance more often seen in major metropolises and expensive venues, while allowing audience members the chance to interact with the performers, Montes says. “A lot of this music has been around close to 100 years, but it’s dying.”
He hopes that young observers inspired to pursue the traditional folk arts will in turn gain the benefits of dedicating themselves to a craft — such as discipline, learning to set positive goals, and encouragement to pursue higher education.
Moreno, the guitarist and composer, may best capture the tension between old and new that challenges many Latinos. Born in Los Angeles to musician parents who supplemented their income by working in the fields, she grew up “with one ear listening to Mexican music and with the other ear listening to my brother trying to imitate Elvis Presley.”
Now a professional musician in her own right, she has made her career bridging the divide between traditional and contemporary music.
“My whole thrust at this stage of my career and my life, my heart’s desire, is to have tradition meet present-day music, still maintaining a touch of the traditional Mexican folklore … I have no boundaries. I am the music that I play.” Moreno will perform an array of Spanish and English-language songs, including her own compositions, Latin love ballads and Mexican folk songs.
Despite their excitement, both Montes and Moreno seem aware of a certain urgency underlying the festivities. The De Colores festival is dedicated to the memory of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, co-founders of the United Farm Workers, and much of its artwork over the years has depicted that struggle. But while Montes acknowledges how far we’ve come — he describes driving past fields where farm workers sit eating their lunches in folding chairs, a small dignity that nevertheless symbolizes years of protests — it is clear the struggle for an equal place in American society is far from over.
“Many people only read what they see in the newspaper, and much of it is bad news,” he says.
The overrepresentation of Latinos in the media has created a distorted impression that discounts that community’s many gifts, Moreno says.
“Mexico is so maligned with the drug cartels and the immigration problems. Modern-day Mexicans are people with great promise and a great future — if they could just spread the word that there are positive things to our culture!”
The music represents a vital opportunity not only to wage a public relations campaign, but to sow pride in a new generation. Instead of feeling oppressed with a “desperate hopelessness,” Montes hopes young people will see the music’s endurance as “a tribute to the Mexican spirit of surviving.”
“This is something we’re still proud of, the heritage we come from — proud enough to continue it,” she says. “We come from a place where people sing about the human condition, no matter what color or their history.”

The De Colores Art Show will be exhibited at the Artists Union Gallery, 330 California St., through April 5. The De Colores Festival will be held Sunday, April 5, 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. 525-8961 or visit  www.DeColoresArtShow.com.