‘Maintaining our traditions’: Reborn holiday event shows Idaho’s changing demographics
The lights from candles flickered inside paper lanterns called farolitos on the ground, illuminating the thin layer of frost outside the Idaho Hispanic Community Center in Nampa last Saturday.
The holiday, sometimes known as Noche de Velitas, is celebrated in Colombia and ushers in the Christmas season. The last time this event was held here was the 2000s, organizers said, illustrating the growth of the local Colombian population.
“We had very few (Colombians). We always tried to meet up and celebrate el Día de las Velitas (Day of the Little Candles),” said Lorena Rengifo, who is from Popayán, Colombia, but has lived in Idaho for 18 years. “It’s a form of maintaining our traditions and culture.”
The festival, known by multiple names, is celebrated the day before the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic celebration. Hundreds attended Saturday’s event.
People of Mexican descent still make up the majority of Latino Idahoans — a little under 83%, according to 2021 American Community Survey estimates. That’s down from 87% in 2010, according to Census Bureau data.
Organizers and officials with the Idaho Hispanic Foundation, which put on the event, told the Statesman that when they were growing up, the Latino population was largely Mexican. But that has started to change.
Jeniffer Rae, a foundation ambassador and event coordinator, was born in Cali, Colombia, and moved to Idaho in the early 1990s when she was 10 years old.
“We were one of the first Colombians that migrated here,” Rae said, with people chatting in the background. “We embraced Mexican culture. ... I embraced that culture. I became a Mexican-Colombian, even learned their dances as well, when I was younger.”
The area has a “huge Colombian Hispanic community now,” Rae said, part of what motivated the decision to bring Noche de Velitas back to life.
Though the Colombian population is still small, it’s growing. There were approximately 968 Colombians in Idaho in 2015, according to American Community Survey estimates. That was up to 1,800 by 2021, though there is a large margin of error.
“Our Colombian community is really growing,” said Mari Ramos, the executive director of the Idaho Hispanic Foundation.
Colombian immigrants ‘more than what people know’
Marlen Cedeño sat in the back of a room set up for decorating farolitos. Children used stickers and colorful plastic sheets to personalize their own paper bags.
Cedeño is also from Cali and moved to Twin Falls just 10 months ago because she already had family who’d lived in Idaho.
“The idea is not to lose these things,” Cedeño said, in Spanish. “We are more than what people know. We are good people, hardworking. Sometimes, the public only knows the ugly part and about people that we aren’t proud of.”
In a larger room at the cultural center, small flags from the South American country of about 52.6 million people lined the room. People ate as organizers explained the holiday. Large Colombian and American flags hung on a far wall.
Dancers came out to the floor, twirling and holding one side of their flowing skirts. The audience filmed the performance on cellphones, and the people in back clapped their hands.
Later, outside, people set out the farolitos, glittering with electric tea candles. Some of the bags bore the names of children who had used the stickers to decorate.
Many people told the Statesman that they think there will be more Colombian events in the future in the Treasure Valley.
“They’ve always had a vision of making it more and making it bigger and bringing it back,” Ramos told the Statesman. “One of my goals is to ensure that all of the different Hispanic cultures feel welcomed here and have that sense of community, either away from home or if they are first, second generation, that they have that connection.”
