The 27th Tamale Festival

The 27h annual International Indio Tamale Festival started off early morning Saturday Dec. 1 with the traditional grand opening celebration. Indio City officials commenced the festival instituting the addition of eating an inaugural tamale, followed by the traditional ceremonial parade. The festival featured many performances by local musicians and various school dance teams, as well as contests such as a tamale eating contest.

LQHS´ Tough Guys & Gals Do Dance made a strong presence at the community stage. They performed various routines such as square dances, line dances, and featured a duet routine. A group of 11 judges were selected to kickoff the annual best tamale contest awarding HOT (House of Tamales´) pork with red sauce and banana leaf the best overall tamale of 2018. Non-Profit organizations were awarded the Traditional tamale awards with La Luz del Mundo Oxnard´ Cheese with Jalapeño tamale coming in first place and La Luz del Mundo Escondido´Chicken tamale coming in second place.

This year’s festival boasted a strong number of local students volunteers representing ROTC and PSA and 100,000 attendees.  The festival ended Sunday with a fitting performance by BUMPTOWN, who sang their classic hit ¨Easy (Like Sunday Morning).”