Billings Mexican Fiesta

Sugar, Faith, and a Park on the South Side:

The Making of the Billings Mexican Fiesta

South of the Tracks

When Billings was founded in 1882, the Northern Pacific Railway ran its tracks through the center of the new town and built its depot on the north side. City Hall and the county courthouse followed there. Industry, immigrant labor, and a scattering of ethnic neighborhoods gathered on the south side (Western Heritage Center, "Billings"). The largest of those industries was a beet sugar factory, incorporated in 1905 and nearly complete in 1906. One local-history compilation calls it the world's largest sugar producer for many years ("Great Western Sugar Factory"). The Great Western Sugar Company took over the plant on April 27, 1918 ("Great Western Sugar Factory"). A Montana Memory Project history identifies it as the company's first and most successful Montana factory (Osborne).

A factory of that size needed beets, and beets needed hands. Workers thinned the plants from late May to mid-July with short-handled hoes, weeded through the summer, and topped the harvest in the fall with curved knives. Children were regularly pulled from school to help (Davis). The Billings Mexican Fiesta, which its organizers date to 1953, grew out of the people who did this work and the neighborhood they built around it.

The Betabeleros

The sugar companies recruited Mexican and Mexican American workers, known as los betabeleros, from Texas, California, and Mexico, and depended on them heavily from about 1915 onward (Davis). Some were also fleeing the Mexican Revolution (Osborne). One figure gives the scale. In 1924, Great Western brought 3,604 Mexican workers and 1,231 German Russians into Montana's Yellowstone Valley to harvest a record 31,000 acres (Davis). That count appears in only one of the sources consulted here and should be read with that in mind.

The companies treated the two groups differently. German Russians were helped to buy farms and settle permanently. Mexican workers were hired as seasonal labor, a policy that kept wages down and eased fears of "foreigners" settling in (Davis). By 1922, as the need for field labor grew, the companies concluded that families who wintered over made a steadier and more experienced workforce (Davis). A scholarly review of the anthology Montana Legacy, which includes an essay by Laurie Mercier on Mexicans in Montana, notes that the workers Great Western brought to eastern Montana arrived as family groups and faced often virulent racism (Spritzer 265–66).

In Billings, a family workforce required housing. Davis reports that Great Western arranged for up to forty small adobe homes in the city. A Western Heritage Center marker describes a company-built "Colonia" that housed more than 60 families, illustrated by a photograph from 1937 (Western Heritage Center, "Billings"). The museum adds that families lived in adobe structures that became known as la colonia ("Viva La Fiesta"). The figures differ, forty homes against sixty families. They may describe different dates or different clusters, and none of the sources reconciles them.

Davis notes that colonias across the Great Plains gave residents mutual support but also isolated them. In the region, Latinos were often barred from public pools, segregated in theaters, and kept out of some stores and restaurants. Davis writes about the Plains generally, and I found no Billings-specific source for those practices. The Depression made matters worse. Great Western chose to hire local workers before outsiders, discouraging Latino families from staying. During the Second World War, the Billings district relied on braceros from 1943 to 1946 (Davis). Community organizing began early, however. Davis cites a Comisión Honorífica Mexicana, formed as early as 1929 to organize social and cultural events and assist those in need. The Western Heritage Center says public celebrations in the Hispanic community date to the 1930s ("Viva La Fiesta").

A Church and a Fundraiser

The fiesta's early history rests mostly on organizers and their families. The event's official website says it was first celebrated in 1953 by the original Fiesta Council (Billings Mexican Fiesta), and Visit Billings gives the same year (Visit Billings). Local broadcast accounts say it began as a fundraiser connected to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, now Mary Queen of Peace Parish (Spartz; "Billings Hosts"). The accounts differ on the purpose. One says the money was to build the church (Spartz). Another says it was to cover operating costs ("Discover").

Family testimony supplies the human detail. Tony and Dallas Contreraz, the current co-chairs, say their grandfather, Ynes Contreraz, sat on the original council. Their uncle, Bill Contreraz, says he has worked every fiesta since the mid-1950s (Spartz; "Billings Hosts"). Tony Contreraz describes the church as the place where the community could worship in Spanish and the fiesta as the means of joining the wider community. He also says that acceptance took hard work ("Billings Hosts"). In the same account Bill Contreraz ties the community's origins directly to the sugar factory's need for workers.

The early entertainment was local. The brothers recall that organizers had few resources and drew on their own people for music (Spartz). Spartz lists Los Crudos, described as Billings' first recognized Mexican band, and the band Little Joe y Los Alegres, in which the brothers' father and uncles played. Chan Romero, who wrote "Hippy Hippy Shake," is also honored there. The dance group Los Guadalupanos, whose choreography passed from the brothers' grandmother and uncle to their father, remains a fixture of the program (Spartz; Billings Mexican Fiesta).

Growth and Change

The community around the fiesta changed as the sugar economy did. Davis reports that mechanization in the 1950s pushed many Latinos toward steadier, better-paying work, and that in Billings the railroad and the packing plants offered an alternative to the beet fields. Families established permanent homes and worked for better schooling. Concilio Mexicano advocated for jobs and education in the 1960s, and a Migrant Council was founded in 1971 (Davis). These details also come from a single source.

The fiesta is now held in South Park, dedicated in 1913 and covering sixteen acres. The sources consulted do not say when the event moved there. The organizers describe a free, five-hour event that draws more than 10,000 visitors, with over twenty food trucks, run by volunteers and the Billings Hispanic Committee under the sponsorship of Mary Queen of Peace Parish (Billings Mexican Fiesta). The car show drew more than 200 classic and lowrider cars in 2024 and was reported to rank among Montana's top ten (Spartz). Visitors crack cascarones, confetti-filled eggshells, over one another's heads and eat elote (Visit Billings). The parish describes itself as among the most diverse in the Diocese of Great Falls–Billings and offers a Sunday Mass in Spanish (Mary Queen of Peace).

Recovering the Record

In 2024, the Contreraz brothers set up a history booth at the seventieth fiesta. It prompted so many memories and photographs that they approached the Western Heritage Center, which mounted "¡Viva La Fiesta!" in 2025. Spartz reports that the project collected close to 400 photographs, along with costumes, instruments, and clippings. It included the saxophone of "Little" Joe Morin, donated by his family ("Discover"; Spartz). The brothers describe the exhibit as having turned into a community archive, and they have begun filming interviews for a documentary (Spartz).

What the Record Does Not Settle

Several questions remain open. The first is dating. The museum refers to celebrations in the 1930s, while the organizers and most press accounts say 1953 or "the 1950s." These may describe different events, an earlier community gathering and a later fiesta organized as a church fundraiser, but the sources do not say.

The second is numbering. The fiesta was called the seventieth in July 2024 ("Billings Hosts") and the seventy-second in July 2026 (Visit Billings), and the organizers' site lists the next one, in July 2027, as the seventy-third (Billings Mexican Fiesta). If 1953 was the first year and none were skipped, 2026 would be the seventy-fourth. The sources do not explain the difference. Skipped years or a different starting point are possibilities, not findings.

Third, the church's name and the fundraising purpose are told differently from source to source. Parish records, contemporary Billings newspapers, and the advertisement for the first fiesta that appears in the museum's exhibit would likely settle these points (Spartz). None of them was available for this account.

What the sources agree on is the outline. A sugar company recruited Mexican and Mexican American families, housed them near the plant, and then reduced its reliance on them when conditions changed. Those families formed a parish and community organizations, and in the 1950s they began an annual celebration that has continued, by their descendants' account, for more than seven decades.

Works Cited

"Billings Hosts 70 Years of Mexican Fiesta Celebration Honoring South Side History." KTVQ, 22 July 2024, https://www.ktvq.com/news/local-news/billings-hosts-70-years-of-mexican-fiesta-celebration-honoring-south-side-history. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Billings Mexican Fiesta. Billings Mexican Fiesta, 2026, https://billingsfiesta.com/. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Davis, Rebecca Berru. "Betabeleros." Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, edited by David J. Wishart, U of Nebraska–Lincoln, 2011, https://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ha.004.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

"Discover Billings Mexican Fiesta Roots at Western Heritage Center." KULR-8, https://www.kulr8.com/news/discover-billings-mexican-fiesta-roots-at-western-heritage-center/article_6dc9664c-b3f2-430a-a130-dedbc251e303.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

"Great Western Sugar Factory." Yellowstone County MTGenWeb, rev. 13 Mar. 2006, https://mtgenweb.com/yellowstone/history/sugarfactory.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Mary Queen of Peace Parish. Mary Queen of Peace Parish, https://www.mqpbillings.org/. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Osborne, Shelby. "The Sweet History of Sugar Beets." Montana Memory Project, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/135286. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Spartz, Isabel. "¡Viva La Fiesta!: Museum Exhibit Celebrates 70 Years of Hispanic Heritage in Billings." KTVQ, 5 May 2025, https://www.ktvq.com/news/local-news/viva-la-fiesta-museum-exhibit-celebrates-70-years-of-hispanic-heritage-in-billings. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Spritzer, Don. Review of Montana Legacy: Essays on History, People, and Place, edited by Harry W. Fritz, Mary Murphy, and Robert R. Swartout Jr. Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 4, 2003, pp. 265–66. DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska–Lincoln, https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2370. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Visit Billings. "72 Years of Tradition: Experience Billings Mexican Fiesta 2026." VisitBillings.com, 30 June 2026, https://www.visitbillings.com/blog/arts-culture-events/72-years-of-tradition-experience-billings-mexican-fiesta-2026/. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Western Heritage Center. "Billings—A Tale of Two Cities." Historical marker, 2822 Montana Ave., Billings, MT. Historical Marker Database, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=308893. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

---. "Viva La Fiesta." Western Heritage Center, 2025, https://www.ywhc.org/exhibit/viva-la-fiesta/. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.