Pride is all year long with SMTX Pride

By Victoria Garcia

Blog Content Contributor

SAN MARCOS, Texas– June is pride month! There are multiple pride events happening all month long, but it doesn’t only exist in June. Pride should be celebrated all year long! That’s the goal of  SMTX Pride.

SMTX Pride started off with “Rainbow Nights” which were nights when Sylvia Sandoval, the founder of SMTX Pride, would participate in bar takeovers with her queer friends. This later turned into fundraising for AIDS. This led to more fundraising while hosting pride festivals as a way of celebrating and giving back to the community. SMTX Pride has been around for 13 years, but the pride event itself is 9 years old. Another way SMTX Pride tries to give back to the community is by giving scholarship funds for students in need and the citizens of San Marcos.

While SMTX Pride doesn’t have a June pride event, they chose to support other events in the area such as Lockhart Pride, New Braunfels Pride and local drag events in San Marcos. SMTX Pride choses to hold their pride event in September to welcome home the students starting and coming back for classes in the Fall.

“There’s nothing like coming out of the closet when you’re finally in college,” said Sandoval. Sandoval wants to create a safe environment for the community of San Marcos and the new students joining the community.

SMTX Pride this year is on September 9 at the San Marcos Park Plaza. Sandoval said SMTX Pride is a family event with vendors and local performances. Last year, Kelany Brent, a local San Marcos musician, performed. Sandoval hopes to make this event stand out more compared to their past events by focusing on drag shows.

Sandoval invites other cities around San Marcos to attend the SMTX Pride event in September for a free all day family show. “Show up! Support the community. We’re here, we’re queer and we care,” said Sandoval.

She encourages the community to get involved by attending the event, volunteering, signing up for the parade and helping sponsor SMTX Pride. Sandoval is currently working on getting vendors for the event, so if anyone is interested in getting a table you can find more information by checking out the SMTX Pride website.

As a fellow member of the LGBTQ+ community, pride is important to me. Which is why I was happy to be able to talk to Sandoval and work on getting the word out about SMTX Pride. I am disappointed that this is the first time, after two years of being in San Marcos, I am hearing about SMTX Pride. I would have loved to attend last year’s event, but now I am making it my personal goal to tell everyone I can about SMTX Pride’s upcoming Pride event. I’ve already started by telling all my friends from San Marcos, “Hey did you guys know there’s going to be a pride event in San Marcos in September? We have to go!”