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The group was playing on a stage under a tent at Hispanic Heritage Fiesta, a block party Janesville’s PremierBank hosted Sunday afternoon at its Black Bridge Road branch on the city’s northeast side.

“It’s a song about always staying true to your husband,” Martinez-Pergolski said. Sort of like Tammy Wynette’s English-language country and western ballad “Stand by Your Man”?

“Kind of,” Martinez-Pergolski said with a playful smile. “But if you recorded the singer on your phone, you could use your phone to transcribe it to try to translate what she sang.”

She also pointed out a booth set up at the fiesta, where a nonprofit liaison could help festival attendees learn to speak Spanish via a Spanish language learners program.

Organizers from PremierBank said Sunday was the first time the bank has hosted a full-scale Hispanic Heritage Fiesta.

The event was part of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs through Oct. 15. Sunday’s festivities brought traditional Hispanic music, dance and food together along with a slew of local nonprofits and business groups including mortgage lenders and real estate agents.

Martinez-Pergolski, a local real estate agent who specializes in connecting non-English speaking residents with home listings, moved to Rock County from Mexico City in 1994. She said at the time there were very few local businesses that catered to those who wanted traditional Hispanic shopping options.

She also said in the early 1990s there were far fewer people like her in Rock County, young Mexican immigrants who initially did not speak English.

Since 2011, the Hispanic population in Rock County has jumped from 11,705 to about 15,000 people.

Martinez-Pergolski and Silvia Donday-Selenske, a bilingual loan officer for PremierBank, both said the biggest growing part of the Hispanic demographic right now are immigrants from Central American countries that are marred by political unrest, extreme poverty and corruption.

Donday-Selenske pointed across a crowd at the festival to a few second-generation immigrants whom she said have lived in Janesville and have started small, cottage-industry businesses.

Donday-Selenske and Angelica Figueroa, a local real estate agent and operator of Hispanos Unidos Rompiendos Fronteras, a Beloit social service nonprofit, said new arrivals to Rock County are facing a difficult time connecting with affordable housing.

She said the language barrier is a tough challenge for new residents who still face competition for home listings that continue to stack up 10 or 15 buyers deep within days of the sales going live.

“Interest rate increases have helped some. It’s almost turning a corner … almost,” Figueroa said.

Figueroa’s nonprofit also helps raise funds for international funeral services for local Hispanic families. Martinez-Pergolski said nonprofits like Figueroa’s didn’t exist a decade ago, but they’ve begun to thrive and form a patchwork of support for Hispanic families as they navigate a new life in Rock County.

Rock County is an area she said many Hispanic people seek to call home because it’s affordable and that people who move here are increasingly welcomed by a growing network of small businesses willing to give specialized attention to their unique needs, cultures and lives.

She said that’s what she was celebrating most at the festivities Sunday.

“The small-business community that’s come together to help make these towns in Rock County a place where these (Hispanic) people can start to fit in and join in, that’s what makes me the most proud,” Martinez-Pergolski said.