The 66th annual National Puerto Rican Day parade kicked off on 5th Avenue and 44th at 11am with great fanfare and lots of music and dancing. With well over 1 million people of Puerto Rican descent living in the Tri-state area, this is one of the biggest parades in NYC of cultural representation. The parade is a bridge from the island to the mainland with many special guests coming from Puerto Rico to participate and make this a spectacular event. The parade route was lined up with thousands of beautiful Puerto Rican flags from 44th St. to 79th St. A reviewing stand was set up near 70th St. where the amazing event was televised on ABC to be aired at noon across the country and PR. As usual, the mounted police let everyone know the parade was getting started. Once the local politicians and VIPs greeted the crowd, then the fun started with lots of dance groups, live salsa bands and plenty of WEPAs from the people. One of the best things to hear was one group on one side of people on 5th Ave. yelling …Yo Soy Boricua…and the other side of the street saying Pa Que Tu La Sepa… It was like family getting together.
Of the many highlights of the parade, the ones that stood out most were a vibrant dance group called Latin Power Dance from Yauco, Puerto Rico. Following right after them were some traditional Bomba dancers with a live band. They were on point. A perennial favorite of the parade came down from the Bronx to show off some moves and swag. The Dancers Dreamzzzz group really got the crowd worked up with all their dance moves. The next phase of the parade was to honor all the VIPs that made or are making significant strides in representing Puerto Rican culture. This years Grand Marshall was Giselle Blondett, most known for being a host of a popular Spanish TV show Despierta America. The Padrino of the parade was Ismael Cruz Cordova, a popular actor in various TV shows. The Madrina was famous freestyle singer, Judy Torres. It’s too bad she didn’t have a dance group doing freestyle and break to some of her more popular hits.
The next segment of the parade was to raise consciousness of the people attending the parade to what is actually going down in Puerto Rico. There were many signs of the dishonesty and pain caused by La Junta, an assigned group to help take Puerto Rico out of severe loan hardships as a result of mismanagement and catastrophic events…aka Hurricane Maria. More groups displayed signs demanding independence from the colonial status of commonwealth.
Various Greeks (fraternities and sororities) jumped in with dances to show off their moves. Plenty of community groups were present to help recruit more people to help improve self empowerment. There was a display of hot cars to get the group revved up. This parade is known to be one of the loudest and proudest and that reputation was well preserved. Yo Soy Boricua….Pa Que Tu la Sepa.
NYC Parade Life 