The close out of the Hispanic Heritage Month was a grand celebration on 5th Avenue with marchers of Spanish speaking countries displaying their culture through costume, music and dance. Thousands of people lined up on the parade route from 44th to 72nd streets to watch their fellow country people represent. NYC has been home to millions of Spanish speaking people for many years. Queens alone has the highest concentration of Hispanic people in the US. Dia de La Hispanidad celebrates the Hispanic culture in the Americas. The wide variety of costume and dance sets this parade apart from any other. One can clearly see the European, Indigenous American, African and Asian influences in the various groups that marched.
As usual with this parade, the first group that marched was the group from Spain. This year they had several groups dressed in medieval wardrobe and an amazing castanet dancing group. The parade goes in alphabetical order starting with Argentina with a few gaucho dancers and some tango dancers. One of the largest groups soon followed. The Bolivians showed off three main styles of music and dance. The slow and rhythmic Morenales always have the best boots of any parade. The Tinkus represent Indigenous culture and have a high energy dance. The showstopper is San Simon Caporales that come in from all parts of the country to show off their sequined costumes and dance moves. It takes about a half hour for the whole group to go forth up 5th Avenue.
After Chile and Costa Rica marchers came up 5th Avenue, another large group from Colombia brought the heat with high energy dance music and amazing costumes. Some groups from Baranquilla, Colombia made it to the parade with their signature costumes from the big Carnival celebration there. The Dominican Republic had a few diablos cracking whips. Ecuador had some traditional and folkloric dancers. El Salvador had some of the best baton twirlers around. Guatemala had some really interesting marchers wearing a variety of masks. They looked like a real person but only fake….really weird. though. A group of fancy horses galloped along and almost took out a photographer not paying attention. Honduras had a nice group of marchers and well known singer.
Mexico had some Day of the Dead wardrobed marchers followed by a mariachi band. Nicaragua had a decent size representation. Probably the largest group came in from Panama…literally. The day before there was the Panamanian Day Parade in Brooklyn. Many marchers came directly from Panama for this event. They sure do love their polleras and drum and bugle marching bands. Paraguay had their group of bottle balancing marchers you really won’t see anywhere else except maybe Paraguay. Puerto Rico had a small group waving their flag. Peru had a really nice group with several styles of dancers but the one that caught my eyes were the Indigenous American group having a powwow. Closing out the big parade were the Venezuelans with their colorful dresses and dancing. One of the nicest things was to watch how different groups cheered each other to celebrate the differences in culture and representation but share the same language. That sounds like something that plenty people can learn from. Gracias Espana.
NYC Parade Life 