Puerto Rico Day Parade 2024!
Last Sunday, June 9, The National Puerto Rican Day Parade took place on 5th Avenue in New York City, alongside dozens of other celebrations around the country. This year the theme was Boricuas de Corazon, with honoree salsa legend Tito Nieves.
We’re thrilled to share some photos from this remarkable march up Manhattan, where Boricuas from New York City and beyond joyfully honor their Puerto Rican heritage.
Celebratory, proud, and unabashedly Boricua, the Puerto Rico Day Parade is a spectacle unlike any other, and in New York City, it’s an occasion for all kinds of Puerto Rican-themed events, like Puentes (that we just posted about) and Manolo Lopez & Cesar Perez’s Primo Lejanos dinner Saturday night at Neuhouse, where they served some of our coffee!
What many don’t know is that the Puerto Rican day parade began in 1958 during a turbulent few decades in US and Puerto Rican relations. Backed by the US, in 1948 Jesus T. Pinero signed Law 53, what became known as the Gag Law, which, in an attempt to identify and suppress Puerto Rican nationalist movements, made flying the Puerto Rican flag illegal, along with any promotion of Puerto Rican national identity. While the law was repealed in part for likely being unconstitutional in 1957, during that time flying the flag became a symbol of Puerto Rico’s powerful cultural heritage, and it’s part of why the parade started in the first place and songs like Que Bonita Bandera still resonate so strongly with us today.
From that difficult but important beginning, the Puerto Rican Day Parade has become the largest celebration of Puerto Rican culture and identity in the United States today. We loved re-visiting some Puerto Rican day parade celebrations of the past, and we’re wanted to share some with you. Here’s Jerry Marzan covering the parade in 1989 along with footage from the very first Puerto Rican day parade in 1958.
And that’s why today it’s still so important to say it loud, and say it proud.
¡Yo Soy Boricua!
¡Pa’que tu lo Sepas!