We missed the National Puerto Rican Day Parade this year. It feels almost obligatory for us to be there, as prdreamers we would expect as much. But we did miss the parade this year. Miss as in not being there and witnessing New York City’s largest parade. And missed in feeling the absence of something or someone. We missed the parade in both senses.
Some people feel the parade, at this point and juncture, is too commercial. It’s been cannibalized and globalized by the economic powers that be and, therefore, has lost its philosophical, cultural or moral compass. That is, its lost its reason for being or swapped it for a mission to turn a profit or help others make one.
Some people ask what does the National Puerto Rican Day Parade have to do with being Puerto Rican? The panoply of floats owned by Verizon, LaMega, Time-Warner, Con Edison, etc., etc., etc. speaks to an identity shared by millions of New Yorkers and, for that matter, Americans. They tend to overwhelm the more traditional floats from the various pueblos of Puerto Rico and the island groups who make an effort to come here and join in the fun.
As we remember, some people shout out to the floats they identify with, feeling comfortable with the logos and labels they’ve come to consider an integral part of their lives. Others shout out to personalities, to songs, to merchandise tossed at them. They heckle too and applaud. At one parade, New York’s Finest passed the area where we stood and were booed. Minutes later New York’s Bravest passed and were cheered. Something to reflect upon.
The parade is the spine of a colossus who visits every second Sunday in June to both gratify and terrorize a city that now ritualistically serves itself up to be ravished by it. The flesh, the blood, the arms, legs, head and heart are all the people there: the Nuyoricans, the Puerto Ricans, the other Latinos who consider themselves Nuyoricans (Hey, did they ever straighten out the John Leguizamo identity issue?), the boricuaphiles, the J-Lo fans, the the Marc Anthony aficionados, the politicos, the tourists, the police.
Did they keep John Leguizamo as the Grand Marshall of the parade even after they learned from his dad that he doesn’t have an ounce of boricua blood? Very likely, for all the reasons mentioned above. He is a Latino, Colombian, who grew up among the biggest and hippest Latino population of the city. Nuyoricans were the ones making plenty of contemporary gutsy theater, and writing urban in your face poetry. And Nuyoricans were the ones making films. So Leguizamo belongs to the category of other Latinos who consider themselves Nuyoricans — even if he is promoting Ghetto Klown. I doubt the ghetto he is referring to is a Colombian ghetto in New York City. Most likely, it’s a Nuyorican one.
It seems like the parade has gotten too big for New York City. It is the most highly contested and controversial parade the city has ever known. There have been scandals and, even when there were no incidents to speak of, the newspapers and media have to report how the National PR Parade had none this year, unlike, they want their audiences to remember, that Puerto RIcan Day Parade a few years back when a group of teenagers — were they Puerto Ricans? who cares, they’re all the same — went wet and wild on some young — were they Puerto Rican — women, spraying them with water and fondling them.
Is there a limit to the size a parade can grow? And why has this parade grown so much — unlike all the others the city hosts? Why is the National Puerto Rican Day Parade the biggest and the most popular? More meanderings later.