Amazing post, one of the best I have read about all the issues in Puerto Rico right now! Thanks for writing this. Am sharing with my network right now!

Si, I agree!. This is absolutely outrageous! This is a wonderful article that speaks directly to the truth. Thanks so much for writing and putting this out there. Gracias amiga!!

Hola Michelle y mil gracias for your kind words.

No se if I were to go as far as you cfaponte as to call it by equally stereotypical names.

Excellent!! Very well said Maegan…this one’s for you (my review:) -> http://efrainortizjr.blogspot.com/2011/06/excellent-post.html

Excellent post! Two years ago, I took my daughter to the parade for the first time and I have to admit, I had mixed feelings about it. Something didn’t feel right. I remember thinking exactly that: This is a distraction. Though my daughter and I had an enjoyable time, the issues remained sorely present in my mind. The issues were starring us in the face as floats passed by, as cops stood by snickering and carrying on, as office holders waved plausible greetings, etc…. We haven’t gone back since.

I shall repost! Thank you.

Dale Hermana!

Great article; dipped in the truth and dripping of sincerity. Our community truly needs to wake up and realize the responsibilities they have. My only hope is that they have not grown so accustomed to the state of life in their slumber that they never seek the light of consciousness again.

Flashback late 80′s – AIDS epidemic hits our communities. I worked for the Department of Health. A few of us organized our selves to get the message across to the masses that AIDS/HIV was killing our people. We we excited to participate in this sham of a parade but were told that we had to wait at the ‘end of the line’ until the beer, liquor and cigarette company floats got their chance to get picked up by the television networks. Nothing’s changed…

Muchas gracias, amazing post, I agree about your point of view.

Hey Minister Mission! So nice to see you here! Mil gracias for your words and insights. Let’s see how tomorrow plays out. As it stands today, the ads have not been removed as promised and yet a million or so people will got o fifth avenue como si nada is really happening in our hoods and homes.

Maria, gracias for commenting. Reading your words I was trying to remember when the clearer shift happened – when the parade changed from a show of pride and success to a series of commercials on foot with a salsa beat. I remember marching in the parade as a child but I wasn’t aware of commercialism then. When I revisited the parade as a politicized teenager it always seemed a problem- from the process of who gets to march and where, to what the messages are, to the way Manhattan gets locked down and how that moves into our neighborhoods after.

the problem with alternatives is the problem at the root of the issue. Money. How can community compete with the billions of Coors Miller?

Froilan Kali Ramirez and thanks for your comments. I also work as a tutor, so I feel your frustration. But I also would like to challenge the idea that I am reading in your comment – and please correct me if I am wrong, that the answer lies outside of our communities. With library hours being shut and public transportation becoming more expensive – the city is doing a hell of a job trying to cut off access to knowledge and food. So how do we demand that we have access to these things where we are – not have to travel a few hoods over to get what we need and what we deserve? Shouldn’t that be part of the fight? And if we can’t get those demands met- how do we create sustainable options for ourselves (community book lending programs, gardens)?

Maegan, I understand your frustration regarding the Puerto Rican Day Parade, but it is reductionist to ignore and disregard its entire history and the complex purposes it serves. Specifically I disagree with your statement: “I have yet to see an analysis of the parade, it’s culture, it’s sponsorship as anything more than an opportunity for mass forgetting/mass drunkenness on the idea that a million of us descending onto Fifth Avenue for a corporate/colonial pat on head means pride and power.”

I have written on the topic extensively, in my dissertation (“Culture, Representation, and the Puerto Rican Queer Diaspora,” Columbia University, 1999) and in articles such as “Puerto Rican Day Parade” in the Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States. Vol. 3. (Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. González, co-editors. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 489-90). (Available here: http://www.jrank.org/cultures/pages/4347/Puerto-Rican-Day-Parade.html ) Other Puerto Rican scholars such as Frances Aparicio have also written on the topic.

Here is a bibliography:

Aparicio, Frances. “Racializing the Puerto Rican Day Parade: Recent Media Representations of U.S. Puerto Ricans in Public Space.” In None of the Above: Contemporary Puerto Rican Cultures and Politics, edited by Frances Negrón-Muntaner. New York: Palgrave, 2005.

El Desfile Puertorriqueño de Nueva York y el Desfile Nacional Puertorriqueño/The New York Puerto Rican Parade and the National Puerto Rican Parade. New York: GALOS Corporation and Carlos Velásquez, 2003.

Estades, Rosa. “Symbolic Unity: The Puerto Rican Day Parade.” In Historical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Survival in the United States, edited by Clara E. Rodríguez and Virginia Sánchez Korrol, 99–106. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 1996.

Kasinitz, Phillip, and Judith Freidenberg-Herbstein. “The Puerto Rican Parade and West Indian Carnival: Public Celebrations in New York City.” In Caribbean Life in New York City: Sociocultural Dimensions, edited by Constance R. Sutton and Elsa M. Chaney. New York: Center for Migration Studies of New York, 1987.

La Fountain-Stokes, Lawrence. “On Drag Queens, Parades, T-Shirts with the Flag, and the Performance of the National.” In “Culture, Representation, and the Puerto Rican Queer Diaspora.” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1999.

I invite you to read more on the history and function of the parade before disregarding the legacy of this event, which was in fact established by the Basque martyr Jesús de Galíndez before he was kidnapped and murdered by orders of the Domincan dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.

What do you all expect… This is America where we corporatize most events of this size.
Maybe you should blame the organizers of the event and write to them directly.
And come to think of it… Why do you think most of the 1 Million people left Puerto Rico in the 1st place?… For a better future in the U.S right.
Why do you suppose that is? Think about it… Your answer to all of your frustrations are in the answer to that simple question… cheers…

I’m not Puerto Rican, but I’ve always wondered why this day is such a huge celebration in the U.S. considering the exploitative relationship between it and Puerto Rico. Some Puerto Rican friends agree, others just think I’m being a pain. Either way, my opinions are from the outside, so their validity is questionable.

Also, thank you for mentioning the issue of violence against the queer Puerto Rican community. As a trans activist I see far too much of this going on, and I appreciate it more than I can express when people even notice.

[...] Sunday an alleged 2 million people hit the streets of Manhattan for the Puerto Rican Day Parade and later today who knows how many will greet U.S. President Barack Obama as he visits the mainland [...]