Puerto Rican Day Parade
Encyclopedia
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
and all people of Puerto Rican
Puerto Rican people
A Puerto Rican is a person who was born in Puerto Rico.Puerto Ricans born and raised in the continental United States are also sometimes referred to as Puerto Ricans, although they were not born in Puerto Rico...
birth or heritage
Puerto Ricans in the United States
Stateside Puerto Ricans are American citizens of Puerto Rican origin, including those who migrated from Puerto Rico to the United States and those who were born outside of Puerto Rico in the United States...
residing in the mainland U.S. In 2006, more than 80,000 participants marched and nearly 2 million spectators lined the parade route. The parade always attracts many celebrities, both Puerto Rican and of Puerto Rican heritage, and many politicians from the Tri-State area.
The parade marches along Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue (Manhattan)
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The section of Fifth Avenue that crosses Midtown Manhattan, especially that between 49th Street and 60th Street, is lined with prestigious shops and is consistently ranked among...
from 44th Street to 86th Street
86th Street (Manhattan)
86th Street is a major two-way street in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan.On the West Side its continuous cliff-wall of apartment blocks includng The Belnord is broken by two contrasting landmarked churches at prominent corner sites, the Tuscan...
and has grown to become one of the largest parades in New York City, with nearly three million spectators annually.
History
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, replacing the former Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
Day Parade. In 1995, the parade became incorporated as the National Puerto Rican Day Parade and expanded beyond the parade itself. The parade now hosts over seven major events throughout the city. There are dozens of other events that also take place the weekend of the parade that are not sponsored by the National Parade's corporation. In addition to the parade in New York, there are currently over fifty smaller parades that take place throughout the United States.
The parade attracts many New York politicians, such as mayor Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...
, former mayor Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani KBE is an American lawyer, businessman, and politician from New York. He served as Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001....
and also many political candidates running for office and looking for voters in local, state and national elections. In recent years, the parade has honored several Puerto Rican celebrities by naming them "International Grand Marshal" of the parade including singer Marc Anthony
Marc Anthony
Marc Anthony is an American singer-songwriter, actor and producer. Anthony is the top selling tropical salsa artist of all time. The two-time Grammy and three-time Latin Grammy–winner has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. He is best known for his Latin salsa numbers and ballads...
, who participated in the parade with along his wife Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lopez
Jennifer Lynn Lopez is an American actress, singer, record producer, dancer, television personality, and fashion designer. Lopez began her career as a dancer on the television comedy program In Living Color. Subsequently venturing into acting, she gained recognition in the 1995 action-thriller...
, and Ricky Martin
Ricky Martin
Enrique "Ricky" Martín Morales , better known as Ricky Martin, is a Puerto Rican and Spanish pop singer and actor who achieved prominence, first as a member of the Latin boy band Menudo, then as a solo artist since 1991.During his career he has sold more than 60 million album copies worldwide...
in 2007 and 2010. In addition to a National Grand Marshal, a variety of honorees are named for the parade, with titles such as "King", "National Ambassador of La Salsa", and "National Godmother.".
In popular culture
The parade itself has been featured in an episode of the NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
situation comedy
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
titled "The Puerto Rican Day
The Puerto Rican Day
"The Puerto Rican Day Parade" is the 176th and antepenultimate episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. It aired on May 7, 1998, and was the 20th episode of the 9th and final season. It was the show's second-highest-rated episode of all time, with 38.8 million viewers, only behind the series finale...
." In it, Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld (character)
Jerome "Jerry" Seinfeld is the main protagonist of the American television sitcom Seinfeld . The straight man among his group of friends, this semi-fictionalized version of comedian Jerry Seinfeld was named after, co-created by, based on, and played by Seinfeld himself.The series revolves around...
, George Costanza
George Costanza
George Louis Costanza is a character in the American television sitcom Seinfeld , played by Jason Alexander. He has variously been described as a "short, stocky, slow-witted, bald man" , "Lord of the Idiots" , and as "the greatest sitcom character of all time"...
, Elaine Benes
Elaine Benes
Elaine Marie Benes is a fictional character on the American television sitcom Seinfeld , played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Elaine's best friend is her ex-boyfriend Jerry Seinfeld; she is also good friends with George Costanza and Cosmo Kramer...
, and Cosmo Kramer
Cosmo Kramer
Cosmo Kramer, usually referred to as simply "Kramer", is a fictional character on the American television sitcom Seinfeld , played by Michael Richards...
get stuck in a traffic jam as a result of the parade. Due to controversy relating to a scene in which Kramer accidentally burns and then stomps on a Puerto Rican flag
Flag of Puerto Rico
The flags of Puerto Rico represent and symbolize the island and people of Puerto Rico. The most commonly used flags of Puerto Rico are the current flag, which represents the people of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico; municipal flags, which represent the different regions of the island; political...
and is chased by a mob of angry Puerto Ricans, NBC refused to air the episode again. The episode was also withheld from syndication as a result, but has been shown sparingly in syndicated repeats since 2002 and has been released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
along with all of the sitcom's episodes.
The parade was portrayed in a negative aspect following the controversial 2000 parade in an 2001 episode of the long-running NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
crime series Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
titled "Sunday in the Park with Jorge
Sunday in the Park with Jorge
"Sunday in the Park with Jorge" is the 240th episode of NBC's legal drama Law & Order, and the 11th episode of the 11th season.-Plot:A couple in a rowboat in Central Park discover the body of a severely beaten woman in a pond during the Puerto Rican Day Parade celebrations. During the celebrations,...
". Before the National Puerto Rican Coalition protested the episode, network executives issued an apology. The company also made a pledge to "improve our procedures regarding sensitive programming issues."
The parade was one of the inspirations for the poetry compilation "Empire of Dreams" by Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
.
Controversy
During recent years, the presence of gangs such as the Latin Kings, the BloodsBloods
The Bloods are a street gang founded in Los Angeles, California. The gang is widely known for its rivalry with the Crips. They are identified by the red color worn by their members and by particular gang symbols, including distinctive hand signs...
and the Crips
Crips
The Crips are a primarily, but not exclusively, African American gang. They were founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1969 mainly by Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams...
have been recorded at the event. On June 11, 2000, there were a number of arrests that were result of the assault of many women in Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
, mainly by African-American and Dominican
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
men after the parade. The attacks, which were videotaped by onlookers, led to the arrest and prosecution of many of those involved. Manuel Vargas, a Dominican American
Dominican American
A Dominican American is any American who has origins in the Dominican Republic.Immigration records of Dominicans in the United States date from the late 19th century, and New York City has had a Dominican community since the 1930s...
who was the suspected ringleader, was quoted by the press as saying he "was just having fun".
In June 2010, controversy arose after organizers selected telenovela
Telenovela
A telenovela is a limited-run serial dramatic programming popular in Latin American, Portuguese, and Spanish television programming. The word combines tele, short for televisión or televisão , and novela, a Spanish or Portuguese word for "novel"...
actor Osvaldo Ríos
Osvaldo Ríos
Osvaldo Ríos born Osvaldo Ríos Alonso on October 25, 1960 in Carolina, Puerto Rico, is a Puerto Rican actor, model, singer, and guitarist, of Armenian descent, who is best known for his roles in telenovelas...
, who served three months in a Puerto Rican prison in 2004 for assaulting his former girlfriend after a domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
incident as the parade's "International Godfather." Many confirmed participants such as U.S. Representative Luis Guiterrez and corporate sponsors such as Verizon withdrew their participation and endorsements due to his controversial past. After mounting pressure from both the media, politicians, public officials, and domestic violence organizations, Rios decided to not attend the parade after discussing the matter with his children and U.S. Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez. He was replaced at the last minute by singer Marc Anthony, who was accompanied by his wife Jennifer Lopez.
In past interviews, actor and comedian John Leguizamo
John Leguizamo
Jonathan Alberto "John" Leguizamo is an Colombian-American actor, producer, voice artist, and comedian.-Early life:...
had always claimed Puerto Rican ancestry via his father's side, which was one of the reasons that he was selected as the 2011 Puerto Rican Day Parade Global Ambassador of the Arts. On June 10, 2011, Leguizamo's father, Albert, declared in an interview published in El Diario La Prensa
El Diario La Prensa
El Diario la Prensa is the largest and oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper in New York City, and the oldest Spanish-language daily in the United States. Published by ImpreMedia, the paper covers local, national and international news with an emphasis on Latin America, as well as human-interest...
, a Spanish-language newspaper published in New York, that he was not Puerto Rican, but of Colombian ancestry, contradicting his son's past claims of his Puerto Rican ancestry. In response to his father's allegations, Leguizamo stated in an interview, that his grandfather was of Puerto Rican descent. A spokesman for the National Puerto Rican Day Parade stated that Leguizamo would not be stripped of his ambassadorship, allowing him to participate in the June 2011 parade.