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City Readies Green For Puerto Rican Festival

Lucy Gellman | August 8th, 2024

City Readies Green For Puerto Rican Festival

Festival Puertorriqueño  |  Arts & Culture  |  New Haven Green  |  Arts & Anti-racism  |  Puerto Ricans United, Inc.

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Miss Junior Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven Lysella Pujols and Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven Alanna Herbert. Lucy Gellman Photos.

Alanna Herbert can remember the moment she fell in love with New Haven’s Puerto Rican Festival. Rocking a fro and a t-shirt that read “Black Girl Magic,” she made her way through the crowd on the New Haven Green, the air filled with music. She must have been seven, she thinks, maybe eight. She ended the day eating pinchos with her family in front of City Hall. 

Never did she imagine that she would be back in an evening gown, representing  Cayey as Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven. 

Thursday afternoon, Herbert got a head start on those festivities on the New Haven Green, as Puerto Ricans United raised a flag to celebrate the return of the Festival Puertorriqueño de New Haven on August 10. Just two weeks after a sold-out gala at Anthony’s Ocean View, the festival will take place Saturday, with entertainment that stretches from the early afternoon all the way into the evening.

It is a near-herculean undertaking from PRU, board members of which are all volunteers. 

“I’m so excited to walk around with my head high, talking to my fellow Boricuas,” said Herbert, a rising senior at Common Ground High School who identifies as Afro-Boricua. “People often assume that when people of color come together, it’s going to be negative. But that just never happens.”

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Instead, the festival has become a vibrant celebration of Puerto Rican culture and identity, which in New Haven and Connecticut has continued to grow in the past several years. In 2021, New Haven’s Boricuas accounted for roughly 22,055 people, or 16 percent of the city’s population, according to the University of Connecticut’s Puerto Rican Studies Initiative. It was three years after Hurricane Maria, and stories poured out of the island and through Connecticut. Puerto Ricans now account for eight percent of the state’s overall population. 

“Part of you stays on the Island” even after leaving, said State Rep. Juan Candelaria, who came to New Haven with his family in 1979. But, he continued, part of the island is also now in New Haven, where groups like PRU have worked to preserve and fête cultural heritage with their annual parranda, gala, festival, and Día de Los Reyes celebration at Casa Otoñal. 

Thursday, speakers celebrated that commitment and growth, often with their own stories of visits to the island. Speaking early in the lineup, State Sen. and President Pro Tempore Martin Looney recalled a trip to the port city of Loíza, during which he found himself doubly grateful for the contribution Puerto Ricans have made to the state. 

“Every neighborhood in this city and every community in this state has benefited from the presence of Puerto Ricans here,” he said. "With culture, with the work ethic, with the contribution to the sense of community and the sense that government should work for the people.” 

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Former Fair Haven Alder Ernie Santiago: Ready to dance.

So too former Fair Haven Alder Ernie Santiago, whose family hails from Coamo, Puerto Rico and raised him to be proud of his roots. For the past eight years, he’s watched the festival continue to grow, braving wet weather, high temps, and a global pandemic in under a decade. Every year, he said, it has somehow come back stronger. 

While he’s still holding out hope that El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico will one day perform, he said he’s excited for headliners Luis Figueroa and Manny Manuel. 

 “I can’t wait to shake my body a little bit,” he said with a laugh.    

He’s far from the only one. This year, PRU is anticipating thousands of people on the Green, in what has become a beloved summer tradition. Among the day’s performances, PRU Board President Joe Rodriguez highlighted appearances from Orquesta Afinke, La Choco Band, Movimiento Cultural Afro-Continental, and headliners Luis Figueroa and Manny Manuel. There will also be dozens of vendors, from city departments to service organizations.  

Mayor Justin Elicker, who brought a lush a cappella version of Noel Estrada’s “En mi Viejo San Juan,” may or may not make a surprise appearance ("Put him together with Manny!" Santiago joked). The song “is like our second national anthem,” said PRU Board Member Juancarlos Soto with a smile.

Building on this year’s gala, the festival will also take time to honor New Haven’s Puerto Rican veterans. 

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Ana Garcia, who performed “La Borinqueña” as Parks Department staffer Edwin Rodriguez raised the blue, red and white flag, said she is thrilled to celebrate alongside thousands of fellow Puerto Ricans. Raised in Manhattan—her mom hails from Ponce and her dad from Guánica, but she was brought up in Spanish Harlem—Garcia loves events that bring her close to a culture that is both hundreds of miles away and right here at home.

“You had la Marketa, you had Puerto Rican flags outside on the buildings, you smelled the food that every neighbor was cooking—you knew you were already on the block as soon as you get off the train [and] you had the cuchifritos, the bins that had the empanadas, your alcapurrias, and so I grew up around that," she remembered of growing up in Spanish Harlem. "People ask me, ‘How did you retain your culture, your Spanish?’ It’s passed down.” 

Twenty-two years ago, Garcia knew she wanted to pass that down to her daughter, who is now a speech pathologist, and her son, a 21-year-old music producer. In 2010, she and her family moved back to Puerto Rico, where they lived until Hurricane Maria in 2018. As they watched havoc unfold on the island, they made the choice to return. They lived on couches until they could find a steady place to live.  

“It means a lot,” she said of the festival. “It means culture. It means how we express our freedom, our Latin roots, our food, our music, and how the people embrace this festival. It means we’re leaving a legacy to our children, to our future generations.”