Boricua pride | Culture & Community | Festival Puertorriqueño | Puerto Rico | Arts & Culture | New Haven Green | Puerto Ricans United, Inc.
Top: Gabriella Xavier, who is a student at UConn, and for years taught voice through ARTE, Inc. Bottom: The flag makes its ascent. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Gabriella Xavier brought the microphone to her lips, closed her eyes and lifted one hand gently into the warm afternoon. La tierra de Borinquén/donde he nacido yo/es un jardín florido/de mágico fulgor, she sang. Behind her, the Puerto Rican flag climbed steadily up the New Haven Green's flagpole, until thick stripes of sky blue, white and red flapped and twisted in the breeze. Even in the humid air, Xavier's voice carried, clear as a bell and soul-deep.
Against a slate gray sky and cries of “Yo Soy Boricua/Pa'que tu lo sepas!” Puerto Ricans United, Inc. (PRU) ushered in a weekend of celebration Thursday afternoon, as city officials, state representatives, educators and PRU board members raised the flag in advance of the city's annual Festival Puertorriqueño de New Haven this Saturday. Nearly two dozen gathered for the event, which followed PRU's sold-out gala in late July. Watch the full flag raising here and listen to a radio interview with PRU Board members below.
"I'm so excited!" said PRU Board President Joe Rodriguez, his eyes sparkling against a shirt that matched the vibrant red of the Puerto Rican flag. "I think that I speak for our full board when I say we're all running on adrenaline. We have all been working so hard, but we're also just so excited and so ready."
This year, the eight-hour festival will bring Boricua excellence with food trucks, a public health fair, vendor tents, and hours of music from Movimiento Cultural Afro-Continental, Carlos Juan el Lunatico y su Grupo Tipico, Rika Swing, and internationally recognized salseros George Lamond, Nino Segarra and Johnny Rivera. After thousands of people attended last year, the all-volunteer board is hoping for record numbers, with a plan to proceed rain or shine.
PRU Board President Joe Rodriguez: "I think that I speak for our full board when I say we're all running on adrenaline. We have all been working so hard."
For Rodriguez and fellow members of PRU, it has become part of the fabric of New Haven, and a testament to the breadth and nuance of a diaspora. During the year, PRU hosts several additional events, from a Dia de los Reyes celebration at Casa Otoñal to its annual gala to the commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico. This year, it also helped bring back the Miss Puerto Rico of Greater New Haven Cultural Pageant, which came to life in March.
For Rodriguez, it's both a joy and a responsibility, as well as a way to pass the island's complex and sometimes painful history down through culture.
"This is a labor of love," he said Thursday. "This is what a community looks like. De todos ... it's a mix of everyone, and that's who we are. That's what we celebrate today."
Miss Puerto Rico Miriam Magalis Cruz (in green pants), with Junior Miss Puerto Rico Alianys Ayala and First Princess Alanna Herbert.
Thursday, the spirit of celebration floated through the audience, powerful enough to stave off an afternoon drizzle until the speaking portion was over. Addressing attendees early in the afternoon, Miss Puerto Rico Miriam Magalis Cruz issued a formal invitation to Saturday's festivities, her crown glimmering as she leaned down to the microphone to speak.
A rising senior at Wilbur Cross High School, Cruz later found herself wiping tears from her eyes during Xavier's soaring rendition of "La Borinqueña," the Puerto Rican national anthem.
"It's gonna mean a lot to us to come together and just show our Boricua spirit," she said. After a summer appearing at cultural festivals across the state, she gets to show up for the city that has raised her—and represent her family, her peers, and her culture on her home turf. While she may have two homes, she added—Caguas, Puerto Rico and New Haven—both will be on full display on Saturday.
"I'm so excited to go as a community [member] and embrace my culture," she said. "We've come so far as Boricuas."
That ebullient spirit flowed through the remainder of the flag raising, as speakers switched fluidly from English to Spanish to English and back again. State Rep. Juan Candelaria, whose family moved to Connecticut from Puerto Rico in 1979, called it an honor to be present, taking a moment to pay homage to those who had come before him. For him, that includes the Indigenous Taíno people who lived on the island until settler-colonialism devastated their way of life.
He gestured to the flag that would soon rise over the New Haven Green, as if it was just waiting for the right lyrics. That version, which represents an 1895 iteration, shows a five-pointed star inside a sky blue triangle, surrounded by bands of red and white. For him, it holds a whole history, centuries of culture flapping in the wind.
Joking that Puerto Ricans are so proud of the flag that it is omnipresent—in cars, shops, bedroom windows, bobbleheads, t-shirts and even in bathrooms, he often paused to switch into Spanish, and then jump back into English again.
"When we look at our flag, we think about the resilience, our identity, and our unity as Puerto Ricans," he said. "We also remind ourselves of our forefathers, our Taínos, their struggles, the Spanish colonization of the island, our autonomy, our independence through el Grito de Lares. That's what reminds us when we look at our Puerto Rican flag. But it also reminds us, as people and as a community, [that] we are united. We fight together through the struggles."
"We are a strong people. We have deep roots, we are very confident in who we are and our identity."
Dr. Madeline Negrón, who began her tenure as New Haven Public Schools superintendent earlier this year, painted both the festival and the flag raising as a sort of full-circle moment for her, and one that is and will continue to be important for New Haven’s young people. Born and raised in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, Negrón said she now makes it a point to talk to kids about their own cultural history, and the significance of knowing about one's ancestors.
"There are so many contributions that we have made in the past, that we continue to make today and that I know we will continue to make in the future," she said, waving a miniature flag that drew excited murmurs of "La bandera!" and "Que bonita bandera!" "We are a strong people. We have deep roots, we are very confident in who we are and our identity."
"We do belong," she added. "And by the way, we are United States citizens for those that continue to forget that fact."
PRU Board Members, all of whom are volunteers.
Even those who were not Puerto Rican basked in the glow of the festival, preparations for which have been underway for months. As a municipal partner, City Cultural Affairs Director Adriane Jefferson pointed to how PRU's work both builds community and dovetails with New Haven's cultural equity plan, which made its debut in January 2022. This year, the Department of Cultural Affairs and New Haven Festivals, Inc. was able to raise $25,000 to support the festival.
"We're just honored to celebrate," she said. "PRU doesn't just do the festival and the gala, but they have programs all throughout the year, [including] curriculum for young people and working deeply in the community. And so I just want to make sure that we are supporting all of the initiatives that they are doing."
Mayor Justin Elicker, who is white and hails from New Cannan, praised the contributions of Puerto Rican community members, who for decades have helped shape the city into the diverse and polyphonic canvas that it is today. He nodded to a new flight from Tweed New Haven Airport to San Juan, starting from Avelo Airlines on Nov. 15, that shows the continued growth and impact of that community on everyday life in New Haven.
Cruz upped her nail game for this year's festival. The artist that she goes to, who is based in East Haven, is @nailsbyangely on Instagram.
"Today, yo soy Boricua," he said to a few laughs from the crowd. "I say it so much that let's just own it. Every day, I am Boricua. The Puerto Rican community is part of New Haven, and New Haven is part of the Puerto Rican community. That connection has existed over decades and decades, and is becoming stronger and stronger every day."
Back at the flagpole, First Princess Alanna Herbert adjusted her crown, and prepared for a festival unlike she'd ever had before. A rising junior at Common Ground High School, Herbert comes to the festival with her family every year, she said. But this summer feels different: for the first time as an Afro-Latina, she doesn't feel like two halves of herself are at odds with each other. She credited PRU for that change.
"I feel like I'm a part of something," she said.
For more on the festival, listen to the interview above.