The National Puerto Rican
Parade Update
The NiLP Network on Latino Issues (May 5, 2014)
Parade Grand Marshals Announced.
This year's Grand Marshals for the June 8th National Puerto Rican Day Parade will be two pioneering 
Puertorriqueñas: New York Congress-woman Nydia Velazquez and NYC Council Speaker
Melissa Mark Viverito . This news was announced by Parade Board members
Orlando Plaza and
Sandra Garcia-Betancourt on Friday on NY1 Noticias' Pura Política program hosted by reporter
Juan Manual Benitez (aka, the official cable news outlet for the National Puerto Rican Day Parade Inc.?). This confirmed reports made weeks ago by NY1 News/Noticias Political Commentator
Gerson Borrero that these two women would be leading the Parade. Garcia-Betancourt also confirmed on the program that there would be a third Grand Marshal but declined to name the person because the designee had not yet confirmed. Borrero had reported some time ago that the third person is Associate Supreme Court Justice
Sonia Sotomayor.
The show's host, Benitez, asked about the criticism that some have raised about Mark-Viverito and Velazquez's designation as Grand Marshals as being a conflict of interest because they were instrumental in calling for NYS Attorney General
Eric Schneideman 's investigation of the Parade that led to the reorganization of its Board. Garcia-Betancourt would only say that these were two outstanding Puerto Rican women who deserved to be so honored. Some have felt that since Mark-Viverito was a leading voice in calling for the investigation of the Parade that her designation by the very same Parade Board she had so much influence in creating would look like a payback instead of a recognition of her accomplishments, suggesting that she should have instead waited at least another year before accepting such a leading role in the Parade. To others, the critical role that community activists such as Lucky Rivera and Ramon Jimenez of Boricuas for a Positive Image also played in calling for the clean-up and reorganization of the Parade was being overlooked since they have not been accorded any similar recognition by the Parade Board.
Still others are speculating that these Grand Marshal designations were the result of pay-for-play. They make the spurious connection with a reception recently held at the Museo del Barrio of Latino elected officials, held to solicit their financial support for the Parade (which at the time was some $175,000 in the hole). Well, the story is that of all the Latino electeds in the room, only two agreed to commit themselves to buy tables at the Parade Banquet, Congresswoman Velazquez and Speaker Mark-Viverito. Next thing we hear, they're Grand Marshals! So the question is: Are they waiting for Sotomayor to simply confirm or are they expecting her to buy table too? It is this type of spurious speculation that we at NiLP find so offensive, but print anyway.
The absence of Parade Chair Lorraine Córtes-Vázquez and her media advisor/Board member Rossana Rosado from the Parade's first news conference and this appearance on Pura Política where such an important announcement was made about the Grand Marshals, was noted by some. When the Parade needs to show it has strong leadership, their more high-profile leaders seem to be publicly AWOL?
The Oscar López Rivera Question Resolved? On the same Pura
Política segment, Parade Board member Orlando Plaza also reiterated the Parade's official support for the release of Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar López Rivera , explaining that the Parade this year will recognize him as a "Puerto Rican patriot." Lopez Rivera will be recognized during the Parade by a
contingent from Chicago that will be led by his brother, José Lopez. There were some calls by supporters of Lopez Rivera to have the Parade honor him at the same level that they planned to honor legendary Puerto Rican poet
Julia de Burgos and the
65th Infantry Regiment (the "Borinqueneers"), but apparently they have all agreed not to push the issue further and all plan to join the Chicago contingent to make it the biggest contingent of the Parade. There was the concern that the Parade organizers felt that honoring Lopez Rivera would be too controversial, possibly costing the support of some potential sponsors, but it appears that this concern was in the end dropped by the activists.
Investigating the Other Parades? One of the concerns that NYS Attorney General Schneiderman's investigation of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade raised was that, although
Carlos Velasquez and his GALOS Corporation was also managing other parades, his activities into these others also needed to be investigated. By focusing solely on the Puerto Rican Parade, and not the Hispanic Day and Dominican parades, the Attorney General's investigation might unfairly stigmatize the Puerto Rican event alone. According to those involved in the negotiations with the Attorney General's office about the investigation, they were told that they were planning to investigate Velazquez's activities with these other parades as well, but they never did. Is this something that Schneiderman is still planning to do, as his office promised, or has he reneged on his promise?
The Parade Permit Almost-Controversy. While the Attorney General's investigation of the Parade was under way, the word got out that former Puerto Rican Parade Board Chair
Ramon Morales was working with former
Ramon Velez attorney,
Paul Bleiffer, to incorporate a new parade, the Puerto Rican Heritage Parade, and that they planned to apply for the permit for
this parade on the same day as the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, June 8th. People at the Attorney General's office confirmed this but assured everyone that this would never happen. Well, it turns out that they did submit a permit application for that same date just in case the official Parade Board screwed up, but this Ramon Velez-type maneuver never panned out. Just another example of the behind-the-scenes craziness connected with the Parade planning this year!
The Politics of the Parade. One of the things that has consistently characterized the Puerto Rican Day Parade, no matter what it has been called over the years, is its connections to the politics of the Puerto Rican community. The complaint has been that it has been too politicized and, up until this year, was too dominated by the politics of the Bronx. As the Parade was being reorganized this year, community activists that called for the changes were concerned about it being re-politicized under a new set of players. With the election of a new Mayor, who was not the first choice of the traditional Puerto Rican power brokers, and the selection of Melissa Mark-Viverito as Council Speaker (not a favorite of the "Bronx Boys"), there has been a significant political realignment within the Puerto Rican community. Now the question is: would the Parade finally become fully community-based or would it simply get controlled by a new set of political players?
Because of this concern, some were worried about Council Speaker Viverito's behind-the-scenes control of the Parade's reorganization, putting people on the Board that were beholden to her. The selection of Lorraine Córtes-Vázquez raised eyebrows because she, for example, was the person who swore-in Viverito during her Bronx inauguration as Speaker. Córtez-Vázquez' longtime relationships with lobbyists Luis Miranda and Roberto Ramirez of the MirRam Group (she was, for example, Ramirez' Chief of Staff when he was an Assemblyman), were viewed as possibly creating a backdoor for these political brokers to gain control, sooner or later, of the Parade's potentially lucrative operations. And so on.
In order to make sense of these political realignments/machinations related to the Parade, the National Institute for Latino Policy quietly assembled a top-notch team of Boricua Pyscho-Historians to begin to mathematically map out what this future political reconfiguration might look like. Here is the preliminary result that will be refined as developments warrant:
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Stay tuned to The NiLP Network on Latino Issues for updates . . .
If you have any information about the Parade, positive or negative, that should be widely known in the Latino community, please let us know at info@latinopolicy.org. Your name will be kept confidential if requested.
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