Chicago celebrates Puerto Rican culture with parade, festival
Salsa, merengue and reggaeton new music blasted from cars and trucks driving all around Humboldt Park Saturday afternoon as purple, white and blue flags with a single star blew in the breeze, some out of vehicle windows and sunroofs and other individuals held by persons on the sidewalk.
In close proximity to the south conclude of Humboldt Park, on West Division Avenue and North California Avenue, folks lined up alongside the road, lots of donning Puerto Rican flag shirts or dresses as they watched the 44th Once-a-year Puerto Rican People’s Day Parade arrive at its stop. Folks shouted, waved and danced as cars and trucks, bicyclists and people today handed by, blasting music and waving additional flags.
The Puerto Rican Competition begun Thursday and runs through Sunday, with stay audio and carnival rides in a shut off aspect of the southeast corner of Humboldt Park. On Saturday afternoon, the parade additional to the festivities as Puerto Ricans in Chicago shown their delight and joy in their heritage.
Sellers marketed foods like savory and sweet empanadas, papas rellenos — potato balls stuffed with seasoned floor beef — tostones, pinchos — grilled pork or hen skewers with onion, bell pepper and tomato — and jugo de parcha or passion fruit juice. Other vendors along the park offered flags, T-shirts, hats, and other components, most with the Puerto Rican flag or its colours.
Dasani Saldana, 13, whose relatives is from Puerto Rico, wrapped a large Puerto Rican flag all-around her again like a cape as she viewed the parade with her pal, her mother and her mom’s good friend. It was her 3rd parade, but the second one particular she remembers for the reason that she was a little one when her mom took her to her first parade, Saldana stated.
She reported she enjoys the food items, listening to her Spanish language and looking at other Puerto Ricans in her neighborhood celebrating their culture jointly at the Puerto Rican Competition and parade.
“We can display exactly where we are from,” Saldana stated. “What Puerto Rico is about.”
Just after the parade, on a household road south of the park, Edras Andujar grilled pork bichos to promote, as persons sat all over him on garden chars, chatting and consuming. People danced along to merengue waiting for the food items to complete cooking.
Jalesa Trotman took her daughter and nieces to the parade. It was her next time likely to the competition, a practical walking length from her property, she reported.
“We enjoy it for the reason that the neighborhood just arrives out and you see everyone jointly and having a great time. It’s incredible,” Trotman said. “Compared to all the undesirable stuff you listen to about Chicago, it is like 1 significant unity occasion for all people.”
Trotman’s grandparents are Puerto Rican and Mexican, and although she has not been to the island nonetheless, she hopes to visit Puerto Rico sometime. Likely to the competition, she said feels welcome into her lifestyle, and sees it as an option to train her daughter about their heritage and track record.
She said possessing her daughter and nieces come out and see and engage in with other kids that glimpse like them and share their society is a excellent way for them to master about on their own.
“I experience like youngsters study by means of practical experience,” she claimed. “So in get for them to fully grasp what they are and who they’re about and what they can maybe do with their life, they have to be uncovered to it.”
Iris Bellido moved to the U.S. from Puerto Rico when she was 1, and was lifted in Humboldt Park. She’s absent to the festival pretty much every yr because she was a baby, she mentioned.
“Thank God that at last COVID is over and we ended up able to celebrate it and really feel back again to regular,” she reported. “And rejoice it the way we commonly do. So that was a aid.”
As she waited in line to get into the pageant, Bellido outlined the numerous items she enjoys about the pageant and about her lifestyle — the foods, how individuals costume, the colors, the flag, the new music, especially bomba y plena.
Bomba and Plena are common music types that replicate the African heritage of Puerto Rico.
“Puerto Ricans are loud men and women that they enjoy tunes and they adore to dance,” Bellido claimed with a giggle. “And…the girls are recognized for their large butt and curly hair. And they just love to have enjoyable, listen to audio, dance. And eat Puerto Rican food items.”
Carmen Malave was at the parade with her youngest daughter, Heather Rodriguez and her three granddaughters, Ruby, 7, Naya, 8, and Sonie, 9. All a few ladies wore Puerto Rican flag attire.
Malave mentioned she utilized to provide her possess three youngsters to the parade when they were youthful.
“Growing up in Humboldt Park, staying a single mother, increasing 3 children, it is not effortless,” she explained. “But, you know, I did it and even even though they’re older I’m continue to there.”
Now she’s enjoying viewing them get started their possess family members and viewing them share the society with their small children.
It experienced been a even though considering that they had participated in the festivities, as they avoided some of the violence in the region, Rodriguez stated, as her daughter Ruby hugged her.
“This is her first time in this article, actually,” Rodriguez said of her daughter. “That’s why I required to deliver her, just to working experience her lifestyle, get a very little awareness of the place she comes from. She’s loving it. She just cannot quit dancing.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this tale made use of the incorrect phrase in Spanish for grilled skewers of meat. The accurate phrase is pinchos.
