The sound of drums mingled with the sirens of police patrols as Puerto Rican flags made their way down Park Street in Hartford, Connecticut. Along the route, families dressed in the colors of the Puerto Rican flag waited for the floats to pass before joining the celebration at Bushnell Park, across from the Capitol.
The scene, witnessed by El Nuevo Día during the 2025 Puerto Rican Parade, showed a massive celebration. Yet behind the music and dancing lies a history of community organizing that began with the need for a dispersed population to gain visibility and political influence.
More than six decades later, the Puerto Rican parades in Connecticut face a new challenge: ensuring that the descendants of those who emigrated maintain a connection with Puerto Rico.
Amílcar Hernández, chairman of the board of the Connecticut Institute for Community Development, did not always understand that purpose. During the years he lived in Philadelphia, he never attended that city’s Puerto Rican parade. He also initially stayed away from Hartford’s when he settled in Connecticut.
“I thought, ‘I’m not going to get involved in all that commotion,’” recalled Hernández, whose organization coordinates the Puerto Rican Parade and the Coquí Festival in the state capital, where 44% of residents are Puerto Rican.
His perspective changed when he learned about the community work carried out throughout the rest of the year and while raising his son in the United States, making an effort to keep him connected to Puerto Rico.
“For many people, as in my case, being Puerto Rican and born and raised in Puerto Rico makes it more natural,” said the Utuado native. For those who belong to the second or third generation, he added, the parade offers the Puerto Rican diaspora an opportunity to meet others who share the identity passed down by their parents and grandparents.
Register to vote
Puerto Rican migration to Connecticut began in the early 20th century. Some workers arrived to take jobs in businesses connected to the rum trade and in the poultry industry, but the movement increased after World War II, when Puerto Rican farmworkers were recruited to work in the state’s tobacco fields.
Many were seeking economic opportunities or, as several have told this newspaper, left the island “fleeing poverty.” By 1960, Connecticut was already home to approximately 16,800 Puerto Ricans.
The community was growing but was spread across different cities and had little representation in the places where decisions were made about housing, education, and other services. Puerto Rican activist María Colón Sánchez found in culture a way to bring people together and encourage civic participation.
On October 4, 1964, Hartford held the state’s first Puerto Rican parade under the slogan “Register and Vote,” which summed up the goal of mobilizing Puerto Ricans politically. Nearly 20,000 people took part in the event, according to research by Jhinia García and Charles R. Venator-Santiago of the University of Connecticut’s Puerto Rican Studies Initiative.
Colón Sánchez later became the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the state Legislature, demonstrating the connection between cultural celebrations and access to political power.
The model spread rapidly. Bridgeport organized a parade in 1965, drawing nearly 50,000 participants. A year later, Waterbury held the third, and by 1968, the event had reached New Haven, where attendance was estimated at approximately 75,000 people.
During the following decade, events were also held in Meriden, Norwalk, New Britain, Stamford, and New London, among other cities. The expansion coincided with the growth of the Puerto Rican population, which increased 124% between 1960 and 1970, from approximately 16,800 to 37,800 residents. By 1980, it had reached about 91,600 people.
The parades thus served as cultural showcases, but also as platforms for demanding attention to the community’s needs. In addition to encouraging voter registration, their leaders called for better housing conditions, bilingual education, and socioeconomic opportunities.
“There was a time when the organization’s leaders took a fighting stance because the times demanded it,” Hernández explained. That work, he said, produced figures who went on to hold elected office, as well as others who exercised leadership within their communities.
Preserving what they inherited
Although the organizations still speak out on public issues, Hernández believes their mission has gradually shifted toward education. The change, he said, responds to a different reality: they must now reach generations whose experience of Puerto Rico comes primarily through their families.
“There is a possibility that future generations will drift farther away from their Puerto Rican roots,” he warned. For that reason, he said, it is necessary to “preserve our identity, protect it, and fight for it.”
That concern is also present in Bridgeport, home of the Fairfield County Puerto Rican Parade. Its vice president, Lissette Colón González, has lived in Connecticut for 42 years and has worked with the initiative in various capacities.
Organizing it, she explained, requires coordinating volunteers and board members, as well as working with the organizations responsible for events in Hartford, New Haven, New Britain, New London, Meriden, and Waterbury. Several years ago, those groups formed a coalition to support one another in producing their respective events.
“It is a commitment to our community, our culture, and, above all, to preserving and passing on our Puerto Rican identity to new generations,” Colón González said.
For the community leader, the outcome should not be measured solely by attendance. Its value also lies in bringing together families, young people, artists, business owners, and organizations.
“Every flag, every song, every dance, and every smile represents a part of our history. Success lies in having created a space of unity, pride, and belonging,” she said.
In her view, the celebration serves to pass on an identity that does not depend solely on where someone lives.
“Puerto Rico is not only an island; Puerto Rico lives in us, in our families, in our traditions, and in the way we teach our children and grandchildren who we are. The parade is a way of telling them: ‘This is your culture, this is your history, and this is your legacy,’” she said.
From advocacy to representation
The participation promoted by the first organizations eventually became reflected in political institutions. In 2001, Eduardo “Eddie” Pérez became Hartford’s first Puerto Rican mayor. In November 2025, Robert “Bobby” Sánchez was elected as the first Puerto Rican mayor of New Britain, where 42% of residents are Puerto Rican.
Today, Puerto Ricans hold 12 seats in the state Legislature and lead the Puerto Rican and Latino Caucus. They have also established a trade commission between Puerto Rico and the state, with the goal of strengthening economic, commercial, educational, and cultural ties between the island and Connecticut.
The measure establishing the Trade Commission was unanimously approved by the General Assembly and signed on June 5, 2025, by Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont, whose mother was born on the island.
Puerto Ricans also lead numerous institutions, including the Hispanic Health Council, the New Haven school district, and, previously, the Hartford school district, as well as medical institutions and organizations in various sectors.
Meanwhile, the community that gave rise to the first parades now numbers more than 300,000 people, representing nearly 8% of Connecticut’s 3.7 million residents, according to data from the American Community Survey.
That figure makes Connecticut the jurisdiction with the highest proportion of Puerto Ricans in the United States.
The 2026 Puerto Rican parade season began in June and has continued throughout the summer in cities with large Puerto Rican communities. In Hartford, the event will take place on September 13, with El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico as the main musical attraction, while the city of Waterbury will close the season for the first time on September 19.
What began in 1964 as a celebration built around a call to register and vote continues, more than 60 years later, as one of the main spaces where the Puerto Rican community in Connecticut makes its presence visible every year.
