Car horns and reggaeton filled downtown Hartford on Sunday, as the city hosted its 61st annual Puerto Rican parade and festival.
Many of the more than 15,000 festivalgoers represented their identities as both Nutmeggers and Boricuas.
Emmanuel Santiago had the Puerto Rican flag draped across his shoulders — a uniform of sorts for the crowd lining Park Street ahead of the parade start. But what stood out in Santiago’s look was underneath the bandera: Half his sweatshirt was University of Connecticut blue.
“I just got it because it looked nice. I seen the Huskies, and it got another patch right here too,” he said, pointing to the attached hood. “Ever since I got it, everybody been complimenting me.”
The other half of his hoodie is the familiar green of the late, great Hartford Whalers hockey team. Santiago moved to Connecticut as a kid, right into Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood, where he says that he’s grown up around even more Puerto Ricans than in heavily boricua Orlando, where he’s from.
Hartford’s total population is 34% Puerto Rican, compared to Orlando’s 14%, after Hurricane Maria.
Carmen Ocasio Huertas Morales found the strong Puerto Rican community comforting when she first arrived in Connecticut from the island back in the ‘60s. That’s when her new home was just deciding to host its first-ever pageant.
“It was the happiest day of my life to become the queen, Miss Puerto Rico in Waterbury,” she said in a new crown and sash.
Soon after winning the 1965 title, she married her husband and raised three children in Connecticut. She eventually moved back to Puerto Rico in 1996.
“I miss the United States because I got my kids here. I got grandkids, and I got great grandkids,” Ocasio Huertas Morales said. “Sometimes, I think about it. I say, ‘Man, I should go back to the United States to be with them,’ you know?”
The Greater Hartford Puerto Rican Day Parade and Festival named Ocasio Huertas Morales an honoree of this year’s festival. That’s what brought her — and some new faces — to Hartford. The mayor of Ponce, Marlese Sifre, represented the featured city at the festival, along with some youth. Even vejigantes, the masked beings of the city’s folklore, came out to represent.
Before the festival
On Thursday, the city hosted not one, but two Puerto Rican flag raisings ahead of the weekend parade and festival.
It makes sense: Puerto Ricans are famously proud of our red, white and blue flag.
You see it hanging from the rearview mirror in our car, flying on our lawns, embellishing our caps and tees. And dozens gathered to watch the flag unfurl in front of the building where laws like the recent Connecticut-Puerto Rico Trade Commission are passed.
“I love Puerto Rico because my mom was born and raised in the Condado and drove me through El Yunque and showed me Ponce as a little boy,” said Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont. “I know how powerful and wonderful Puerto Rico is. I'm going to do everything I can to reestablish, to make sure those relationships between Puerto Rico and Connecticut are strong.”
Hartford’s city hall and the Connecticut State Capitol hosted the two flag raisings.
When he’s not running the Connecticut State Capitol Police, Chief Luis Casanova has been known to lead in other ways: most recently, as the parade’s grand marshal in 2023.
“What does Sunday mean to us? For some, it means a party. For me, what it means is resilience. It means pride of our heritage. It means culture,” Casanova said. “It means to the wonderful men and women of Puerto Rico who contributed to this state and to this nation and to the world, we contribute a lot.”
Attendees came from near and far, including those honorees who reside on the island and Joe Rodriguez from down in New Haven. He’s the president of Puerto Ricans United, the organization behind New Haven’s Puerto Rican festival. At the first flag raising in Hartford, he emphasized the cultural significance of such events.
“It is important for us to share our story and to tell people who we are, to share our history,” Rodriguez said. “Do not let them write our history. We are our own storytellers.”
Learn more
For more information on this and other Hispanic Heritage Month events running through Oct. 15, check out our full guide.
