Starting in 1952, late June in New York City has been marked every year by the San Juan Fiesta. Although the parade nominally celebrates the Catholic holiday of the Feast of Saint John, it is really a celebration of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, and of Puerto Rican culture and traditions. By the 1970s, the festival drew tens of thousands of revelers with themed floats, marching bands, an outdoor Catholic Mass, representatives from local unions, traditional food stalls and beverage company sponsorships. The Municipal Archives has recently digitized unique footage of the 1979 parade taken by the New York Police Department’s Bureau of Special Services and Investigations, a.k.a. “BOSSI”.
More than 100,000 people attended the 1979 festival and 5,000 took part in a Mass held in the Central Park band shell. Cardinal Terrence Cooke of New York and Bishop Ricardo Surinach of Ponce, Puerto Rico presided over the Spanish language service. The festivities also included open air food stalls serving piraguas and deep-fried treats like tostones, carnival games of chance, and even a piñata with candy for kids. The 1979 San Juan Fiesta sponsors hired a private sanitation company to keep the event as clean as possible, with Park Commissioner Gordon J. Davis remarking that “this is the most responsible group that uses the park.”
The parade itself featured scaled down replicas of Spanish colonial ships under command of the first Spanish governor of Puerto Rico, Ponce de Leon. Dancers in traditional costumes matched their choreography to the tunes of marching bands from local high schools ahead of the queen and princesses of the San Juan Fiesta. In addition to the Puerto Rican history and tradition celebrations, factory worker unions, New York police associations and church congregations also took part in the parade. Corporate sponsors such as Miller High Life and Pepsi even made elaborate floats and supplied drinks for many of the vendors.
The tradition of the parade began during a tumultuous period of Puerto Rico’s history. After centuries of Spanish Colonial rule, the USA invaded Puerto Rico in 1898 and imposed a military government. In 1952, the Constitution of Puerto Rico was officially ratified, and the island archipelago became an unincorporated territory of the USA. President Truman granted Puerto Ricans the right to choose their own governor for the first time in 1947, culminating in the 1948 election of Luis Muñoz Marín, who once supported independence but went on to become a proponent of the Free Associated State structure or ELA (Estado Libre Asociado). This election took place just a few months after the passage of Law 53, better known as the Gag Law. The law made it illegal to own or display the flag of Puerto Rico, sing the Puerto Rican national anthem, speak against the United States government, or write, sing or assemble in favor of Puerto Rican independence. Enforcement of the law led to the open persecution of Puerto Ricans that supported independence.
Resistance to the Gag Law, the new governor, and the American federal government was fierce. Oscar Collazo, a New York-based member of the independence-oriented Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, attempted to assassinate President Truman in 1950. He was set to be executed before his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
In 1953 alone, at the peak of migration, more than 75,000 Puerto Ricans moved from the island to New York City. In 1954, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Lolita Lebron and two other Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire in the United States Capitol, injuring several members of Congress. Denounced as terrorists by the United States government, some Puerto Ricans saw the nationalists as freedom fighters in a global wave of resistance to colonial powers after the end of World War Two.
In the 1979 NYPD BOSSI footage a parade float shows prison cells labeled ‘Miranda’ and ‘Collazo,’ advocating for their release. A few months later, President Jimmy Carter pardoned Collazo, Miranda, Lebron and several other high profile Nationalist Party members who had served decades in prison. Years later, on June 22, 1990, Miranda joined Nelson Mandela on stage in New York City to support global efforts for self-determination.
In addition to the San Juan Fiesta, BOSSI created photographic records of several Puerto Rican Day parades throughout the 1970s. Like the San Juan Fiesta, these parades offered both a celebration of Puerto Rican history and culture, as well as opportunities to comment on the politics and governance of Puerto Rico.