NYC Puerto Rican Day Parade Boycott: Who's In, Who's Out, And How To Pick A Side

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — The annual Puerto Rican Day Parade along Fifth Avenue, one of NYC's largest street parties and the biggest celebration of Puerto Rican culture anywhere off the island, is throwing back to its more controversial years for the 60th anniversary event on Sunday, June 11.

The parade will begin at 11 a.m. at 44th Street and end at 5 p.m. at 79th Street.

In the early 2000s, the event got bad press when attendees allegedly caused widespread damage to storefronts along Fifth; when suspected Puerto Rican gang leaders embedded themselves in the march and harassed/attacked people post-parade; and, in 2010, when parade leaders honored Puerto Rican telenovela hunk Osvaldo Riós, an alleged wife-beater, as the parade's "International Godfather." (In response to mounting public pressure, the actor was replaced by singer Marc Anthony, with then-wife Jennifer Lopez on his arm.)

This year, Puerto Rican Day Parade organizers are getting arguably even more heat for planning to honor a man tied to terrorism — but so far, at least, they've stuck to their decision.

The Problem

Parade leaders lit the fire back in early May when they announced that, among roughly 20 other "legendary figures" honored at this year's parade, they would bestow the first-ever "National Freedom Hero" award upon Oscar López Rivera.

Rivera, pictured below, is the 74-year-old co-founder of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), an FBI-designated terrorist group that fought to liberate Puerto Rico from the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s.

To these ends, FALN fighters are believed to have carried out between 100 and 150 bombings, including multiple in Manhattan. One bomb, planted at a bar in the South Sea Seaport district called Fraunces Tavern, killed four people and injured more than 60 others. Another bomb left a police officer in Harlem disabled for life.

The son of one of the four Fraunces Tavern victims said in an interview with CBS this week that he was furious to learn the man who "ruined" his father's life and "destroyed" his family would be honored at a city-sanctioned event.

Rivera was never convicted of direct involvement in any of the FALN explosions. He was, however, found guilty of transporting weapons for the group and, more generally, plotting to overthrow the U.S. — a crime for which he served around 35 years in jail. He was freed just weeks ago on a last-minute sentence commute from Barack Obama after decades behind bars.

It's hard to think of a more polarizing figure in the mainstream: In the past few weeks, elected officials have compared Rivera to both Nelson Mandela and Osama bin Laden.

"Some people call him a terrorist while others think of him as a freedom fighter," Puerto Rican Day Parade officials wrote in a May 12 statement addressing the controversy.

But the way they see it, officials said, "Oscar’s participation is not an endorsement of the history that led to his arrest, nor any form of violence. But rather a recognition of a man and a nation’s struggle for sovereignty."

The Boycott

In response to Rivera's inclusion in the Puerto Rican Day Parade, some of the parade's biggest corporate sponsors — including Hispanic cooking-ingredient behemoth Goya Foods — were first to drop out. The boycott has snowballed in the weeks since. Now, a growing number of brands — many of which the public likely didn't even realize had pledged their support in the first place — are making a stink about staying home instead.

Here's a running list of corporate boycotters, gathered from multiple news outlets. We'll be updating it with any others as they're announced.

• JetBlue Airlines
• Goya Foods
• New York Yankees
• Coca-Cola
• AT&T
• Corona
• Univision
• WNBC

For the most part, the companies dropping out have avoided specifically naming their reason as Rivera. (JetBlue, for example, said it pulled sponsorship "out of respect for the many different points of view" that had arisen during a "debate" that was "dividing the community.")

And in response to concern from parade organizers that the boycott might gouge their scholarship program for Puerto Rican youth, most of the companies then issued followup statements saying they would still pony up for the scholarships — just not for the parade.

Who's Out

Following in the footsteps of corporate America, a slew of local politicians, orgs and influencers have announced they won't show their faces at the parade this year.

Here's a list of who's out. (This list, like the one above, will be updated. Please let us know if we missed any names: simone.wilson@patch.com.)

• New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
• NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill
• Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez
• NYC mayoral candidate Nicole Malliotakis
• NYC mayoral candidate Paul Massey
• The New York Daily News
• FDNY Hispanic Society
• NYPD Hispanic Society
• NYPD Gay Officer Action League
• Uniformed Fire Officers Association (the FDNY union)
• Lieutenants Benevolent Association (the NYPD union)

Who's In

Once everyone and their mother started going public with their plans to avoid Fifth Avenue on June 11, it then became fashionable for city leaders who did still plan on attending the parade to announce as much as well.

Here's a list of everyone who has publicly pledged to attend the parade, despite — or, in some cases, because of — Rivera's presence. (Again, if we missed anyone, let us know: simone.wilson@patch.com.)

• NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio
• These 31 members of the New York City Council, led by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito
• Mark Viverito's deputy chief of staff (and expected successor) Diana Ayala
• New York State Senators Marisol Alcantara and Gustavo Rivera
• New York State Assembly Members Marcos Crespo and José Rivera
• Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.

Mark-Viverito, head of the City Council, has taken perhaps the most firm stance of support, calling Rivera a symbol of "the voice, tenacity and resolve of Puerto Rico and its people."

But de Blasio, more than anyone, has been increasingly derided for his position.

“How can you be the mayor of a city that has been attacked over and over again, and march with a terrorist,” Joe Connor, the son of an FALN bombing victim, said in his interview this week with CBS. “Go ahead, stand there with the terrorist, give him a hug, smile — the people of this city will understand who you are.”

At an otherwise cheery press conference Wednesday morning celebrating the launch of a new NYC Ferry line serving South Brooklyn, the mayor was bombarded with parade-related questions by reporters in attendance for upward of 15 minutes.

"Do you actually support the parade’s decision to honor Oscar López Rivera?" one reporter asked, almost incredulously.

"Look, the parade committee made a decision," the mayor answered. "I don’t know the specifics of their thought process. I wasn’t a part of that. I think what’s happened here is the underlying issue has been lost, which is the situation of Puerto Rico today. And I hope, despite this controversy, we can get this conversation back to what I believe they were trying to highlight — which is the extraordinarily unfair way Puerto Rico is being treated by the United States government right now."

Other reporters kept pressing.

"But do you just fundamentally — do you support the decision to honor Oscar López Rivera in the parade?" one asked.

"Again, it’s going to be a 'Yes' or 'No' to you, but it’s not to me, because the parade committee has its own approach," de Blasio answered. "I believe they were trying to focus attention on the situation in Puerto Rico. ... It’s led to a different kind of controversy. I think that’s very unfortunate."

How To Pick A Side

Like it or not, anyone who attends the Puerto Rican Day Parade this year will be making a political statement of sorts, and will run the risk of offending terror victims and their supporters who hold Rivera responsible for the blood spilled by the group he co-founded.

And indeed, there was some pretty compelling evidence that Rivera played an active role in planning the attacks on NYC.

But those on the other end of the debate have pointed out that not only was Rivera acquitted of as much by a U.S. judge, but that America — in its own violent colonization of Puerto Rico — left little choice for those who wished to remain independent but to fight back with what limited resources they had.

As one popular blogger for Latino Rebels put it: Your decision to march in the parade depends on which "side of the oppression" you're on.

Parade organizers are hoping, meanwhile, that no matter how you feel about Rivera, you'll consider attending the event more as a tribute to "the commitment and hard work of thousands of people, Puerto Rican and non-, whose efforts contributed to his sentence commutation."

Not really feeling any of these options?

You may be interested in checking out the smaller, more community-oriented Puerto Rican Day parade down in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Now in its third year, the Brooklyn parade begins at 5 p.m., right after the one in Manhattan ends. Around 20,000 people attended in 2016, according to police figures.

Be forewarned: If anything, its politics lean even more pro-Rivera. "New York Puerto Ricans, and everyone here in New York, doesn't pay attention to the history of violent repression, the real terrorism, that has been provoked by the US. in Puerto Rico," Dennis Flores, the community activist who runs the parade, said in a phone interview with Patch.

The Sunset Park parade organizer said he and his group, El Grito de Sunset Park, invited Rivera to attend their parade as well — but that the FALN co-founder couldn't make it.

Anyway, that's beside the point, Flores said. At the Brooklyn parade, he said he hopes to draw attention away from the Rivera controversy up in Manhattan and highlight "what's really taking place" in Puerto Rico right now — aka, the dire economic and educational crisis unfolding under U.S. rule.

As the Facebook event description says: "This year our parade will be fully dedicated and in solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico in the midst of the crisis, and for those on the front lines of the struggle fighting for the civil and human rights of the people of Puerto Rico!"

Flores told Patch he's been contacted this year by multiple big corporate sponsors and elected officials who've dropped out of the main parade and want to sign onto his instead.

But Flores said he's turning them all down — just as he's done from the start.

"It's important to hold onto your mission and your roots," he said. "We've been talking for a long time about how commercial and disconnected from its roots and its culture [the Manhattan event] has become. It's become this parade of brands and politicians. That's why people really connect with the parade in Sunset Park. This is about our community... and our connection to the motherland."

The local activist added: "We're also not interested in getting pitted against our own community and playing into their politics."

You can still register for a spot in the Sunset Park parade until 5 p.m. Monday, June 5.

Lead photo by Boss Tweed/Flickr