¡WEPA! Nuyorican pride on full display at heritage celebrations

Despite lingering tensions between community leadership and City Hall, this year’s Puerto Rican Day parades, receptions, and cultural festivities went off without a hitch, with Mayor Zohran Mamdani partaking on several occasions.

“I think first and foremost[ is] to recognize that you can’t tell the story of our city without the story of the Puerto Rican community,” said Mamdani, while among the screaming crowds waving their flags at the 69th Annual National Puerto Rican Day parade in Manhattan on Sunday, June 14, 2026.

Puerto Ricans began calling New York City home as early as the 1940s. Together, they helped shape the city’s music, cuisine, art, poetry, and labor and civil rights movements. This year’s parade theme, “Somos Más Que 100×35,” celebrated the unity, heritage, and enduring contributions of the Puerto Rican community to the city.

However, it was the 8th Annual Knickerbocker Avenue Puerto Rican Day Parade in Brooklyn that had the honor of receiving New York Knicks point guard José “Grand Theft” Alvarado and Knicks guard Jordan Clarkson, who is of Filipino descent, fresh from their win in the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals Championship in Texas this past weekend. The Knicks team, particularly Alvarado as a Puerto Rican and Brooklyn native, have come to embody all that it means to be a New Yorker.

“I’m from Brooklyn, I play for the Knicks, and I’m Puerto Rican,” yelled Alvarado from the top of a float in the parade. “I’m telling you, man, I love y’all so much. We gonna party and have fun.”

“I had the pleasure of standing next to José Alvarado at the Knickerbocker parade later in the day, and this is a man who was raised in New York City, who has brought this city to its feet and done so with the kind of relentlessness, the kind of determination, and the kind of love for this city that New Yorkers are so proud of,” said Mamdani in a WNYC interview. “It has given everyone that extra pep in their step as they walk through their lives to know that they are in fact not alone, both in how they feel about the city and how they feel that tomorrow could be better than today.”

Last month, the city’s Puerto Rican leadership expressed deep frustration with Mamdani for a proposed cancellation of a longstanding annual reception at Gracie Mansion to celebrate their heritage. He has since explained that the email about the cancellation sent from his office was “inaccurate,” but the abrupt possibility stirred many Puerto Rican organizers into action. They collectively demanded that the reception take place while others hastily planned their own event.

“As a proud Puerto Rican, I believe our community deserves more than an invitation, we deserve respect,” said assembly candidate Jasmin Sanchez in a statement on Friday, June 5. “The annual Puerto Rican reception at Gracie Mansion is not just a party. It is a recognition of a people whose labor built this city, whose culture transformed it, and whose organizing power helped shape its politics for generations. Puerto Ricans did not earn a seat at the table because someone decided to give us one. We fought for it. We organized for it. We marched for it. We voted for it.”

As a backup, the New York City Puerto Rican Heritage foundation, in partnership with the Puerto Rican Bar Association, held their own reception at the outdoor venue at Pacha in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on June 11. Speakers included foundation director Carmen Cruz, Martha Flores-Vazquez, and Assemblymember Maritza Davila. They honored small-business owners, lawyers, members of law enforcement, and community leaders, such as Toñita (aka María Antonia Cay), Detective Miguel Rivera, Richard Samuel Ortiz, Luis A. Rodriguez, Sarah Vanga, and Chief Mark A. Vasquez.

“We’re not gonna bad mouth [the mayor]. He’s a young man,” said Flores-Vazquez at the event. “We have to teach him that the Puerto Ricans are the founders of bringing people together.”

“Boricuas are united and we have a strong voice that cannot be ignored,” said Cruz. “City Hall hasn’t taken time to understand there’s a huge Puerto Rican community that’s made contributions.”

Mamdani did end up having a separate Puerto Rican Heritage Reception at Gracie Mansion a day later, on June 12, which was equally attended by local leadership and elected officials.

“Mamdani has put forward an affordability agenda focused on housing, focused on making it easier to afford to live here. More and more Boricuas are leaving New York City for another place and we have to take that very seriously, because it is our talent and expertise that makes New York City such a wonderful, amazing place to live,” said former City Councilmember Carlina Rivera, speaking at the mayor’s reception.

More than 1.1 million Puerto Ricans have lived in the city, one of the largest populations outside of the island. However, according to a recent study from the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, there have been notable declines in the city’s Puerto Rican and Dominican populations, particularly after 2017. Between 2017 and 2022, the number of Puerto Ricans living in the five boroughs dropped by almost 20%, from about 715,000 to 574,000.

“This work, as we all know, is just beginning and it is work that will demand everything of us, and it will require the same defiant insistence on dignity, on naming injustice, that has long defined New York City’s Puerto Rican communities,” said Mamdani at his reception.