Corporate sponsors including AT&T and JetBlue dropped out of Sunday’s parade over the organizers’ decision to honor Oscar Lopez Rivera, 74, a former member of the militant Puerto Rican nationalist group Armed Forces of National…
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Travelling around midtown Manhattan is a bit more difficult Sunday as tens of thousands of revelers pack Fifth Avenue for New York’s annual Puerto Rican Day parade.
Barricades were set up along the parade route early Sunday, beginning at 44th Street and continuing uptown to East 79th Street.
Parade-goers turned out despite a controversy over honoring a man who spent 35 years in prison for his involvement with a group responsible for bombings that killed and maimed dozens in the 1970s and 1980s.
Corporate sponsors including AT&T and JetBlue dropped out of Sunday’s parade over the organizers’ decision to honor Oscar Lopez Rivera, 74, a former member of the militant Puerto Rican nationalist group Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN.
MORE: NYPD Commissioner Says He Won’ t March In Puerto Rican Day Parade
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and several police and fire department groups also said they wouldn’ t attend.
Protesters on both sides of the Lopez Rivera controversy have promised to turn out, joining the crowds of revelers cheering on salsa dancers and waving Puerto Rican flags.
MORE: De Blasio Says He Privately Threatened To Sit Out Puerto Rican Day Parade Over López Rivera Involvement
The parade has often been a venue to showcase the complicated history of the U. S. territory, now mired in a recession. This year, it comes on the same day Puerto Ricans vote among three choices: independence, statehood or their current territorial status.
In the decades ago, FALN claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings in the U. S. and Puerto Rico, including a lunchtime blast in 1975 that killed four people at New York’s historic Fraunces Tavern.
MORE: Oscar López Rivera Declines To Be Honored In Puerto Rican Day Parade
Lopez Rivera was convicted of seditious conspiracy though he was never charged with any specific bombings and has denied participating in attacks that injured anyone. He was released from prison last month after his sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama.
Lopez Rivera said last week he would not accept the title of “National Freedom Hero” and would instead join the parade as a regular citizen, in part because the focus was too much on him and not enough on the plight of Puerto Rico.
Huge banner at #PRParade welcoming #OscarLopezRivera pic.twitter.com/qHixIFJhhE
— Myles Miller (@MylesMill) June 11,2017
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who for weeks defended his decision to march, said last week he was uncomfortable with the idea of honoring Lopez Rivera all along and was glad the issue was resolved ahead of the parade. Others said they’ d march to show support for Puerto Rico despite disagreeing with FALN’s methods.
“I will not let the controversy surrounding one man become bigger than the hearts of millions of Puerto Ricans, ” Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. wrote last week.
New York’s first Puerto Rican parade took place in 1958 when it was barely legal to display the Puerto Rican flag on the island and Puerto Ricans on the mainland faced harsh discrimination. It has grown to a nationally televised spectacle.
Congress will ultimately have to approve the outcome of Sunday’s referendum. Some Puerto Ricans blame the current recession on the U. S. government, partly because of the elimination of tax credits that many say led to the collapse of the island’s manufacturing sector.
(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
