Cleveland’s annual Puerto Rican Day Parade is arguably the city’s most energetic (next to the Cavs 2016 championship parade).
But it appears the loud, colorful and joyful event might be taking a detour this year, or at least be scaled down.
The Hispanic Police Officers Association of Cleveland, which has led the organizing of the parade and associated festival since 2018, is trying to hand off the large responsibility for hosting both.
“We are calling on organizations to come together,” Erik Melendez, president of HPOA, told Weekly Chatter about the need to find a new caretaker of the events, which have been around since the late 1960s under different names and leadership.
Melendez said he has convened several community meetings to discuss how to best put the events in new hands. He said the related responsibilities, which include fundraising, recruiting volunteers and finding sponsors, are daunting and too much for his organization to continue indefinitely.
An announcement that a new group has been formed to manage the parade and festival has been posted on several media platforms, including the Cleveland Puerto Ricans Facebook page. That announcement says a new organization called Herencia Borinqueña CLE, which means Puerto Rican heritage, will eventually take over both events.
“For generations, this celebration has represented culture, pride, resilience, and community,” the post reads. “Over the past five years, the Hispanic Police Officers Association and its volunteers helped carry this tradition forward, growing the event to a historic 30,000 attendees across two days. Their dedication and leadership will always be appreciated. Now, a new chapter begins.”
Melendez declined to identify the people and groups considering taking over, saying details still need to be settled. He said his organization would also remain involved in some capacity but could not say definitively if either a parade or festival would happen this summer.
Typically, the parade and festival are held during the first week of August on the city’s near West Side. Last year’s 55th annual parade filled Scranton Road and the festival took place at nearby Quad Park, near the MetroHealth Towers.
The website used to promote last year’s event, puertoricanparade.org, is no longer active.
A MetroHealth spokesperson said no one has contacted the hospital system about hosting an event there this year.
Puerto Rican Day parade proposed for Shoreway
Public records show that a permit to hold a Puerto Rican Day parade on Aug. 2 was requested last month by Jorge Lozada of Cleveland, a longtime advocate for the Hispanic community who helped manage the parade – but not the festival – over the last several years.
The permit seeks a short parade along the Shoreway, from West 45th Street to Lake Road.
Lozada told Weekly Chatter that he volunteered to try to organize the parade again this year amid the change of leadership because of the parade’s history and importance to the community. He said he expects there will be no festival this year, or at least he is not trying to pull that off.
He said Hispanic organizations are reluctant to commit because of the amount of time and resources planning a festival requires. He declined to identify the organizations involved in Herencia Borinqueña CLE.
“Almost everyone that gets involved comes to regret it,” he joked.
Lozada said the festival has outgrown the space at MetroHealth but groups are compiling a list of larger sites that could host the festival in 2027. He said he believes the festival has draw as many as 100,000 people.
He said the HPOA and others are trying to “distribute responsibility to all groups,” but that requires more coordination.
“The real concern is that we need a structure to carry it forward,” he said.
