Thousands march in North Jersey's Cuban Day Parade

BY MONSY ALVARADO/

NORTH BERGEN — Celia Cruz salsa tunes blared throughout Bergenline Avenue Sunday as spectators waved flags and swayed to the Latin beat during the 13th Annual Cuban Day Parade.

KEVIN R. WEXLER / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Mateo Pegas, center, dances with Cafe y Orquidias during the Cuban Day Parade on Bergenline Avenue in North Bergen Sunday.

Thousands lined the retail corridor, some decked in the blue, white and red colors of the Cuban flag, to celebrate the Caribbean Island’s heritage and culture — and to also contemplate the communist nation’s past and future.

“We remember a piece of our country,” said Omaida Camacho of Fairview who snapped pictures of floats as she stood by more than a dozen family and friends. “We think of our families and the many restrictions.” Camacho has uncles and cousins in Cuba.

Emilio Del Valle, founder of the parade, said about 250 parade participants walked and danced down the street and rode in cars, motorcycles and floats through North Bergen, Guttenberg and Union City.

“It’s grown enormously,” he said before he began to walk the parade route. “I think our first parade started with 50 people.”

Hudson County and the surrounding region is home to the highest number of Cubans outside Miami. According to the census, there are 28,652 Cubans in Hudson County and 83,362 in New Jersey, including 12,708 in Bergen County and 3,448 in Passaic County.

In the past the parade has drawn hundreds of thousands of viewers from different parts of the state, Del Valle said. The event started at 78th street and ended on 43rd street in Union City. A festival was also held at Schuetzen Park on Sunday.

Joining Del Valle at the front of the parade was U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco and Union City Mayor Brian Stack.

Menendez, who is Cuban-American said the parade is “close to his heart.” The Democrat said it serves to celebrate the contributions Cuban-American’s have made in New Jersey, the nation, and locally. But he acknowledged, that is also a time to think of the needs of the nation that has been under communist rule since Fidel Castro came into power in 1965. Castro’s brother, Raul, who turned 81 on Sunday, is the country’s current president. He succeeded his brother, who left office due to his health.

 “Always when Cubans get together they are thinking about their loved ones, their families and the oppression that exists inside of Cuba and hoping for that day in which Cuba can once again be free,” he said.

Stack said he’s dismayed that the United States hasn’t done more to help free the island nation of the Castro’s dictatorship.

“Here we are going half way around the world and around the world to liberate countries, and yet 90 miles off the Florida keys Cuba sits and we allow a dictator to remain there after all these years,” he said. “…How do we sit by year after year and still let him sit there and separate families. And the atrocities he’s committed against the Cuban people is a disgrace.”

Stack also criticized Cuba for its imprisonment of Alan Gross, an American who was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years on charges related to his distribution of communications equipment to the island’s Jewish community.

Some Cubans, who have lived in the United States for decades, said they no longer think about a free Cuba.  More >>