On September 15th, 2019, the Puerto Rican Parade returned home to Reading, Pennsylvania, for the first time in 15 years. It was beautiful to see people embrace their culture and feel celebrated and appreciated in their own community.
I captured the images of that day and poet journalist Anthony Orozco/Glyph captured it in the way only he can in his poem Encantado.
Chrome covered jeeps
crotch rocket motorcycles
and a thousand Boricua on foot
make the city echo
with a WEPA!
with Hector Lavoe and Bad Bunny,
beautiful black people of all colors
in bandanas and banderas
dark skin wrapped in
white linen
carried here like Jesus
en los brazos de Maria
a people risen off of a cross
100 miles long by 35 miles wide
Manati a Ponce
Rincon a Fajardo
they are a land mass
they are the tangled wilderness of El Yunque
the orderly chaos of Nueba Yor
displaced to this place
their flags cut through the air
the way volcanic rock swiftly cuts through waves
the way water slowly cuts through stone
give and take
home and away
daughters of the ocean
husbands of the wind
warriors, dancers, musicians and poets
nine million cousins
bastard sons of Uncle Sam.
patriots and foreigners
red
white
and blue.
© 2026 Mateo Toro
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