The 9th Annual Sunset Park Puerto Rican Parade & Festival is proud to announce the Madrina for this year is, Aurora Flores Hostos. Aurora is a distinguished, award-winning, published author and historian of Latin music and culture. Listed in Who's Who in Hispanic America, she’s broken barriers, founding and leading a public relations and production company, producing major events from music festivals at Madison Square Garden to health symposiums at the United Nations. As a published author and journalist, she broke barriers as the first female music correspondent for Billboard Magazine while still attending Columbia University. Her name appears on hundreds of Latin music liner notes and in thousands of articles covering music, culture, community, and politics across mainstream newspapers, magazines, and media outlets. She delivers lectures at colleges and universities and leads cultural tours of East Harlem. As a BMI composer, she creates original music for the Nickelodeon hit series "Dora the Explorer" and as bandleader leads Zon del Barrio orchestra, performing from New York to the Caribbean and France's Côtes d'Azur. A play on the word "son," a musical genre found throughout the Islands and U.S. barrio "zones" where people of color work hard, only to partyjust as hard, Zon del Barrio is NOT your average grandma's "salsa" group. Intergenerational, creative, and co-ed, Zon del Barrio embodies the sound of Latin music from the vibrant streets of El Barrio and the Bronx. Rocking New York City at venues such as Museum Mile, Lincoln Center, and the High Line, this big band showcases her original songs, rooted in community, alongside virtuosic music that is often missing from the contemporary Latin New York scene. She is currently writing her memoirs and delivering lectures/presentations. Her commissioned article on West Side Story, “Spielberg’s ‘Rican Reconstruction,” is cited in Wikipedia, followed by her essay “New York’s Dance of Displacement” for Lincoln Center’s microsite on San Juan Hill. She can be found on Substack, Medium, IG, YouTube, and FB. El Grito presents The 9th Annual Sunset Park Puerto Rican Parade & Festival, on Sunday, June 8th 2025. Parade begins at 5pm and the festival begins at 6:30pm near the entrance to Sunset Park on 43rd Street & 5th Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. (fb)

The 9th Annual Sunset Park Puerto Rican Parade & Festival is proud to announce the Padrino for this year is, Nelson Walter Canals Martínez. Don Nelson studied in public schools and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in Social Sciences from the University of Puerto Rico. He earned a Master of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Georgia and went on to pursue doctoral studies in Urban Sociology at New York University. He obtained a Juris Doctor degree from the UPR and completed the courses for a Master's in History and Literature of Puerto Rico at the Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. He began theological studies at the San Pedro y San Pablo Seminary of the Puerto Rican Episcopal Church. He was a professor at several universities in Education of Children in the city of New York, also in that city he was Associate Director of the Commission of Hispanic Affairs of the Episcopal Church of the USA. Together with other Puerto Ricans in exile, he founded the Betances House in New York and the Chapter in E.E.U.U. of the Legal Institute of Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, he was Executive Director of the Legal Institute of Puerto Rico. He chaired the National Committee for the Freedom of Nationalist Prisoners, which successfully achieved the release of Oscar Collazo, Lolita Lebron, Andres Figueroa Cordero, Irvin Flores Rodríguez and Rafael Cancel Miranda. He was the founder and first leader of the Unitary Committee Against Repression and for the Defense of Political Prisoners (CUCRE), which was the citizen front that contained the brutal repression unleashed by the Federal Bureau of Investigations of the Government of the United States of America for the decade 1980. He collaborated in the National Committee for the Defense of Vieques and the All Puerto Rico front with Vieques that finally achieved the departure of the Navy. (fb)