Tens of thousands in Newark expected to celebrate Ecuador’s ‘first cry for independence’ Sunday

By Steve Strunsky

Newark will alight with the colors of red, yellow and blue this weekend in celebrations of Ecuador’s “first cry for independence,” with an official flag raising on Saturday followed on Sunday by a parade and all-day festival in the city’s Ironbound section.

Traditional Ecuadorian food will be served during Sunday’s events.

Members of the city’s Ecuadorian community will join city officials at 1 p.m. on Saturday in the City Hall rotunda to raise the tri-color flag of Ecuador in a 1 ½-hour ceremony open to the public, a city spokesperson said Friday.

Sunday’s 15th Annual Ecuadorian Parade and Festival will begin when the parade steps off at noon at the Ironbound’s Five Corners intersection of Merchant and Ferry streets and Wilson Avenue. Marchers will proceed up Ferry Street for a dozen blocks northwest to Edison Place, just outside Newark Penn Station, where the festival is scheduled to rave on until 10 p.m.

Last year’s parade and festival attracted some 50,000 people, said Diego Muñoz, president of the Ecuadorian-American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, the event’s sponsor. Muñoz said he expects at least as many people this Sunday.
“It gets better every year,” said Muñoz, who also plans to attend Saturday’s flag-raising.

Newark isn’t the only city outside of the country to celebrate Ecuador’s cry for independence. Day-long celebrations, fairs and parades are also planned for Queens and Madrid, Spain.

Newark’s festival will highlight Ecuadorian culture, with booths selling ceviche, hornado and other traditional foods, tricolored merchandize, and two stages for traditional Ecuadorian folk music and popular performers including Paulo Plaza, Juanita Burbano, and Hector Jaramillo.

Aug. 10, 1809 was the date that Ecuadorians asserted their independence from Spain, though it wasn’t until 1820 that it was achieved, and then as part of broader Gran Colombia, from which Ecuador emerged as a sovereign nation in 1830.
There were just over 237,000 ethnic Ecuadorians in New Jersey as of 2020, according to Census figures, making up 2.6% of the state’s population, second only to New York.

New York City will host a parade and festival on Sunday, also starting at noon, on Northern Boulevard in Carona, Queens.
Elsewhere in New Jersey, Nuñez said there used to be a parade in Union City, but that was discontinued several years ago. He said another annual march and celebration that’s usually held in Trenton was cancelled this year.

As in other largely immigrant communities, Nuñez said the current crackdown on people without valid documentation was a concern among ethnic Ecuadorians.

But, he added, Sunday’s festival will be a way to forget about all that, at least for the day, when forecasts call for mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the 80s.

“They come here with no worries, to celebrate,” he said. “They’re coming here because everything is good.”
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Credit: NJ.com