Alan Appel Photo
Nathan Hale sixth grader Irving Inahuazo has never been to Ecuador, although his parents said they may be able to send him there next summer.
He joined 400 Ecuadorians from town and the tri-state area as they celebrated Ecuadorian independence day, Aug. 10, as well as their flourishing local immigrant communities.
Sunday afternoon Irving’s troupe, Generacion Latina, helped lead a parade of dancers, singers, and truck-borne kid soccer teams all decked out in the yellow, red, and blue colors of the flag and native costumes in a festive circumambulation of the Green .
Costumes included zammoros, or horsehair cowboy-type chaps worn by the “Poricunag,” a Danbury-based troupe also performing traditional dances.
It was the second annual Ecuadorian parade and festival in New Haven, which boasts an Ecuadorian consulate, the first opened by a foreign country in New Haven since the great Italian immigrant wave of the late 19th and early 20th century.
The organizing committee included the Virgin del Cisne, one of the Ecuadorians oldest community groups headquartered, like Genracion Latina, at St. Rose of Lima church in Fair Haven.
One of its leaders, Carmen Zambrano, said there were also groups in attendance from Long Island, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. She guesstimated that New Haven has about 2,000 Ecuadorians. Other estimates peg the number of Ecuadorians living in the Nutmeg State at about 50,000.
Irving’s older sister Peggy, a rising freshman at Metropolitan Business Academy, said she particularly liked wearing the colorful dresses, many of which represented the city of Guayaquil and other specific regions of the South American country. “We have nice clothes,” she said.
She was a=sked by a reporter (who had had a memorable social studies teacher) what year Ecuador became independent (1809) and who was its liberator (Simon Bolivar). Peggy and several other kids drew a blank.
“When you’re born and live in the U.S. [like these kids], you forget your own country’s civics,” said Talia Lopez of United Action of Connecticut, a statewide non-partisan interfaith organization attending the parade.
Peggy Inahuazo said her parents seized the occasion of the celebration to speak with them more than usual about Ecuador’s traditions.
Prior to the singing of the American and Ecuadorian national anthems, Consul Raul Erazo spoke to a large crowd gathered round the flagpole, as did New Haven’s alcalde, John DeStefano.
The latter greeted the crowd on the Green with “Buenos dias a todos,” and concluded with a “Viva Ecuador!”
The consul’s son Gabriel (left) and his friend Francisco Salinas did the honors of carrying the two countries’’ flags.
After the parade, organizers invited everyone within hearing distance to join a party in the parking lot behind the consular building on Church Street at George.