Thomas Breen photos
Wearing tricorner hats and colonial uniforms, the Yalesville Fife and Drum Corps marched down the middle of Chapel Street to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Not far behind in white-collared shirts and black-and-yellow bowties, the Stylettes Drill Team stepped back and forth and spun in sync to the percussive beat of their own three drummers.
And watching over them all, a man dressed as Christopher Columbus held a small inflated globe in one hand and a spyglass in the other, smiling and pointing and waving from the prow of his wooden-ship parade float.
Those were a few of the diverse musical, dance, and costumed performances on display on Sunday afternoon during the regional Columbus Day Parade. The annual event landed in New Haven this year after rotating through Branford, North Haven, East Haven, Hamden, and West Haven over the past half-decade.
East Rock Alder Anna Festa said this year’s parade and subsequent cultural heritage festival in Wooster Square were not only in honor of Christopher Columbus, the 15th-century Italian-born explorer whom she said many Italian-Americans think of as “the first Italian immigrant.” She said the celebrations were also in honor of the city’s cultural diversity more broadly, and in particular of its manifold immigrant populations.
“This is to share and show off New Haven and its diversity and how all immigrants have contributed in a positive way,” she said.
Paul Criscuolo (at left in photo, with committee board member Peter Desio), the president of the Columbus Day Parade Committee, said that the city’s first Columbus Day parade took place in 1892, on the 400th anniversary of the explorer’s landing in the New World.
“Columbus is a symbol for all immigrants,” he said, “and in particularly for Italians and Italian-Americans.”
The parade began at 1 p.m. outside City Hall. The hundreds of marchers from the nearly 60 different organizations that participated in the parade got into formation, readied their instrumentsand sheet music, and found their places in the backs of sports cars and trailers.
Of the dozens of people who lined up along Church Street and Chapel Street to watch the parade go by, many were parents looking out in support of their middle school children in one of the parade’s many marching bands.
Jessica Rodriguez held her phone up high and cheered as she watched her sixth-grade daughter march by in the Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School’s marching band.
“This brings the community together,” she said in praise of the parade.
Ramon and Denise Figueroa, looking out for their seventh-grade and eighth-grade sons in Nathan Hale School’s marching band, said that this was their first time at the parade, but that they planned to come back the next time it’s in New Haven.
As the various parade groups turned from Church Street onto Chapel, they were greeted by just handfuls of onlookers sparsely distributed between Church and State Street. But the relative quiet of the crowd didn’t deter the groups marching in the middle of the street.
The Mattatuck Drum Band pea-cocked their way through downtown, fifes in hand, drums around their waists, wearing bright red-and-navy wool uniforms.
The Nathan Hale School marching band followed close behind, students dressed in classic teenager uniforms of jeans and t‑shirts as they bopped along with their saxophones and trumpets.
State Rep. Al Paollilo, Jr. and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro led the parade as its grand marshals, marching in step and waving to the crowd as DeLauro used one hand to push her grandson’s stroller.
The crowds picked up a bit as the parade made its way to Wooster Square, where it culminated before a stage set up right across from the park on Wooster Place.
Inside the park, a few hundred parade marchers and attendees stuck around for a cultural heritage festival that featured a falafel vendor, a pasta-making tutorial, an outdoor Irish pub, and a Mexican food truck.
The musical attractions on the stage set up at the middle of the park were equally eclectic, ranging from Tony Vermiglio crooning Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra covers to Scottesa Marks singing gospel music.
“Times are different, parades are different,” said Bill Iovanne, the organizer of the heritage festival and a native of Wooster Place.
He said he remembered growing up in the 1970s and gathering alongside thousands of fellow New Haveners who packed the sidewalks from Ella T. Grasso Boulevard to Wooster Square for each year’s Columbus Day parade. He said parades were a much bigger deal at that time in the city’s history, and that nearly every public school would participate.
But, he said, despite the Italian-American migration from New Haven to surrounding suburbs like East Haven and North Haven over the past several decades, he knows that the Elm City’s rich Italian-American history still has a powerful draw even for people who no longer live here.
“They always come home to Wooster Square,” he said.
“Is ‘Genocidist’ A Word?”
In the past decade, cities and states throughout the country have voted to change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day in honor of this land’s Native American inhabitants and as a rebuke to European colonization represented by Christopher Columbus.
Minneapolis and Seattle voted to change the holiday’s name in 2014. The state of Vermont voted to do so in 2016. Los Angeles voted to do the same in 2017.
Although no cities or towns in Connecticut have yet voted to change the holiday’s name, the Board of Education in Bridgeport voted to do so in 2015, the New London school board voted to do so in 2016, and the West Hartford school board voted to do the same in March 2018.
“This parade is an all-inclusive parade,” New Haven Columbus Day Parade Chairperson Laura Florio Luzzi said before the parade kicked off outside of City Hall. However, she said, she opposes changing the holiday’s name to honor indigenous people instead of Christopher Columbus.
“We realize that Native Americans were here before us,” she said, “but we want to recognize what Christopher Columbus has done for our country, opening our eyes to different arts and engineering and science.”
She said that many nationalities get to celebrate their cultural heritages with public parades and holidays, and suggested that native people select another day of the year for an official Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration.
Wooster Square resident Michael Honhongva said he stopped by the festival after hearing the parade and musical performances from his apartment near Wooster Square park.
When asked what he most associates with Christopher Columbus, the California native asked, “Is ‘genocidist’ a word?”
“It starts a useful conversation about how we identify in our communities,” he said about the parade and festival. “I don’t identify with this. But I can still participate in it.” Nevertheless, he told the Independent, he does not support the festival and is curious as to why some Wooster Square residents identify with Columbus.
Click on the Facebook Live videos below to watch portions of Sunday’s Columbus Day Parade.