Fiesta

In crowded streets and candle-gleaming churches of Chicago and New York City, the Feast of St. John the Baptist was celebrated in high style last week. There were heaps of lechon asado (roast pig) and pasteles (meat cakes wrapped in plantain leaves). Blindfolded children laughingly broke pinatas, whacking away with sticks at the hanging earthenware pots that might contain candy or water; music vibrated whole city blocks, and there were dozens of mambo, cha-cha and rumba contests. For San Juan is the patron saint of the island of Puerto Rico, and the Roman Catholic Church in the two cities was giving the Puerto Ricans their day.

The U.S. melting pot has never known anything like the Puerto Rican. For one thing, he is a U.S. citizen by birth, though he may never get to know more than a word or two of English. He steps out of a plane at Idlewild with but a seven-hour journey behind him, and he can be back among his wooden shacks again next month or next day, if he has the $57.75 plane fare. In 1953, for example, 289,000 Puerto Ricans left their island and 213,000 were back within the same year.

Unlike the immigrants from Europe, Puerto Ricans do not huddle together when they first put down roots. There are well over 600,000 Puerto Ricans in New York City (there were fewer than 100,000 in 1945), but there is not really a section that is to Puerto Ricans what Harlem is to Negroes. Almost every sector of the city has a bodega (grocery) or two, and perhaps a Spanish-language movie house.

They are almost entirely Roman Catholic but not quite the kind U.S. Catholics understand. Accustomed to receiving the sacraments only when a priest visits the village, sometimes baptizing their children themselves and often marrying without benefit of clergy,* Puerto Ricans have scandalized many a priest with their casual church ways. But gradually the church has found its way among the burgeoning Puerto Rican flock. The zesty mixture of fun and devotions last week in Manhattan and Chicago was testimony to the church's success.

Music All the Time. In Chicago the fiesta was weeklong. Samuel Cardinal Stritch's Committee for the Spanish Speaking in Chicago was set up to accentuate the positive among the city's Puerto Ricans, block the growth of prejudice and discrimination against a group that numbers only 20,000 now but is expected to swell to 100,000 in ten years.

The week's high jinks and hoopla were staged by busy, black-haired Father Leo T. Mahon, 30, who has been working with Chicago's Puerto Ricans for three years. Ten moppets showed up at city hall to present Mayor Richard J. Daley with a baby lamb named Felicitas, after the mayoress of San Juan, Felisa Rincon de Gautier. The lamb is not only the symbol of Puerto Rico but of the Chicago church's potent and growing organization of Puerto Ricans, the Knights of St. John. Founded in 1954, the Knights now number more than 1,000 families and sponsor social and recreational activities, run a hostel for newly arrived Puerto Ricans, a legal and medical-aid program, and are trying to set up a revolving fund to lend money at low interest.

High point of San Juan Week was Sunday, feast of San Juan. After a Pontifical High Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Name, a 5,000-strong procession made for the Chicago Avenue Armory and an afternoon and evening of island-style fun and games. Armour & Co. provided 500-odd pigs and the prize for reaching the top of a well-greased pole was a color television set.

Outdoor Mass. Manhattan's San Juan fiesta was held on the campus of Fordham University. In charge was handsome, energetic Msgr. Joseph F. Connolly. Working with him was young (29) Father Ivan Illich, Austrian-born Roman-trained linguist whose work among Manhattan Puerto Ricans was recently recognized by Francis Cardinal Spellman, who asked him to serve as vice rector of the Catholic University in San Juan. (The Cardinal also had 22 of the Diocese's newly ordained priests study Spanish at Georgetown University, sent eight New York priests to serve temporarily in Puerto Rico.) Cardinal Spellman, New York's Mayor Robert Wagner, San Juan's Mayoress de Gautier and about 30,000 Puerto Ricans turned out for a Solemn High Mass on the terrace of Keating Hall. And then the fiesta began. Mayor Wagner opened it by shattering a king-sized earthenware pinata (filled with gifts) with a green-covered baseball bat, and both mayor and cardinal were promptly bowled over in the crush of a crowd to pick up souvenir pieces.

"Puerto Ricans are now at the point of making a real contribution to New York," said Father Illich. "This fiesta really beckons to the whole city."

*The Roman Catholic Church recognizes a non-church marriage between Catholics as valid under conditions in which a priest could not be reached in less than a month.

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