A Puerto Rican artist is shutting down Market Street in response to America 250 this weekend. Here’s why.
"Vamonos Pa’l Monte" is a performance that starts at City Hall, stops at Independence Mall and Cruz Playground, before its finale in the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Norris Square.
Though this year’s Puerto Rican Day Parade was rained out, Philadelphia’s Boricua community has another opportunity to celebrate their culture in the streets this Saturday: a four-mile-long artistic procession culminating with music and dancing in Norris Square Park.
Vamonos Pa’l Monte, meaning “let’s go to the mountain,” is a mobile performance that starts at City Hall and includes stops at Independence Mall and Cruz Playground before its finale in the Puerto Rican neighborhood of Norris Square. The colorful, music-filled procession invites people to join the walk north to the metaphorical “monte” as performers pass out props, like banners, flags, and signs about local Puerto Rican history.
Artist Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, a Bronx-raised Nuyorican now based in Virginia, has spent two years developing the project with Mural Arts, Taller Puertorriqueño, and Norris Square Neighborhood Project as a response to America’s Semiquincentennial. When Mural Arts approached her to commission a performance piece in the nation’s founding city, she immediately thought of Puerto Rico’s current political status as a territory of the United States; it’s considered one of the oldest colonies in the world as Puerto Ricans are American citizens who receive limited congressional representation and cannot vote for president.
“My knee-jerk response was, ‘Whose independence? Who you talkin’ about?’,” said Raimundi-Ortiz, an art professor at George Mason University. “If you’re talking about the Semiquincentennial, that means a lot of energy is directed towards the Liberty Bell, towards this, towards that. You’re putting all your energy and tourism there. But there’s a whole other bunch of Americans actively getting pushed [out of their communities] and they’re here [in Norris Square]. So ya’ll gonna walk this way, I’m gonna walk that way.”
She aims to bring audiences from the imposing buildings and historical sites that idolize American values in Center City to the working-class neighborhoods in North Philadelphia, where Boricua communities have made a home despite decades of neglect and encroaching gentrification.
“How do we tell the story of walking away from colonialism and heading towards this green space that, to me, becomes a ‘monte?’,” Raimundi-Ortiz said. “The ‘monte’ itself is like home.”
Taking her performance through the streets of Philadelphia is also an effort to “democratize the work” and reach community members where they are. It’s part of her goal “to make sure that our folks are being seen” and raise awareness of the presence and power of the Puerto Rican diaspora in Philadelphia.
The artist leads the procession as a ceremonial host wearing a different elaborate dress for the five chapters of the performance: revolucionario urbano (urban revolution), resistencia (resistance), travesía oceánica (ocean crossing), el monte (the mountain), and bombazo (a performance of the Afro Puerto Rican folkloric music, Bomba).
Raimundi-Ortiz will change costumes — designed by Kristina Tollefson — during each chapter, beginning with a 45-pound patchwork denim dress that she will wear while ringing a bell as she walks down Market Street, before removing it to reveal another dress underneath.
“I’m violently shedding [and] peeling off this colonial silhouette right in front of the Liberty Bell,” she said.
Vamonos Pa’l Monte — which references late salsa legend Eddie Palmieri’s 1971 hit of the same name — received a $360,000 grant in 2024 from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, in addition to funds from William Penn Foundation and Pennsylvania Creative Industries.
Working with longtime local arts organizer Marángeli Mejía-Rabell as curator, Raimundi-Ortiz has spent significant time in the city building connections with the Norris Square community through cultural events and collaborative art workshops, hiring dozens of local artists and inviting Philadelphians to contribute their own artwork to the procession’s visuals.
When the procession reaches the end, Raimundi-Ortiz will unveil a traditional Bomba outfit with a ruffled skirt that shows images of the Norris Square neighborhood as the bombazo begins, featuring performances from local youths and seniors, including bands Grupo Alegría and La Familia Rojas, as well as a set from Puerto Rico-based Bomba fusion group El Laberinto del Coco.
“At the closing, we have this element of performance while coming to el batey … that’s the local community embracing her,” said Mejía-Rabell, who runs the Philadelphia Latino Arts & Film Festival. “We’re ready to celebrate en familia, [understanding] the complexity of who we are as a people and lifting it [up].”
Both Raimundi-Ortiz and Mejía-Rabell hope the procession can provide a starting point for viewers to learn more about Puerto Rican history, in Philadelphia and beyond, during a year when Americans mark 250 years since this nation declared independence from an imperial superpower.
“I have a hard time with the hypocrisy of celebrating independence while having colonies, right?” said Raimundi-Ortiz. “It boggles the mind … 250 years of ‘Our founding fathers built this nation for liberty for all,’ but we’re [still] gonna press on Puerto Rico and all the other colonies that are still out there.”
She hopes one day that Puerto Rico could declare its independence, too.
‘Vamonos Pa’l Monte’ begins at 10 a.m. at 599 Market Street and concludes at 1:30 p.m. at Norris Square Park on Saturday, Oct. 17.
