By the time Toñita’s and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s float rolled uptown on Fifth Avenue during the Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sunday (June 14), it felt less like a parade vehicle and more like a moving tribute to Puerto Rican New York — draped in flags, bumping reggaetón and carrying one of Brooklyn’s most beloved cultural figures through a crowd more than a million deep.

I climbed aboard with my Brooklyn-born Nuyorican boyfriend, aware that as a California-bred Mexican American who has lived in New York for nearly 17 years — mostly in Bushwick — I was stepping into a tradition I was there to witness, not claim.

More than a million people lined the streets — mostly decked out in red, white and blue, waving Puerto Rican flags high above the crowd. Also spotted were black-and-white revolutionary flags, banners representing Vega Baja and shirts repping Juncos, Toñita’s hometown. Reggaetón and salsa kept blasting through the float’s sound system: Tego Calderón’s “Pa’ Que Retozen,” Calle 13’s “Atrévete-Te-Te,” and, naturally, Bad Bunny’s “NuevaYol,” the song that helped bring the 85-year-old Brooklyn legend’s name to a wider global audience.

If you have spent any time reporting on Puerto Rican culture in New York, then you already know that Toñita isn’t simply a local personality. María Antonia Cay, owner of one of the last surviving Puerto Rican social clubs in the city, founded the Caribbean Social Club in 1973 for the Puerto Rican baseball team she managed. Over the decades, the space has grown into something much bigger than its four walls: a place where people eat, dance, play dominoes, remember where they came from and, for many, feel at home in a rapidly changing city.

Her float reflected all of that history in motion. It was decorated with portraits of Toñita posing with her iconic rings, references to her baseball background, photos of the Caribbean Social Club draped in a Puerto Rican flag, an illustration of her as a superhero, and one whole section lined with the recognitions and certificates she has received over the years. It felt less like a traditional float and more like a moving archive of a woman whose life has touched so many corners of Puerto Rican New York.

Then there were the people aboard it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood in a dazzling white dress, waving a Puerto Rican flag proudly as the crowd cheered below. Toñita, in a white lace top, red lipstick and windswept blonde curls, looked every bit like the matriarch at the center of it all. Influencer Omi Hopper of Cooking Con Omi was onboard, while Tito Puente Jr. was nearby — we spotted him after the parade just a few blocks south of Tito Puente Way on 110th Street, named for his legendary father. Daddy Yankee, meanwhile, was spotted on his own float. Every few minutes, names were shouted through the float’s sound system, turning the ride into a rolling tribute.

But what struck me most was how musical the float felt — not in a symbolic sense, but in a literal one. Alongside the booming speakers, there was a plena band with percussion and brass (courtesy of Taller Toca Plena Komerío) and at different moments people broke into salsa. The soundscape moved across generations and genres, from reggaetón anthems to live Afro-Caribbean rhythms, mirroring the many worlds Toñita has held together for decades inside the Caribbean Social Club.

That link between Toñita and music is now impossible to ignore. In recent years, her club has become a touchstone for artists, including Residente and Rauw Alejandro, who understand what it represents: a rare surviving space of Puerto Rican and Nuyorican life in Brooklyn. Bad Bunny’s embrace of Toñita — from shouting her out on “NuevaYol” to folding her world into the broader visual and emotional language surrounding his Puerto Rico era, including her appearance during his Super Bowl halftime performance — only deepened what many New Yorkers already knew. Toñita is legendary not because she became adjacent to fame, but because fame eventually found its way to a figure the community had long revered.

Being on the float gave me a vantage point into that reality. Usually, when covering a parade, you’re trained to observe the spectacle from the outside. Here, I was inside it. The announcer kept shouting out Toñita, AOC and the other guests and influencers aboard — and then, unexpectedly, my name too: “Isabela Raygoza from Billboard.” I felt shocked, then amused, then acutely aware of how unusual that moment was. It lasted only a few seconds, but it underscored the larger feeling of the day: This was not a detached press experience. It was an invitation into a living tradition.

And like so much of what Toñita has built, that invitation did not end when the float stopped moving.

After we got off, food was waiting for us — dishes Toñita had cooked herself, including arroz con habichuelas, salchichas and arroz con pollo. That detail, small as it may sound, felt essential. The public image of Toñita is vibrant: the celebrity friendships, the parade appearances, the recognition, the photos, the music. But the private legacy that sustains all of it is much simpler and much more powerful. She feeds people. She gathers them. She makes room for them.

That is the through line from the baseball roots of the Caribbean Social Club to the artists who now celebrate her, from the block in Williamsburg where she built her club to the avenue packed with Puerto Rican flags in Manhattan. Riding on Toñita’s float was exciting for all the obvious reasons — the star power, the music, the sheer energy of the parade — but what stayed with me most was how clearly it reflected the purpose behind her legacy. Even surrounded by politicians, artists, lowriders with hydraulics and red Mustang convertibles gleaming in the sun, the heart of the story remained the same.

By the time I made it back home to Bushwick, the city was still in full roar. Knickerbocker Avenue was packed, the kind of New York scene where one celebration seemed to bleed into another. The borough was already buzzing after the Knicks won their first championship in 53 years on Saturday (June 13), and Williamsburg native José Alvarado’s appearance on the avenue only added to the hometown pride in the air. After spending the day aboard Toñita’s float, it felt like the perfect final image: Puerto Rican pride still moving through the city long after the parade itself had passed.

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