New York, which holds the sad record for the city with the highest number of deaths from coronavirus in the United States, paid a moving tribute on Sunday to its 30,258 victims of covid-19 on the first year of the pandemic.
“We have lost more New Yorkers than in World War II, the Vietnam War, Hurricane Sandy, and 9/11 combined. Every family has been affected, and for so many families there is pain, raw pain,” said the Mayor. Bill de Blasio in a virtual ceremony broadcast live, after asking for a minute of silence in honor of the victims.
De Blasio made special mention of the “health heroes” who “saved lives”, sometimes at the cost of his own, and called to remember the good times.
“Whatever happens, no one can take away the dances you have had,” said the mayor in Spanish in this city where a third of immigrants are of Latino origin, citing the Colombian writer and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez.
“Shoulder to shoulder, helping each other, we will take back our city,” he promised.
The virtual ceremony began with a short recital by the New York Philharmonic, in front of lit candles on the iconic Brooklyn Bridge on a freezing, windy night. Large black and white photos of the victims were projected on the bridge.
There were speeches by religious leaders and a young poet. The ceremony culminated in front of the Brooklyn Bridge with the lively participation of Black Bishop Hezekiah Walker, a popular gospel artist and pastor of the great Brooklyn Love Fellowship Tabernacle Church, and his choir The Love Fellowship.
Carolina Juárez Hernández, a young Mexican-American, spoke of her father Francisco Juárez García, a Mexican immigrant who died of covid on April 28, 2020, when New York was the national epicenter of the pandemic. The Latino and black communities, the poorest, were the most affected.
“My whole family tested positive for COVID,” the young woman said.
When she and her mother were released from the hospital, the father was admitted. “I didn’t realize that I couldn’t go with him, I didn’t think of giving him a goodbye hug, I wanted to keep his spirits up, so I just told him ‘We’ll talk later, pa'”, she said excitedly.
“To this day I regret not giving him that hug, because I never saw him in person again.”
lbc / lda
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