Puerto Rican Festival is making its triumphant return

When the first salsa band went onstage at the opening of the Puerto Rican Festival this weekend at Franklin Park, festival president Reyito Santiago said he felt sheer joy.

"It was a huge victory," Santiago said. "When the music came on, I jumped in the air and started dancing."

Last year's festival had been canceled after financial mismanagement left organizers without enough money to pay vendors or the city, and this year, Friday's intense wind, rain, and lightning threatened to put a damper on the celebration.

But the show went on.

"We're going to go forward no matter what," said organizer Carlos Rivera.

That has been the challenge for festival organizers in recent years. The nonprofit Festival Puertoriqueño de Massachusetts Inc. - the group that has sponsored the event since 1968 - lost its federal nonprofit status in 2007, and although the parade and other events continued, the weekend-long festival had to be canceled .

It looked like this year's festival was headed in the same direction. Even though festival organizers stepped down and a new group took over earlier this year, helping it regain nonprofit status, debts remained. City officials forgave those costs, including money owed for police detail, Santiago said, and Fiesta Shows, a carnival vendor, offered its services at a 30 percent discount.

Marco Torres, Mayor Thomas M. Menino's liaison to the Latino community who helped broker the deal, said city officials thought the festival should continue.

"The mayor calls the city of Boston a multicultural city, a city started by immigrants," said Torres, who was at yesterday's celebration. "Having such a cultural event is important because it benefits everyone. It's a family-friendly type of event."

That was in evidence early yesterday, as parents and children from around the city came to dance and eat mofongo, a Puerto Rican dish. Puerto Rican flags flew from cars, stages, and booths and were worn as capes. Organizers said the event was expected to draw up to 80,000 over three days, attracting people from around the region and from the island itself.

Ramiro Hernandez, originally from Cuba, brought his son and daughter, ages 6 and 7, to the event early for a lunch of rice and beans and fried chicken wings. An employee at Boston Medical Center, he said he has gone to the festival every year since he moved to the United States in the 1970s.

"I love it, the music, the people speaking Spanish," he said. "Everyone speaks Spanish."

Ana Maldonado of Jamaica Plain wore Puerto Rican flag earrings and a hat with red, white, and blue Puerto Rican flag streamers trailing from it. And she bought a T-shirt from a vendor depicting Betty Boop in an evening gown made from the Puerto Rican flag. She said she planned to stay all day and had camped out on the lawn near the stage.

"I just came to have a good time," she said. "It's the spirit I like."

Torrential rains caused problems for vendors who were setting up Friday afternoon, and some feared the rain would keep crowds away. Instead, the evening's weather turned clear and cool, and throngs arrived to hear live music and hop on the carnival rides.

Rain is forecast for tonight, but organizers and vendors said they're not worried.

Norma Rosario, who runs a catering business and sold Puerto Rican fare inside a tent, said people are so excited that the festival is back, bad weather won't keep them away.

"In Puerto Rico, there is a plant that never dies, the morivivir," she said. "You will see a lot of umbrellas if it rains, but people will come. We are Puerto Ricans, and we are like that."

This year's festival takes place a month earlier than those in the past. Santiago, who works full time for a state health agency and part time as an assistant manager at Walgreen's, said he wedged his festival duties in between his two jobs, working as an unpaid volunteer.

"My pay is when I see people laughing," he said.

Megan Woolhouse can be reached at mwoolhouse@globe.com.