May 4, 2021
12pm

The Puerto Rican Heritage Cultural Ambassador Program Presents:

Screening of Puerto Rican Voices film shorts and discussion with folklorist Elena Martine

Join us for a conversation with Elena Martinez, folklorist for CityLore. Elena will discuss the vast contributions of Puerto Ricans to the musical landscape of the United States and beyond. She will discuss the role of music in the migration experience, including evolving identities, and the ways in which musical traditions, like bomba, have been maintained in diaspora communities. Three segments from Centro’s award-winning Puerto Rican Voices television series will be screened:

Semilla Cultural - Runtime 8:08
Semilla Cultural is a non-profit organization developing and cultivating a community that embraces Puerto Rican culture and arts in the Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia region.

Eguie Castrillo, Celebrated Percussionist and Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA – Runtime: 8:42
Eguie Castrillo performed with Tito Puente, Steve Winwood, Michael Brecker, Ruben Blades, United Nation Orchestra, Paquito D'Rivera, Michel Camilo, KC and the Sunshine Band, Dave Valentin, and Giovanni Hidalgo. He toured with the Arturo Sandoval Band; recordings include Hot House with Arturo Sandoval, The Latin Train with Arturo Sandoval, soundtrack for The Perez Family for MGM, Get Down Live! with KC and the Sunshine Band, and A GRP Celebration of the Songs of the Beatles.

Miguel Zenón, Multiple Grammy Nominee - Runtime: 9:01
Widely considered as one of the most groundbreaking and influential saxophonists of his generation, he has also developed a unique voice as a composer and as a conceptualist, concentrating his efforts on perfecting a fine mix between Latin American Folkloric Music and Jazz.


Speaker:

Elena Martinez

About Elena Martinez

Elena Martínez is the Co-Artistic Director of the Bronx Music Heritage Center and a Folklorist at City Lore. Her work at City Lore has included getting Casa Amadeo (the longest continually-run Latin music store in NYC) nominated to the National Register of Historic Places (the first nomination relating to the Puerto Rican experience on the mainland); and nominated master Puerto Rican lacemaker (the art of mundillo) Rosa Elena Egipciaco for a NEA National Heritage Award. <More>

In Side by Side: US Empire, Puerto Rico, and the Roots of American Youth Literature and Culture, author Marilisa Jiménez García focuses on the contributions of the Puerto Rican community to American youth, approaching Latinx literature as a transnational space that provides a critical lens for examining the lingering consequences of US and Spanish colonialism for US communities of color.

Through analysis of texts typically outside traditional Latinx or literary studies such as young adult literature, textbooks, television programming, comics, music, curriculum, and youth movements, Side by Side represents the only comprehensive study of the contributions of Puerto Ricans to American youth literature and culture, as well as the only comprehensive study into the role of youth literature and culture in Puerto Rican literature and thought.

Considering recent debates over diversity in children’s and young adult literature and media and the strained relationship between Puerto Rico and the US, Jiménez García's timely work encourages us to question who constitutes the expert and to resist the homogenization of Latinxs, as well as other marginalized communities, that has led to the erasure of writers, scholars, and artists.

Author: Marilisa Jiménez García, assistant professor of English and Latino Studies at Lehigh University

Commentator: Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, School of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Bios

Marilisa Jiménez García is an assistant professor of English and Latino Studies at Lehigh University. She is also the founding director and principle investigator at the Institute of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (https://wordpress.lehigh.edu/cres/). Jiménez García’s research on Latinx literature have appeared in Latino Studies, CENTRO: A Journal of Puerto Rican Studies, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Children’s Literature. Her new book, Side by Side: US Empire, Puerto Rico and the Roots of American Youth Literature and Culture (University Press of Mississippi, March 2021) examines the history of colonialism in Puerto Rico through an analysis of youth literature and culture both in the archipelago and the diaspora. Jiménez Garcia has worked on projects with Teaching for Change, The Children’s Defense Fund, and Sesame Street. 

Contact: [email protected]

Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Sonia Nieto’s research has focused on multicultural education and the education of students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, with an emphasis on [email protected] students. She has written or edited 13 books and has received dozens of awards for her scholarly work, teaching, activism, and advocacy, including 9 honorary doctorates.
Contact: [email protected]   Webpage: sonianieto.com

Virtual Event

6 PM Eastern Standard Time

eJournal Presentation

The Puerto Rican Experience in the U.S. Military: A Century of Unheralded Service
And Celebration of National Borinqueneers’ Day


Join the webinar at this Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87373175795?pwd=TWRoOHgxaUJHaDdPbGxlTlRHMy93UT09

The impact and meaning of the Puerto Ricans’ service in the armed forces of the United States go beyond mere numbers. Their service has served to disperse Puerto Ricans across the United States and the world creating new communities beyond what we understood as traditional diaspora centers. Military service, in particular during the WWII-Korean War period, also served to build modern Puerto Rico, and for Puerto Rican colonias turning into full-fledged communities to stake a claim of belonging. In this Webinar historian and author, Dr. Harry Franqui-Rivera, explores the impact of military service for Puerto Rico and the Puerto Ricans.

The Puerto Rican Experience in the U.S. Military: A Century of Unheralded Service

Puerto Ricans started fighting as auxiliary forces to the U.S. military in 1898. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans have served in every small and major conflict in which the United States has participated. This publication intends to show the scope of the Puerto Rican experience in the U.S. military without lionizing nor demeaning it. This project hopes to inspire the public and scholars to look into this under-studied phenomenon.

Author: Harry Franqui-Rivera, Associate Professor of History and Coordinator of History/Global Languages, Bloomfield College

Commentator: Laura Lee Oviedo, Ph.D. Candidate, Project Historian for the Philanthropy Initiative at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.


Celebrating the first “National Borinqueneers’ Day”

In January 2021, Congress overrode a presidential veto to pass the National Defense Authorization Act. The legislation also designated April 13 as National Borinqueneers Day.

On April 13, 2016, Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the 65th Infantry Regiment in recognition of the Borinqueneers’ numerous contributions to American history and outstanding military service from World War I to the Korean War. Learn more:

Borinqueneers Day and the Korean War in Puerto Rican History and Memory
In this essay, Harry Franqui explores the meaning of the Borinqueneers’ sacrifices for Puerto Rico and the Diaspora. “Let us remember that they represented the hopes of a people willing to sacrifice their youth for a better future, to pay a tribute of blood in search for acceptance, respectability, equality, a path towards decolonization, and a democracy that has proven elusive to them.” https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/centrovoices/chronicles/borinqueneers-day-and-korean-war-puerto-rican-history-and-memory

The Borinqueneers: The Forgotten Heroes of a Forgotten War
https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/centrovoices/chronicles/borinqueneers-forgotten-heroes-forgotten-war

With Honor and Dignity: Restoring the Borinqueneers' Historical Record
https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/centrovoices/chronicles/honor-and-dignity-restoring-borinqueneers-historical-record

President Obama to Honor Borinqueneers With Congressional Gold Medal
https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/events-news/news/president-obama-honor-borinqueneers-congressional-gold-medal

Puerto Rican Voices Season 3, Episode 7: The Pride of Our People
In this episode of Puerto Rican Voices, Harry Franqui-Rivera narrates the history of the 65th Infantry Regiment and describes events in Washington D.C. and New York which were held to commemorate the award. Watch the full segment here:
https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/centro-tv/puerto-rican-voices/pr-voices-s3e7-pride-our-people

Explore The Puerto Rican Experience in the U.S. Military: A Century of Unheralded Service
https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/digital-humanities/pr-military

Bios

Dr. Harry Franqui-Rivera is an Associate Professor of History at Bloomfield College, N.J. He is a prolific published author, documentary producer, public intellectual, cultural critic, blogger, political analyst, and NBC, Latino Rebels, and HuffPost contributor. His work has been featured in national and international media outlets, Telemundo, the New York Times, and NPR. His latest book, Soldiers of the Nation: Military Service and Modern Puerto Rico, (2018) has been widely praised. His next book, Fighting on Two Fronts: The Ordeal of the Puerto Rican Soldier during the Korean War will be published by Centro Press. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve and National Guard for over a decade and currently serves in several academic, advocacy and policy boards such as the National Puerto Rican Agenda.  Contact: [email protected]

Laura Lee Oviedo is a project historian for the Philanthropy Initiative at Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, where she was also a curatorial fellow for the Division of Armed Forces History and project historian for the War & Latinx Philanthropy Initiative. As a Ph.D. candidate of History at Texas A&M University, her research examines how war and militarization impacts Latinx communities and shapes their understanding of identity, rights, citizenship and belonging. 

Contact:  [email protected]; Museum: [email protected] 

Tuesday, April 13, 2021, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM EST

WHERE

Virtual: Zoom link will be emailed upon registering

Full Panel

Q and A  Tami Gold, Pam Sporn and Ricardo Gabriel

María Elizabeth Pérez y González and Dr. Virginia Sanchez Korrol

Q and A  María Elizabeth Pérez y González, Dr. Virginia Sanchez Korrol and Ricardo Gabriel

Co-Sponsors

Making the Impossible Possible, chronicles the story of the student-led struggle to win Puerto Rican Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY, in the late 1960s. The documentary is a mosaic of voices, film footage, and photographs taken by student activists. This important intergenerational story highlights how students and faculty seized the moment to build upon an alliance of Puerto Rican, African American, and other progressive students forged in their communities and the civil rights movement. Together they changed the face of higher education, transforming the curriculum and expanding who gets educated. The film sheds light on the 50-year history of struggle that started with the founding of one of the first Puerto Rican Studies departments in the nation, and documents the continued movement to maintain their gains.

Speakers will also talk about their research on the 50 years of Puerto Rican studies for the City University of NY book project, as well as a current overview of Puerto Rican Studies at CUNY.

50 Years of Puerto Rican Studies at the City University of New York
Editors: María E. Pérez y González and Virginia E. Sánchez-Korrol

This book project will focus on the creation of Puerto Rican Studies and its founding leaders; its birthing of academic journals, the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños (Centro)/Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, and the Puerto Rican Studies Association; it’s often misunderstood mission to study the stateside Puerto Rican diasporic experience as connected to Puerto Rico, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and Latin America; the forging of a space within the “Ivory Tower” academy; its survival tactics in the face of austerity and elimination; its current status; and its future in the 21st century.

The editors seek the submission of photos, brochures, events flyers, relevant links/resources, and faculty and student reflections (written and audiovisual) from each of the PRS departments, programs, and institutes noted herein; they will be linked to the book project on the Centro website, resulting in an online archive of PRS in CUNY.

For more information contact María Pérez y González or Virginia Sánchez-Korrol at [email protected]

Presenters

Co-sponsors:
Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College
Puerto Rican and Latino Studies Department at Brooklyn College
Third World Newsreel

Making the Impossible Possible is a production of the Alliance for Puerto Rican Education and Empowerment and was directed by Pam Sporn and Tami Gold and co-produced by Gisely Colón López. It is available from Third World Newsreel,www.twn.org.  

6:00 PM Eastern Time

Virtual Event: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85366244258?pwd=QTBDWW1KSGlkVXlYNGhPSU1ySE1tdz09

Congressional Redistricting in New York State (Full Webinar)

This webinar will introduce participants to the process and challenges New Yorkers, particularly Hispanics, will face in the upcoming redistricting of congressional districts that takes place every ten years. Centro: the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, the leading academic research institute dedicated to the study of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States, and the largest and oldest Latino Studies research institute on the East Coast, along with LatinoJustice-PRLDEF, the premier Latino public interest law practice and leading legal advocacy and human and civil right Hispanic organization on the East Coast, will describe what Hispanics can expect from the reapportionment and redistricting process taking place in 2021, discuss the findings of a new research brief from Centro on the subject, and learn how Hispanics can become actively involved in the process of redrawing political boundaries in New York State.

Joining this discussion will be the Honorable Robert Rodríguez, member of the New York State Assembly and co-chair of the New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, and Dr. Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina, Assistant Professor at Fordham University and member of the New York Independent Redistricting Commission, charged with redrawing legislative districts in the state.

Carlos Vagas Ramos Presentation

Juan Cartagena Presentation

Fulvia Vargas-De Leon Presentation

Discussion with the Honorable Robert Rodríguez, and Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina

Redistricting 2020: Challenges to Hispanic Congressional Representation in New York State
by Carlos Vargas-Ramos

The process of apportioning political power in the United is about to begin. New York Latino U.S. representatives, and specifically Puerto Rican representatives, are vulnerable to losing their congressional seats in the upcoming process of congressional reapportionment and redistricting. This brief presents an analysis of population change at the state, county and congressional district levels to illustrate the changes to come in the process of congressional reapportionment and redistricting as it affects federal political representation in New York State. New York gained population between decades, but at a very low rate. New York gained population because of the sustained growth of the state’s Hispanic population, which countered the declining population of the state, particularly the decreasing non-Hispanic white population.

Presenters

Carlos Vargas-Ramos, Director of Public Policy and Development at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College (CUNY), centropr.hunter.cuny.edu;

Lucia Gomez, Political Director at NYC Central Labor Council - AFL-CIO; and Executive Director of LA Fuente A Tri-State Worker & Community Fund Inc, www.nycclc.org; [email protected] 201-988-8824

Juan Cartagena, President & General Counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, www.latinojustice.org/en;  https://www.latinojustice.org/en/form/contact-us

Fulvia Vargas-De Leon, Associate Counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF, https://www.latinojustice.org/en; https://www.latinojustice.org/en/form/contact-us

New York State Assembly member Robert J. Rodriguez, Co-Chair of the NYS Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, latfor.state.ny.us; [email protected]

Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina, New York Independent Redistricting Commission, www.ivelissecuevas.com/research   

This event is cosponsored by LatinoJustice PRLDEF

Join the Zoom webinar at :
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83392117798?pwd=K3Z4ZUNBNkQ3dDZRdDJmVXIzenpaUT09

Tools

Redistricting 2020: Challenges to HispanicCongressional
Representation in New York State (PDF)

Wednesday, February 3rd at 3:00 PM EST/4:00 AST

Puerto Rico has suffered the compounded effects of multiple disasters since the devastating impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017. At the end of 2019, the island was impacted with recurrent seismic activity in the southwest region, including a magnitude 6.4 earthquake on January 7, 2020. In early 2020, the current COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting health crises induced yet another economic contraction. All these disasters are underscored by a crushing debt crisis and a federally mandated austerity regime since 2016. Multiple natural disasters have exacerbated vulnerability and poverty; and public energy, telecommunications, water, health, and transportation systems have deteriorated and become even more vulnerable, causing systematic failures in social safety nets.

Post-disaster federal funding for economic recovery offers Puerto Rico a unique window of opportunity to restore its economy and infrastructure in a more resilient fashion while strengthening the nonprofit sector capacity for community planning, housing development and neighborhood revitalization. However, such an opportunity is contingent on implementing a comprehensive strategy for reforming public policy to encourage and support nonprofit developers participation in reconstruction programs, building industry capacity by strengthening intermediaries and CDCs, encouraging intra-industry partnerships and collaborations, and providing professional development for economic recovery.

Join us Wednesday, February 3rd at 3:00 PM EST/4:00 AST for a webinar to discuss the collection of studies included in Fall 2020 special volume of the Centro Journal showing evidence of how post disaster recovery is progressing in Puerto Rico, and the challenges and opportunities for local participation in reconstruction programs.

Event Cosponsors:

This webinar is cosponsored by
The National Puerto Rican Agenda, National Puerto Rican Student Coalition, IdeaComún,
Puerto Rican Student Association at NYU, Despierta Boricua at Yale, and Urbana Planifica

Presenters:

Entrepreneurial Dynamics in Puerto Rico Before and After Hurricane María
Marinés Aponte, Professor, Business Administration Department at Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras

Centros de Apoyo Mutuo: reconfigurando la asistencia en tiempos de desastre
Roberto Vélez-Vélez, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, SUNY at New Paltz

Impact of Hurricane María to the Civic Sector: A Profile of Non-Profits in Puerto Rico
Ivis García Zambrana, Assistant Professor, City & Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah

Puerto Rico Community Development Industry’s Capacity for Disaster Recovery
Edwin Meléndez, Director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies and Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, Hunter College

What is Possible? Policy Options for Long-term Disaster Recovery in Puerto Rico
Ariam L. Torres Cordero, Centro Researcher and doctoral student in Urban Planning (DSUP) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Presenter bios can be found at this link: https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/education/instructores

Tools

Journal Abstract: CENTRO_Abstract_Fall2020.pdf
Journal Intro: CENTRO_Intro_Fall2020.pdf

A Profile of Non-Profits and Recovery PPP (PDF) by Ivis Garcia Zambrana

CENTRO: Journal Special Issue: Post-Disaster Recovery in Puerto Rico and Local Participation is available here http://www.centropr-store.com/centro-journal-vol-xxxii-no-3-fall-2020/