The NiLP Network on Latino Issues (February 19, 2014)

According to NY1 News/Noticias Political Commentator Gerson Borrero on his
February 17th NY1 Noticias’ weekly segment, Para Que Lo Sepas:

The first meeting of the newly-constituted Board of Directors of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade will be held on Saturday, February 22 at 10am at their headquarters, 2804 Third Avenue, 5th floor, Bronx, NY 10455.

Despite efforts to keep the newly reorganized Parade politically independent, NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito is reportedly inviting herself to the first meeting of the Parade Board to address the group, which many see as inappropriate.
There is increasing concern in the community about the NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s failure to bring criminal charges against the Parade’s marketing agent, Carlos Velasquez of the Galos Corporation. Despite finding that he stole $1.4 million from the Parade, Schneiderman only required Velasquez to repay back a measly $100,000, and to do so in installments!
Although Velasquez was forbidden by Schneiderman’s office from any further association with the Parade, Borrero discovered that Velasquez’ Galos Corporation still listed the Parade as a client! Upon notifying the AG’s office of this by Borrero, the corporation’s websites are now listed as being “Under Construction.”
Despite the findings of serious wrong doing by Carlos Velazquez, it is troubling that he is being allowed to do business with the Hispanic and Dominican Parades.

Borrero, who broke the Parade scandal story in the February 1st edition of The New York Post, will continuing discussing issues confronting the Parade, along with NYS Senator-Reverend Ruben Diaz, Sr., on the Sunday, February 23rd edition of Tiempo, hosted by reporter Joe Torres on WABC-TV New York, Channel 7 at 11:30am.

Among those found guilty of the looting of Parade resources was Debra Martinez, who headed the nonprofit arm of the Galos Corporation, the Diversity Foundation. According to the Attorney General’s office: “The settlement agreement also requires the dissolution of the Diversity Foundation, with any remaining assets to be distributed by the Attorney General’s office in a manner consistent with the scholarship purposes for which the funds were solicited. In addition, for a period of five years, the members of the Diversity Foundation’s board, its Executive Director Debra Martinez and its advisor Karen Pillot are barred from serving as an officer, director or employee of NPRDP or in connection with any parade-related activity.” In light of this, a video of Martinez promoting the 2013 Puerto Rican Parade has been making the rounds.

If you have any information about the Parade, positive or negative, that should be widely known in the Latino community, please let us know at info@latinopolicy.org. Your name will be kept confidential if requested.

The NiLP Network on Latino Issues is an online information service provided by the National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP). For further information, visit our website at www.latinopolicy.org

We extend our condolences to the Espada family for their and our immeasurable loss.

Puerto Rican photographer Frank Espada dies
Published February 17, 2014 | EFE
Fox News Latino

Photographer Frank Espada, leader and activist of New York’s Puerto Rican community in the 1960s, died in California, his son said Monday. He was 84. His father died Sunday evening, Jason Espada said. Frank Espada, also father of the renowned poet Martin Espada, gained nationwide fame after publishing “The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People,” in which he portrayed his fellow islanders in different places doing different things all across the United States.

Born in Utuado, Puerto Rico, in 1930, Espada was 9 years old when his family moved to New York, where the photographer recalls a childhood full of poverty and restrictions. “We were quite poor, always struggling to make ends meet, living in apartments with no hot water or refrigerators, with no heat in the winter and rats in the hallways,” he said in a short autobiography that appears on his Web site.

For years Espada had to put off his photographic ambitions to work at ordinary jobs to support his family. He also got involved in the incipient civil rights movement in New York, and in 1967 joined the community action project dubbed The City-Wide Puerto Rican Development Program. In 1979 he won a scholarship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which enabled him to carry out his dream of making a photographic history of the Puerto Rican diaspora all across the United States. In the three-year project, he documented more than 30 Puerto Rican communities thoughout the country and, among other aspects, caught on film the labor of Puerto Ricans in Hawaii, where more than 5,000 were recruited to work the sugarcane fields.

El Nuevo Día
11 de diciembre de 2013
http://www.elnuevodia.com/voz-fugadecerebros-1663790.html

El aumento en el grado de escolaridad y el nivel ocupacional de los emigrantes puertorriqueños en las últimas dos décadas ha llamado la atención pública. Algunos artículos periodísticos han dado la alarma de una “fuga de cerebros”, alegando que la pérdida de recursos humanos altamente calificados “desangra” a la economía boricua. Miles de jóvenes con títulos universitarios han tenido que irse del País al no conseguir empleos acordes con su preparación académica debido a la prolongada recesión. Esta exportación de talentos supone un alto costo demográfico y económico para la Isla, como contribuir al envejecimiento de la población insular y agudizar la escasez de personal especializado en renglones clave como los servicios de salud y educación.

Cada vez más miembros de la clase media puertorriqueña se han reubicado en Estados Unidos desde la década de 1990, buscando una mejor “calidad de vida” -refiriéndose a seguridad, tranquilidad, salud, vivienda y educación. Los nuevos emigrantes incluyen una cantidad considerable de maestros, enfermeras, ingenieros y médicos, entre otros profesionales. Como promedio, su nivel educativo supera al de los emigrantes de los años cuarenta y cincuenta del siglo pasado. Sin embargo, el grueso del éxodo contemporáneo sigue siendo personas atraídas por mejores oportunidades de empleo, salarios y condiciones de trabajo en Estados Unidos.

El destino principal de la emigración puertorriqueña desde los años noventa ha sido el estado de la Florida. La población de origen boricua residente en ese estado aumentó de 247,010 a 847,550 personas entre 1990 y 2010. El crecimiento de los “floriricans” se concentró en la Florida Central, especialmente en el área metropolitana de Orlando-Kissimmee, donde residían 269,781 boricuas en el 2010.

Los últimos datos censales constatan que los puertorriqueños residentes en la Florida tienen un perfil socioeconómico más aventajado que en estados como Nueva York, Pensilvania, Connecticut y Massachusetts. Entre otros indicadores, tienen niveles de escolaridad e ingreso más elevados, así como tasas de pobreza y desempleo más bajas.

No obstante, los emigrantes boricuas a la Florida no constituyen una “fuga de cerebros” en el sentido de representar mayoritariamente a los sectores más educados del País. Según los cálculos censales, entre los años 2007 y 2011, el 38.9% de los emigrantes no se había graduado de escuela superior, comparado con el 29.5% de la población insular. Apenas el 13.7% de los emigrantes había completado un bachillerato y el 4.7% estudios graduados o profesionales, comparados con el 17.4% y el 6.7% de la población de Puerto Rico, respectivamente.

Los estimados censales también confirman que los emigrantes recientes a la Florida no provienen principalmente de las ocupaciones más calificadas en la Isla. Solo el 21.6% de los emigrantes, frente al 27.6% de los residentes de Puerto Rico, se desempeñaba como gerentes y profesionales. Los emigrantes sí tenían una mayor proporción (31.4%) de vendedores y oficinistas que la fuerza laboral de la Isla (27.9%). Además tenían un mayor porcentaje (12.7) de trabajadores de construcción, mantenimiento y reparación que en Puerto Rico (6.6). En conjunto, el 48% de los emigrantes eran trabajadores de servicio y cuello azul, comparados con el 44.4% de la población insular.

Tales estadísticas sugieren que se ha exagerado la magnitud de la “fuga de cerebros” en Puerto Rico. El economista Kurt Birson, del Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños de Hunter College, ha llegado a la misma conclusión, al examinar las características socioeconómicas de los emigrantes puertorriqueños a Estados Unidos entre los años 2000 y 2011. Por lo tanto, se requiere revisar la popular visión de que la mayoría de las personas que se han ido de Puerto Rico en la última década son graduados universitarios con destrezas profesionales. Más bien, el éxodo contemporáneo abarca a una amplia gama de la sociedad boricua, agobiada por el desempleo, la pobreza y la criminalidad.

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Widely anthologized and with numerous titles that remain in demand among students and fans, Mr. Laviera was one of the best-known representatives of the Nuyorican school of poetry.

By DAVID GONZALEZ

Published: November 5, 2013

Tato Laviera lost his sight, but not his vision. His acclaimed poems and plays captured the rhythms and language of Puerto Rico and the Lower East Side — his twin loves — with equal measures of protest, playfulness and hope.

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When health problems briefly left him homeless in 2010, he took part in poetry readings with residents of the shelter where he stayed. “I can create here, and that makes me feel liberated,” he said in an interview at the time. “Being here has given me the spirit of continuity and centrality, and that’s better than a salary.”

Mr. Laviera, who had been in a coma since late January, died on Friday in Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. The cause was complications of diabetes, which years earlier had left him legally blind, said his sister, Ruth Sanchez, who survives him along with his daughter, Ruth Ella Laviera. He was 63 and lived in East Harlem, renting an airy apartment that his admirers helped him get when they learned he had no place to hang his ever-present Panama hat. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Mr. Laviera published books, plays and poems and made hundreds of appearances at colleges, workshops and literary events. Widely anthologized and with numerous titles that remain in demand among students and fans, he is one of the best-known representatives of the Nuyorican school of poetry.

His words could dance, shout and laugh — in English, Spanish and Spanglish. In “My Graduation Speech,” he showed a playful touch in writing about his multicultural life, and his hair, in these lines:

i think in spanish

i write in english

i want to go back to puerto rico,

but i wonder if my kink could live

in ponce, maygüez and carolina

“The American thing is to forget who you are and become homogenized,” said Jesus Melendez, known as Papoleto, a friend and fellow poet. “The whole Nuyorican struggle was to maintain your roots because they are the groove that keeps it all together. Tato personified that struggle.”

He even took the word and turned it inside out in one collection, “AmerRican,” whose very title made clear his people’s place in the world. That book also featured poems that embraced the city’s diversity as well as his own people’s rich racial roots.

“Tato’s voice was not a singular one, but one that gave voice to people and even objects who did not have a voice but should,” said William Luis, a professor at Vanderbilt University and co-editor of an upcoming collection of essays on Mr. Laviera. “He was able to reach across boundaries and reach all those different people.”

Jesús Abraham Laviera (Tato was a nickname) was born on May 9, 1950, in Santurce, P.R., near San Juan, and moved to the Lower East Side as a child. He graduated from Seward Park High School and attended Brooklyn College and Cornell. But his real education, friends and relatives said, came in the neighborhood, where he showed an early knack for activism and organizing (not to mention music and dance).

Elizabeth Colón, a community advocate who befriended him when they were both teenagers, described Mr. Laviera as a natural leader who inspired others to rally around causes, especially youth and education.

“His poetry and creativity came from that,” she said. “It came from his involvement and his participation in the community’s struggle, growing up on the Lower East Side, seeing the abuses and how others who were in charge had the power to intervene and did not. He deeply understood the need of people to participate in their future.”

Mr. Laviera left community organizing to become a full-time poet in the 1970s. (He told the website Latino Rebels that he wanted to be a poet once he saw Luis Palés Matos recite in Puerto Rico in the late 1950s.) His first collection, “La Carreta Made a U-Turn,” was published by Arte Publico Press in 1979.

“To him, poetry was the highest calling,” said Nicolás Kanellos, his publisher. “Even though he lived in relative poverty, he was proud of being part of a tradition that went all the way back to the ancient, epic poets.”

But Mr. Laviera lived — and performed — very much in the moment. In recent years he had been working on a novel about East Harlem, as well as staging his play “The King of Cans” at a theater inside the housing complex where he had been living. He also continued to inspire future poets, sharing encouragement and advice.

Li Yun Alvarado recalled clutching a poem at a workshop Mr. Laviera gave at Yale 14 years ago. She was nervous. He calmed her down, telling her to “embody the work” and feel the words, linger on the beats and perform. It reminded her of how her 93-year-old grandmother could still remember a poem she had learned as a child.

“He took me back to that history of poetry as part of our culture,” said Ms. Alvarado, who is a now doctoral candidate at Fordham University. “He was our troubadour. He told our story.”

Diosa Costello (Juana de Dios Castrello) was an actress, performer, producer and club owner, known as “the Latin Bombshell”. She was born in Guayama, Puerto Rico on April 23, 1913. After performing at various venues in Spanish Harlem, she paired with Desi Arnaz at the La Conga club. Her Broadway debut was in “Too Many Girls” (1939), where she became the first Latina on Broadway. She performed in film but refused to move to Hollywood, California. Her filmography:

Miss Sadie Thompson (1953)
The Bullfighters (1945)
They Met in Argentina (1941)

The Smithsonian filmed an interview with Costello in 2006. She died in her sleep on June 20, 2013 at the age of 100 in Hollywood, Florida.

PRdream mourns her passing.

PRDREAM’S COMMENT ON RIVERA AND KENNICOTT “DEBATE”

The arguments here are at cross-purposes and the two gentlemen are both right. There is a need for focused exhibitions, with specific curatorial themes. Ironically, the value of the current exhibition at the Smithsonian is in manifesting this issue in a highly visible way. The quality of the work displayed cries out for a series of exhibitions that take on the oeuvre of several of these accomplished and highly skilled artists on their own turf. This is a major challenge and opportunity for curators, scholars, artists, institutions, and galleries.

We have a small new media gallery in New York City’s Spanish Harlem called MediaNoche, which exhibits works by new media artists worldwide–including Latino digital artists. As the founder and chief curator of MediaNoche, and as a Latina, I have always sought to articulate a clear curatorial theme to our exhibitions that eschews identity as a basis for exhibition, though identity does figure into our artistic practice through our ethos, our history, our philosophical and political view of the world, and our gallery’s mission. We have shown many Latino new media artists and many Asian and European ones as well. We have also shown non-Latino American new media artists.

Our shows focus mostly on individual artists. That presents its own set of issues around selection. When they have been group shows, the curatorial vision was absolutely critical. Actually, it always is. What is the raison d’etre for the exhibition? Is it enough to be simply shown?

From the perspective of the artists, the answer is yes—especially in an institution such as the Smithsonian. And so “Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art” is valid in attempting to be inclusive of as many of the “best” Latino American artists as possible within the scope of their curatorial aim. Problem is an all-inclusive agenda of the “best” Latino artists always results in leaving out some of the “best”. It is simply too broad. Curators might also wind up selecting artists through criteria unsuitable to curatorial integrity, such as population proportionality or quotas of representation. This is at best a dubious practice better left to activists trying to right a historical wrong, or politicians or museum heads who are chasing audiences and pandering to the masses. It is corrupting and can negatively impact real scholarship –especially if this criteria is not explicitly stated and addressed. It usually is not.

Given the dismal historiography of American art history, the absence of a truly comprehensive and inclusive scholarship, (which admittedly would be hard but not impossible to do), and given the years of exclusion of Latino artists in our nation’s major galleries and institutions, one can expect exhibitions such as “Our America” to be inevitably polemical and politically charged, at once encouraging and disappointing. That explains but does not excuse the need for a rigorous curatorial trajectory. We hope “Our America” is only the beginning of a new unfolding narrative in which all currents of American Art flow freely into a confluence of themes and visions. Then and only then can we speak of a truly American Art. Then and only then can it be said that the category of Latino Art is meaningless.

Till then, the dialectic created through exhibitions such as “Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art” can lead to exchanges that engage scholars, curators, artists, and the public to explore freely and openly what is called American Art.