PRdream mourns the passing of Tato Laviera, Nuyorican poet and a major proponent of Afro-Boricua identity in its earliest manifestation in the Latino literature of the U.S.

Tato Laviera is a first generation Nuyorican poet. Born in Puerto Rico, he moved to New York City with his family in 1960.
Laviera’s poetry, which is written sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English, more often in Spanglish, addresses language, cultural identity, race, and memory, particularly as it affects the transculturated lives of Puerto Ricans in the United States.
Scholar William Luis describes Laviera’s work as follows: “His poetry is full of the music of bomba and plena, and of rap and preaching. However, it is also socially minded and historical in content. Indeed, his poems are a conglomeration of voices, songs, dialects, and cultures producing a unique synthesis which is moving, instructive, and aesthetically appealing”. From wikipedia.