Asserting Their Rights: Puerto Ricans in Their Quest for Social Justice

abstractIn an effort to claim a dignified place in the United States as American citizens, "Boricua" leaders developed core political skills from African American grassroots organizations: established networks, adapted strategies of community activism, and found a path towards social justice. Individuals, such as Arturo Schomburg and Pura Belpre, played a crucial role in moments that marked the two "histories" of Puerto Ricans in the US: the official one-written by the System about them-, and the other-that had to be written by them. Historical facts, film highlights, newspaper articles, and popular music also evidence how events were conceived by the media, and by those few protagonists who bore a name, and had credentials to support it. In the end, Puerto Ricans and African Americans crossed along racial, political, and cultural lines, revealing a transcendental association that brought conflict, social transformation, but ended up in a stronger democracy for the American nation. [Keywords: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Interracial collaboration, Civil Rights]studies have shown that the puerto rican community in the united states, despite their citizen status, share issues of adaptation, identity, and discrimination with other immigrant groups (sanchez-korrol 1983; whalen 2001; rodriguez 1989; thomas 2010). According to 2000 Census, there are more than 800,000 Puerto Ricans in New York. It is still the largest and the most documented Puerto Rican community in the United States. Particularly documented are the Puerto Rican's experiences after arrival in New York and what expectations they had for their new life in the city. Interestingly, their experiences in many ways mirrored the experience of the other ethnic groups already in New York such as Italians, Irish, Jews, and African Americans. However, the focus of this article, entitled "Asserting Their Rights," centers on the cultural, political, and social interactions developed among Puerto Ricans and African Americans. Undoubtedly, the ethnicity of these two groups contributed significantly to similarities in their migratory experience and the struggles related to it. In the end, they found communality in their experiences and used it as a tool to demand and exercise their civil rights."Asserting Their Rights" is conscious that many social-political frameworks can be identified according to each stage of the processes experienced by all Puerto Rican subjects, movements, alliances, and organizations mentioned, or described in this article. However, this academic aspect of a scholarly work has been partially avoided in order to let the essay narrate how these characters transit through singular periods in history. As fluid entities these women and men constructed their subjectivities when they adopted new notions of identity, and adapted themselves to different social and political situations. This work is intended to be read mostly by scholars who can address particular facts and find the appropriate theoretical concept to name them, as a basic skill during his/her professional formation. But, in the end, it is relevant for me as an intellectual to let these characters be protagonists in their own hi/stories. The ego has to step back, watch, and show how a handful of Puerto Rican immigrants asserted their rights, and participated along with African American people in changing the course of US history.Colonialism and MigrationFor more than five hundred years Puerto Rico and its people have been colonial subjects; first, more than 400 hundred under Spanish regime-since 1493 until 1898-, and over 100 as a US territory after the Spanish-American war.When the United States became involved in what began as the Cuban-Spanish conflict of 1895, high hopes arose within many sectors of the Puerto Rican society; the United States was seen as a model of economic progress and liberty (Guerra 1999). However, the thought of Puerto Rico being ruled by an Anglo Saxon country fueled discussion on issues of citizenship and class among the Puerto Rican people, whose culture was essentially influenced by a Hispanic-Roman Catholic ideology. …