Members and friends of the Frente Independentista Boricua gather in fron of the Federal Building in downtown Manhattan on July 4th to demand independence for Puerto Rico from the US.
By Luis Cordero Santoni luiscorderosantoni@gmail.com Ever since relocating to Borikén I have tried to connect with art and artists. Borikén is the best place for that. Here you can find museums, galleries, public art, arts and crafts fairs, local shops that sell handmade crafts, and artists that set up galleries wherever they can. So far, I’ve been lucky to have found some great craft fairs here on the west coast. Every town seems to have a fair every week from up in Isabela to down in Cabo Rojo. The Puerto Rican artist plays an important role in maintaining our culture alive. Their role falls right in line with the mission of The Institute for Puerto Rican Culture: ...research, preserve, promote, and disseminate Puerto Rican culture in its diversity and complexity. With the memory and promise of culture, the different levels, sectors, ages and interests of the community create the set of ways of life, customs and artistic manifestations that identify us as a country. I dare to s
By Luis Cordero Santoni & Victor Quintana Originally published in Comite Noviembre's 2020 Puerto Rican Heritage Month Journal . This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of El Comité-Movimiento de Izquierda Nacional Puertorriqueño, one of the main organizations of the Puerto Rican left in the 1970s in New York City. The people’s struggles of the 60’s and early 70’s for civil rights and against the Vietnam War spawned many grass roots organizations. El Comité was one of those organizations. El Comité was born on the summer of 1970 in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, what was then the Urban Renewal Area. In that summer, a group of 200 families took over various buildings slated for demolition on the West Side. The courageous action of these squatters to secure decent, affordable housing motivated a group of young people, led by Federico Lora, from the community to take over a storefront on 88th Street and Columbus Avenue. Their goal was to convert it into an office and es
Editor's note: The Frente Independentista Boricua (El Frente), a New York based coalition of organizations with chapters in cities around the US that support the independence of Puerto Rico, issued the following statement with regards to the elections taking place in Puerto Rico: Elections in Puerto Rico are held in a context of political subordination and colonialism and within the framework of a dictatorial Fiscal Board that makes arbitrary decisions outside of any democratic process. The Puerto Rican electoral process is uneven and is aimed at protecting both the colonial framework and the colonial interests. This reality is widely recognized by all sectors of the independence movement, whether or not they participate in the election process. As independentistas, we have fought in the past and we will fight that system in the future from all flanks, resisting from outside and from within its structures. Among the points of unity adopted by El Frente made public in the summer o