50th Anniversary of the Founding of El Comité-MINP
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