Word: rican
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...then there are the festivals, especially Puerto Rican Day in June, when some 250,000 members of the community parade up Fifth Avenue and turn Central Park into a joyous 840-acre cookout. It is then that Puerto Rican exuberance blossoms. Hotels and nightclubs rock to the three-two rhythms of salsa. Hot dog vendors watch forlornly as their all-American offerings are spurned in favor of bacalaitos (codfish fritters), alcapurrias (plantain-meat rolls) and tostones (fried plantains). The community comes ablaze - forgetting for a while the gritty realities of its plight...
...Puerto Ricans are the largest - and most beleaguered - national group among the estimated 2.6 million Hispanics in and near New York City.* They are, of course, not ordinary immigrants but U.S. citizens, as are all 3.3 million inhabitants of the Puerto Rican commonwealth. Despite that advantage, the Puerto Rican experience today is all too often one of blighted hopes. Says Carlos Garcia, 20, a school dropout and part-time carpenter on Manhattan's Lower East Side: "I expected a West Side Story, and never...
With Puerto Rican youngsters now making up 25% of the pubic school population, one of the community's highest priorities is education. But according to New York's deputy mayor for education, Herman Badillo, the city's efforts on behalf of Hispanic pupils are a "disaster in all areas." Says Badillo, a Puerto Rican: "We have plenty of jobs in the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan; the problem is that kids can't spell...
Meantime, Badillo estimates the Puerto Rican school-dropout rate at 85%. Discouraged youngsters are almost natural prospects for membership in the city's underclass, quickly contributing to the ghetto plagues of violent crime, drug use and arson. Says one Lower East Side youngster: "A lot of kids want an education to get out of here. But in order to survive, they're dealing [drugs]. Kids ten and eleven make more money than their old man in the factory." Says another: "I saw some pictures of this place 20 years ago, and it had benches and trees. We took...
...Congressman Badillo points out that only 13 years ago he was the sole Puerto Rican actively engaged in elective politics. Now the community can boast three New York City councilmen, four state representatives and two state senators. Badillo's fellow Hispanics lamented his decision to abandon Congress for his deputy mayor's job, but his successor in Washington, Robert Garcia, is applauded as a compassionate, hard-working advocate of Puerto Rican concerns. Still, activists like Dora Collazo-Levy, 42, a Democratic Party district leader, complain that political passivity is the Puerto Rican community's principal bane. Says...