Word: rican
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...three other cities: metropolitan Miami, whose Cuban population (430,000) is exceeded only by Havana's; metropolitan Los Angeles, whose 1.6 million Hispanic population, which is overwhelmingly chicano, makes it the world's second largest Mexican agglomeration after Mexico City; and New York, which surpasses San Juan in Puerto Rican population (1.3 million). There is a fourth community that also demands study: that furtive, elusive subculture-within-a-subculture, the illegal aliens...
...Cubans have their own complaints. They point out that only two Hispanics hold elective offices in Miami: Mayor Maurice Ferré, a Puerto Rican, and City Commissioner Manolo Reboso, a Cuban. Cubans have no representatives in the Florida legislature or in the U.S. Congress. Latins hold only 20% of the city government jobs in Miami and only 4.9% of the top bureaucratic posts. Much of the blame for that rests with the Cubans: only 47% of them are American citizens. Many still see themselves, apparently, as anti-Communist absentees from their island home...
...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...