The work of American artist Jean Michel Basquiat is featured in an ad campaignl from iconic jeweler Tiffany, along with singer Beyonce and rapper Jay-Z. BeLatina bemoans the fact that Basquiat’s Puerto Rican heritage is not well recognized. Basquiat’s mother was Puerto Rican, his father was from Haiti, and he grew up in New York… Read more »
Puerto Rico has held six plebiscites. So what is a plebiscite? What is a plebiscite? A plebiscite is a direct vote by registered voters on an important legal or political question. The word comes from French and before that from the Latin words for “people” and “decree.” A plebiscite is thus a decree by the… Read more »
Joe Biden has been officially certified as the next president and will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021. In an effort to keep Puerto Rico on his radar and that of Congress, a group of Puerto Rican organizations joined together to send a letter to President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. A separate, identical… Read more »
2020 is the 50th anniversary of “Feliz Navidad,” a bilingual Christmas song written by Puerto Rican musician Jose Feliciano. It was the first Spanish language Christmas song to become popular in the United States, and is still one of the most popular holiday tunes, hitting the top 10 on Billboard this year. Jose Feliciano José… Read more »
Deborah González made history on December first when she prevailed in the election for Georgia District Attorney in a run-off against James Chafin by a vote of 53.1% to 46.9%. Gonzalez’s win creates several milestones. Gonzalez will be the first Puerto Rican woman to be elected district attorney in the United States. She will be… Read more »
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ),chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, has written to President-Elect Biden asking him to take action on the Biden-Harris Plan for Puerto Rico. After expressing congratulations on Biden and Harris’s victory, the letter begins, “The Committee on Natural Resources is the lead committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on… Read more »
Benito Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, is Spotify’s most-streamed artist for 2020 with 8.3 billion streams. His album YHLQMDLG is also Spotify’s most-streamed album of the year, with over 3.3 billion streams. This is the first time that an artist who doesn’t sing in English has ever achieved this honor. The album’s title stands… Read more »
U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) and a group of Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen last month objecting to the Department of Justice’s characterization of the 2012 plebiscite vote. “I am deeply concerned by the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) contentions that the… Read more »
Felicitas Mendez moved with her family from Puerto Rico to live in the states when she was a child. As an adult, she lived in Orange County in Southern California with her Mexican-born husband. When she and her sister-in-law went to enroll their children in their local school in 1943, the Mendez children were rejected…. Read more »
José Andrés, an award-winning chef, became one of the heroes of Hurricane Maria when he and his crew fed 100,000 people a day in more than a dozen kitchens across the Island. In his book about that adventure, We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time, Andrés… Read more »
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