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Education and the Puerto Rican Day Parade

06/11/2012 By 2 Comments
Puerto Rican Day parade

Photo: Being Latino

The Puerto Rican Day Parade is a time for moving and shaking. I had the privilege of seeing if first hand yesterday, June 10, as I joined the crew from Being Latino and Fox News Latino to celebrate nuestra isla y herencia. From the dance troupe representing Banco Popular to Geraldo Rivera, everyone on that warm Sunday afternoon seemed to have a spring in their culo.

The real movers and shakers at the parade weren’t just the dancers. You see while Puerto Ricans are world renowned as the among the greatest dancers in the world, the organizers of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade used this year as an opportunity to highlight Puerto Ricans in higher education. For Puerto Ricans, the parade was not just an opportunity to show that we’re a fun rhythmic people, but also an educated people that the world should take note of.

So, in the spirit of higher education, while you’re staying conscious of Puerto Rican singers like Marc Anthony, Tito el Bambino, and Frankie Ruiz, you should also take a moment out to think of some of the parade committee’s 2012 Educational/Leadership honorees.

  • Pedro Noguera – prolific professor and author.
  • Gloria M. Rodriguez – founder of the De Almas Woman’s Institute
  • Jesse Mojica – Director of Community Engagement for the New York City Department of Education
People watching the parade

Photo: Being Latino

Aside from these people, I know many of us Puerto Ricans have our favorite higher education success stories. For me personally, it’s Sonia Sotomayor, not so much because she’s a Supreme Court justice, but that she ended the 1994 Major League Baseball Strike.

Every year Puerto Ricans get an opportunity to celebrate ourselves and let the rest of the world see what we’re all about. As a people, we need to keep driving towards educational success, so that we won’t just be thought of as that group of people that dances the best and puts the most attractive actors in movies.

Filed Under: Cultura Tagged With: , ,
About Eric J Cortes

Eric Jude Cortes describes his ethnic background as simply “New Yorker.” The son of an Italian mother and a Puerto Rican father, Eric Jude grew up in a Russian/Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn and attended extremely diverse public schools. Eric Jude credits his diverse upbringing with his success professionally, as since 2004 he has been teaching in a public high school with one of the largest percentage of foreign born students in the city. It is this diversity which has shaped his work for Being Latino, which have ranged from a lighthearted musing on the drink Malta, to a passionate diatribe against drug addicts. At the university level, Eric Jude has an MA in History, with a thesis on Contraband in Spanish Puerto Rico, from Brooklyn College. An avid traveler, Eric Jude’s bucket list includes a pledge to visit every Latin American country, something he has complete halfway so far. His secrets to success in life include faith, a type-A personality, and the ability to be silly and break into a dance at moment’s notice. Daily, he can be found running on your local street, lifting weights at your local gym, or praying at your local Catholic church.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.

Comments

  1. Daniel Ruiz says:
    06/15/2012 at 5:19 pm

    Nice article. Far too often our pop culture heroes are paraded when it is our intellects we should celebrate.

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    06/14/2012 at 9:00 am

    [...] proud of everything: proud to be an American, proud to be a New Yorker, proud to be a Latino, even proud to be a Puerto Rican – or what’s more, proud to be an American of Puerto Rican descent (whatever that [...]

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