Nuyorican Movement

The Nuyorican Movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans. It originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in neighborhoods such as Loisaida, East Harlem and the South Bronx as a means to validate Puerto Rican experience in the United States, particularly for poor and working-class people who suffered from marginalization, ostracism, and discrimination. The term Nuyorican was originally used as an insult until leading artists such as Miguel Algarín reclaimed it and transformed its meaning. Key cultural organizations such as the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, and El Museo del Barrio are the result of this movement. Its political counterparts in 1970s New York included the Young Lords.