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The NFL has done a great job of promoting the popularity of the game. There now are youth leagues in Puerto Rico and Mexico. You're starting to see more and more young men with Hispanic surnames come into the NFL and that's a wonderful thing.
Puerto Rican culture is very different from Mexican culture. Part of the Mexican psychology is the idea of being an immigrant or being illegal or being confused with that. That doesn't happen with Puerto Ricans, because you're a commonwealth.
I am 100% proud Puerto Rican but have lived two-thirds of my life in the United States. So, there will be some things I write in English, but my main way of conversing with my audience is in Spanish because, at the end of the day, I'm a Latino.
Cubans have no bar to being legalized once they are in America. All other Hispanics - with the exception of Puerto Ricans - have to go through a broken, dysfunctional process. One group is American from day one. And all the rest are trying to be.
The 'Dangerous' album has producers like Tiny, who to me is very special. Also, Luny Tunes, Nesty La Mente Maestra, Nelly La Arma Secreta, Haze, and El Ingeniero. I wanted to use everyone who makes music in Puerto Rico and beyond to have variety.
Yet, Puerto Rico's economic convergence and political integration with the rest of the nation is in a state of arrest - even though the island has been within the national borders, political system and customs territory of the U.S. for a century.
I'm half Puerto Rican and every Friday we have rice and beans and chicken in my house - so that's like a very Latin staple. It's just so comforting. I look forward to every single Friday because I just can't wait for my rice and beans and chicken.
I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'
My mother was born in Sinaloa, and she moved to Los Angeles when she was three years old. My father was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and moved here when he was 19. They met at the Palladium in Hollywood, and they've been together from that moment on.
I was discriminated against because I was Jewish, Italian, black and Puerto Rican. But maybe the worst prejudice I experienced was against the poor. I grew up on welfare and often had to move in the middle of the night because we couldn't pay the rent.
I'm a half-breed. You know, I'm Puerto Rican and Norwegian from descent, and I grew up, born and raised in New York City, and I stood out amongst my friends in my community. I was very blond-haired, white, and 'Lemonhead' was the name that they gave me.
So many people in this country have a dual loyalty. They have loyalty to America, but they also are determined to have their parade up Fifth Avenue once a year... a Cuban parade or a Puerto Rican parade - many other countries. So they really don't forget.
When my mom, Mercedes, and her younger sister, Juanita, first came from Puerto Rico, they were the youngest in the family. They had to jump into a new community and really learn English, assimilate, and adapt - and I saw that. I grew up in that community.
I believe - and so do most Puerto Ricans - that the ideas that will prevail in the new century will be those similar to the basic principles of commonwealth, of national reaffirmation, and political and economic integration among the peoples of the world.
In Puerto Rico, we have a lot of traditions. We eat a very typical thing that's called 'pasteles' - it's almost like a tamale made of bananas, and we make it all together. Like, all the women of the family unite, and it's a very big deal, a very big thing.
Well, if you are planning a Caribbean vacation, you can start by booking it to this warm and friendly island paradise as soon as it is ready to receive tourists. As a U.S. territory, your trip to Puerto Rico doesn't require a passport or currency exchange.
As a matter of comparative, the U.S. citizens - the Puerto Ricans that live in the United States - have much better incomes, more than twice as much, participate in the labor force of greater scales, have better results in the education system, and so forth.
The government of Puerto Rico has every right to hold a plebiscite, to consult the people of Puerto Rico regarding their wishes. But the truth is that for a change in the status of Puerto Rico to happen, you need both Congress and Puerto Rico agreeing to it.
To look back and reflect on the career and sort of look at the seasons of it before I got to the WWF, working the territories and Japan and Texas, Puerto Rico, and then the WWF and WCW, then obviously the TNA years - it's been quite a journey, I'll say that.
At one point, I bought brown contacts because people told me I wasn't Latin enough to play Latin, and I'm Puerto Rican. I went and bought brown contacts just so I could go in and look more Latino... but that was something that I've dealt with in this business.
I know Spanish pretty well. I'm half-Puerto Rican - my mom is from Puerto Rico - so I have a lot of family there, and my mom's first language is Spanish. But growing up in the States, and with my dad being from the States, I'm kind of just like this white kid.
I would say one of the most romantic things I've done is I've taken a girlfriend back to her hometown when she hadn't been back for years. It was in Puerto Rico, and we stayed there for about a week and a half. She showed me the different places she grew up around.
I worked seven years in territories in Japan and Puerto Rico and worked my way up to the main events on those cards, then went to the WWF and spent a little while there before I got into the Intercontinental run and a main event runs with Shawn Michaels and Kevin Nash.
I've always thought that jazz needs to be heard by a wider audience in Puerto Rico. I want to put together a series of free concerts in the small towns - one with Miles Davis music, another with bebop, maybe Duke Ellington. I want younger people to see what is possible.
I never thought anything was strange in Puerto Rico other than the big mosquitos; because I was born there, nothing was really foreign to me. I think what I saw strange coming to L.A. was that a lot of people are a little bit two-faced. In Puerto Rico, you don't get that.
After four centuries of Spanish rule, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898. Residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, and the federal government has allowed Puerto Rico to exercise authority over its local affairs in a manner similar to the 50 states.
The most important thing is to find the balance between city and nature. I have that 'hippie quality' - my husband is a super-hippie Los Angeles boy - so we'll have to make time to go to Puerto Rico, and upstate New York, and be sure we get to do outdoorsy stuff like that.
I've been dealing with racism since I was a little kid! My dad's super black, from Puerto Rico. Then my mom's super white - she's Puerto Rican too, but she grew up in Milwaukee. As a Latino in the U.S. I've seen how we are treated differently based on the color of our skin.
Some of our best fighters are not only Puerto Rican greats but all-time greats of the sport. Carlos Ortiz, Wilfredo Gomez, Wilfredo Benitez and Felix 'Tito' Trinidad and many others have made Puerto Rican boxing what it is today, and I am only an extension of their greatness.
Immediately after hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, I was extremely concerned about my family, friends and all the people in Puerto Rico. I felt helpless and could not concentrate not knowing if my family and loved ones were safe. I wanted to help my people as fast as I could.
Growing up in the Midwest, Boston, and Alabama, I didn't know any Puerto Ricans... at least, I didn't know if I knew any Puerto Ricans. The only Puerto Rican that I had ever even heard of was Juan Epstein, one of the students from the classic 1970s sitcom 'Welcome Back, Kotter.'
I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions.
It may be that a majority of superheroes are white males. But that's because they used to all be white males, except for Wonder Woman and Black Canary and maybe one or two others. Now there are Spanish, Puerto Rican comic book superheroes, black superheroes, and women superheroes.
Pageants were an amazing platform that gave a little girl like me from the mountains of my beautiful Puerto Rico a chance to travel, explore the world, meet amazing people, work for great charities and be a voice to empower women wherever I went. For all those things, I am grateful.
Puerto Ricans, it doesn't matter where they live, it doesn't matter how long it's been since they visited the island, their hearts are there. If you keep them informed, and if you say to them, 'This is important for Puerto Rico, go and call your congressman,' they do it. They do it.
I was actually born and raised in Puerto Rico. I was born to a single mom. She was a wonderful woman, and she taught me to believe in myself, to work hard, play by the rules. She wanted me to get a good education, and she just told me that the best thing I could do is just study hard.
I haven't traveled in Africa nearly as much as I'd like to. I've been there a few times, and I'd like to learn more about the various cultures in Africa. But that's the basis point of where all of the music that I love is based upon, from Africa to Cuba to Puerto Rico to South America.
Once I tried to find myself as a musician and a composer, I went back and saw that there was something special about Puerto Rican music. I knew that before, but had never sat down and thought about it. The more I learned about it, the more it found its way into the music I was writing.
My dad is Dominican, my mother's Puerto Rican, and I got into bachata at the age of 10 or 11. When I started listening, it had a reputation for being music for hick people. I thought that had to be changed. I was born and raised in the Bronx, and I knew you make something cool if you're cool.
I was in Puerto Rico going to school, and it was very jarring for me. 'Traumatic' is the only way that I can say it. Kids were making fun of me: 'Oh, you're a Yankee.' And I acted out a lot. A lot. But looking back, and through a little bit of therapy, everything I am has to do with that time.
I am much more wired to be an athlete than anything else. I understand the 'hard work = payoff' equation in sports. I run marathons and I box. And that's my Puerto Rican flag hanging in Freddie Roach's Wild Card Boxing gym. I gave it to him. My last N.Y.C. marathon time I ran in three hours flat.
I was actually born and raised in Puerto Rico. I moved to the States when I was 19. I was very impressed early on by being around people who spoke my language and ate the same food and listened to the same music, dressed the same. But then you look around and, you know, you're not in Puerto Rico.
I'm not an immigrant - I was born and raised in New York. My parents are Puerto Rican, and Puerto Rico is a part of the U.S., for the people that don't know. So my whole life, I've identified as an American. There are times when I've gone to Puerto Rico, and there, I'm seen as the American cousin.
Even when we were under the Spanish flag, we had a movement that just wanted assimilation into Spain, a movement of autonomy - which has been the majority always - and a movement for separation. In that sense, Puerto Rico's political reality is very different from any place I know in the whole world.
My mother's feeling about men in general were always a bit of a mystery to me. She had difficulties in Puerto Rico with the men in her life. Her brothers abused her. It's very easy to be judgmental, but more often than not, there are mitigating circumstances, and children are not usually aware of those.
Today, the District of Columbia has more residents than at least two other states; Puerto Rico has more than 20. With numbers like that, admitting either or both to the union is less a political power play on the Democrats' part than the late-19th-century partisan move that still warps American politics.
My mother always gives the best advice. When I left Puerto Rico to pursue my dreams, she always supported me and said to me, 'I'm never going to cut your wings, so don't let anyone else do that to you.' That has been my philosophy through life. I want to share that valuable lesson with my little girl someday.
I don't eat Puerto Rican food in L.A. because it's just too much, too addicting, but I know how to cook, so I can easily make it. I just choose not to because you never stop! I think my favorite would be pollo guisado con arroz blanco y habichuelas. I love tostones, I love maduros! I can eat rice and beans all day long!
The Documents Project has actively collected documentation on both island-based Puerto Rican art as well as Nuyorican art in the United States through partnerships and researchers ceded at the University of Puerto Rico's museum in San Juan and Hunter College's Center for Puerto Rican Studies in New York City, respectively.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but by their own choice, Puerto Rico is not a state. The relationship has worked well for Puerto Rico - which has strengthened its culture, language and economy - and for the United States, which has helped create in Puerto Rico a showcase of democracy and prosperity for all of Latin America.