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,
Williamsburg, 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 and CHARAS/El Bohio in the
Lower East Side, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Agüeybaná Bookstore, Mixta Gallery, Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center,
El Museo del Barrio, and El Maestro were some of the institutional manifestations of this movement. The next generation of Nuyorican cultural hubs include PRdream.com, Camaradas El Barrio in
Spanish Harlem. Social and political counterparts to those establishments in late 1960s and 70s New York include the
Young Lords and
ASPIRA.