By Carlos Flores
CHICAGO - I was born in Guayama, Puerto Rico, where I was raised by grandparents until the age of 10. In 1959 I arrived in Chicago to join the rest of my immediate family, i.e. parents, sisters and brother. I was educated in the Chicago Public School system, as well as the parochial school system. I also received my higher education in Chicago with a Bachelor's and Master's Degree from the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Growing up in Chicago as a youngster, teen, and young adult, I always lived in neighborhoods located in the near-north side of the city where Puerto Ricans and other Latinos were concentrated. At the age of 17, I lived in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and attended an inner-city public high school. A camera came under my possession and it was back in the late 1960's when I began to take my first serious photographs of my surroundings and subjects that impacted my everyday life. Today, many of these photographs have a historical value because there is not a lot of visual documentation showing that people of color, particularly a large concentration of Puerto Rican migrants, openly lived, played and interacted in neighborhoods that have undergone a gentrification process, such as the Lincoln Park area has within the last two decades
In the four decades that I have lived in Chicago, I have also established a track record of community activism in Chicago's Latino community. In the late 1960's I was a member of the Young Lords' Organization in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The Young Lords' Organization was involved in the movement of social justice and community empowerment in Chicago's Puerto Rican/Latino community. This movement is chronologically sequenced with other national collective social uprisings occurring throughout the country. It marks the awakening of social consciousness and the fight for equality of the Puerto Rican people in Chicago. This experience as a young man impacted my life by raising my level of consciousness about social problems affecting my own people. I became aware of the struggles faced by disadvantaged people of color throughout the city as a result of a lack of education opportunities, decent health care, economic resources, political representation, and racism.
As a Puerto Rican college student in the 1970's I became part of the Latino student movement at the University of Illinois in Chicago, where our collective efforts as minority students of Spanish speaking descendants, resulted in the development of academic programs for Latinos that are still in effect today. Later on in the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's, I became an employee with the US Office for Civil Rights and US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This experience further enlightened me as to the discrimination practices that were evident in the social service area involving the delivery of health and educational services, as well discriminatory practices in the workplace.
My personal experiences with racism and discrimination and my observations of these same factors in the communities of color, motivated me to volunteer in the election campaign of the late Mayor Harold Washington in his efforts to run for Mayor of the City of Chicago. I later served as a member of the Mayor's Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs during his term. This political movement by the late Mayor Harold Washington and the collective efforts of the Black and Puerto Rican voters, also opened doors that led to the election of other Latino elected officials who today are still serving in their elected capacity. I have also served on various organizational boards that have addressed various issues in Chicago's Puerto Rican/Latino community.
I have also established a track record in my efforts of promoting awareness of the rich Puerto Rican and Afro-Latino culture and heritage. As a participant in the development of Puerto Rican/Latino arts and culture in the city of Chicago, I have been one of the founders of the Afro-Caribbean Music Society and the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance in Chicago. Both of these organizations were established for the purpose of preserving, promoting, and disseminating Afro-Caribbean music and local Puerto Rican arts and culture showcasing individual Latino artist. From 1994 - 1997 I served as the coordinator of Project KALINDA at the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College. The project examined the existing relationship between the music of the Caribbean, Central/ South America, Mexico, and African-American music. I have also served as consultant, advisor, and collaborator with local institutions/organizations like the Jazz Institute of Chicago, Chicago WBEZ Radio (Chicago's public radio station), Urban Life Center, African Festival of the Arts, and many others.
As a self-taught musician, I have performed with a local Latin-Jazz group by the name of Ensemble Descarga. As a photographer, I have had my photographs exhibited at various locations throughout the city. My last major exposition was entitled "Los Puertorriqueños en Chicago" (The Puerto Ricans of Chicago), in June of 2000, at the Humboldt Park Horse Stables Gallery. I have written articles on arts, culture, and race that have been published in the KALINDA Newsletter published by the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago, DIALOGO Magazine (Spring /96 & Spring/01) published by De Paul University Center for Latino Research. In the Spring 2002, the CENTRO Journal published by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York, will be publishing my photo-essay, as well as several of my photographs. In November of 2001, as a member of the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance, I completed the successful planning of the Third Puerto Cuatro Festival, held at Chicago's Field Museum to a sold-out crowd.