Jesús Colón
Jesús Colón was a prominent activist and writer deeply engaged with the Puerto Rican and Latino communities in New York City. Born into a humble family in Puerto Rico, he immigrated to New York at the age of sixteen, where he experienced the challenges faced by working-class immigrants. Colón’s writings reflect his commitment to socialism and his advocacy for the rights of marginalized populations, including Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and African Americans. His articles, published in both Spanish and English, critiqued social injustices and the negative perceptions of Puerto Rican immigrants, seeking to present a more nuanced and authentic portrayal of their experiences.
In 1961, he published an anthology that compiled some of his articles, many appearing in English for the first time, emphasizing the rich traditions and struggles of Puerto Rican life. His storytelling was influenced by his background as a newspaper reporter and drew on vivid memories from his childhood, showcasing the diverse characters and narratives within the Puerto Rican community. Colón's work not only documents the immigrant experience but also celebrates the resilience and aspirations of Puerto Ricans in the broader context of American society. Ultimately, he sought to validate the everyday lives of Puerto Rican immigrants as integral to the American narrative, highlighting their quest for freedom and progress.
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Subject Terms
Jesús Colón
Writer
- Born: 1901
- Birthplace: Cayey, Puerto Rico
- Died: 1974
- Place of death: New York City, New York
Author Profile
Jesús Colón was involved as an activist with the Puerto Rican and Latino communities in New York City. He understood the plight of the poor, working-class immigrant, since he had held a variety of odd jobs, from dishwasher to dockworker. A committed socialist, Colón wrote from New York for a socialist newspaper, Justicia, published in Spanish in Puerto Rico. He also contributed articles in English to the New York-based socialist newspapers The Daily Worker and The Worker. His publications denounced violations against the working class, and they opposed biased attitudes against the Puerto Rican, the Latino, and the African American populations. His 1961 anthology gathers together some of those articles, some of them published for the first time in English.
Colón’s background as a newspaper reporter directly influenced his sketches. Born to a humble peasant family, Colón aims to offer a kinder view of the Puerto Rican experience by recapturing key moments of his own life and stressing particular folk traditions as representative of Puerto Rican culture. His struggle to succeed in New York City, where he arrived at sixteen, illustrates the saga of the Puerto Ricans generally, who since the 1920’s have come to that city by the thousands. In spite of the sizable importance of the Puerto Rican population, Colón protests a generally negative attitude toward Puerto Ricans. Colón offers, instead, his own life as example of the Puerto Rican experience in New York, a life that is a combination of strong, fulfilling, and discouraging emotions.
Colón’s sketches place the writer as protagonist in stories that attempt to illustrate specific traits of the Puerto Rican personality. His narrative is highly dependent upon his memories, which go back to his childhood in rural Puerto Rico during the first decade of the twentieth century. Displaying his ability to remember incidents from several decades before, Colón recalls the readers who entertained tobacco wrappers, some of whom were so well read that they could recite long literary passages from memory. Listening to men reading and commenting on literature made the boy Colón aware of social injustice toward the working class.
Colón’s stories bring together a number of colorful characters who inhabit the Puerto Rican barrios of New York. His book, with its commitment to document the Puerto Rican immigrant experience, stands out as a rich sociological treatise. Colón’s major contribution may be his ability to validate the role of average Puerto Rican immigrants as protagonists of their own stories. For Colón, the history of the Puerto Rican community is not to be found in the “sentimental, transient and ephemeral, or bizarre and grotesque in Puerto Rican life” but in “the deep traditions of striving for freedom and progress that pervade our daily life.”
Suggested Readings
Colón, Jesús. The Way It Was, and Other Writings. Edited with an introduction by Edna Acosta-Belen and Virginia Sanchez Korrol. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1993.