The military defense of Puerto Rico is the responsibility of the United States as part of the Treaty of Paris. Locally, Puerto Rico has its own National Guard, the Puerto Rico National Guard, and its own state defense force, the Puerto Rico State Guard, which, by local law, is under the authority of the Puerto Rico National Guard. The commander-in-chief of both forces is the governor of Puerto Rico, currently Pedro Pierluisi, who delegates his authority to the Puerto Rico Adjutant General, currently Major General José J. Reyes. The Adjutant General, in turn, delegates the authority over the State Guard to another officer but retains the authority over the Puerto Rico National Guard as a whole. At the national level, the commander-in-chief is the President of the United States, currently Joe Biden.
Antonia Pantoja, was a Puerto Rican educator, social worker, feminist, civil rights leader and the founder of ASPIRA, the Puerto Rican Forum, Boricua College and Producir. In 1996, she was the first Puerto Rican woman to receive the American Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Nydia Margarita Velázquez Serrano is an American politician serving in the United States House of Representatives since 1993. A Democrat from New York, Velázquez chaired the Congressional Hispanic Caucus until January 3, 2011. Her district, in New York City, was numbered the 12th district from 1993 to 2013 and has been numbered the 7th district since 2013. Velázquez is the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in the United States Congress.
Albizu University is a private university with its main campus in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a branch campus in Miami, Florida, and an additional instructional location in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. It focuses on psychology, health, education, and human services.
José Alberto Cabranes is an American lawyer who serves as a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a former presiding judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ("FISCR"). Formerly a practicing lawyer, government official, and law teacher, he was the first Puerto Rican appointed to a federal judgeship in the continental United States (1979).
Maria Vizcarrondo-De Soto is the first woman and Latina to become the President and CEO of the United Way of Essex and West Hudson.
Angelo Falcón was a Puerto Rican political scientist best known for starting the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy (IPR) in New York City in the early 1980s, a nonprofit and nonpartisan policy center that focuses on Latino issues in the United States. It is now known as the National Institute for Latino Policy and Falcón served as its president until his death. He was also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Columbia University School of Public and International Affairs (S.I.P.A.).
Stateside Puerto Ricans, also ambiguously known as Puerto Rican Americans, or Puerto Ricans in the United States, are Puerto Ricans who are in the United States proper of the 50 states and the District of Columbia who were born in or trace any family ancestry to the unincorporated US territory of Puerto Rico.
Black Hispanic and Latino Americans, also called Afro-Hispanics, Afro-Latinos, Black Hispanics, or Black Latinos, are classified by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget, and other U.S. government agencies as Black people living in the United States with ancestry in Latin America or Spain and/or who speak Spanish and/or Portuguese as either their first language or second language.
Joxel García is a Puerto Rican physician and a former four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. He served as the fourteenth Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from March 13, 2008, to January 20, 2009. He served as the Director of Health in the District of Columbia. He served as the Executive Director of the MD Anderson Cancer Control and Prevention Platform and Member of the Leadership Team of the MD Anderson Moon Shots program until May 2017 before joining American Express as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer.
Pedro E. Segarra is a Puerto Rican-American politician and lawyer who served as the 66th mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. Prior to becoming mayor, Segarra was president of Hartford's City Council. He succeeded former Mayor Eddie Perez who resigned after he was convicted by a state Superior Court jury of bribery and extortion in a political corruption case, though Perez' convictions eventually were reversed by the Connecticut Appellate Court. Segarra was sworn in as mayor on June 25, 2010, and won re-election on November 8, 2011. In 2015, Luke Bronin defeated Segarra for the Democratic mayoral nomination. He is Hartford's second mayor of Puerto Rican ancestry and the first openly gay mayor of the city. He is also the second openly gay mayor of an American state capital city.
Joseph Orlando Prewitt Díaz is a retired psychologist who specialized in psychosocial theory. He received the APA International Humanitarian Award from American Psychological Association
Maria Colón Sánchez a.k.a. "La Madrina", was an activist and politician who, in 1988, became the first Hispanic woman elected to the Connecticut General Assembly. She was also the founder of the Puerto Rican Parade Committee in 1964 and co-founded La Casa de Puerto Rico, the Society of Legal Services, the Spanish-American Merchants Association, the Puerto Rican Businessmen Association, and the Community Renewal Team.
Jean J. Schensul is a medical anthropologist and senior scientist at The Institute for Community Research, in Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Schensul is most notable for her research on HIV/AIDS prevention and other health-related research in the United States, as well as her extensive writing on ethnographic research methods. She has made notable contributions to the field of applied anthropology, with her work on structural interventions to health disparities leading to the development of new organizations, community research partnerships, and community/university associations. Schensul’s work has been dedicated to community-based research on topics such as senior health, education, and substance abuse, among others.
The "Borinqueneers Congressional Gold Medal" is a Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Puerto Rico's 65th Infantry Regiment by President Barack Obama, at an official ceremony on June 10, 2014. On May 19, 2014, the United States House of Representatives passed the Bill, known as HR 1726 and three days later on May 22, 2014, the Senate approved Bill S. 1174. With the approval of both houses, the president signed the legislation which awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the 65th Infantry, the first segregated Hispanic military unit, and the first unit of the Korean War, to receive such distinction.
Edna Negron Rosario is an American educator who founded the first family resource center and school-based health clinic in the United States. She was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
Carmen Delgado Votaw was a civil rights pioneer, a public servant, an author, and community leader. She earned an associate degree at the University of Puerto Rico and graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., with a bachelor of arts in international studies. She was subsequently awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities by Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.
Alice Cardona was an activist and community organizer.
El Puente is a non-profit arts and social justice organization located in the communities of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York. El Puente was founded in 1982 by the late Luis Garden Acosta and co-founded with Eugenio Maldonado, and Dr. Frances Lacerna. Garden Acosta's mission was to stop the epidemic of violence stemming from youth gang/drug activity and street violence. El Puente's initiatives focus on fighting for a wide variety of social justice issues, including racial, environmental, immigration, educational, economic, housing justice, and more. As a renowned latino art's and cultural institution, El Puente does most of its activism through various visual and performative art forms.
