Diaz, Mercedes

The Puerto Rican Oral History Project began with grant funding from the New York State Council on the Arts. Awarded in 1973, the purpose of the grant was to conduct interviews with Puerto Ricans who settled in Brooklyn between 1917 and 1940. Sixty-nine individuals were interviewed as part of the original scope of the project with each individual assigned a number identifier from 1 to 69. The number of participants later expanded due to the continued interest of project interviewer John Vazquez. Mr. Vazquez, the Director of the Department of Puerto Rican Studies at New York City Community College(NYCCC), taught an oral history course in the Spring of 1975 that required his students to interview Puerto Rican residents of Brooklyn: these interviews are also included in the collection.

Of the original sixty-nine interviews, nine were conducted between April and August 1973 before the project was shelved until 1974. The 1973 interviews were usually conducted in paired teams by Elba Correa, Mayda Cortiella, Pedro Rivera, Tomas Rivera, [Mr.] Torres, and [Mr.]Ruiz. Other than their names, no further information is available on these interviewers, and their relationship to LIHS is unknown. When the project was picked back up again in January, it had difficulty retaining staff. Project coordinator Anthony Cucchiara hired two college students to conduct interviews. These students left the project after one month having conducted only one interview. Next hired was Roberto Rosado, an instructor at NYCCC. Mr. Rosado was able to carry out two interviews before leaving the project in May 1974. In June, another instructor from NYCCC, Monte Rivera, joined the project and conducted seven interviews before leaving at the end of the month. A new hiring search produced Jaime Barreto, a Brooklyn Public School Coordinator. Mr. Barreto was joined by John Vazquez in August, and individually, the two conducted the remaining fifty interviews that comprised the project’s original scope.

Interviews were conducted in Spanish, English, or both. In 1974, Maria C. Ramos and William Santos were hired to transcribe and translate interviews. These transcriptions are handwritten. Additional interview transcriptions come from a typed series which were done by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College when the interview tapes were on loan to that institution in 1984. Typed transcripts are in the language of the interview, without English translation. There is some overlap between handwritten transcriptions done by Ramos and Santos and those from the Hunter series resulting in interviews with multiple transcripts attached to them.

Of the interviews done as part of Mr. Vazquez’s course at NYCCC, three participants carried over from the original sixty-nine. Transcripts of two interviews from this group were possibly made as a result of the loan to Hunter College. Besides these two transcripts the rest of the interviews recorded for Mr. Vazquez’s course are not transcribed.

For specific information on language and availability of transcription for individual interviews, please see the Index file in Box 1.