{"id":242443,"date":"2026-05-24T16:41:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T16:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/242443\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T16:41:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T16:41:40","slug":"nuevayol-the-puerto-rican-new-york-that-bad-bunny-sings-about-eps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/242443\/","title":{"rendered":"NUEVAYoL: The Puerto Rican New York that Bad Bunny sings about | EPS"},"content":{"rendered":"

LeAna L\u00f3pez\u2019s hips cue the musician, who, in a direct and improvised exchange, mirrors her movements on the primo, the lead drum of Puerto Rican bomba<\/a>. The rhythm \u2014 born on Puerto Rico\u2019s slave plantations in the 17th century \u2014 reverberates on this occasion inside a church in East Harlem, the Manhattan neighborhood known as El Barrio. The roar of the barrel drums builds, and, as the music reaches its peak, the scene seems to shift to the northeastern coast of the Caribbean island, to Lo\u00edza, the cradle of Afro\u2013Puerto Rican culture. But in an instant, the traffic on Lexington Avenue breaks the spell, serving as a reminder: this is New York.<\/p>\n

Another 15 participants dance alongside L\u00f3pez in a workshop organized by Los Pleneros de la 21, a community organization and artistic collective whose mission is to promote awareness in New York of bomba and another genre native to Puerto Rico, plena. Those who play plena are known as pleneros \u2014 hence the group\u2019s name. Since its founding in 1983, Los Pleneros de la 21 has cultivated Puerto Rican culture at the heart of the city\u2019s diaspora community. More than 1,500 miles from the island, Puerto Ricans have left an indelible mark on New York\u2019s history. So much so that Manhattan\u2019s Fifth Avenue hosts the world\u2019s largest Puerto Rican pride parade, drawing more than a million people every summer for nearly 70 years to celebrate the Caribbean island and its diaspora.<\/p>\n

It is the same diaspora that Bad Bunny<\/a> sings about in the opening track of his latest album, NUEVAYoL, and the same one he honored during his Super Bowl performance<\/a>, when To\u00f1ita \u2014 the matriarch of Puerto Rican nightlife in New York \u2014 appeared on the nation\u2019s biggest stage to serve him a drink as he sang: \u201cA shot of ca\u00f1ita at To\u00f1ita\u2019s house, ay \/ PR feels so close.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Pao Lebr\u00f3n Guzm\u00e1n, 41, identifies as a \u201ctrans Bori-Yorker\u201d and champions the power of food and land as a bridge between the diaspora in New York and Puerto Rico. Lebr\u00f3n Guzm\u00e1n is wearing a dress by Willy Chavarria.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

A journey through the neighborhoods most emblematic of this community underscores the extent to which New York\u2019s essence is Puerto Rican. The city sounds like Puerto Rico: from the traditional rhythms preserved by Los Pleneros to salsa and reggaeton, both of which took shape here with the help of the diaspora. And the city also tastes like the island \u2014 from the bakery in East Harlem selling traditional sweets where Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> has stopped for coffee, to the fried street foods sold along Brooklyn\u2019s Puerto Rico Avenue.<\/p>\n

Creating and claiming spaces<\/p>\n

LeAna L\u00f3pez was the first in her family to be born in the diaspora, in East Harlem. It is a place where Puerto Rican accents can be heard on every corner, blending with Nuyorican slang while retaining their distinct character: the drawn-out double r and the rolled single r softened into an l. Here, a street bears the name of Tito Puente, the king of the timbales and mambo, who was born and raised on these blocks lined with comida criolla restaurants and draped in Puerto Rican flags.<\/p>\n

Growing up surrounded by all of this, L\u00f3pez never questioned her connection to an island she had visited only sparingly as a child. Her parents, both born in Puerto Rico, always instilled in her the importance of keeping their culture alive from New York. That was how, at age seven, she arrived at her first bomba and plena class with Los Pleneros de la 21.<\/p>\n

Sitting atop a drum stool at the group\u2019s headquarters, as she speaks, L\u00f3pez shifts between English and phrases that emerge naturally in Spanish, colored by a distinctly Puerto Rican accent. Nearly three decades after that first class, she says she remains grateful for finding in Los Pleneros a place where she could \u201cconnect with and continue the traditions\u201d of her island \u2014 work that has shaped her entire artistic career.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis organization always allowed me to feel that I was as Puerto Rican as someone who was born on the island,\u201d she says. \u201cI never felt like I didn\u2019t belong. That came later, when I started hearing terms like Nuyorican.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Adelaida Mill\u00e1n, 80, wife of Radam\u00e9s Mill\u00e1n, founder of San Germ\u00e1n Shop, poses outside his store in Williamsburg.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

That word \u2014 \u201cNuyorican,\u201d a play on the English pronunciation of \u201cNew York\u201d and \u201cPuerto Rican\u201d \u2014 was for many years used by Puerto Ricans born on the island as a sort of insult against those who, like L\u00f3pez, were born outside Puerto Rico, or against those who, after years away, tried to return and were seen as different, as outsiders because they came from the diaspora.<\/p>\n

During the second half of the last century, New York became the mecca of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora. Between World War II<\/a> and the 1970s, the city\u2019s Puerto Rican population grew from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. It reached its peak in 1970, when Puerto Ricans accounted for more than 10% of the city\u2019s total population. At the time, nearly 70% of all Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland resided in New York.<\/p>\n

When they arrived, they faced marginalization. They were U.S. citizens \u2014 Puerto Rico has been an unincorporated U.S. territory since 1898 \u2014 but many did not speak the language. They spoke Caribbean Spanish and little to no English; they were mixed-race and Afro-Caribbean people who had never experienced the harshness of winter. In the face of rejection, they planted their flag and built communities of their own so that those who came after them would know they were not alone. Out of that experience, a new identity began to take shape: New York Puerto Ricans.<\/p>\n

\"\"A man waits in line at La Pira\u00f1a Lechonera in the Bronx, showing off his cap, which features the image of Puerto Rican singer H\u00e9ctor Lavoe, the “singer of singers,” one of the most iconic voices in salsa. Lavoe’s career began on the streets of New York, like that of so many others who emigrated from Puerto Rico to the city. He was a member of the Fania All-Stars salsa orchestra from its inception in the 1960s and helped popularize the genre from its very beginnings.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

Juan Guti\u00e9rrez \u2014 known as Juango \u2014 founder of Los Pleneros de la 21, arrived at the height of that migration wave. Born in 1951 in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico\u2019s capital, he moved to New York in 1976 to further his musical training. \u201cEver since I can remember, I was interested in music, though not specifically in bomba and plena,\u201d he says. \u201cBut once I got to New York, I got bitten by the Puerto Rican bug. I said to myself, I aspire to musical excellence, but I have to immerse myself in Puerto Rican music.\u201d<\/p>\n

From that point on, he trained in plena and bomba under diaspora masters such as Marcial Reyes Avelo, with whom he founded Los Pleneros de la 21 forty-three years ago. He soon recognized the need to share that knowledge with the broader community, and, in 1989, the organization began offering dance and music workshops that continue to this day. The classes have become so popular that this year they moved to the People\u2019s Church, a community temple that served during the 1960s and 1970s as a gathering place for Puerto Rican activists in El Barrio \u2014 particularly the Young Lords, a social justice movement inspired by the revolutionary Black Panther Party but focused on the struggles Puerto Ricans faced in the city: marginalization, poverty, and hostility.<\/p>\n

For Guti\u00e9rrez, preserving Puerto Rican culture in New York stems from a need for self-preservation in the face of adversity. Now 75 and semi-retired, the musician divides his time between Puerto Rico and New York, while his daughter, Julia, has taken up the mantle at Los Pleneros. Speaking by phone before heading back to the island for a time, he reflected: \u201cWhen you leave Puerto Rico, you confront many realities of living in another culture \u2014 one that is often hostile to our identity, not only as Puerto Ricans but as Latinos. And how do you defend yourself? By looking more deeply into your identity and grounding yourself in the pride of who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nuyorican boom<\/p>\n

Another guardian of that identity has been Jos\u00e9 Flores \u2014 or Pepe, as he is known in Lower Manhattan. A contemporary of Guti\u00e9rrez\u2019s (the two first met in Puerto Rico and later crossed paths again in New York), Flores arrived \u2014 \u201cfortunately,\u201d as he puts it \u2014 in the Lower East Side, or Loisaida, a name that merges the word \u201cLo\u00edza,\u201d Puerto Rico\u2019s historical Afro-Puerto Rican municipality, with the English pronunciation of \u201cLower East Side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Jos\u00e9 Flores, known to everyone who loves him as Pepe, is 75 years old and loves to dance. So much so that for half a century he has been collecting music in his small apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. That collection now exceeds 5,000 records and forms part of the living archive of the Nuyorican community in New York.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

Back then, Loisaida was a rough neighborhood. Drugs ruled the streets \u2014 first heroin, then crack. It bore little resemblance to what it is today, with its vintage shops and high-end restaurants. When Flores arrived, he rented a two-bedroom apartment for $75 a month and, while cleaning it before moving in, found used syringes beneath the linoleum floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the same time, this place was entirely Puerto Rican. I could walk out my front door and, before reaching the corner, greet 10 or 15 people in Spanish,\u201d he recalls from the living room of his current apartment, still in Loisaida.<\/p>\n

Flores arrived in the city as a devoted music lover \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m a born dancer. I dance even during commercials,\u201d he says \u2014 and in the Puerto Rican Loisaida of the 1970s, he found a creative world in full bloom: art, poetry, theater, music. He witnessed the emergence of a cultural and artistic movement that embraced Nuyorican identity as its banner. He saw the birth of institutions such as the Nuyorican Poets Caf\u00e9, founded in 1973 by poets Miguel Algar\u00edn and Miguel Pi\u00f1ero, and, three years later, New Rican Village, a music and theater space led by Eddie Figueroa.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mar\u00eda Antonia Cay, or Do\u00f1a To\u00f1ita, owns the Caribbean Social Club, the small bar on Grand Street in Williamsburg that everyone knows thanks to Bad Bunny. The megastar visited the establishment years ago and, last February, invited To\u00f1ita to his Super Bowl halftime show, the biggest sporting event in the United States. This portrait was taken in 2021. Cay’s club has been around for over 50 years, and although she has received multimillion-dollar offers to sell it, she refuses.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

It was a moment born out of \u201ca generation that didn\u2019t feel fully from here or from there. And so they give birth to this new nation, and the term \u2018Nuyorican\u2019 goes from that pejorative to being worn as a badge of honor,\u201d explains An\u00edbal Arocho, head librarian at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, the first research institution dedicated to the Puerto Rican diaspora, which opened its doors in El Barrio during that same era.<\/p>\n

Against the backdrop of that cultural renaissance, Flores began building a vinyl collection in his apartment. He collected anything he could find: Puerto Rican music, Cuban records, African sounds, jazz. Back then, records cost only a few cents, and Flores steadily amassed an enormous archive through flea markets and music shops. Today, his collection exceeds 5,000 records.<\/p>\n

Among them are genuine treasures, which he has always made available as archival material for students and music enthusiasts. \u201cI\u2019m only the holder, I\u2019m not the owner,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are music collectors who won\u2019t even let you through the door, much less touch a record. But as long as there\u2019s respect, that door will always be open.\u201d<\/p>\n

The door he is referring to is the one to his apartment, which he says he often leaves unlocked in case he forgets his keys on the way out. Records cover the walls of his living room, stacked on wooden shelves stretching to the ceiling. Until recently, however, many of them were housed in his gallery, opened in 2022 in the storefront of the building where Flores had lived for more than 40 years. He called the space La Sala de Pepe, or Pepe\u2019s living room \u2014 an extension of his home transformed into a cultural hub dedicated to Puerto Rican music, photography, art, and activism.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ryan Del Rio, 18, was born in New York and grew up frequenting the only remaining Puerto Rican market in south Williamsburg. His stepmother sells soaps and creams in a small stand where he sometimes works. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s important to feel close to my culture, to always carry the flag close to my heart and to represent it in every way possible,\u201d he says. He doesn\u2019t speak Spanish, but wears a Puerto Rican flag hanging from a necklace. Del R\u00edo wears Valentino.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

Pepe does not know whether he will reopen the gallery. He laments the gentrification of Loisaida, which has pushed many Puerto Ricans out of the neighborhood. \u201cBack then, this avenue was full of immigrant businesses \u2014 a butcher shop, a fish market\u2026 All of that went to hell,\u201d he says. The area is now known as the East Village, where the average monthly rent has climbed to around $5,000.<\/p>\n

The collector cannot resist reaching for a metaphor to describe Loisaida\u2019s endangered Puerto Rican roots: \u201cWhat I\u2019m telling you about are things that don\u2019t exist here anymore. That garden is gone now \u2014 and without it, those flowers can no longer bloom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still here\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it falls to people like Caridad de la Luz \u2014 considered one of the guardians of Nuyorican culture in the city \u2014 to tend that garden. The 49-year-old poet, better known by her stage name La Bruja, arrives at the Bronx Music Hall wearing a long green lace dress and what she calls \u201cpeculiar\u201d shoes. \u201cDo you know La India? She gave me this dress and the shoes. They\u2019re very witchy, right?\u201d she says with her trademark laugh as she walks into the cultural center, where in a few hours she will perform before a sold-out crowd, marking 30 years of her career.<\/p>\n

The La India she is referring to is singer Linda Bell Viera Caballero \u2014 known as the Princess of Salsa \u2014 one of the genre\u2019s most beloved voices, who was raised in the same Bronx neighborhood where De la Luz was born, an area known as the County of Salsa. \u201cThe Bronx is like a little Puerto Rico,\u201d the poet explains in Spanglish. \u201cThe Bronx is the one borough that is green enough that it\u2019s like you could make it look like Puerto Rico; you feel it here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resemblance is so strong that it is one of the few places outside Puerto Rico where people can eat at an authentic Puerto Rican lechonera: La Pira\u00f1a, run by \u00c1ngel Jim\u00e9nez, whose nickname gave the business its name. Every weekend, customers wait for hours in line to buy plates of roast pork served with rice and gandules (pigeon peas). Jim\u00e9nez begins roasting the pigs before dawn and starts selling around noon \u2014 only on Saturdays and Sundays, and only until everything sells out.<\/p>\n

\"\"Caridad de la Luz, or La Bruja (The Witch), is one of the leading contemporary guardians of Nuyorican culture. The Bronx-born poet has spent 30 years reciting, rapping, and singing to the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York. She is now the executive director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. \u201cI consider myself a ‘cacica’ (chief) and a witch because women who rejected the patriarchy were called witches. The things I’ve survived and how I’ve gotten to this point \u2014 there was certainly magic that helped me,\u201d she says. She is wearing a dress by Willy Chavarria.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

The Bronx has produced some of the most prominent names in the Puerto Rican diaspora, including Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the nation\u2019s highest court; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, widely seen as a leading figure in the future of the Democratic Party; and Jennifer Lopez<\/a>.<\/p>\n

De la Luz\u2019s love of poetry dates back almost to infancy. She learned from her great-grandmother, an illiterate woman who was nonetheless a poet, and began reciting verses in her family\u2019s living room. Growing up in the Bronx, more than an hour by subway from the Lower East Side, De la Luz was unaware of the Nuyorican movement that had been taking shape in Lower Manhattan during her childhood. <\/p>\n

That changed when a friend, after hearing her recite, told her she had to perform at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. \u201cAnd I was like, Nuyorican? What?\u201d she recalls. She was taken aback that a place would carry the name Nuyorican \u2014 a word she had always known as an insult. \u201cBut when I went there, it gave me a new appreciation for the contributions Nuyoricans have made,\u201d she says. \u201cIt changed my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

She first stepped onto its stage at 19, unaware that three decades later she would become the executive director of the caf\u00e9 \u2014 one of the last enduring pillars of the Nuyorican movement and a place that, for more than 50 years, has nurtured the talents of poets, actors, filmmakers, and musicians.<\/p>\n

\"\"Maxwell Vice Tong (27 years old) poses with his mother, Jessica Castro (57 years old). Both were born in Bushwick, a historically Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn that has fallen into the hands of gentrification. Together, they fight to preserve its identity. \u201cMy first memory is of my father bringing me to the Puerto Rican parade. Before having queer pride, I had Puerto Rican pride. It changed my life,\u201d says Tong. Castro wears a suit by Willy Chavarria; Tong, a dress by Bad Binch Tongtong.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

De la Luz took the helm in 2022. A year later, the venue closed its doors for an extensive renovation project costing $24 million, funded by New York City. For La Bruja, amid gentrification and the displacement of the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York, the fact that the city invested in rebuilding an institution like this \u201cis a testament to the cultural contribution the Nuyorican Poets Cafe has made to the fabric of New York. It is a temple of culture in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

The glowing tower to the north<\/p>\n

Puerto Rican New York endures. It does so thanks in part to artists like Bad Bunny, who, as An\u00edbal Arocho \u2014 head librarian at the CUNY Center for Puerto Rican Studies \u2014 notes, \u201crecognizes and celebrates New York as the glowing tower to the north\u201d of Puerto Rico. It is a place where Puerto Rican culture \u201crefused to die, where it grew and thrived and evolved and continued to perpetuate the beauty of our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has thrived in Los Pleneros de la 21 in East Harlem, in Pepe\u2019s living room in Loisaida, and in the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. In La Bruja\u2019s poetry and in La Pira\u00f1a\u2019s lechonera in the Bronx. In San Germ\u00e1n Shop, Radam\u00e9s Mill\u00e1n\u2019s store in Brooklyn, where he has sold records, clothing, and Puerto Rican food for more than half a century, and in To\u00f1ita\u2019s club, which she refuses to sell despite receiving multimillion-dollar offers. It also lives on in the thousands of bodegas scattered across the city \u2014 the corner stores where New Yorkers buy their bacon, egg, and cheese every morning and whose name traces back to the Puerto Rican bodegueros who created them.<\/p>\n

\"\"Radam\u00e9s Mill\u00e1n, the 82-year-old founder of San Germ\u00e1n Shop, named his Brooklyn record, clothing, and Puerto Rican food store after the southwest Puerto Rican municipality where he was born and lived before emigrating to New York. He has owned the store in Williamsburg for 57 years. Radam\u00e9s Mill\u00e1n is wearing a Givenchy shirt.Camila Falquez<\/p>\n

Bodegueros like Arocho\u2019s family, whose grandparents arrived in New York in the 1950s and opened grocery stores along Manhattan\u2019s Ninth Avenue. Over time, those shops came to be known as bodegas, a term that has since become synonymous with the city itself. Every New Yorker has their trusted bodega. And although most owners are no longer Puerto Rican \u2014 now many belong to newer immigrant communities, such as Yemenis \u2014 they are still called bodegas, in Spanish.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my neighborhood I know of exactly one Puerto Rican bodeguero who\u2019s a holdout,\u201d Arocho notes. \u201cAnd whenever I walk by 10th Avenue and I see his store and I see the Puerto Rican flag hanging there \u2014 it\u2019s tattered and faded because he hangs it outside \u2014it\u2019s very poetic because it\u2019s very much faded but not gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Credits<\/p>\n

Styling: Lorena Maza @lorenamazastyling <\/p>\n

Photography assistant: Ana Aizersztein @fotosdeana_ <\/p>\n

Makeup: Kaiya Carlin @kaiyacarlin <\/p>\n

Casting: G\u00fcerxs Casting @guerxs <\/p>\n

Studio: Delicia Studio @deliciastudio_ <\/p>\n

Production: The LTC – @the__ltc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeAna L\u00f3pez\u2019s hips cue the musician, who, in a direct and improvised exchange, mirrors her movements on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[878,6014,7689,9,11,10,19090,62936,82],"class_list":["post-242443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-alexandria-ocasio-cortez","tag-bad-bunny","tag-jennifer-lopez","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-puerto-rico","tag-sonia-sotomayor","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}