Agüeros pictured in 1967, far right, then the deputy director of the Puerto Rican Community Development Project–the nation’s first Puerto Rican anti-poverty organization

(Image credit: Agüeros Family)

The papers document the life of Jack Agüeros, a Puerto Rican-American poet, community activist, translator, playwright, educator and a former director of El Museo del Barrio.  The papers reach as far back as his high school yearbook and include his personal and professional correspondence over fifty-one years, drafts of published and unpublished work ranging from plays and novellas to a description of Agüeros’s experiences riding the New York City subway’s from 1987-1989.  Agüeros saved and documented his research (for poems translation work and lawsuits); he framed his hate mail and carefully stored his fan mail from students and fellow poets.  The Jack Agüeros Papers include artifacts from his collection of old tools and metal findings, detailed records of his submission rejections as well as copies of his accepted works, timelines and ephemera from his many readings, slides from gallery installations at El Museo del Barrio, and many of the articles that he wrote for New York newspapers.

See, “The Agüeros Archive: Preserving New York’s Latino Heritage” at Columbia E-News.

See also, “Columbia preservará historia de hispanos en NY” at El Diario.