Nyorican Dream
NyThe Nuyorican Dream is a documentary about the construction of identity and how family, race, class, and sexuality can collapse on top of you. It follows the daily struggles of a migrant lower-class Puerto Rican family living in New York. The Nuyorican Dream is an ambitious and often heartbreaking case. Nuyorican are of second generation who are born and live in New York City. The difference between Nuyorican and Puerto Ricans is the country they are born in and that Nuyorican barely speak Spanish.
This film follows three generations of mother Marta Torres’s, forty-six, family. In the year 1940’s – 60s Puerto Ricans suffered of a lot of poverty. You could barely find jobs and if you did the payments could not provide enough money to support your family. Millions migrated to New York City in search for a better life, mainly economically. Marta Torre’s decides to come to Brooklyn, New York around the 1960’s with her family. She comes to aim for a better life,but it doesn’t result how she wished it could of.
She is a mother of five kids who only her eldest son Roberto graduated from college and has job as a teacher and administrator in a public school. Her other kids can be considered to be less successful. Eldest sister Tati is addicted to heroin and crack but tries to quit and leave it back so she moves to Florida with her husband but still remains hooked to this addiction. Didn’t finish her education and now is hard for her to find jobs. Has a daughter who is five years old.
She struggles through for money and ends up losing her apartment so she moves back to Brooklyn. After years of trying she becomes drug free. Then we have Betty who is 26 years old and is also addicted to heroin and crack. She didn’t finish her education either and got pregnant of 3 kids whom she lost custody for. Marta gets the custody of these three innocent kids. You probably asking yourself why she kept having children after the first one if she couldn’t afford to and wasn’t responsible. Well Betty says,” It just happens and I don’t believe in abortion”.
Millie the young of the Torres family, thirteen years old, attends school and hopes to get out of the life she is in. Danny, twenty-three younger brother, spend most of his time behind bars due to robbery and drugs. When he thinks he is finish with a life of crime he find himself back in jail till he is thirty. This family was from all corners facing problems and was not what Marta had expected for her kids. Marta brought her kids here mostly to give them a better education and opportunities because Puerto Rico in her time was phasing poverty and political issues.
The status of Puerto Ricans based on this film wasn’t as good as what you would imagine. All these migrants came for the American Dreams but in order to have success in it they have to go through many obstacles. Puerto Ricans use both Spanish and English put together for is known to us Spanglish. Puerto Ricans are not the only group of Latinos which phase these problems. We have for example Mexicans, Dominicans and Colombians who come to New York City in search of a better life for their kids but they have struggles as well.
Many kids don’t take advantage of the opportunities and get peer pressure or hang out with the wrong crew and get to drugs and cutting school. This film taught me that we should always take advantage of the opportunities we get in life and in having a good education. In order to be successful in the United States you will always need education. We should be satisfied and grateful with what we have, because there are others who don’t have half of what we have. We should always be proud of our background because although it has poverty it has beautiful natural resources.
