Quote by Judith Rodríguez: “We did not cross the border; the border crossed us.”

This reverses the usual story told about migrants. It points out that the borders that now divide communities were created by conquest and political decisions — the people were there first. To cross a border is often to re-enter land that was once yours.

The 1980s saw significant migration from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Central America to the United States, driven by economic hardship and political violence. The Chicano and Puerto Rican civil rights movements had been asserting indigenous and historical claims to land that US expansion had absorbed.

Puerto Rican poet and community activist whose work centers on migration, diaspora, identity, and the experience of Caribbean communities navigating cultural displacement. Her writing has been an important contribution to Nuyorican and Caribbean literary traditions.