Puerto Rican communities all aglow

The revelation thrilled them all: A Puerto Rican woman, who had been through trying times just like them, had been nominated to the US Supreme Court.

"I've just had tons of people either calling or texting on how excited they are, how excited we all are," said Rodriguez-Parker, an aide to US Representative James McGovern. "She came up the hard way, and she worked really hard for what she has and what she's been able to accomplish. . . . It takes a lot to be able to do what she's done."

From Boston to San Juan, Puerto Rico, yesterday, Latinos expressed pride in Sonia Sotomayor's nomination, and they hoped her high profile would provide a symbolic voice for the nation's largest minority group. Her ascension, they said, held special meaning for Puerto Ricans, whose complex relationship with the United States is often misunderstood.

Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in the Spanish- American war of 1898, and Puerto Ricans have been automatic US citizens since 1917. They can serve in the US military - and have died in large numbers in American wars. But they do not pay federal taxes, cannot vote for president and experience some of the highest unemployment rates in the United States. Spanish is the island's predominant language.

But unlike others in Latin America, Puerto Ricans can move freely to the United States, and that led to waves of migration from the Caribbean island in the 1950s and continuing in the '70s and '80s, reshaping major cities such as New York, Chicago, and Boston. In Massachusetts, Puerto Ricans accounted for about half of all Latinos in the state in the 2000 Census. They are prominent in Holyoke, Springfield and Lawrence, now the most Latino city in the state.

The early arrivals from Puerto Rico included migrant workers who picked tobacco, factory workers who cobbled shoes, and fledgling community activists. And they, or their children, were woven into the US mainland as poets, such as UMass-Amherst's Martin Espada, politicians such as former Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo - and lawyers, such as Sotomayor.

"To say that someone who's Puerto Rican understands the American people, I think, is a huge message," said Giovanna Negretti executive director of ¿Oíste?, a Latino civic organization in Boston. "The fact that President Obama would choose her to represent the average American in the Supreme Court to me is very visionary."

Sotomayor's own story touched many Puerto Ricans deeply because of how closely it mirrored their own. Her father, a laborer, died when she was 9, and her mother raised her in a housing project in the Bronx.

Her story resonated in Lawrence, where community activist Isabel Melendez, who was born in Puerto Rico, narrowly lost a bid to become the city's first Latino mayor in 2001. "When you see something like that you can't help but get emotional," Melendez said.

It sparked nostalgia in Worcester, where stories of Sotomayor's mother reminded Rodriguez-Parker of her own. Her mother, a migrant worker who could not read or write but insisted that her children do their homework every day, propelled Rodriguez-Parker to college to earn a master's degree.

And Sotomayor's story echoed across Boston's Villa Victoria, a compact red-brick neighborhood of low-income housing that Puerto Ricans and others fought to preserve amid a surge of urban renewal.

"Being an activist in the community for many years, it is about time that we are recognized," said Reinelda "Chickie" Rivera, a board member of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, which promotes community and economic development, and who, like Sotomayor, was raised in New York by a single mother. "It really shocked me, . . . . I said, oh my God, finally!"

Maria Flores, 64, a retiree who lives in Villa Victoria, said Sotomayor's nomination should speak to Puerto Ricans young and old.

"It's so beautiful, more because of how she did it," said Flores, clutching her chest with glee. "That's what we have to do to improve our schools and move up."

In Northampton, Muñoz, the granddaughter of Puerto Rico's beloved former Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, the first to be democratically elected, said Sotomayor's story reminded her of her own mother, who, though from a prominent family in Puerto Rico, came to live in Villa Victoria to start a new life, raising five children on her own.

"Her story from humble beginnings to being the daughter of a single mother to going to an Ivy league law school to now being nominated to become a Supreme Court justice, that's a story that all Americans can be inspired by," said Muñoz, who runs a bilingual website, www.laprensama.com. "When I read her story I thought yeah, I know Sonia."