Everything you ve ever heard, and nothing you ve ever heard: Ricanstruction, New-Nuyorican Punk Activists

Despite recent scholarly interventions into the cultural production of contemporary Puerto Rican popular music, few works have analyzed alternative local practices or the political activism by and within the Nuyorican youth community. Even less examined is the impact of so-called white musical genres and popular culture (i.e. punk rock) on Boricua identity construction. This essay recognizes the subjectivities of a Nuyorican punk band in order to discuss the negotiations and strategies used for recapturing and redefining identity. In the context of cosmopolitan, translocal, and hybrid puertorrique o cultural praxis, such urban manifestations suggest the formation of a new Nuyorican social and political consciousness and the recuperation and maintenance of Puerto Rican activism.