Collection: Carlos Ortiz Collection
Description: The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) maintains an extensive archival collection documenting the social, political, and cultural heritage of Puerto Rican communities. For this project, CENTRO was awarded funding to support the reformatting of approximately 6,600 feet of film and 25 videotapes from photographer and documentary filmmaker Carlos Ortiz (1947-2008).
The importance of the Carlos Ortiz Collection resides in the vital glimpse it provides into the South Bronx during a period of social unrest and political ferment over three decades starting in the early 1970s. It contains materials on the political movements, demonstrations and protests in the city over the course of thirty years. It offers a rare intersection of cultural production and civic life as it also captures the neighborhood in celebration and represents community institutions such as the Puerto Rican Day Parade, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre and the United Bronx Parents. It documents the New York Latin jazz and salsa scene and its legendary stars in a musical and historical context. It includes the Nubia Music Society’s papers, correspondence, newspaper clippings, articles, pamphlets, photographs (negatives, prints and slides), and audiovisual materials spanning from 1971 to 2005, most between 1976 and 1993.