Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman, born Paul Guzman on Aug. 17, 1950, in New York City, to Puerto Rican and Cuban parents, joined the ancestors on Nov. 26, 2023, after suffering a heart attack. The sad news spread quickly to all of us who shared a history with him in the Young Lords Party.
He may not be someone you recognize unless you lived in New York City during his time as a television reporter, or you read some of his written work in the Village Voice or Rolling Stone. Perhaps you have had the chance to learn the history of The Young Lords Organization in Chicago, and The Young Lords Party in New York City, where he was a founding member, and minister of information on our organization’s Central Committee.
Though his passing is being covered by mainstream media sources, which tend to focus on his many years as a reporter for CBS, I’d like to share a little today about his early political involvement and later importance in the history of the political struggles of the Puerto Rican and Black communities in New York and beyond.
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Here are a few of the mainstream media announcements, this first one from CBS, where he worked for the last 28 years.
CBS posted this video tribute, focused on his job as a reporter. Though they included his time as a Young Lord, they had Geraldo Rivera, who had been a lawyer for the Lords, as the only person to speak about his political history. Shudder. There were no conversations with former Young Lords or activists.
New York Mayor Eric Adams got into the act and posted this:
Frankly, all of us would like to hold Mayor Adams to account (but that’s a whole ‘nother story).
A number of the current news reports have referenced this CBS video promoting Pablo from 14 years ago.
The Los Angeles Times did a little bit better, including the fact that Pablo went to prison for resisting the draft. Andrea Flores wrote:
Born in Spanish Harlem and raised in the South Bronx, Guzmán graduated from Bronx High School of Science and attended the State University of New York at Old Westbury. During his college years, he became a co-founder of the Young Lords Party in New York.
Inspired by the Black Panthers, the group was a Puerto Rican revolution party fighting for neighborhood empowerment and the self-determination of Latinos. In addition to acting as one of the group’s main spokesmen, Guzmán was also the minister of information. In that role, he produced and hosted a weekly radio show for the Young Lords, edited their weekly newsletter Palante and helped the organization grow in various other cities.
Toward the end of the Vietnam War, Guzmán refused to report for the draft as an act of protest. He was subsequently imprisoned for nine months on a two-year sentence at a time when others with no prior arrests were receiving community service or suspended sentences for the same offense. In an archived bio, Guzmán says that it was due to his affiliation with the Young Lords Party.
As a side note: If you want to learn more about the YLP, I suggest you read Dr. Johanna Fernandez’s book, “The Young Lords: A Radical History.” To date, her history is the most comprehensive and insightful take on the YLP. (Here’s a sample via Google books.)
I’d like to share my memories of Pablo and how we met. They aren’t recent ones, since I haven’t seen him in a number of years, though we stayed in touch from time to time via Twitter DMs.
I was one of the Black and Puerto Rican students selected to help “plan” the State University of New York experimental college at Old Westbury, along with Black Puerto Rican poet Roberto Ortiz and Mickey Melendez. Recruiters from the college found us working at the Real Great Society in East Harlem.
I would posit that had the initial SUNY Old Westbury “experiment” (that failed) not happened, there would never have been a New York Young Lords Party.
In our first summer and year there, the campus was located in Oyster Bay, Long Island, at Planting Fields. We pushed the administration to recruit and accept more “students of color” and one of those recruited students was Paul Guzman, who had graduated from the Bronx Science High School—one of NYC’s premier specialized high schools.
One of the professors on campus who had a major impact on us was Panamanian activist and head of Field Studies Dr. Carlos Russell:
Carlos Russell was born in Panama’s Canal Zone. In 1955, Russell immigrated to the United States on a student visa to attend De Paul University in Chicago. In attempting to leave behind what he described as Panama’s “rampant racism,” he was forced to confront the reality of a deeply segregated and discriminatory U.S. society. After graduating, Russell worked for the Mary McDowell Settlement House in Chicago and the Albany Community Center as part of government-sponsored anti-poverty efforts. A cultural activist as well, Russell was also a member of the Harlem Writers Guild, and a writer and Associate Editor for the Liberator magazine. He consulted with Martin Luther King Jr. in early planning for the Poor People’s Campaign, and is a noted founder of Black Solidarity Day, first initiated in 1969.
Russell became the chair of the Field Studies Department at State University of New York College at Old Westbury in 1968. He had a strong influence on students in the urban action programs, inspiring and challenging students involved in the formation of the Young Lords. Immediately after Old Westbury, Russell moved to Brooklyn College, where he went on to become the Chair of the Department of Educational Services, Director of SEEK and Dean of the School of Contemporary Studies. He has a PhD from the Union for Experimenting Colleges. Later in his life he served as Panamanian Ambassador to the United Nations, and also to the Organization of American States. Russell continues to write poetry, plays, and political commentary.
He took Old Westbury students into Ocean Hill-Brownsville during the teachers strike in 1968 to keep the schools open. One of those students was Paul Guzman.
In 1969, several students participated in a field study program to learn Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico, at Ivan Illich’s CIDOC (Centro Intercultural de Documentación) and Paul was one of them. He married one of the other students, Rona Rothman, who also went on the journey, while they were there.
He came back from Mexico as Pablo Guzmán. He and his best friend on campus, Bob Bunkley, also paid visits to the Black Panther Party office in Harlem. Around that time Pablo adopted the name “Yoruba” and Bob chose “Muntu.”
One of the important things to note here is that Pablo was central in raising the whole issue of “Afro-Latinidad” and multifaceted identity, which was a key element in the Young Lords’ political agenda. Other Puerto Rican leftist organizations did not deal with internalized racism.
Pablo speaks very strongly about issues of race and racism in the piece he wrote on Medium in 2016:
THE SLAVE SHIP
Square One. For a good many Latinos, African-Americans, and people of the Caribbean, that is our link. To music, dance, cuisine, religion, history. And, a politics to build upon. We may be different shades of black. But we be Black. African. That one drop thing has truth. Now, we are a New World Black. I mean, we ain’t African. Proud of Africa. But we gone through the looking glass. Among Latinos we’re also Spanish and Indigenous. In some Latinos, the impact of slavery is much more pronounced. Among others in the New World, the European blend could be French, or Dutch, or British or Portuguese. The Indigenous element might be Mayan, or Taino, or Incan, or Muscogee, or Carib or scores of others. But the African element. Is like no other.
My parents and I were born in New York City. My grandparents are from Puerto Rico and Cuba. Except for my paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother we are all dark-skinned. “Obviously” of African descent. But that guaguancó gene is lying within practically all Latinos with raíces in Africa. So, you might be light-skinned, and you might marry a light-skinned Latina, but hello! One of your babies might be a nappy-headed rhumbera. Took my people a while to figure out genetics. There was a lot of fighting at first about where that baby came from…
Now, yeah, I’m joshing a bit. But the truth is that in some families, the dark-skinned ones sometimes caught hell. Yeah, that racist self-hate thing permeated everywhere. But the moms and grandmoms especially, circled protectively. Bien conmigo, negrita. Ten cuidao con mi negrito. As Pedro Pietri said in his epic poem Puerto Rican Obituary
“Aqui to be called Negrito/Means to be called LOVE”
Pablo told his own story about becoming a Young Lord in February 2016. He includes press clippings and photos from his archives. Some of this material can’t be found in a simple search. I hope you will take time to give it a read:
Since the Young Lords Party ended in 1975, I have gotten more inquiries about the organization than when we were active. And at the time, we were smokin’. Those requests have really snowballed. Most have been from people younger, to varying degrees, than myself (I’m 65). Or, contemporaries who want to tell friends: Yo, THIS is how those crazy motherfuckers did it!
It’s a bit pathetic to admit —- since I was the YLP Minister of Information —- but I have never written anything, really, about my experiences. Except for this piece in the Village Voice 21 March 1995. [...]
Meanwhile a small group of activists in New York in 1969 who were trying to get “a Puerto Rican thing” started heard about Chicago; sent four people to the Midwest in a Volkswagen (including yours truly); and bingo! A chapter in Nueva York! Which, after a split from Chicago in 1970, re-branded itself “the Young Lords Party.”
Our rise foreshadowed the current “Latino explosion.” Or, “near-explosion.” It still hasn’t quite detonated. [...]
Those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about. … The Young Lords were a predominantly Puerto Rican radical group in the United States. The Chicago unit, which began before we did in New York, and was called the Young Lords Organization, started as a gang around 1960. In 1968, they radicalized, thanks to the insight of leader “Cha Cha” Jimenez.
Pablo wrote about what it was like to go to prison for resisting the draft. When we think about the Vietnam War and the activists who fought against it, most of the time the images conjured are of young white men—never young Black guys or Black Latinos. So Pablo explained his experience in his first chapter on May 30, 1973:
“You are to begin your sentence of two years on each count immediately. To be served concurrently.” And yes, Federal Judge Charles Metzner brought down the gavel. My hands were cuffed behind my back.
I turned to say goodbye to my family and friends. It was Wednesday, May 30th 1973. I was 22. The courtroom at Foley Square was packed. It was like looking out on an audience. Different though than the audiences I had looked at speaking in colleges or street rallies. Those always made me a bit nervous, even though people said I was good; I always got nervous. Now, I was more than nervous; I was scared. But, had to put up a front. Big time. Could not show fear. My parents, though divorced, were there together for me. My cousin Gil. Reporters I had dealt with the past four years. And about 150 colleagues and supporters. No time to be a punk.
At the railing I leaned forward. But two court officers grabbed me, one by the throat, and twisted me backwards. Though my Dad was not yet fifty-five, he was in good shape and took the railing, punching out first one officer and then a second. Amateur boxer. He came out of Spanish Harlem, and you did not fuck with those cats. As more officers swarmed, my father’s action was almost a signal to the many Young Lords in the gallery. After all, this is what we did for a living. In seconds the melee in court resembled one of the brawls in Errol Flynn’s Gentleman Jim, a favorite of my Dad and me. “The Corbetts are at it again!” Officers dragged me out of there and threw me in a holding cell. It’s true: when that cell door clangs shut, there’s no other sound quite like it. It fuckin’ rings in your head.
After the end of the Young Lords, Pablo continued his calling, learned as minister of information, by continuing a career in media. His hiring as the program director of WBAI-FM Pacifica in New York City in 1976 made waves, which turned into a tsunami. It eventually included a takeover of the station by mostly white staff and volunteers who were resistant to Pablo’s plans to include new programming that would engage the city’s Black and Latino population at a time when WBAI’s listenership was waning. He resigned in 1977. The New York Times reported:
Pablo Yoruba Guzman, whose selection as program director at WBAI‐FM contributed to a controversy that shut down the radio station for almost two months resigned yesterday, the station announced.
Mr. Guzman, who had wanted the station to air more so‐called third‐world programming, said in a statement that the agreement under which WBAI had reopened was “merely the groundwork for continued infighting to take place and to block Latin and black input into the station.”
So-called? I remember having to send staff and volunteers from our minority-controlled Pacifica station in Washington, D.C., WPFW-FM, to assist Pablo in keeping the station going. The racism unleashed against him at the time was virulent.
I hope these glimpses of Pablo’s past will fill out the obituaries being written for him this week. I’m not dismissing his long career in NYC television news; I just think he was much more than a reporter. Condolences to his wife Debbie, his children Angela and Daniel, his mom Sally, his extended family and friends, and to everyone whose lives he touched through his commitment to community, political, and social change.
Rest in Power.