José E. Cruz has composed a unique volume that persuasively challenges paradigms currently dominating the broader study of ethnic politics, and describes new ways to understand Puerto Rican politics in particular. Ethnic political studies as a whole are distinct, because until recently they were generally perceived by scholars of American politics to constitute marginal fields, not among the mainstream intellectual traditions of political science. Against this backdrop José Cruz's book is a major step toward two important goals. The first is to demonstrate conclusively that Puerto Ricans have not been marginal players in New York City politics, and secondly, that the field of ethnic political studies itself is far from a marginal sub-discipline. Whether Cruz intended to achieve this second goal is not clear—but he achieved it.

Cruz's stated intention was to use the case study of Puerto Rican politics in New York City to determine “whether ‘the political process works according to democratic norms and yields policies responsible to citizens’ expectations’” (xiv). He approaches this in two steps. The first is to delegitimize the notion that Puerto Ricans have been politically marginal, and the second is to locate the politics of New York's Puerto Ricans within the city's traditional political institutions and interactions.

Cruz began his analysis by challenging earlier literature that minimized the scope of Puerto Rican politics or questioned their significance, typically by arguing that although ethnic politics (such as “Puerto Rican politics”) appear to persist, they carry little actual weight in today's world. Instead, Cruz was able to demonstrate—through careful reading of three decades of voting data, documentary evidence, and contemporary accounts—that ethnic politics not only persisted, but played defining, substantive roles advancing Puerto Rican interests in New York. In his second major claim, Cruz rejected the idea that Puerto Rican politics were best seen as moving beyond liberalism, to radicalism, and showed instead how Puerto Rican politicians during three critical decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, played politics along very traditional lines. The activities of the Young Lords, around which much of the radical trope revolves, are discussed; Cruz argues, however, that the Young Lords were an aberration, and did not reflect the underlying nature of Puerto Rican participation in city politics. The Young Lords, Cruz tells us, raised important community issues and provided some services, but they eventually faded from the political landscape because their tactics proved unpopular. The issues most often championed by Puerto Rican politicians, community activists, and other leaders have not been radical at all, he found, but were typically those that would further open the doors of New York politics, fostering greater Puerto Rican participation. Finally, Cruz rejected the ideas that colonialism, or the proximity of Puerto Rico, were determining factors shaping the character of New York's Puerto Rican politics.

The bulk of Cruz's analysis lies between Chapters Three and Nine, chronicling in great detail the political machinations of players such as Félix Navarro, Felipe Torres, and Tony Méndez, who played important roles in the Tammany Hall political machine, as well as Olga Méndez and Carmen Arroyo among others, who used their roles as community activists to win seats on local school boards. Finally, he chronicled the politics of Herman Badillo, José Serrano, and Nydia Velázquez, who represent(ed) various districts in Congress. With documentary evidence, Cruz argued that Puerto Ricans have a long, successful history of playing with power brokers, political machines, and powerful individuals in the electoral process, and as a result, have gained a measure of influence in New York City politics.

Puerto Rican political participation, however, was not limited to the electoral arena. Cruz pointed out that one also found Puerto Ricans playing significant roles in informal but powerful political positions, such as César Perales, who founded the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Educational Fund (PRLDEF), and who centered his activities on the voting and civil rights of the community. Luis Miranda was a close advisor to Mayor Ed Koch, and worked behind the scenes of many successful mayoral campaigns over the years. Another community activist with political influence was Angelo Falcón, who published reports and analyses from his Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, to educate the city and the nation on issues of concern to the Puerto Rican community. Falcón played a central role in nationalizing the political significance of New York's Puerto Ricans.

Importantly, Cruz also made clear that it wasn't only Puerto Rican men who played significant political roles in New York—so did many women including Yolanda Sánchez who founded, with others, the National Latina Caucus (NLC). María Canino was an advocate for higher educational issues, and a member of the City University of New York (CUNY) Board of Trustees. Diana Caballero was president of the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights (NCPR).

Beyond its persuasive, well-documented claims about the Puerto Rican community's essentially mainstream, liberal politics, the book's core message is that political empowerment of Puerto Ricans in New York took place through activism at many different levels, and arenas, of city politics, not just through electoral politics. Cruz identified important roles for Spanish language, and Puerto Rican culture, in this ascendance. The book documents Puerto Rican leaders’ engagement with traditional (non-Puerto Rican) elites, and their use of existing democratic institutions to gain and maintain political influence. From a theoretical perspective, Cruz's work suggests that under certain demographic and political conditions, ethnic or racial minority groups can move from the margins into the mainstream of American politics. Puerto Ricans have demonstrated this in New York, and Latinx have the potential to demonstrate it on the national level soon.

This is an important book that I can highly recommend not just for undergraduate and graduate students, but for scholars, journalists, and anyone else who is interested in Puerto Rican politics specifically, and Latinx politics generally.