Biography of Jesus Colon

(1901-1974)

 Little has been written abut Jesus Colon although his single published volume of essays, A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches, is well known.  Unlike other Puerto Rican writers of his period, who wrote predominantly in Spanish, Jesus wrote his reminiscences in English.  Because of this, he is clearly able to express concerns that are not limited to those of the Puerto Rican community in New York City.  He is also able to relate the customs and ideals of a class  of  workers with which he identified.  His essays are considered to be seminal for the development of Puerto Rican literature in the United States because of his class stand, and his interest in race.  

Born into a working class family in Cayey, Puerto Rico where his father was a baker, Colon experienced early the struggles of poverty and survival.  His home was located behind the town cigar factory.  Here he was influenced as a young boy by the readers hired by the cigar factory workers to read to them as they worked.  These readers were dramatic performs and kept the workers abreast of current as well as historical events.  He was exposed to the ideas of Karl Mark, Emil Zola and Honore de Balzac.  From these ideas he formed a personal ideology that was liked to socialism.   He was exposed early to ideas through workers' discussions  on the benches that bordered the public square.  He developed a strong personal sense of justice that led to interest in both the spoken and written word.  

At sixteen, he left Puerto Rico as a stowaway on the SS Carolina and landed in Brooklyn.  In New York he began a series of jobs that would expose the exploitation and abuse of lower-class and unskilled workers. Many of these jobs were dangerous and difficult.  He managed to survive while writing of the daily life of the lower class Puerto Rican workers in New York.  He even began an ingenuous Spanish-language newspaper.  All the while he suffered the abuses of discrimination.  At one time he was offered a job by an editor, impressed with his writing skills, but was soon dismissed when the man admitted to him that he though he "was white."  

His writing talent and interest in the working-class led him to a fifteen year association with the Daily Worker, the publication of the national office of the Communist party in New York.    In 1955 he began writing a regular column for the newspaper and continued doing so until only a few years before his death.  

In addition to his work for the Daily Worker, he was president of Hispanic Publishers which published history books, political information pamphlets in Spanish and literary books.  Colon was always interested in politics and in 1969 he ran for public office on the Communist party ticket. He sought the office of comptroller of the city of New York, running with Rasheed Storey, candidate for mayor.  Among their demands were the creation of jobs for youth at minimum weekly salaries, free day care for children of working mothers, an end to police brutality through the elimination of prejudiced offers from the police force, and an end to the draft and the Vietnam War.

Colon was married twice in his life:  once to his wife Concha, and after her death in 1958 to Clara Colon, a feminist and social activist.  He survived both of them and, in accordance with his wishes his body was cremated and his ashes were returned to Puerto Rico and scattered over the city of his birth.

His efforts on behalf of Hispanics, minorities, and other workers gained him the respect and admiration of co-workers and colleagues and made his writings one basis for the political and social orientation of the Puerto Rican literature to be produced in New York in the 1960's and 1970's.