María E. Pérez y González, professor of Puerto Rican and Latinx Studies and co-director of the María E. Sánchez Center for Latinx Studies at Brooklyn College, was recently awarded a prestigious Citation of Honor by the New York City Office of the Mayor. Pérez y González was one of only three honorees, recognized for her lifelong dedication as a scholar, educator, and former chair of the Department of Puerto Rican and Latinx Studies. The award was presented by Deputy Mayor Ana J. Almanzar at the mayor’s Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration on October 9 during a ceremony led by the Community Affairs Unit. The event highlighted leaders whose work has shaped the cultural and intellectual landscape of Latino communities in New York and beyond. For more than 33 years, Pérez y González has been a guiding force in higher education, mentoring students from all backgrounds, advancing the field of Puerto Rican and Latinx studies, and amplifying the voices and histories of Latino communities across the United States. Her most recent work is Puerto Rican Studies in the City University of New York: The First Fifty Years (Centro Press, 2021), which she co-edited with Professor Emerita and prominent U.S. historian Virginia Sánchez Korrol. Deputy Mayor Ana J. Almanzar (left) presents María E. Pérez y González with the Citation of Honor on October 9 at the Mayor’s Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration. As the co-director of the María E. Sánchez Center for Latinx Studies, Pérez y González has coordinated lecture series and workshops, implemented undergraduate research assistantships, and partnered with campus entities to bring forth academic and cultural campus-wide programming focused on Latino communities. The center is named in honor of María E. Sánchez, who served as the chair of the nascent Department of Puerto Rican Studies from 1974 to 1989 during the economic recession and its aftermath, in which she successfully led the four-year-long struggle for departmental self-determination, co-founded the widely acclaimed Bilingual Teacher Education Training Program, and ensured Puerto Rican studies would be part of what became the nationally recognized Core Curriculum.
