It is with deep sadness that the Department of Film and Media Studies share the news of the recent death of Blanca Vázquez, a longtime adjunct professor who leaves a lasting impact in our department and throughout Hunter. She will be profoundly missed as a brilliant educator and an unrelenting fighter for economic and racial justice.
Blanca Vázquez spent her entire life in analysis and action around the cause she was unwaveringly committed to: liberation from oppression. She is celebrated as the founder and editor of the Puerto Rican academic journal CENTRO, Co-Director of the Aronson Awards for Social Journalism, and devoted PSC CUNY organizer for the rights of part-time CUNY faculty.
Blanca came alive in the classroom and with great enthusiasm shared her years of study with her students. Blanca’s ability to understand her student’s realities came from her working-class experience. She grew up in Brooklyn with her mother and three sisters and lived through difficult Puerto Rican migration experience of the 1950s. Her father drove a cab, and her mother worked in a factory. Blanca came of age in a New York City that was often hostile to Puerto Ricans.
As a student at City College, during an era of global anti-colonial struggles, heavy protesting against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and campus takeovers defending a then tuition-free City University of New York, Blanca’s consciousness of class struggle and the colonialism that had displaced hundreds of thousands of families like hers from Puerto Rico took shape.
Her relationship with Hunter College began in the 1970s with the struggle to create the Center for Puerto Rican Studies – a fight she participated in with hundreds of CUNY students and faculty. Blanca often spoke about this experience as the foundation of her revolutionary spirit.
Out of this struggle, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies was born. In 1987 Blanca became the founding editor of CENTRO, an academic journal devoted to Puerto Rican Studies, and served in this role until 1997. Under her leadership the journal became the only US publication specifically devoted to the Puerto Rican lived experience.
Her examination and challenge of capitalism, racism, and gender discrimination would profoundly deepen over the decades.
She is known for articles and reviews critical of both the musical and its film adaptations of West Side Story, highlighting the impact it had on her community.
“Interestingly, during the six decades of West Side Story’s replaying, there have been no productions backed with vast amounts of capital that tell the stories of Puerto Ricans boldly claiming their power” Blanca Vázquez Women’s Media Center
Blanca was passionate about Puerto Rico and advocated for its independence. She was arrested on January 6, 2000, along with actress Rosie Perez and other women, for an act of civil disobedience to demand that the US Navy end its decades of bombing exercises in Vieques, Puerto Rico. She was an advisor and researcher on award-winning documentaries most notably La Operacion (1982) which exposed the forced serialization abuse of Puerto Rican women.
Organizing was a constant for Blanca. She worked with groups demanding the liberation of political prisoners, holding the NYPD accountable for police killings, and calling for a free Palestine.
In 2005 Blanca began teaching in the Department for Media and Film Studies, and in 2018 was recognized for her outstanding teaching with the Hunter College Insdorf Presidential Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching.
Blanca was a fierce advocate for free thinking, independent and investigative journalism, and community newspapers, and she believed deeply that journalism was a tool in the fight for justice.
In 2006 she was invited to join the steering committee of the Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism at Hunter College and 2014 became the Co-Director.
L to R: Tami Kashia Gold, Karen Hunter, Blanca Vázquez, James E. Causey, Andre Lee Ellis
Blanca retired in 2020 and, not surprisingly, showed up late to her retirement party. She explained, “I was in the middle of a life changing discussion with my students on the construction of ‘whiteness’.”
Her community was shaped by the connecting chapters of her journey and consisted of her literal and chosen sisters, writers, artists, filmmakers, neighbors, Indepentistas, socialists and Marxists.
On June 10th, surrounded by loved ones Blanca whispered, “. . . stay vigilant in the struggle to end the genocide in Palestine.”
Blanca Vazquez was our comrade, sister, friend and a beautiful symbol of love and resistance.
