Leonidas Brito never made it to Santo Domingo

By Frances McInnis

December 9, 2009

Leonidas Brito was a quiet neighbor. The 52-year-old rented a single bedroom on the ground floor of 416 East 173^rd Street, a building of crumbling and mismatched orange and red brick with black fire escapes snaking down its front wall.

Guillermo Neiras, 24, who lived in the apartment directly above Brito for several years, said in a recent interview that he rarely heard the small older man moving around below. Read the full story

Rep. Charles Rangel tries to keep his touch

By Frances McInnis
November 4, 2009

Rep. Charles Rangel takes questions from reporters regarding alleged financial improprieties on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photo Credit: Associated Press

One hundred and fifty subpoenas. Thirty-four witnesses. Twenty-one thousand pages of transcripts and 12,000 pages of documents. The end of a 36-year congressional career? Read the full story

The mambo as a New York moment

By Frances McInnis
October 5, 2009

It’s a characteristic New York moment: an ethnically diverse group of students learning a New York version of a Cuban dance from a Dominican teacher in Spanish Harlem. From Jerome Robbins’s electric choreography in 1957’s West Side Story, to East Harlem’s Latin Hustle in the 1960s and ’70s, to Jennifer Lopez’s Latin pop in the early 2000s, mambo has long reflected the New York Latino experience, and the Santo Rico Dance School continues to adapt the mambo to reflect the multiculturalism of the city. Read the full story