New York Young Lords History
Highlights (1971- 1976)

1971 YLP
JAN 1971 -- YLP National Office opens at 117th Street & 3rd Avenue and begins leadership school to train officers of organization. YLP continues struggle to fight male chauvinism and recruit more women to organization.

MAR 1971 -- Launch of "Ofensiva Rompe Cadenas" expands YLP to Puerto Rico. Branches established in El Cano and in Aguadilla.

APR 1971 -- Third World Woman's Conference in Toranto, Canada. First conference to bring together women Third World Woman from across the world. Young Lord women detained at border. After conference, YLP publishes postion against the white middle- and upper-class women's movement in the United States.

MAY 1971 -- YLP turns to building mass organizations for specific constituencies: Workers, Lumpen, Students, Community Pro-Defense of Community, Women's Union, and GI organization. Women's Union produces several issues of La Luchadora newspaper.

OCT 1971 -- Pablo "Yoruba" Guzman travels to China to represent the YLP.

1972 YLP/ PRRWO
JAN - MAY 1972 -- YLP members organize Workers, Lumpen, Students, Community Pro-Defense of Community, Women's Union, and GI organizations.

MAY 1972 -- Young Lords Party members in Puerto Rico resign from the organization asserting that the role of the YLP is in the United States.

JULY 1972 -- YLP becomes the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization (PRRWO) under the direction of Gloria Fontanez. The mission is to organize Latino/a workers toward the building of a U.S. revolutionary party.

AUG - DEC 1972 -- PRRWO members are assigned to workplaces across the Northeast to organize workers' study groups.

1973 PRRWO
-- Cadre focus on organizing in factories and hospitals and within trade unions.

-- Central Committee leadership engaged in theorectical debates and less organizing.

-- Central Committee suspends publication of Palante newspaper.

-- Pablo "Yoruba" Guzman is imprisoned for refusing induction into US Army. He is incarcerated for a year in a Florida federal prison.

1974 PRRWO
-- New York cadre focus on organizing in factories, hospitals, Brooklyn College and District 1 School District.

-- Philadelphia cadre focus is on factory and hospital organizing, organizing of women, and collaborations with other activists organizations around issue of police brutality.

-- Other branches engage in worker organizing and set up study groups and collectives.

-- Yoruba released from prison, returns to New York, and resigns from PRRWO.

1975 - 1976 PRRWO
-- Central Committee leaders limit organizing work and move members toward increased study of Marxism-Leninism and Party Building documents.

-- Tremendous demoralization in organization.

-- By 1976, the organization, like others in the movement, had disintegrated and ceased to exist as a result of opportunist leadership, government and police infiltration, and shifting political directions.

Back to 1967 - 1970