Francisco Madrid

Interview Description

Oral History Interview with Francisco Madrid

Francisco Madrid was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and immigrated to New York City with his family in 1970, settling on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn. He attended high school in the evenings, studying English, and worked in small factories by day. He was drafted, and rather than enter the Army, he joined the Navy, where he spent three years. During that time he was able to perfect his English. After his military service, he enrolled at Brooklyn College, planning to study economics. His interests shifted to theater, and he began to take courses in the theater department. In 1981, he started teaching bilingual classes in a Brooklyn public school, and gained a master's degree in bilingual education. He was then admitted to a doctoral program in educational drama at New York University. In 1989, he was teaching in a heavily Latino/a populated school in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn with students from the Caribbean, Central and South America.

In the interview, Francisco Madrid recalls his biographical highlights. He speaks of racial tensions during the early seventies in the Armed Forces, and of relations among Black, White, and Latino sailors. Madrid delves into his professional teaching experience; he has applied his dual interests in education and drama to his classroom work with children, dramatizing abstract ideas such as racial prejudice and social problems, such as the drug epidemic. Madrid describes the racial composition of where he lived; the Ditmas Park and Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn in the late 1980s. He ends the interview with an assessment of Latino theater in New York City. Interview in Spanish conducted by Marcelo Herman.

Brooklyn Historical Society initiated the Hispanic Communities Documentation Project in 1988. Over fifty interviews were conducted to document the experiences of Brooklyn residents who arrived from Puerto Rico, Panama, Ecuador, and several other Central and South American nations in the latter half of the twentieth century. This collection includes recordings and transcripts of interviews conducted between 1988 and 1989. The oral histories often contain descriptions of immigration, living arrangements, neighborhood demographics, discrimination, employment, community development, and political leadership. Also included are photographs and printed ephemera.

Citation

Madrid, Francisco, Oral history interview conducted by Marcelo Herman, March 13, 1989, Hispanic Communities Documentation Project records and oral histories, 1989.004.32; Brooklyn Historical Society.