Meet Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Miranda is an actor, playwright, composer, rapper, and writer. He was born in New York City to Puerto Rican parents. He is best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals In the Heights and Hamilton. Both productions won the prestigious Tony Award for Best Musical, and Hamilton also took home the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
In the Heights reveals the joys and heartbreaks of a vibrant, tight-knit Latino community in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood from the perspective of a bodega (corner store) owner. Hamilton is about the life of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Born in the British West Indies, Hamilton was determined to make his mark on his adopted country, America, despite facing many challenges. The work blends historical accuracy with contemporary hip-hop music and features a multiracial and multicultural cast.
Latino and American by Law
According to 2015 statistics, nearly two-thirds of the Latino American population was born in the United States, making them U.S. citizens. Some Latinos born outside of the 50 U.S. states are also citizens. Puerto Rico has been formally associated with the United States as a territory since 1917. Since then, any person born in Puerto Rico automatically acquires U.S. citizenship and may live legally in the United States with most of the same rights and protections afforded to “natural-born” citizens. An 1848 treaty had previously offered a similar type of citizenship, called statutory citizenship, to Mexicans living in U.S. territories that had yet to become states at that time, including California. More than half of all Latinos living in the United States in 2010 traced their origin to Mexico (63 percent), followed by Puerto Rico (9.2 percent), Cuba (3.5 percent), and the Dominican Republic (2.8 percent).
