BORIMIX Awards 2024: Puerto Rican Cultural Leaders in New York
The 2024 BORIMIX Awards honored a spirited group of writers, performers, scholars, visual artists, and cultural leaders whose work carries Puerto Rican creativity across disciplines, generations, and borders.
Presented during Puerto Rican Heritage Month in New York, the awards celebrated Giannina Braschi, Máximo Rafael Colón, Arlene Dávila, Sully Díaz, Gabriel Diego Hernández, Sonia Manzano, Eddie Noel, Willie Perdomo, Charles Rice, Andrés “Chulisi” Rodríguez, Didi Romero, Jeannie Sol, and Rhina Valentín.
Together, the honorees represented the range and vitality of Puerto Rican culture in New York: poetry and fiction, theater and television, photography and scholarship, music, performance, and community leadership.
A Celebration of Puerto Rican Arts in New York
The BORIMIX Awards ceremony took place on November 22, 2024, at the Silberman School of Social Work Auditorium in East Harlem, home of CENTRO: The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College.
The ceremony opened the 2024 BORIMIX Puerto Rico Fest with visual art exhibitions, live entertainment, and a celebration of Puerto Rican and Latin American culture. The festival was presented through the collaboration of Teatro SEA, Teatro LATEA, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, and CENTRO.
BORIMIX Awards 2024 Honorees
- Giannina Braschi
- Máximo Rafael Colón
- Arlene Dávila
- Sully Díaz
- Gabriel Diego Hernández
- Sonia Manzano
- Eddie Noel
- Willie Perdomo
- Charles Rice
- Andrés “Chulisi” Rodríguez
- Didi Romero
- Jeannie Sol
- Rhina Valentín
The list brought together celebrated figures and emerging voices. Poets Giannina Braschi and Willie Perdomo represented two distinct generations of Puerto Rican literature in New York. Photographer Máximo Rafael Colón has chronicled the political and cultural life of the city’s Puerto Rican communities. Arlene Dávila’s scholarship examines Latinx culture, media, race, and urban life. Sonia Manzano, Sully Díaz, Didi Romero, Andrés “Chulisi” Rodríguez, and Rhina Valentín embody the breadth of Puerto Rican performance across theater, television, comedy, and musical theater.
Rather than separating literature, scholarship, visual art, and performance, BORIMIX places them in conversation. That cross-pollination is one of the festival’s signatures—and one of the great energies of Puerto Rican culture in New York.
From the Lower East Side to the City at Large
BORIMIX Puerto Rico Fest was established in 2006 by Puerto Rican visual artist Miguel Trelles and Manuel Morán, founder and artistic director of Teatro SEA. Beginning as a month-long gathering of diaspora artists at The Clemente on the Lower East Side, it grew into a citywide festival connecting artists from Puerto Rico with Puerto Rican, Latinx, and Latin American communities across New York.
The festival’s programs encompass theater, poetry, visual art, music, film, dance, panels, and performance. Its audiences are likewise expansive: multigenerational, multilingual, and drawn from communities throughout the city.
By bringing these artists together during Puerto Rican Heritage Month, BORIMIX affirms that Puerto Rican culture flourishes both on the island and throughout its diaspora. The traditions are not rivals or distant relatives. They are participants in the same restless, inventive cultural conversation.
Related Reading
- BORIMIX and Latinx Theater in New York
- Puerto Rican poetry: poets of the island and diaspora
- Puerto Rican poets at the Whitney Museum
- Latinx theater and philosophy
- BORIMIX 2024 photo gallery
Editorial Note
This article was prepared by the editorial team of this site as an archival account of the 2024 BORIMIX Awards. It was not written by Giannina Braschi.
Last reviewed and updated: September 7, 2026