Genius

Throughout the years and the many lives I’ve lived in different parts of the world, God has blessed me with quite a generous supply of good, caring friends. I love them all, and I hope they have learned to like me as well. Many are extremely talented persons who have done interesting things with their lives. A couple of them I consider geniuses. One of these is, indisputably, Paquito D’Rivera. My friendship with The Paq-Man, as he is known to his friends, goes back four decades, when we both lived in Oh, La Habana, to use the title of his latest book. But that’s not a good-enough reason to profile him in our magazine. Paquito, who started his career as a child prodigy, has just celebrated 50 years of musical performance with a star-studded tribute at Carnegie Hall. And, most important perhaps, he has just been named a “Jazz Master” by the National Endowment of the Arts, an honor he now shares only with Dizzy Gillesie, Miles Davis, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Marian McPartland. Our music editor Mark Holston talked to Paquito at length about his musical career as well as the other hat he wears as a published writer.

On our cover we decided to go with our first Hispanic president. No, he wasn’t inaugurated in January, but we hope he will be confirmed later this year—on television. Jimmy Smits is a strong candidate to make it to the White House on The West Wing, where he will likely replace that other Hispanic, Martin Sheen.

And, since we are not ones to shun controversial figures, we profile Anthony Romero, the first Hispanic to head the American Civil Liberties Union.

As we do every March, we run our annual list of the Top 25 Colleges for Latinos.

Carlos Verdecia