State Senator Gustavo Rivera’s Journey From Puerto Rico to the Bronx

Ed. Note: This is the first in a series of articles about State Senator Gustavo Rivera who was thrust into the spotlight after defeating the controversial Pedro Espada, Jr. last fall. Rivera represents the entire Norwood News coverage area.

Just 10 months into his new job as a state senator representing the northwest Bronx, Gustavo Rivera is a relative newcomer to elected office. But Rivera, a Puerto Rican native who moved to the Bronx 13 years ago, is not new to his party’s liberal ideology. He grew into it through years of study and an unexpected discovery during his early years in New York City.

Much like the vast majority of Puerto Ricans, Jose Gustavo Rivera’s parents, Lydia and Jose Manuel Rivera, exercised their right to vote on election days. (Rivera and his brothers, Jose Manuel, Jr. and Jose Javier, all go by their middle names.) But they were not in any other way political.

Both parents grew up in the center of the Caribbean island country without their fathers. Each became the first in their families to attain high school and college degrees and preached the value of education to their three sons.

“Both his mother and myself, we stressed the importance of education on them,” says Rivera’s father. “It doesn’t matter what they want to do. But you need to have an education. It will always be there.”

After earning undergraduate and master’s degrees in biochemistry in Puerto Rico, Jose Rivera went to Wisconsin to pursue a PhD. But the pursuit was cut short when his first son, Gustavo Rivera’s older brother, Jose Manuel, Jr., began showing signs of what is now known as autism. Determined to help his son succeed, the elder Rivera turned his attention to studying up on this mysterious developmental disability. Now a high-functioning autistic who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, Gustavo’s older brother makes a living translating books into Braille.

Jose Rivera, of course, wanted badly for his middle son, Gustavo, to go all the way with his education and earn his doctorate.
“Gustavo was always an extremely curious guy,” his father says. “He wanted an answer for everything. Always wanted to know the why, what and  whom. It got him in trouble with some of his teachers.”

As a child, Gustavo’s mother called him “Papa con ojos” or “Potato with eyes” because of his oval-shaped head and enormous eyes. He was a mature conversationalist at a young age and felt as comfortable speaking with adults as he did with his peers, his father says. In secondary school, his father says young Gustavo was “very peculiar; he chose his friends very carefully.”

Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood in the capital of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Rivera says he was “not wealthy but didn’t lack for anything.” He attended private schools until eventually matriculating at the public university in San Juan, the University of Puerto Rico.

Although it may be hard to imagine now, given his signature shaved head and sharp suits, Rivera entered college looking like a “long-haired skater dude,” he says.

Unlike his math-loving father, Rivera drifted toward the social sciences. He settled on political science with an eye toward law school. “Then I talked to people going [to law school],” he says, “and hated them.”

He ultimately decided to continue pursuing political science on the graduate level and applied to three schools in the United States — the University of Pittsburgh, Georgetown University and the City University of New York. CUNY ended up being the only school to accept him.

Though he had never been to New York City, he decided to give it a shot.

The mere thought of gritty Gotham made Rivera a little nervous. “I thought every corner would be like ‘Braveheart,’ Aaagh!” Rivera says now, seated comfortably at his own personal Seinfeld diner, the New Capital restaurant in Kingsbridge Heights.

Although he came to New York thinking about a career in academia, it didn’t take long for Rivera to find himself knee-deep in an election.

In 1998, one of his classmates decided to run against powerful Brooklyn Councilman Angel Rodriguez, who was later sent to prison after pleading guilty to bribery charges in 2003.

He jumped in with both feet, banging on doors in some of the most dangerous, rundown projects in the city where, he says, he “got a gun pulled on me a couple of times.” His candidate got destroyed in the primary, but Rivera learned a couple of valuable lessons from the experience.

For one, Rivera saw first-hand the depth of poverty in a big city like New York. On one visit at one of the worst buildings on his Brooklyn tour, Rivera says everything “came into focus” for him. After walking up a particularly dirty staircase and down an equally filthy hall, he knocked on one of the doors on his list. A man opened up to reveal “a nice home” — clean, organized — an oasis among the wreckage.

After that visit, Rivera says he realized the people in these projects were all inherently good people who were hampered by their situation and surroundings. It’s difficult to emerge from this type of poverty even if you do keep your own living space in pristine condition, he thought, even if you manage to make it to school or work every day.

A conservative would say anyone can succeed and overcome their surroundings if they try hard enough. A liberal would say that might be true, Rivera says, but some people have it harder than others and it’s the state’s job to make it easier.

That encounter “turned me into a liberal,” Rivera says now as state senator representing the Bronx. “It’s the state’s responsibility to give people more access, not less” to the tools they need to succeed.

Ed. Note: Look for Part II of this series on 33rd District State Senator Gustavo Rivera in the next edition of the Norwood News, which comes out Sept. 22.