Pedro Pietri (March 21, 1944 – March 3, 2004) was a Nuyorican poet and playwright and one of the co-founders of the Nuyorican Movement. He was considered by some as the poet laureate of the Nuyorican Movement. Early years Pietri was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, however his family moved to New York City in 1947, when he was only three years old. They settled in the west side (Manhattanville) section of Manhattan where he and his siblings received their primary and secondary education. Pedro was greatly influenced by his aunt, who often recited poetry and on occasions put on theatrical plays in the First Spanish Methodist church in El Barrio. Pietri himself started to write poems as a student at Haaren High School. After graduating from high school, Pietri worked in a variety of jobs until he was drafted into the Army and sent to fight in the Vietnam War. The experiences that he faced in the Army and Vietnam, plus the discrimination that he witnessed while growing up in New York, were to become the main factors that would forge his personality and style of poetry. "Puerto Rican Obituary" Upon his discharge from the Army, Pietri affiliated himself with a Puerto Rican Civil Rights activist group called the Young Lords. In 1969, he read for the first time his poem, "Puerto Rican Obituary". The New York Times obituary of Pedro Pietri noted that the poem "sketched the lives of five Puerto Ricans who came to the United States with dreams that remained unfulfilled. By turns angry, heartbreaking and hopeful, it was embraced by young Puerto Ricans, who were imbued with a sense of pride and nationalism." Fellow Puerto Rican poet of the Nuyorican Movement Giannina Braschi, who performed with Pedro Peitri, pays homage to "Puerto Rican Obituary" and his sites his own obituary in her novel "United States of Banana." "Puerto Rican Obituary" is an epic poem published in 1973 by Monthly Review Press and widely considered Pietri's greatest work. Nuyorican Poets Café Pietri helped found the Nuyorican Movement together with Miguel Algarin, Miguel Piñero and Lucky Cienfuegos also founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. The Café is an institution where many New York Puerto Rican and Latino artists perform. Pietri wrote the play El Puerto Rican Embassy. The theme was that an island, which was neither an independent nation nor a state of the United States, should