Juan Flores, Scholar of Nuyorican Music and Culture, Dies at 71

Flores was born John Martin Flores in Alexandria, Virginia. His father was a Puerto Rican writer and academic; his mother was of Hungarian descent. Flores grew up in Bayside Queens and attended Queens College and Yale University, where he studied German.

He later changed his name to Juan and turned his full attention to the analysis of Latino culture, focusing on Puerto Rican life in the diaspora, exploring what he deemed “the pan-ethnic 'Latino' label and the uneasy fit of the Puerto Rican identity within it.”

Flores was the Director of Latino Studies at New York University, where he was a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis.

His death on Dec. 2 was caused by complications from the autoimmune disease Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Flores’s wife, Miriam Jimenez Roman, told the New York Times.

Flores passed away at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, where he was admitted after falling ill while he attended a conference at the University. He lived with his wife in Brooklyn.