In 1972, leaders of the Puerto Rican community founded the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that, from the start, has fought to defend the legal and educational rights of an oppressed community.

Six months after one of their worst fiscal crises, Cesar Perales, president of the fund, spoke yesterday about the future of the institution.

According to Perales, the fund now deals with a diversified Latino population whose problems are more complicated due, in part, to the problems faced by non-citizen Latinos. In addition to traditional issues like education and access to healthcare, “we have problems such as labor exploitation, which are new for us,” he said.

Areas for possible litigation include “the refusal to provide immigrants with appropriate health care” and the lack of programs for Latino children with talent.

The fiscal crisis—the center depends exclusively on private funding—corresponds to an era in which there is much less support for civil rights. The fund had to dismiss six of 23 employees and reduce salaries for four months, until last month. The actual deficit is $250,000 for this year, in addition to a prior debt of $250,000.

The requests for help that the PRLDEF made to the community have raised $50,000, mostly from lawyers who benefited from center programs. “That is a lot if you consider that it is a community of modest means,” said Perales.

In response to accusations that former executive director Juan Figueroa embezzled funds, Pareles describes them as “foolish rumors,” and added that there hasn’t been a need to carry out an audit.

The PRLDEF will not change its name to reflect that it serves a diverse community. “Let people see what we do and they will understand who we are,” he said.