J.R. (José Rafael) Guzmán was born in Monte Christi, in the north of the Dominican Republic. He came to the United States as a child, as a result of his mother's political activity against the Trujillo regime. They had first gone to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico in 1952, where the family had relatives, and then moved to upper Manhattan in the mid-1950s. Guzmán lived at 135th Street and Broadway until 1965. At the time that the area became heavily populated with Dominicans, Guzmán left the neighborhood and moved to the Bronx. While studying engineering at the University of Puerto Rico in 1967, he was drafted and sent to Vietnam, although not yet a United States citizen. After his release from the Army, he attended Lehman College, where he studied art. While still at Lehman, he took a job as a graphic artist, and in 1978 he started his own company. At the time of the 1988 interview, he worked with Roman and Tannenholz, an advertising company in Manhattan. Guzmán moved to the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1982, where he owned a home that he renovated himself. Some years before this interview, he obtained citizenship.