Rosie Perez Is Fighting the Power

Don't look now, but the onetime Fly Girl choreographer who squealed ''Mookie!'' in Do the Right Thing just may be the most provocative Brooklyn-bred director not named Spike. Perez, who has always been fiercely proud of her Puerto Rican roots and was even jailed over the U.S. Navy's test bombing of Vieques, poured all her passion into the doc ¡Yo soy Boricua, pa'que tu lo sepas! (I'm Puerto Rican, Just So You Know!). ''I made the movie out of frustration,'' Perez says of her debut, which airs on IFC starting June 12. Why? She points to her Oscar-nominated turn in Fearless: ''It wasn't about a Latin woman — I had to fight for that.'' Perez's film mixes vibrant scenes of her in Puerto Rico with an episodic look at the island's history that will shock most viewers. Yet the 41-year-old's trademark sassiness still shows. ''This story is long overdue,'' she says. ''What are we, chopped liver?''