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A History of Puerto Rican Politicsin New York City: 1860s to 1945

ANGELO FALCON

The more than century-old presence of a politically active Puerto Ricancommunity in New York City has been curiously obscured, afflictedby what Russell Jacoby calls "social amnesia," and with serious con-sequences.' The existing literature on the Puerto Rican experience inthe United States for the most part ignores the pre—World War II historyof this community, at best trivializing it as a curiosity or bringing itdown to the level of lifeless statistics on migration.

"Not until the 1960s did Puerto Ricans begin organizing in their owninterests," 2 one writer reports. In response to discrimination encoun-tered by Puerto Ricans, another writes,

To make matters worse, the Puerto Ricans did little to help themselves, eitherthrough mutual-aid societies or through political pressure.. . . Most of them didnot vote in elections, and therefore they had no spokesman in government—local, state, or national—who would work to improve their condition.'

Writing of the organizational life of the Puerto Rican community ofNew York in the 1970s, James Jennings concludes, "The relative ab-sence of organizations . . . is only one indication of the very apoliticalhistory of Puerto Rican communties." 4

Even a cursory examination of the early history of the Puerto Ricanin New York raises serious problems for these interpretations. This pre—World War II experience was much more substantial and important tothe life of Puerto Ricans than has been portrayed in most writings onthis community. Such an examination entails the necessary broadeningof the horizon of the Puerto Ricans' political development in the United

Special thanks are extended to Carlos Diaz, Henry Rodriguez-Reyes, Gilberto de Jesus,and Felix Ojeda for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

States and radically alters commonly held explanations of this com-munity's realities.

The rather sparse research on the history and politics of Puerto Ricansin the United States began to appear relatively recently. The publicationof the Memorias de Bernardo Vega in 1977, a personal political accountof the pre—World War II period in New York, represented a majormilestone for research on the early history of this community.' Otherwork, such as that of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos of theCity University of New York, Rosa Estades, Virginia Sanchez-Korral,and others also appeared in the late 1970s and forms the basis for moreextensive investigations and syntheses in this area. °

It may be puzzling to casual observers that so little has been writtenabout the politics and history of Puerto Ricans in the United States.Such a reaction would be natural in the light of the much-publicizedPuerto Rican national revitalization movements of the late 1960s andthe relative proliferation of Puerto Rican studies programs in the U.S.universities since that period. The reality, unfortunately, conforms tothese perceptions.

There are many reasons for this underdevelopment of U.S.-basedPuerto Rican historical and political research. One important cause isthe overwhelmingly poor and working-class nature of this community,a situation made more extreme by what is perhaps one of the mostintense back-and-forth migrations in U.S. history. But such researchalso has been dominated by middle- and upper-class persons not presentin significant numbers in the Puerto Rican communities of the UnitedStates.

Another important source of this problem is the general ideologicalbias of mainstream social science against racial-ethnic and working-class history and politics, as well as that of radical movements. Althoughthis issue has been effectively challenged in the last couple of decades,

. the toll it has already taken on research on Puerto Rican history andpolitics in the United States that could have taken place earlier is tre-mendous, making current efforts more difficult.

These two characteristics of American social science join in inter-esting ways with the specificities of the Puerto Rican situation to negatemany of its critical political and historical elements. Besides beinghighly influenced by the research of non—Puerto Ricans, much of whathas been written on this experience has been by Puerto Ricans whose

personal development occurred primarily in Puerto Rico and not theUnited States.

One form this has taken is the disproportionate role that the com-monwealth of Puerto Rico played, particularly in the late 1940s and inthe 1950s, in explaining the Puerto Rican community in the UnitedStates to American society. The early history of this community wasinfluenced by a number of radical movements that the commonwealthgovernment felt more comfortable exorcising from their accounts of thePuerto Rican experience in the United States and from the Americanconsciousness.

At another level, the demands for Puerto Rican studies programs inturn created a need for university-trained personnel to staff them at atime when the government in Puerto Rico moved to the right with the1968 election of a pro-statehood governor. This resulted in a rathersignificant exodus of independentista intellectuals from Puerto Rico withno long-term intentions of remaining in the United States and withpolitical and intellectual commitments to the struggle in Puerto Ricoand not the United States.

On the other hand, those Puerto Rican social scientists and writersformed by the U.S. experience were and continue to be few and con-centrated in fields such as education, sociology, psychology, and socialwork. The small number of such people, along with the problems theyencounter as minority social scientists from poor and working-classfamily backgrounds, has greatly limited their scholarly output in theareas that concern us here. At the same time, most have appeared tobe in fields that focus -t on the present and that stress psychologicalapproaches, making their professional interest in history and politicsminimal.

It was against such a backdrop of forces that in the late 1960s thePuerto Rican Left in the United States entered into an intense debateover the national question. The purpose of this debate was to determinewhether Puerto Ricans in the United States should be considered partof the U.S. working class or of the nation of Puerto Rico, and thepolitical consequences of this decision. The result was more an ideo-logical civil war than an informed discussion, and in the end it gaveway in practice, if not in theory, to the island-centered influences.

The result has been that the history of the Puerto Rican struggle inthe United States has been distorted in ways that allow for such general

16 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 17

IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 1918 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s

characterizations of it that they can be fitted to a wide array of inap-propriate and sometimes conflicting theoretical frameworks. The prob-lems faced by Puerto Ricans in the United States, for example, arereadily explained by many researchers by the recency of this group'sarrival. Portraying Puerto Ricans as newcomers unaccustomed to ne-gotiating the American system places the burden of adapting primarilyon the Puerto Rican community itself and not on societal institutions.

Politically, Puerto Ricans are presented as a people who only recentlybecame civically involved and who have no tradition of self-help oreven group consciousness in the United States. Within such a frame-work, the problem again becomes one of Puerto Ricans adjusting overtime to American interest-group politics. The European immigrant modelthus becomes simple to apply to the Puerto Rican case under thesecircumstances, despite the many problems this model encounters inactuality.

The early history of the Puerto Rican community in New York Citypresents a challenge to these popular interpretations because it revealsa very politicized community that exhibited a vital and broad-basedorganizational life. The types of issues salient to the early Puerto Ricansin New York were many and wide-ranging, from the political situationof Puerto Rico, local New York City politics, and the Spanish CivilWar, to U.S. imperialism in Latin America.

The Puerto Rican experience in dealing with institutions in New YorkCity for close to a century (and not only the twenty or thirty yearscommonly presented) raises questions about the ability of those struc-tures and practices to respond effectively to the needs of this communityand the poor in general. Puerto Ricans, in fact, have been running forpolitical office in New York City at least since the 1920s, and theirinvolvement with the city's major political parties is even longer.

As a preliminary survey of the early history of the Puerto Ricancommunity in New York City, the approach taken here is more of ahistoire historisante. The goal is to explore briefly the general coor-dinates for further research on this early history by offering a tentativeperiodization. This history is divided into five periods: the pre-1898period; 1898 to World War I; the 1920s; the depression years; and the1940s.

The Pre-1898 Period

Puerto Rican immigration before the U.S. possession of Puerto Ricoin 1898 was primarily to Latin America (Santo Domingo, Cuba, Pan-

ama, and Venezuela), but by this time there had already developed asmall and politically involved Puerto Rican community in New YorkCity. A few Puerto Ricans had found their way to New York beforethe turn of the century to work and study, mainly to the Spanish colonyin the Chelsea area of Manhattan. This early migration (1860s-1890s)was facilitated through contact generated by substantial mercantile trans-actions in sugar and molasses between the United States and PuertoRico.

The politics of this early Puerto Rican community in New York wasdominated by the struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico and therest of the Antilles from Spain. The center of this independence move-ment in the United States shifted from New Orleans to New York Cityafter the American Civil War, largely the result of the political, eco-nomic, and racial strife in New Orleans following its occupation byUnion forces in 1862.

The involvement by this "exile" community in New York City elec-toral politics appeared to be minimal, however. After the late 1860s,the city's politics were dominated by the Tammany Hall political ma-chine from the reign of the Tweed Ring to that of Mayor Richard Croker.The small size of the Puerto Rican community, along with its "exile"orientation, no doubt contributed to this lack of electoral participation.

In 1867, prominent Puerto Rican independence leaders such as RamonEmeterio Betances and Ruiz Belvis met and worked in New Yorkthrough organizations such as the Republican Society of Cuba and othersto lay the groundwork for what became known as "El Grito de Lares"(the Cry of Lares). This 1868 rebellion against Spain in Puerto Rico,though unsuccessful, has become an important symbol for Puerto Ricannationalism. In contrast, the revolt in Cuba that year was successful.The coordination of these two events symbolized more than anythingelse Lola Rodriguez de Tio's poetic phrase that Cuba and Puerto Ricoare the "wings of the same bird."

In the aftermath of the Lares revolt, a number of the rebels foundthemselves in New York as political exiles. In 1869, for example,Eugenio Maria de Hostos and Julio J. Henna, a prominent physicianwho became one of the founders of the Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospitalin New York, arrived in New York. There was also an attempt byindependence forces to regroup that year as the Puerto Rican RepublicanCommittee under the direction of Ramon Emeterio Betances and Basora.The momentum of these efforts was lost through the departure of Hostosand Betances, who left to organize abroad in 1870, and the tragic failure

20 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 21

of the 1873 Virginia expedition, when patriots invaded Cuba in a futileattempt to liberate the island from Spain.

This momentum was regained with the arrival of Jose Marti in 1885.The priority for the Puerto Rican patriots became the Cuban independ-ence movement, which had intensified by the 1890s. In New York, asa result, the Cuban-Puerto Rican Mutual Aid Society was establishedin 1892 and the Puerto Rican Section of the Cuban Revolutionary Com-mittee in 1895.

The formation of the Puerto Rican Section revealed one of the earliestconflicts to develop within the New York Puerto Rican communitybetween the section's petit bourgeois leadership and the growing andradicalized Puerto Rican working class. The apparent success of thePuerto Rican autonomist leader Luis Munoz Rivera in convincing thesection's president, Henna, to delay sending a military expedition toPuerto Rico while he negotiated with Madrid for more autonomy wasthe cause of suspicion by the more radical workers.

This emerging conflict led to the calling of the now-famous publicassembly of the Puerto Rican Section in New York on December 22,1895. The historical significance of this event was that it was wherethe present one-starred flag of Puerto Rico, modeled after the Cubanflag, was adopted. The military occupation of Puerto Rico by the UnitedStates the following year changed the terms of the independence struggleconsiderably, however. Henna's unsuccessful attempts to secure conces-sions from Washington, D.C. , for Puerto Rico, for example, led to theeventual dissolution of the Puerto Rican Section in 1898.

As the 1890s progressed, the presence of working-class elementsbegan to grow within the New York Puerto Rican community. In 1893,one of the first organizations of Spanish and Latino cigar makers, thePopulist Committee, was formed in New York by Antonio Molina,Pachin Marin, and others to begin their involvement in U.S. electoralpolitics. In 1894, Samuel Gompers pointed out that of the 3,000 cigarfactories in New York at the time, at least 500 were owned by Spaniardsand Latin Americans.' This change in the composition of the New YorkPuerto Rican community was reflective of changes in Puerto Rico sincethe 1870s to an agrarian capitalism and the development of urban-basedindustries such as tobacco processing.

1898 to World War I

The aftermath of the Spanish-American War brought tremendouschanges to the island of Puerto Rico and consequently to the Puerto

Rican community of New York City. The political agenda of thosefighting for liberation from Spain changed. The ceding of the island tothe United States also served to facilitate migration to the north. Withthe passage of the Jones Act of 1917, which imposed U.S. citizenshipon the people of Puerto Rico over the objections of the island's legis-lature, the movement of Puerto Ricans to the United States becameeasier. One estimate puts the number of Puerto Ricans migrating to theUnited States between 1900 and 1909 at 2,000, which grew to 11,000between 1910 and 1919. 8 Another estimate put the Puerto Rican pop-ulation in New York City in 1918 at 35,000. 9

There were many pressures on Puerto Ricans to migrate to New Yorkat the turn of the century. Some came as political refugees followingthe Spanish-American War, as did Dr. Henna's mother and over thirtyothers in May 1898. Others were forced to leave the island as a resultof the devastation of the San Ciriaco hurricane in 1899, beginning withthose who arrived in New York on August 6 of that year on the steamshipPhiladelphia. But more important were the economic pressures fromthe opening up of Puerto Rico to U.S. capital, particularly the sugarinterests.

At the turn of the century, Puerto Ricans were being recruited aslaborers to such diverse places as Hawaii, Panama, Ecuador, St. Louis,and Santa Domingo. The Hawaiian migration of 1900-1901 stood outas an example of the tremendous cost of this extensive movement ofpeople. Not only were lives lost and hopes dashed, but Puerto Ricansclearly were not welcome to many. The reception extended to PuertoRican workers was described in an article in the New York Times in1901 that pointed out, when writing of the migrants to Hawaii, that the"recruiting agents have orders to enlist no Spaniards, and no blacks ofunmixed blood are to be taken, the idea being to have the men marryHawaiian women and thus lose their identity with Puerto Rico."' In1905, newspapers in Puerto Rico, such as La Correspondencia and LaDemocracia, carried stories of the plight of Puerto Ricans who hadgone to St. Louis to work but instead found no work and becamedestitute.

During World War I the continued Puerto Rican migration to NewYork began concentrating itself in East Harlem around 116th Street inManhattan in what Bernardo Vega found had already become knownas el barrio Latino. There was also a significant Puerto Rican presencein the Chelsea area and in Brooklyn, areas that were physically worseoff than Harlem. Puerto Rican—owned businesses were growing steadily,

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particularly boardinghouses and barber shops (Bernardo Vega recallsthe existence of at least ten Puerto Rican—owned barber shops in 1917).La Prensa newspaper was established as a weekly in 1913 and becamea daily in 1918 under the ownership of Rafael Viera.

For most of the period from 1898 to World War I, New York Citypolitics remained dominated by the Tammany machine under RichardCroker. This was a period that opened with the consolidation of greaterNew York City, in large part an unsuccessful attempt by Republicansto wrest control of the city from the Democrats by incorporating thelargely Republican areas of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. In 1914,a fusion and reform major, John Purroy Mitchell, took office in theaftermath of a governmental fiscal crisis and President Taft's efforts totopple Tammany after its failure to endorse him in 1912.

Under both machine and reform politics, Puerto Ricans remained atthe periphery of party politics in New York during this period. Althoughan estimated 7,000 Puerto Ricans were registered to vote in 1918,Bernardo Vega pointed out that "no serious effort was made to organizethe community and utilize its citizenship rights." He found that "neitherof the two political parties, not the Democratic nor the Republican, wasseriously interested in the support of Puerto Ricans" and that, in fact,"Puerto Ricans generally thought they had little to gain in Americanpolitics."

In terms of New York party politics, Puerto Ricans appeared toidentify with the Democratic party in contrast to the city's blacks, whowere largely Republican. Although blacks outnumbered Puerto Ricansin New York at the time (they were about 3 percent of the city'spopulation in 1920) and were established in the city longer, they alsoremained politically isolated and powerless. The mechanisms estab-lished by the major parties to control the black vote were more complexthan with Puerto Ricans, however; they included the establishment ofthe United Colored Democracy by Tammany in 1898 and its functionalequivalent by the Republicans in the person of Charles W. Anderson.'

The initial optimism by Puerto Ricans toward the American presencein Puerto Rico soon turned to despair as repression by the U.S. militarygrew. In 1901, Luis Munoz Rivera, the autonomist leader, arrived inNew York disillusioned by the loss of freedom and economic problemsin Puerto Rico under the Americans and the defeat of his Federalistparty in 1900. While in New York, he founded a bilingual newspaper,the Puerto Rico Herald. In 1903, news arrived of the arrest of the editor

of the San Juan News and in 1909 of the arrest of editor J. Beirreirofor printing a cartoon critical of President Taft. Along with this camestories of the "ungodly lives of Americans in Puerto Rico" and callsby Puerto Ricans in Santo Domingo for a revolt against U.S. tyrannyin Puerto Rico." In 1911, a group called the Puerto Rican Alliance wasformed in New York to support the independence of Puerto Rico.

In New York and other U.S. cities, the transition to American ruleover Puerto Rico had unsettling effects on Puerto Ricans in these set-tings. American newspapers such as the Boston Globe and the NewYork Times projected derogatory images of Puerto Ricans as "aborig-ines," people "incapable of governing themselves." Incidents aboundedof the citizenship and legal residency of Puerto Ricans being questionedand of the refusal of the right to vote and public services to PuertoRicans in the United States, the most publicized cases being those ofDr. Francisco Del Valle and his son in Baltimore and Eduardo Canalesin New York City in the year 1900.' 4

One of the most significant changes experienced by the New YorkPuerto Rican community at the turn of the century was the growingnumeric and political influence of the Puerto Rican cigar makers (ta-baqueros). Bernardo Vega estimates that on his arrival in New Yorkin 1916, tabaqueros made up some 60 percent of the Puerto Ricanpopulation of the city and that by 1918 there were 4,500 Puerto Ricansin cigar maker unions in New York."

These tabaqueros, as skilled craftsmen, represented the political van-guard of a radicalized Puerto Rican working-class movement. In 1899,Puerto Rican tabaqueros joined efforts to form La Resistencia in NewYork, an outgrowth of the Cuban-initiated Society of Cigarmakers ofTampa, which formed chapters in New Orleans, Philadelphia, Havana,and Canada, as well as in Florida, as part of the American Federationof Labor (AFL). There was concerted effort to gain official recognitionfor a Hispanic section of the cigar makers' international in 1912, andin 1916 over 100 cigar makers met in New York in support of a majorsugar strike in Puerto Rico.

In 1899, Santiago Iglesias Pantin and Eduardo Conde, two laborleaders from Puerto Rico, came to the United States to attend the annualconvention of the United States Socialist Labor Party (SLP) held inRochester, New York. Although they almost missed the convention anddid not secure any formal resolutions of support for the workers ofPuerto Rico, their visit was significant nonetheless. Iglesias met Samuel

24 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 25

Gompers on this trip, leading to his appointment in 1901 as the generalorganizer for Puerto Rico and Cuba for the AFL. Both men also metwith Latino cigar makers in Brooklyn from La Resistencia and spokeat a socialist gathering at Cooper Union on conditions in Puerto Rico.'

Santiago Iglesias, a Spaniard who was an important leader in thedevelopment of the labor movement in Puerto Rico and who was inprison at the time of the U.S invasion for his trade union activities onthe island, had a strong following among Puerto Ricans in New York.He, however, was also the object of much criticism for his support ofU.S. policies. In 1901, for example, he wrote an article pointing outthe need for unionists to distinguish dark-skinned Latinos from Amer-ican blacks, who, he argued, were harder to organize. One prominentPuerto Rican who challenged this view was Arturo Alfonso Schomburgwho, having come to New York in 1891, was fast becoming a leadingblack scholar in the United States."

Opposition to Iglesias's positions by Puerto Rican workers in NewYork grew sharper in the 1920s when he helped move the Socialistparty of Puerto Rico into a pro-statehood alliance with the island'sRepublican party. In 1922 the Puerto Rican Nationalist Association wasorganized in New York in reaction to policies pursued by the governorof Puerto Rico, E. Mont Reilly, whom Iglesias supported, against in-dependentistas. Reilly purged them from all government posts and pres-sured the Unionist party under Antonio Barcelo into abandoning its pro-independence plank in 1921. When Reilly visited New York in 1922accompanied by Iglesias, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Association greetedthem at the dock with a picket. In 1928, Iglesias drew jeers fromprogressives in the Puerto Rican community in New York during aspeech at a meeting of the Liga Puertorriquena when he failed to con-demn U.S. imperialism. The meeting was picketed by independentistas,and Iglesias was forced to leave the meeting with a police escort.

The 1920s

The direct aftermath of World War I was not a particularly auspiciousbeginning for Puerto Ricans in New York in the 1920s. One study hasfound, nevertheless, that this was a decade in which this small com-munity began to develop social and cultural roots in New York City.'But the early 1920s was a period of economic recession that saw manysetbacks for the American labor movement, characterized by a rise in

xenophobia and by the "red scare." One result was the passage ofhighly restrictionist immigration laws by the U.S. Congress and thetermination of open immigration to the United States after 1924. It waswithin this context that the first fairly large Puerto Rican immigrationbegan to New York.

The war demobilization of 1919 caused a large number of layoffsamong Puerto Ricans in New York. At the same time, many PuertoRican cigar makers were forced into household production and theinformal sector by the 1919-1920 recession and by the more long-termshifts from industrial to corporate forms of economic organization,forces that led to the movement of cigar factories away from New Yorkto New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other locations. In addition, cigarmakers were further displaced by the widespread mechanization of theirindustry that began in 1919.

Bernardo Vega explains that all Latinos in New York were experi-encing similiar economic difficulties. The difference, he finds, was thatthe non—Puerto Rican groups to some extent could count on the assis-tance of their countries' embassies in securing passage back home, whilePuerto Ricans did not have this same sort of support (he points out, forexample, that over 2,000 Spaniards were repatriated in 1922 with theaid of their embassy).

There was a relatively large growth in the migration of Puerto Ricansto New York following these first few years of the 1920s. By 1927 onePuerto Rican organization estimated that 100,000 Puerto Ricans livedin New York City, mostly in the lower Harlem area, Chelsea, and theWest Side of Manhattan. It also found that there were fifteen activePuerto Rican community organizations and an estimated 200 bodegas(small grocery stores) and 125 restaurants owned by Puerto Ricans. 19

The popular Puerto Rican composer, Rafael Hernandez, was in NewYork in the late 1920s and became the owner of what is reputed to havebeen the first Latin music record shop in New York, Almacenes Her-nandez, located in lower Harlem. It was on the sidewalk in front ofthis store where he composed his famous "Lamento Borincano." 20 By1929, lower Harlem, according to Bernardo Vega, had become thecenter of the Puerto Rican community in New York.

Many New York Puerto Ricans were employed during the 1920s ascigar makers, a large number were employed by a large biscuit companyand a pencil factory, and many performed laundry work. It is estimatedthat at this time about 25 percent of Puerto Rican women in New York

26 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 27

worked outside the home as cigar makers, domestics, typists, and op-erators in the needle trades, and a large number worked in their homesdoing piecework. Census records reveal that in 1925 about a quarter ofthe Latinos in south central Harlem were lodgers. The WPA Guide toNew York City, written in 1939, described this area, "Spanish Harlem,"as follows:

Spanish Harlem first acquired its present character after the World War, whenthousands of Puerto Ricans and Latin-Americans came to New York. Poverty,famine, or successive political upheavals in their native countries drove thesepeople to the United States. They settled in Harlem because of the cheap rentsand the sympathetic environment. Sixty percent of the residents, however, havenot been able to obtain regular employment since their arrival.'

Puerto Rican organizational life in New York began to flourish in the1920s. In 1922, the Alianza Puertorriquena, Club Latinoamericano, andthe Club Betances formed the Liga Puertorriquena, which GonzaloO'Neil, its first president, declared in La Prensa, "is not a politicalassociation." 22 Other groups established that year include the PuertoRican Nationalist Association, the Club Democrata Hispanoamericano,the Asociacion Puertorriquena, Club Gaborrojeno, Alianza Obrera Puer-torriquena, and the Federation of Porto Rican Democratic Clubs of NewYork. The Puerto Rican Brotherhood of America, El Club Hijos de Borin-quen, the Porto Rican Political Club, and the Porto Rican Chelsea Demo-cratic Club were established in 1923; the short-lived Comite de Defensade Puerto Rico in 1924; and the Caribe Democratic Club under JosephV. Alonso in 1925. By 1927, a number of periodicals, including ElGrafico, Metropolis, and El Machete Criolla, had been founded.

Incidents of violence against Puerto Ricans were common at thistime. For example, in May 1925 a group of Puerto Ricans was arrestedafter an altercation with some Marines who objected to their singingon the subway. 23 In the summer of 1926 a major incident occurred inwhich some fifty people were injured over a two-week period of violencein Harlem directed at Puerto Ricans. The situation became serious enoughto prompt the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico to make a formalrequest for protection by the New York City police commissioner forthe Puerto Ricans of the area. These attacks, which occurred in thesection between 110th and 118th streets, were initiated by bands of

Jews with clubs. The main cause for the violence was the area's Jewishmerchant's hiring of gangs to intimidate Puerto Ricans because of theirresentment over the rapid growth of bodegas in Harlem.

In response to these attacks the Puerto Rican Brotherhood of Americacalled a mass assembly on August 8, 1926, at the Harlem Casino. Thismass meeting resulted in the formation of the Liga Puertorriquena eHispana to promote the community's unity and provide for its self-defense and the Camara de Comercio Hispana by the Latino businesspersons in Harlem.

The first officers of the Liga Puertorriquena e Hispana were BlasOliveras of the Puerto Rican Brotherhood, Joseph V. Alonso of theCaribe Democratic Club, Pedro San Miguel of the Alianza Obrera Puer-torriquena, and Victor Fiol Ramos of the Liberty Republican Club.Ramos, the Liga's secretary, explained to the New York Times that "thesource of the problem is that people don't realize that we Puerto Ricansare American citizens." 24

Bernardo Vega points to the constant tensions between Puerto Ricansand other groups and to the police practice of ignoring attacks on PuertoRicans. Group self-defense efforts such as that arising from the Harlemincident of 1926 had become a necessity for Puerto Ricans and includedprotest demonstrations against the capital punishment of Puerto Ricansin New York, such as the 1923 Rodriguez incident, where a PuertoRican teenager was sentenced to death for a crime that many believedto be a frame-up.

Another major problem of concern to Puerto Ricans at the time wasthe large number of their compatriots being recruited as laborers toArizona and New Mexico. In response to the labor shortages resultingfrom the restrictionist immigration laws passed by the U.S. Congressin 1922 and 1924, the Arizona Cotton Growers Association recruited1,500 people from Puerto Rico in September 1926.

Stories on the terrible conditions Puerto Ricans faced in Arizonaappeared almost daily for over a month in papers in Puerto Rico suchas La Democracia and La Correspondencia. "We are suffering bitterly.If I had money I would leave immediately for my Homeland"; "EightyPuerto Ricans that went to Arizona College allege that the living con-ditions that were promised were not fulfilled"; "I am barefoot andalmost dying of hunger and the cold—says one unfortunate compatriotsuffering in Arizona" were typical headlines in newspapers from Sep-tember 1926 through most of 1927 in Puerto Rico.

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The Arizona recruiters screened out dark-skinned Puerto Ricans dur-ing their recruitment on the island, a practice unaffected by widespreadcriticism. In October 1926, future recruitment of laborers to Arizonawas suspended pending an investigation of the problems faced by themigrants, which included their being attacked as strikebreakers andattempts by North Americans to use Puerto Ricans to intimidate nativeAmericans in Arizona. Despite these problems, there were occasionswhen the number of Puerto Ricans wanting to go to Arizona exceededthe space available on the recruiting ships. But as Carey McWilliamsreported, those Puerto Ricans in Arizona "staged a minor rebellion"and in a year "90 per cent . . . had disappeared; they 'scattered likeclouds.' ,,25

Throughout the prosperous 1920s, Tammany was in firm control ofthe politics of the city through the administrations of John F. Hyland(1918-1925) and Jimmy Walker (1925-1932). New York Puerto Ricaninvolvement in party politics in this decade continued to be peripheral.In April 1923, the once apolitical Liga Puertorriquena affiliated withthe National Democratic Committee. The Alianza Obrero Puertorri-quena endorsed La Follette for U.S. president in 1924 and La Guardiafor Congress in 1927. The Alianza, formed in 1922 by a group thatincluded Jesus Colon and Luis Munoz Marin, had attracted over 1,000persons to its Labor Day activities in 1923.

The Republican party of New York supported two unsuccessful Latinopolitical candidates in 1927, Rafael Bosch for assembly and Victor FiolRamos for city council from Harlem. Ramos, from the Liberty Repub-lican party, was supported by the Puerto Rican Brotherhood of Americabut not by the Democratic-affiliated Liga Puertorriquena. On December7, 1927, he received a letter from La Guardia, from whom he soughtsupport for his city council candidacy, asking Ramos for a list of PuertoRican organizations in his congressional district. 26 Ramos's reply thatno organizations existed was interesting in light of the fact that a yearand a half earlier he had served as secretary to a coalition of organi-zations, the Liga Puertorriquena e Hispana, formed in response to theviolence against Puerto Ricans in Harlem.

The large size of the Puerto Rican community in Harlem began toattract the attention of local politicians in greater frequency. In 1928,for instance, La Guardia introduced a bill to the U.S. Congress (whichwas not adopted) that would have required the governor of Puerto Ricoto be a native-born citizen of the island and to be elected and not

appointed, as was the current policy. In the same year, when the SanFelipe hurricane hit Puerto Rico, La Guardia led efforts in Congress toprovide relief funds, and he helped Puerto Ricans in New York com-municate with their families on the disaster-torn island.

A recent study has identified prominent Puerto Rican communityfigures in the 1920s, among them Luis Felipe Weber, Carlos Tapia,and Sister Carmelita. Jennings concludes from his study of Brooklyn,perhaps too hastily, that "early settled Puerto Ricans did not turn topoliticians for leadership and influence but rather to social and economicleaders." He found, however, that "one social leader who did moveinto the political realm was a numbers runner by the name of LuisWeber [whose] money was responsible for the establishment of the firstPuerto Rican Democratic Club . . . in the late `20s." 27

On the other hand, Carlos Tapia, a 250-pound, 6-foot-8-inch manwho worked the Brooklyn docks and later owned a restaurant, wasinvolved, as far as Jennings could tell, in helping "Puerto Rican new-comers find apartments, food, and jobs . . . [and] protected PuertoRicans from Italian, Irish, and Jewish 'territorial' aggression." "CarlosTapia," he concludes, "was not involved nor sought to become involvedin New York City politics in the early 1920s." 28 Tapia died in 1945,and in 1964 the first New York public school named for a Puerto Rican,P.S. 120 in Brooklyn, was named for him. Sister Carmelita of St.Peter's Church was, according to this study, the first Puerto Rican nunin New York. She was involved in 1934 in the establishment of theCasita Maria settlement house in East Harlem, which later moved tothe Bronx.

The Depression Years

After the growth of the Puerto Rican community in New York Cityin the 1920s, it was "plunged by the depression into the most menialand service jobs and onto relief rolls. Many returned to the Island inthat decade the 1930s]; others remained and were part of the politicalstruggles of the depression years." 29 Vazquez Calzada reports that be-tween 1900 and 1934, 10,000 or about 20 percent of the total PuertoRican population counted by the census in the United States returnedto Puerto Rico." Nevertheless the community continued to grow duringthis decade. By 1935, the Puerto Rican population had spread to theBronx, Washington Heights, and Long Island.

30 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 31

One estimate puts the number of Puerto Ricans in New York in 1935at 49,500. 3 ' Chenault, however, discusses the problem of the censusundercount of Puerto Ricans during this early period due to its failureto count those born in the United States. 32

The records of the New York office of Puerto Rico's Department ofLabor indicate that between 1930 and 1936, it placed about one-thirdof the 16,500 Puerto Ricans registered with their employment services. 33

More women than men were placed in jobs, primarily as domestics,needleworkers, hand sewers, factory and machine operators, and laun-dry workers; the men as laborers, construction workers, laundry work-ers, porters, errand runners, domestics, and hotel workers. Guia Hispana,a guide published in 1933, listed a small number of Puerto Rican profes-sionals in New York City. It identified thirty lawyers, thirty dentists,more than fifty doctors, forty drugstores, forty restaurants, and thirty-five tailors who were Puerto Rican. 34

The effects of the Great Depression on the New York Puerto Ricancommunity were devastating. It resulted in a very large return migrationto Puerto Rico. In an interesting sidelight, Bernardo Vega estimatedthat of the 2,500 suicides in New York in 1930-1931, he was able toidentify at least 35 as being Puerto Rican. 35 The depression forced avery large number of Puerto Ricans to go on relief, particularly in 1930."In New York City there is not only poverty among Puerto Ricanfamilies," Chenault observed in 1938, "but many of them are dependentupon the various welfare agencies." 36

Despite these economic problems, Puerto Rican community organi-zations in New York and their activities continued to grow in the 1930s.During this period local politicians began "to seek active links withIsland leaders and issues as the presence of Puerto Ricans, especiallyin East Harlem politics, became more visible and insistent." 37 Theincreasing size of this community and the greater problems it faced interms of economic survival contributed to a greater shift of concern tolocal politics. At the same time, the struggle for Puerto Rican inde-pendence and related struggles in Spain and Latin America continuedto dominate much of the community's politics.

Political and economic struggles in New York City during the depres-sion became more intertwined than ever before, and the Puerto Rican,Chenault observed, was "not behind any of the other racial groups inhis willingness to join a demonstration at the Home Relief Office." 38

The resignation of Jimmy Walker from the mayoralty in 1932 in re-

sponse to the Seabury investigations into city government corruptionand the consequent discrediting of Tammany boss John F. Curly createdthe conditions for the La Guardia mayoral victory in 1933. During theLa Guardia years (he was reelected in 1937 and 1940), the power ofTammany declined, eclipsed by the growing control of the Brooklynand Bronx Democratic leaders.

In part because of the unique character of the careers of La Guardiaand Marcantonio, as well as the size of Harlem's Puerto Rican popu-lation, most of what is known of Puerto Rican electoral politics in NewYork in the 1930s and 1940s centers around the Harlem community.Although La Guardia was elected mayor in 1933, in the previous yearhe had lost his East Harlem congressional seat to a Democrat, J. J.Lanzetta, due largely to the Roosevelt landslide that year but also tothe neglect of Puerto Ricans as a source of voters.

La Guardia, however, had apparently learned his lesson by the timeof his 1933 mayoral campaign when he backed the candidacy of J. M.Vivaldi, the director of the Puerto Rican Employment Service of thePuerto Rican government in New York, for the assembly that year,even though it was unsuccessful. He also formed a Hispanic Divisionfor his own campaign. Clearly the Puerto Rican population of EastHarlem had become too large for politicians to ignore.

In his 1934 campaign for reelection to Congress, Lanzetta solicitedthe aid of Antonio Barcelo to campaign among Puerto Ricans in EastHarlem, and Barcelo drew some 2,000 of his fellow countrymen andwomen to one march. Lanzetta, however, lost to his Republican chal-lenger, Vito Marcantonio, marking, as Bernarndo Vega put it, a newepoch for the Puerto Rican community. Congressman Marcantonio, wholocated his district office at 247 East 116th Street and employed Spanish-speaking workers, became an important, if controversial, leader in thePuerto Rican community for most of the 1930s and 1940s.

On taking office, one of Marcantonio's first struggles involved leadinga protest against the growing movement to deport those on relief withless than two years' residence. In response to the jailing of AlbizuCampos and other members of the Nationalist party by U.S. authoritiesin Puerto Rico in 1936, Marcantonio went to the Island to defend thenationalist leader and announced his intention to introduce legislationin the U.S. Congress calling for the independence of Puerto Rico.

When he returned to New York, Marcantonio took part in organizinga march in August 1936 in support of Puerto Rican independence, which

32 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 33

attracted some 10,000 people." Organizations that participated in thisand other protests against the Puerto Rican colonial government's pol-icies included the Mutualist Obrere Puertorriquena, the Harlem sectionsof the U.S. Communist party, the Comite Obrero Espanol, the IndustrialUnion of Cigarmakers, the Committee against War and Fascism, andthe Junta Nacionalista Puertorriquena.

In 1936 Lanzetta won back his congressional seat from Marcantonio,who had affiliated with the newly established American Labor partythat year. Marcantonio was returned to the Congress in 1938 as acandidate of both the Republican and the American Labor parties.

That year 1937 witnessed the victory of the first Puerto Rican electedofficial in New York City when Oscar Garcia Rivera was elected to thestate assembly from East Harlem by defeating the Democratic candidate,Meyer Alterman. Elected as a Republican and with the support of theAmerican Labor party and fusion forces, Garcia Rivera was refusedrenomination by the Republican party the following year. The Repub-lican County Committee gave its support instead to a black attorney,John Ross, because Garcia Rivera "hung around too much with Com-munists and members of the American Labor Party." 4°

Charging a "Tammany plot," Garcia Rivera ran on the AmericanLabor party line and defeated the Republican candidate. Ironically, ofthe five labor ticket incumbents to the assembly in 1938, Garcia Riverabecame the only American Labor party representative in Albany. Hewas defeated, however, in the next election by the future Manhattanborough president, Hulan Jack, the first black to hold that post.

Many years later, Garcia's widow explained that "even though hebelonged to the Republican Party, his legislation was the kind of socialreform corresponding more to Socialist ideology than to a conservativestance." This, she felt, accounted for "his dissatisfaction with theRepublican Party, and his decision to run with the American LaborParty, from which he seceded at a later time because of the leftistideology of the party."'" Presumably she is referring to the greater rolethe Communist party played in the American Labor party after 1938,when the Communists failed to qualify for the ballot on their own.

Puerto Ricans, however, remained Democratic, and this party at lastwas also beginning to make concrete efforts to attract this vote in the1930s. The key figure in these efforts was Dr. Jose N. Cestero, whowas based in East Harlem." As chairman of the Puerto Rican Divisionof the Democratic National Committee, he had organized it by 1936

into a group that included over 150 Advisory Committee members, 13New York City coordinators, a 21-member Ladies Committee, andhonorary membership of U.S. Sen. Robert F. Wagner from New Yorkand Sen. Dennis Chavez from New Mexico, as well as U.S. Rep.Adolph J. Sabbath from Illinois. The Puerto Rican Division worked forLa Guardia's reelection and in the gubernatorial campaign of HerbertH. Lehman.

Incidents of discrimination against Puerto Ricans in New York con-tinued during the 1930s. In one instance, Eleanor Roosevelt's reportson her 1934 trip to Puerto Rico on the poverty and high levels oftuberculosis she found there led to charitable organizations in New York,such as the Gould Foundation and the Federation of Protestant WelfareAgencies, to deny admission to thousands of Puerto Rican children intotheir summer camp programs.' The decision was rescinded when PuertoRican community groups protested by holding a mock trial on this issuein Harlem. In another incident the following year, the arrest of a PuertoRican youngster by white store guards for stealing led to a small riot inthe predominantly black 125th Street area when residents learned that theguards had beaten the youth.

Political developments in Puerto Rico during the 1930s were turbu-lent. The island's economy after World War I was dominated by a smallnumber of large U.S.-owned sugar companies; the tremendous de-pendency this created fostered much of the political conservatism thathad held sway over Puerto Rican society in the 1920s.

In the midst of this movement to the right, there was the formationof the Nationalist party in reaction to the Union party's abandonmentof its pro-independence plank in 1922. With the election of Pedro AlbizuCampos to the presidency of this new party in 1930 and the dramaticnationalist struggles of that decade, Albizu joined Marcantonio and LaGuardia as an important political figure among Puerto Ricans in NewYork.

The Nationalist party, which played a significant role in the island-wide sugar strike in Puerto Rico in 1934, became the object of intenserepression by newly appointed Gov. Blanton Winship and his admin-istration. Four of their adherents were killed at a 1935 university rallyon the Island, leading to the killing of police captain Francis Riggs andto police retaliation. Albizu Campos and other nationalists were im-prisoned in 1936 in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, by anAmerican court.

34 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 35

On March 21, 1937, this repression came to head with the killing of20 and wounding of more than 150 unarmed nationalists by insularpolice during a peaceful parade in the city of Ponce. This incident,which the American Civil Liberties Union concluded was a police riot,came to be known at the Ponce Massacre. The violence continued whennationalists attempted to assassinate Winship in 1939.

These events in Puerto Rico had a profound impact on the politicsof the Puerto Rican community in New York. According to Chenault,"During the recent trouble growing out of the independence movementon the Island, the sympathy of the group in New York was apparentlyentirely on the side of those favoring independence."" An importantaspect of Marcantonio's political appeal to the East Harlem communitywas his strong support for Puerto Rico's independence and his aggressiveprotests on the floor of the Congress against the repression of thenationalists.

A mass march in New York in 1936 in support of the nationalistsand led by Marcantonio was followed in May that year by a conventionto form the republic of Puerto Rico, attended by fifty-one delegatesfrom over twenty Puerto Rican organizations in New York. The PuertoRican Political Prisoners Committee held a mass meeting in 1937 at thePark Palace in reaction to the Ponce Massacre. In 1938, apparentlydissatisfied with the leadership of the Junta Nacionalista in New York,the imprisoned Albizu Campos forced the resignation of the majorityof its members, resulting in the establishment of a new group, theAsociacion Pro-Independencia.

Franco's military revolt in July 1936 against the liberal Spanish re-public created another major issue of concern for Puerto Ricans in NewYork. More important than religious affiliation, family ties, and ideo-logical sympathies led Puerto Ricans to support the Loyalists. Of the3,000 Latin American members of the International Brigade, 300 werePuerto Rican, according to Bernardo Vega." Large numbers of PuertoRicans were present as well at a 1938 Madison Square Garden rallyprotesting the U.S. arms embargo of Spain.

The late 1930s witnessed the death of three prominent Puerto Ricans.Arturo Alfonso Schomburg died on June 10, 1938, having been in NewYork since 1891; by 1922 he had become president of the AmericanNegro Academy. That same year, Antonio Barcelo, Unionist partyleader, died. And the following year, Santiago Iglesias died in Wash-

ington, D.C., during his tenure as resident commissioner, a post he hadheld since 1932.

The depression years and their aftermath set the stage for the greaterpolitical participation of Puerto Ricans in the electoral politics of theUnited States, as well as for the intensification of independence senti-ment in both New York and Puerto Rico. The struggles of Puerto Ricansin New York for relief payments, in rent strikes, and for politicalrepresentation occured concommitantly with those against U.S. repres-sion of the labor and nationalist movements in Puerto Rico.

The 1940s

Puerto Rican migration to the United States took on massive pro-portions following World War II. This migration totaled 90,000 between1898 and 1944; during the 1940s alone, it was 151,000." By 1950,Puerto Ricans lived in most neighborhoods of New York City.'" The1940s were also the years in which the highest concentration of PuertoRicans in the United States was found in New York City (88 percent).

The Puerto Rican Journey, a Columbia University study by well-known sociologist C. Wright Mills, and others, appeared in 1948. 48This study, which concluded that Puerto Ricans came to New Yorkprimarily for economic reasons, was published amid calls to stem thetide of that migration. In that year, for example, the New York CityWelfare Council urged the creation of a federal agency to divert PuertoRican migration away from New York.

The Mills study also found that within the New York Puerto Ricancommunity of the 1940s, "Such organizations as do exist are few andweak" and did "not play any kind of role in the life of the migrant.""In the absence of any community organizations of their own to helpthem when they are in trouble and to defend them in public," the studyobserved, "the machine of Congressman Vito Marcantonio func-tions. "49 In contrast, a more recent study has found that "the first post-war wave of newcomers . . . came into a community that had beenlifted from a long siege of joblessness by the war, but that already hadits own informal network of coping institutions and small organizationsfor dealing with the larger society." 5°

With such a large influx of new migrants from Puerto Rico, the politicsof the island continued to play an important role in the development of

36 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 37

the New York Puerto Rican community. Following the repression ofthe nationalist and labor movements in Puerto Rico by the United Statesin the 1930s, which served to coalesce a strong independence sentiment,the post—World War II period was one in which some fundamentalpolitico-juridical changes occurred in the status and economic of PuertoRico.

Munoz Marin, who returned to Puerto Rico from New York in 1932,had shifted from his earlier support for independence to one embracingNew Deal liberalism. The serious weakening of the Nationalist partyin the 1930s, splits in the Socialist party of Puerto Rico, the politicalmomentum of President Roosevelt and the New Deal, and the rise ofa new intermediate technocratic class in Puerto Rico all contributed tothe victory of the newly formed Popular Democratic Party (PPD) ledby Munoz Marin.

President Truman appointed the first Puerto Rican governor of theisland in 1946 and granted the Puerto Rican people the right to electtheir own governor in 1947. In the 1948 election, the PPD won thethird consecutive time, and Munoz Marin became Puerto Rico's firstelected governor.

Munoz was able to alter considerably the terms of political discoursein Puerto Rico through his populist appeals; Campos and Flores arguethat he had in fact transformed the very "coordinates of Puerto Ricanculture." 51 As a result, by 1950 the concept of commonwealth statusor free associate state had been generally accepted as the most practicalover either statehood or independence in both Puerto Rico and the PuertoRican community in New York.

In reaction to this movement away from independence by the PPD,a number of its members formed a new party in Bayamon in 1946, thePuerto Rican Independence Party (PIP). In 1947 the nationalist leader,Albizu Campos, returned to Puerto Rico after his long imprisonmentin the United States. A major student strike was organized the followingyear at the University of Puerto Rico, in response to school policiesagainst students and faculty who were pro-independence.

The entrance of the United States into World War II at the end of1941 greatly involved the Puerto Rican community of New York. Ber-nardo Vega describes his own participation in the war effort as a trans-lator with the U.S. postal censor. 52 He estimates that some 1,000 PuertoRicans were employed there at the time, including the future East Har-

lem assemblyman, Jose Lopez Ramos (elected in 1958), and Luis QuieroChiesa, who became a prominent civic and cultural leader. In 1946 theWashington, D.C. , office of the government of Puerto Rico publicizedthe fact that Puerto Ricans had the second largest number of wartimecasualties (after the Hawaiians).

Puerto Ricans remained subject to attacks by the press throughoutthe 1940s. "Welcome Paupers and Crime: Puerto Rico's Shocking Giftto the U.S." was the title of a 1940 article appearing in Scribner'sCommentary that generated much protest activity by Puerto Ricans inNew York." The two largest meetings called in response to this articlewere one held in the Bronx and attended by over forty communitygroups and another in Harlem called by the Association of Puerto RicanWriters and Journalists. A New York Times article appeared in 1945that questioned the capacity of Puerto Ricans to govern themselves anddrew a critical reply from Luisa Quintero, now a veteran Puerto Ricanjournalist. The most iniquitous attacks were made by the New YorkWorld-Telegram. Blaming Puerto Ricans for the ills of New York andsuggesting they be driven out, this paper found its offices picketed byover 1,000 protestors on December 1, 1945.

During the 1930s and 1940s the independence movement in PuertoRico was at its height. In New York City, it continued to receivewidespread support from the Puerto Rican community. This support,however, was beginning to see some internal divisions in the 1940s.This became evident to Vega in the celebration held in New York in1940 to commemorate the recent Ponce Massacre: one sponsored bythe separatist nationalist junta that included Marcantonio and Julia deBurgos and the other by a more moderate group headed by GilbertoConcepcion de Garcia and Lorenzo Pineiro. Vega concludes that this"already marked the two orientations adopted by the Puerto Ricanindependence struggle from that point on." 54 Another event of signif-icance in 1940 was the meeting in solidarity with the General WorkersConfederation (CGT) held in the Park Palace and addressed by Mar-cantonio, Jesus Colon of the International Workers' Order, Colon Gor-diary, president of the CGT, and others.

The local political involvement of Puerto Ricans in New York duringthe 1940s continued to be heavily influenced by Marcantonio, whoretained his congressional seat until 1950. "In his time," AdalbertoLopez wrote of this controversial figure, "no one outside Puerto Rico

38 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 39

condemned U.S. colonialism in the Island as passionately and as con-sistently as Marcantonio; no one was as visibly active on behalf ofPuerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland as he was." 55

Vega estimated that in 1940 there were 30,000 Puerto Ricans reg-istered to vote in New York City and that 80 percent voted for FranklinRoosevelt that year. 56 Puerto Rican voter participation did not rise bymuch by the 1950s despite the large increase in migration after the war.The evidence, therefore, seems to support Lopez's observation that inthe 1930s and 1940s, "the Puerto Rican community in New York Citywas far more politicized than has been assumed by many and [that]among New York Puerto Ricans there existed strong support forindependence." 57

Puerto Rican electoral politics in New York remained very localizedin the 1940s. Most information readily available about Puerto Ricansin this decade focuses almost exclusively on East Harlem; however,there clearly was significant Puerto Rican political activity in the Bronxand Brooklyn, although it was probably dominated by the existingpolitical machine in those boroughs. The relative permeability of thereform administration of La Guardia, which lasted until 1945, alongwith his special relationship to East Harlem and Marcantonio, no doubtaccounts for a large part of the relatively high level of activity in thearea, as well as did the comparatively large size of the Puerto Ricanpopulation of El Barrio. It was only as recently as the early 1950s,after the establishment of the Migration Office of the Government ofPuerto Rico in 1948 in New York, that there were the beginnings of acity-wide projection of the Puerto Rican community.

Conclusion

This brief survey illustrates that the Puerto Rican community of NewYork City has some fairly strong political and organizational traditions.Assertions to the contrary are based on little or no comprehension ofthis early history.

The contemporary consensus on the low levels of political partici-pation of Puerto Ricans in New York is reflective of a reality that isindisputable; an understanding of the nature of this early political historydoes not challenge the existence of this reality but rather puts it in anew light and generates a different set of questions about its nature andcauses. As the post–World War II history of the New York Puerto Rican

community reveals, a quantitative and qualitative decline occurred inthe late 1940s and in the 1950s in its politics, in large part the resultof the massive migration from Puerto Rico after the war. Another reasonfor this decline can be found in the types of changes that had occurredin the city's political and social structures and attitudes. There were,as well, the changes in U.S.–Puerto Rico relations after the war withthe adoption of commonwealth status.

These factors—massive numbers of new migrants, changes in NewYork's political structures and attitudes, and a redefinition of U.S .

Puerto Rico relations—and how they affected the politics of the PuertoRican in New York need to be put in historical context and requirefuller exploration than is evidenced today in the literature. This transitionperiod of the late 1940s and the 1950s needs to be understood in all itscomplexity before a truly sound analysis of the sources of current PuertoRican marginalization in the political process can be made. This hasnot been done, and the consequences are apparent in the studies quotedat the opening of this chapter.

This examination of the early history of the Puerto Rican in NewYork does not present an analysis as such of this period but merelyattempts to sort out some key events and describe some trends in arather schematic manner. Questions concerning the relationship amongrace, ethnicity, class, and gender; the role of U.S. labor unions andpolitical parties; the nature of U.S. imperialism; and so on are onlypassed over lightly. These clearly are issues that demand serious atten-tion if one is to go beyond simply discovering interesting but vacuousparallels with contemporary events as a result of such a historical survey.

Another aspect of the research agenda that this historical work in-dicates is needed is for studies of a more comparative nature—historical,political, or otherwise—that fully examine the rich diversity of thePuerto Rican experience throughout the United States and other partsof the Western Hemisphere, as well as studies that go beyond lookingat Puerto Ricans in isolation and begin to compare their experience withthat of other groups in a rigorous way. The focus of this chapter hasbeen New York City, currently populated by about half the PuertoRicans in the United States. It should be obvious, however, that thegeneralizability of this experience is limited and that it may in fact beunique, imposing an inappropriate model on the other half of the PuertoRican people in the United States. For example, it should be clear thata study of New York City would be of limited use, if any, in shedding

40 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s IN NEW YORK CITY: 1860s TO 1945 41

light on the situation of the thousands of Puerto Rican seasonal farm-workers in the United States. The Puerto Rican political and historicalresearch agenda is in need of some work.

Notes

1. Russell Jacoby, Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychologyfrom Adler to Laing (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975).

2. James Stuart Olson, The Ethnic Dimension in American History (NewYork: St. Martin's, 1979), 1:383 (emphasis added).

3. A. H. Live and S. H. Sankowsky, American Mosaic (Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), p. 221 (emphasis added). Citation courtesy of AnaCelia Zentella.

4. James Jennings, Puerto Rican Politics in New York City (Washington,D.C.: University Press of America, 1977), p. 40 (emphasis added).

5. Cesar Andreu Iglesias, ed., Memorias de Bernardo Vega (Una Contri-bucion a la Historia de la Communidad Puertorriquena en Nueva York) (RioPiedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracan, 1977).

6. History Task Force, Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos, Labor Migra-tion under Capitalism: The Puerto Rican Experience (New York: MonthlyReview Press, 1979); Rosa Estades, Patterns of Political Participation of PuertoRicans in New York City (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Editorial Universitaria, Universidadde Puerto Rico, 1978); and Virginia E. Sanchez-Korral, "Settlement Patternsand Community Development among Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1917-1948" (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York, 1981).

7. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 115.8. Jose L. Vazquez Calzada, "Demographic Aspects of Migration" in

History Task Force, Labor Migration, p. 144.9. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 144.

10. New York Times, April 4, 1901, p. 5.11. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 155.12. Ira Katznelson, Black Men, White Cities: Race, Politics, and Migration

in the United States, 1900-30, and Britain, 1948-68 (New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1973), pp. 84, 115.

13. New York Times, May 25, June 8, 1909.14. Ibid., September 26, October 20, 1900.15. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 144.16. Based on unpublished research by Felix Ojeda of the Centro de Estudios

Puertorriquenos/City University of New York.17. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 201.18. History Task Force, Labor Migration, pp. 146-149.19. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 201.

20. John Storm Roberts, SALSA! (New York, Broadcast Music, 1976); andMax Salazar, "Latin Music: The Perseverence of a Culture," in Clara Rodriguezet al., The Puerto Rican Struggle (New York: Puerto Rican Migration ResearchConsortium, 1980), pp. 74-75.

21. The WPA Guide to New York City (New York: Random House, 1982;originally published in 1929), p. 266.

22. La Prensa, December 12, 1922.23. Ibid., May 26, 1925.24. New York Times, August 9, 1926.25. Carey McWilliams, Ill Fares the Land (Boston: Little, Brown, 1942),

p. 80; also see Lawrence Royce Chenault, The Puerto Rican Migrant in NewYork City (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938; reissued in 1970 byRussell and Russell), pp. 81-82.

26. Arthur Mann, La Guardia-A Fighter against His Times, Vol. 1: 1882-1933 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959), pp. 246-247.

27. Jennings, Puerto Rican Politics, p. 24.28. Ibid., p. 45.29. History Task Force, Labor Migration, p. 184.30. Vazquez Calzada, "Demographic Aspects," p. 224.31. Chenault, Puerto Rican Migrant, p. 52.32. Ibid.33. Ibid., p. 73.34. Ibid., p. 71.35. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 218.36. Chenault, Puerto Rican Migrant, pp. 83ff.37. History Task Force, Labor Migration, p. 186.38. Chenault, Puerto Rican Migrant, p. 155.39. New York Times, August 30, 1936.40. Ibid., June 30, 1938.41. Estades, Patterns of Political Participation, p. 32. Also see Rene Tones

Delgado, El Primer Legislador Puertorriqueno en Nueva York: Oscar GarciaRivera (San Juan, P.R.: Coleccion Hipatia, 1979). Citation courtesy of JoseR. Sanchez.

42. Ibid.43. Iglesias, Memorias, pp. 244-245.44. Chenault, Puerto Rican Migrant, p. 153.45. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 245.46. Vazquez Calzada, "Demographic Aspects," pp. 224, 225.47. Welfare and Health Council of New York City, Population of Puerto

Rican Birth or Parentage, New York City: 1950 (September 1952).48. C. Wright Mills et al., The Puerto Rican Journey (New York: Harper

and Row, 1950; reissued in 1967 by Russell and Russell).

Puerto Rican Politics in New YorkCity: The Post—World War II Period

SHERRIE BAVER

During the 1950s a few Puerto Ricans participated in Democratic partypolitics in New York City, but these "politicos" were really "tokens."The meaningful question to be explored in this period is why the Dem-ocrats so neglected the Latino community. In the 1960s, first-generationPuerto Ricans gained some influence in city politics through a varietyof strategies: the style of the moderate Herman Badillo differs from thatof machine boss Ramon Velez, as both do from the approach of themilitant Gilberto Gerena Valentin. A discussion on the diversity of theirleadership styles not only offers insight into the personalities of thesepoliticians but also provides information about their political organi-zations, their constituencies, and the city-wide political arena.' Fromthe 1970s on, the presence of Puerto Ricans in the New York Citypolitical scene greatly expanded.

The 1950s: Tiempo Muerto in Puerto Rican Politics inNew York e

At the end of World War II the great airborne migration of PuertoRicans began, largely as a result of "Operation Bootstrap," a U.S.economic development plan that sought to industrialize the island. Sup-posedly, supply-side economics would create jobs for Puerto Ricans;instead, since Puerto Rico had an agricultural economy, it displacedtens of thousands of farm workers and small town people who migratedto the United States with the lure of postwar jobs. (This migration was

42 PUERTO RICAN POLITICS: 1860s TO 1970s

49. Ibid., p. 105.50. History Task Force, Labor Migration, p. 184.51. Ricardo Campos and Juan Flores, "Migracion y Cultura Puertorriquenas

Perspectivas Proletarias," in Angel C. Quintero Rivera et al., Puerto Rico:Identidad Nacional y Clase Sociales (Rio Piedras, P.R.: Ediciones Huracan,1979), pp. 81-146.

52. Iglesias, Memorias, pp. 255-256.53. Ibid., p. 252.54. Ibid., p. 251.55. Adalberto Lopez, ed., The Puerto Ricans (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenck-

man, 1980), p. 363.56. Iglesias, Memorias, p. 251.57. Ibid., p. 372.

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PUERTO RICANPOLITICS INURBANAMERICA

EDITED BY

James JenningsAND

Monte Rivera

FOREWORD BY

HERMAN BADILLO

Contributions inPolitical ScienceNumber 107

I GREENWOOD PRESSWestport, Connecticut • London, England

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Contents

FIGURES AND TABLES vii

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data FOREWORD BY Herman Badillo

ix

Main entry under title: PREFACE

xi

Puerto Rican politics in urban America.

(Contributions in political science, ISSN 0147-1066 ;no. 107)

Bibliography: p.Includes index.1. Puerto Ricans—United States—Politics and

government—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Jennings,James, 1949- . II. Rivera, Monte. III. Series.E184.P85P8 1984 323.1'1687295'073 83-10739ISBN 0-313-23801-4 (lib. bdg.)

Copyright © 1984 by James Jennings and Monte Rivera

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may bereproduced, by any process or technique, without theexpress written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-10739ISBN: 0-313-23801-4ISSN: 0147-1066

First published in 1984

Greenwood PressA division of Congressional Information Service, Inc.88 Post Road WestWestport, Connecticut 06881

Printed in the United States of America

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INTRODUCTION: The Emergence of Puerto Rican ElectoralActivism in Urban AmericaJames Jennings

Part One

Puerto Rican Politics: 1860s to 1970s

1. A History of Puerto Rican Politics in NewYork City: 1860s to 1945Angelo Falcon

2. Puerto Rican Politics in New York City:The Post-World War II PeriodSherrie Bayer

3. Organizational Politics of the East HarlemBarrio in the 1970sMonte Rivera

Part Two Puerto Rican Politics Today: New York,

Boston, and Chicago

4. Puerto Rican Politics in Two Cities: NewYork and BostonJames Jennings

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