The "Puerto Rican Problem" in Postwar New York City

By Edgardo Meléndez

The "Puerto-Rican Problem" in Postwar New York City presents the first comprehensive examination of the emergence, evolution, and consequences of the “Puerto Rican problem” campaign and narrative in New York City from 1945 to 1960. This notion originated in an intense public campaign that arose in reaction to the entry of Puerto Rican migrants to the city after 1945. The “problem” narrative influenced their incorporation in New York City and other regions of the United States where they settled. The anti-Puerto Rican campaign led to the formulation of public policies by the governments of Puerto Rico and New York City seeking to ease their incorporation in the city. Notions intrinsic to this narrative later entered American academia (like the “culture of poverty”) and American popular culture (e.g., West Side Story), which reproduced many of the stereotypes associated with Puerto Ricans at that time and shaped the way in which Puerto Ricans were studied and perceived by Americans.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: Nov 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781978831483

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Cover: The “Puerto Rican Problem” in Postwar New York City by Edgardo Meléndez

The Puerto Rican Problem in Postwar New York City

Latinidad

Transnational Cultures in the United States

This series publishes books that deepen and expand our understanding of Latina/o populations, especially in the context of their transnational relationships within the Americas. Focusing on borders and boundary-crossings, broadly conceived, the series is committed to publishing scholarship in history, film and media, literary and cultural studies, public policy, economics, sociology, and anthropology. Inspired by interdisciplinary approaches, methods, and theories developed out of the study of transborder lives, cultures, and experiences, titles enrich our understanding of transnational dynamics.

Matt Garcia, Series Editor, Professor of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies, and History, Dartmouth College

For a list of titles in the series, see the last page of the book.

The Puerto Rican Problem in Postwar New York City

EDGARDO MELÉNDEZ

Rutgers University Press

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Meléndez, Edgardo, author.

Title: The Puerto Rican problem in postwar New York City / Edgardo Meléndez.

Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2023] | Series: Latinidad : transnational cultures in the United States | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2022010599 | ISBN 9781978831476 (hardback) | ISBN 9781978831469 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978831483 (epub) | ISBN 9781978831506 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Puerto Ricans—New York (State)—New York—Social conditions—20th century. | Puerto Ricans—New York (State)—New York—Public opinion. | Puerto Ricans—Government relations. | New York (N.Y.)—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century. | Puerto Rico—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century. | New York (N.Y.)—Ethnic relations. | New York (N.Y.)—Politics and government—1898–1951. | New York (N.Y.)—Politics and government—1951- | BISAC: HISTORY / United States / 20th Century | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration

Classification: LCC F128.9.P85 M453 2023 | DDC 305.868/7295074741—dc23/eng/20220707

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010599

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2023 by Edgardo Meléndez

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

Parts of chapter 3 were previously published in "The Puerto Rican Journey Revisited: Politics and the Study of Puerto Rican Migration," CENTRO Journal vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 192–221, 2005. Reprinted by permission from CENTRO Journal.

Chapter 5 is a revised version of an article previously published as Vito Marcantonio, Puerto Rican Migration, and the 1949 Mayoral Election in New York City, CENTRO Journal vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 199–233, 2010. Reprinted by permission from CENTRO Journal.

References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

1 The Study of Puerto Rican Migration and Incorporation in the United States

2 The Puerto Rican Problem Campaign in New York City

3 Dealing with the Puerto Rican Problem in New York City

4 The Puerto Rican Problem in New York City and Puerto Rico’s Migration Policy

5 Marcantonio, the Puerto Rican Problem, and the 1949 Mayoral Election in New York City

6 The Mayor’s Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs

7 The Demise of MCPRA and the Redefinition of the Puerto Rican Problem

8 In the Aftermath of the Puerto Rican Problem in New York City

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

The Puerto Rican Problem in Postwar New York City

Introduction

In July 2019, President Donald Trump told a group of four congresswomen of color to go back to their countries. Three of these women were born in the United States, and all of them were citizens. One of them happened to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents.¹ This was not the first time Puerto Ricans born on the U.S. mainland were treated to this racist insult. Puerto Ricans born on the island have been subjected to this invective for more than a century, after the United States took the island in 1898 in the aftermath of the so-called Spanish-American War. What makes this tirade somewhat confusing is that Puerto Rico is legally—though not constitutionally—a part of the United States, and Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. Still, a majority of Americans today do not know these people are American citizens.²

Ideas like these have impacted U.S. sentiment and policies toward the people of Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017—causing damages estimated upward of $100 billion, the death of close to 5,000 people, and a general power blackout that left some areas of the island without electricity for close to a year—a former senior aide to President Trump claimed that he used a derogatory term when referring to Puerto Ricans while discussing the extension of immediate aid to the island.³ Trump later suggested that Puerto Rico was not a part of the United States when he tried to justify his administration’s efforts to deny hurricane relief aid to the island.⁴ The U.S. president’s visit to Puerto Rico after the hurricane is best remembered by his degrading act of throwing paper towels at those present in an event orchestrated by the pro-statehood administration of then governor Ricardo Rosselló (who in July 2019 became the first governor to be removed by extensive and extended popular protests never seen on the island before).⁵

Adding injury to insult, the Trump administration later stopped the hurricane reconstruction aid to Puerto Rico that had been approved by Congress. Many in Puerto Rico and the United States—including in Congress—questioned the Trump administration’s extremely slow emergency response in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane and its repeated attempts to block aid to devastated Puerto Rico. Months after the hurricane, Trump continued to insist that his initial claim of a very low number of deaths caused by Maria was correct, although even governor Rosselló had acknowledged that the number was above 3,000 and other independent accounts put it closer to 5,000.⁶ No doubt racism is at play here, and this is nothing new. There is a vast literature on how the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898 and the colonial policies that followed—implemented by Congress and legitimized by the Supreme Court—were based on views of these people as alien and inferior subjects. The idea that the people in Puerto Rico are not really U.S. citizens or of Puerto Ricans in general as second-class or nondeserving citizens has permeated Puerto Ricans’ relationship with American society and government.

One of the immediate consequences of Hurricane Maria was the unprecedented migration of Puerto Ricans to the United States, particularly to more recent areas of settlement like central Florida. Migration has been part and parcel of Puerto Rico’s history under U.S. rule since 1898. But the extremely high number of people who left the island in a matter of several months—estimated at upward of 200,000—was unparalleled in Puerto Rican history, even considering that high levels of migration are not a new phenomenon in the twenty-first century. A large number of Puerto Ricans have left the island since the mid-1990s, and this recent migratory flow already exceeds that of the so-called Great Migration of the early postwar years. Most scholars agree that the main reason for this new surge in migration is the economic crisis that afflicts the island, particularly since 2007. One factor that has aggravated this situation is the public debt crisis that forced the Puerto Rican government to declare bankruptcy in 2016. That same year, the U.S. government approved the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), which halted all debtor’s claims against the island but imposed a federal fiscal control board that not only has fiscal powers but has also participated in the formulation of public policies of the local government. It effectively erased what limited autonomy the colonial state in Puerto Rico enjoyed. Trump and his administration, Republicans in Congress, and the U.S. economic and financial elite in general put the blame for Puerto Rico’s crisis on Puerto Ricans themselves, ignoring the role of the U.S. Congress in creating the crisis by eliminating the tax incentives on which Puerto Rico’s manufacturing economy was based. Corruption and an inherent incapacity to govern itself is the avowed reason why the Trump administration is trying to eliminate or limit congressionally approved aid to Puerto Rico.⁷ In an article titled Donald Trump: A Nefarious Legacy in Puerto Rico, the correspondent for El Nuevo Día in Washington, DC, alleged that Trump’s legacy on the island "is marked by the slow and inefficient response to the catastrophe caused by Hurricane Maria, prejudiced statements and a public policy that was based mainly on seeing the island as a problem."⁸

In May 2016, even before the Puerto Rican government had declared bankruptcy, the conservative Wall Street Journal published a piece on Puerto Rico titled Puerto Rico’s Debt Portent: The Refugee Exodus Builds and Will Add to the U.S. Dole. After predicting Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy declaration, the paper described the dilemma that Republicans faced—allowing the island government to write down its debt, which the Wall Street Journal called tantamount to a bailout, or doing nothing, which will result in anarchy and a back-door bailout as tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans flee to the mainland where they will land on the U.S. public dole. The article then elaborates on how this scenario will lead to an even greater number of people leaving the island, with dire consequences for the United States: "While many will eventually find jobs in the U.S., their incomes will at least initially be low enough to qualify for Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing. Their kids will attend public schools. The Puerto Rican refugees will also be able to vote."⁹

Although the context might be different, this kind of diatribe against Puerto Ricans, particularly against migrants, is nothing new. It has been a constant tirade ever since Puerto Ricans began migrating to the United States in the early twentieth century. It became stronger and more extended after 1945, when they moved in unprecedented numbers to New York City. They were seen as wretched and destitute, uneducated and unhealthy, alien to American culture and values, inclined to leftists ideologies and politics, and moving to the mainland to exploit its welfare system. An intense campaign, with racist and nativist overtones, mobilized in reaction to their entry in New York City. The campaign and the narrative that later emerged from it became known, first in New York and later in Puerto Rico, as the Puerto Rican problem. The ideas that came out of this campaign and narrative were reproduced by the U.S. media and later by American academia and shaped the way in which Puerto Ricans were perceived by Americans, not only in New York but in other parts of the United States as well. Its echoes still reverberate in the views that many in the United States still have about Puerto Ricans, as described in the previous pages. The Puerto Rican problem in New York influenced the way this group was incorporated in New York City and in other parts of the United States. It also impacted the public policies of the governments of Puerto Rico and New York City regarding the entry of these migrants to the city. This book examines in detail the emergence, evolution, and consequences of the Puerto Rican problem campaign and narrative in New York City from 1945 to 1960.

Chapter 1 provides a historical, analytical, and more theoretical background to the arguments and research that form the main framework for this book. The initial sections discuss in general terms what the Puerto Rican problem is and its significance for the study and understanding of Puerto Rican postwar migration and incorporation in the United States. The chapter then places the study of Puerto Rican migration within the larger framework of U.S. im/migration studies. Puerto Ricans have been compared to the two major waves and models of migration and incorporation in the United States: the so-called traditional migration coming from Europe from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s, and the more recent transnational migration coming mostly from Latin America in the past five decades. I find these two models limited and frequently faulty in terms of offering a good understanding of the Puerto Rican migration and incorporation experience. The traditional model is analyzed more closely, since for several decades this was the dominant view in the study of Puerto Rican postwar migration and incorporation within American academia. Many of the ideas presented by scholars within this perspective with respect to Puerto Ricans had already been disseminated during the Puerto Rican problem campaign in New York City and were notions that later became part of the problem narrative that lasted for several more years. Although the transnational perspective—also examined here—has provided some insights into the study of Puerto Rican migration to the United States, I argue that it is easier to understand the Puerto Rican experience within the framework of a colonial migration—that is, a migration of colonial subjects/citizens moving to the U.S. mainland from one of its unincorporated territories. Finally, the chapter discusses the concept and theory of mode of incorporation and some of the limitations of this framework in understanding Puerto Rican postwar incorporation in the United States.

Chapter 2 explores in detail the late 1940s Puerto Rican problem campaign in New York City: its origins, background, and evolution in the years thereafter, as well as the narrative that emerged from it. The chapter studies how the New York City and Puerto Rican media and governments exacerbated, on the one hand, or tried to contain and manage, on the other, the campaign against the entry of island migrants to the city. It also looks at how Puerto Ricans reacted to the campaign and how they organized to fight it. Many of the prevailing notions during the Puerto Rican problem campaign later became major elements of the problem narrative and discourse that were used to characterize this group for several decades.

Chapter 3 analyzes how the Puerto Rican government and the Welfare Council of NYC—a respected city institution—reacted to the Puerto Rican problem campaign in 1947. The study financed by Puerto Rico’s government—the so-called Puerto Rican Study—and the report produced by the Welfare Council presented a more positive framework for the incorporation of island migrants into the city. These two studies—the first to analyze Puerto Rican migration to New York in the postwar period—were in reaction to the 1947 anti–Puerto Rican campaign. The Puerto Rican Study was commissioned by the government of Puerto Rico to Columbia University in August 1947, months before it approved its migration law later that year. Puerto Rico’s government used the Columbia University study to counteract the negative assertions that were presented about Puerto Ricans in the New York City media and to appease the city and U.S. public opinion regarding the entry of island migrants to the U.S. mainland. Years later, the study became The Puerto Rican Journey, a very influential text on Puerto Rican postwar migration. The report by the Welfare Council represents the first study of the Puerto Rican problem by one of the city’s elite institutions. It presented a liberal view on the incorporation of Puerto Ricans to NYC and laid out a series of recommendations on how to manage their migration to the city and the United States, many of which were later implemented by the Puerto Rican and NYC governments.

Chapter 4 studies how the Puerto Rican problem campaign in New York City led to and influenced the formulation of Puerto Rico’s migration policy. It was only after the anti–Puerto Rican campaign erupted in New York that the Puerto Rican government addressed the situation of island migrants seriously. The official policy—neither to encourage nor discourage migration—concealed a more active participation of the government in the management of migration. The new law approved in December 1947 created the Bureau of Employment and Migration in San Juan and the Migration Division in New York, both under the Puerto Rican Labor Department. The former dealt with prospective migrants on the island, the latter with migrants already in the United States. The Puerto Rican problem in New York influenced the implementation of Puerto Rico’s migration policy for many years.

The Puerto Rican problem resurfaced again when Congressman Vito Marcantonio ran for mayor in New York City’s 1949 mayoral election. Two issues dominated the campaign against him: his characterization as a communist and his relationship to Puerto Ricans. Chapter 5 reviews Marcantonio’s association with Puerto Ricans, both in New York and in Puerto Rico, as well as the basis of Puerto Rican support for Marcantonio and his defense of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans living in the United States. The close relationship that Marcantonio and the island’s charismatic leader Luis Muñoz Marín had in the early 1940s became antagonistic after the end of the war, primarily due to the role played by Marcantonio in the Puerto Rican community in New York. Using Marcantonio as a scapegoat, the island government blamed him for the Puerto Rican problem and aggressively campaigned against him in 1949. Because of their support for Marcantonio, one important notion of the Puerto Rican problem narrative was disseminated again during the 1949 mayoral election campaign: that Puerto Ricans were prone to communist and un-American ideals.

Chapter 6 examines the most important postwar institution created by the NYC government to deal with and facilitate the incorporation of Puerto Ricans in the city: the Mayor’s Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs (MCPRA). The creation and workings of this committee are indicative of how the NYC establishment sought to incorporate Puerto Ricans: through a bureaucratic structure linked to the city government. MCPRA needs to be understood within the context of the continuing Puerto Rican problem in the city. Its major goals were to diffuse the Puerto Rican problem narrative that continued to exist during that period, so that Puerto Ricans could provide a necessary source of labor to the city; to find the means to stop or drastically reduce their continuing migration to the city; and to further the incorporation of this group of people who, although they were U.S. citizens, were nonetheless seen as alien to American society in culture, language, and values. Unable or unwilling to create its own constituency from Puerto Ricans living in the city, MCPRA and the city government relied on the Puerto Rican government to achieve many of its objectives. The committee legitimized the role of Puerto Rico’s government as an intermediary between the city establishment and the Puerto Rican community. However, many of MCPRA’s actions and much of its discourse regarding Puerto Ricans reinforced some of the ideas of the problem narrative that it was supposed to diffuse. The chapter discusses the relevance of examining MCPRA within the study of Puerto Rican migration and incorporation in NYC, what several scholars have said about this committee so far, its creation and programs, and its activities under the administrations of mayors William O’Dwyer and Vincent Impellitteri. Particular attention is given to the so-called migration conferences, organized to coordinate the efforts of the NYC and Puerto Rico governments on matters related to the continuing Puerto Rican problem in the city.

Chapter 7 explores the abolition of MCPRA by Mayor Robert Wagner, a move supported by Puerto Rico’s government and sectors of the Puerto Rican community in the city. This action was an attempt to move beyond the problem narrative still attached to this group. Many argued that the existence of MCPRA helped to sustain the idea of Puerto Ricans as a problem for the city. But many issues related to the Puerto Rican problem narrative did not go away, and the institutions created to deal with matters concerning all minority groups in the city—including island migrants—were not able to deal with them effectively. Many Puerto Rican political and community leaders in the city complained that these institutions did not address important concerns of their community no represent them. The NYC government kept relying on the Puerto Rican government for advice and support during the 1950s as it faced matters related to the continuing Puerto Rican problem. The relationship between the city and the island governments was sustained through the migration conferences held under the Wagner administration in 1954, 1958, and 1960. But by the early 1960s, the growing and more vocal political and community leaders of Puerto Ricans living in the city demanded greater participation in the solution of the most pressing problems that affected them. They questioned the prominent role that the island government played in the affairs of their community and confronted the NYC government for keeping them marginal to the decision-making process and for relying on Puerto Rico’s government for advice on matters concerning Puerto Ricans in the city. By the end of the 1960s, Puerto Rico’s government ceased to be an important actor in NYC politics as the local Puerto Rican leadership gained more access and participation in the structures of the city’s government.

The fact that the Puerto Rican problem was not a major issue of debate in NYC after the mid-1960s does not mean that the problem narrative went away completely. The Puerto Rican problem narrative extended to other Puerto Rican postwar settlements in the United States and also influenced the way that U.S. academia and American popular culture perceived and understood Puerto Ricans in the United States. The first section of chapter 8 studies how the Puerto Rican problem also emerged in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Hartford, and how the problem narrative that initially emerged in New York City impacted the incorporation of island migrants in these new postwar settlements. Certain notions that were disseminated during the Puerto Rican problem campaign in NYC, and that later became central to the problem narrative, were accepted by U.S. academia and framed how island migrants were studied in the United States for several decades. The second section of this chapter examines what is perhaps the most influential theory in the study of Puerto Ricans in the United States: the culture of poverty. Puerto Ricans became a common subject of study under this perspective after the publication of Oscar Lewis’s La Vida. It argued that Puerto Rican poverty was caused by their own behaviors and that its roots lie in Puerto Rico, an idea common in the Puerto Rican problem narrative that emerged in NYC in the 1950s. The culture of poverty became extremely influential in the study of the myriad of problems affecting Puerto Ricans in the United States in the postwar period. Perhaps no other cultural construct has had such an impact on the way generations of Americans have perceived Puerto Ricans than West Side Story, both the play and the film. The last section of chapter 8 reviews how this important piece of Americana reproduced some of the basic elements of the Puerto Rican problem narrative that predominated in 1950s NYC. I argue that the reason Puerto Ricans were chosen as one of the two warring gangs in this modern representation of Romeo and Juliet needs to be directly related to the Puerto Rican problem narrative that still lingered in NYC during the 1950s.

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This book presents the first comprehensive examination of the Puerto Rican problem in NYC. It looks at the public campaign that unfolded against this group’s entry into the city in the late 1940s and the campaign’s consequences, including the institutionalization of the problem narrative that for many years was used to characterize these migrants. The notion of a Puerto Rican problem became an important element in how this group was perceived when they migrated to the U.S. mainland in the postwar era, and influenced their incorporation in NYC and other parts of the United States where they settled. It also led to the formulation of public policies by the governments of Puerto Rico and NYC to manage the incorporation of Puerto Rican migrants in the city. Notions intrinsic to the Puerto Rican problem narrative entered American academia and cultural constructs like West Side Story in the 1960s, which reproduced many of the stereotypes associated with Puerto Ricans prevalent at that time. Puerto Ricans remained a source of public debate in NYC throughout the 1950s, usually in relation to matters associated to the Puerto Rican problem narrative. For example, news related to their alleged welfare dependency or criminal tendencies kept Puerto Ricans in the headlines of the city’s mainstream media during this period.

Another trope of the Puerto Rican problem campaign and narrative that kept Puerto Ricans in the NYC newspapers and generated public debate about this group was their alleged tendency toward nationalist rebellion and communist subversion. Puerto Ricans were inserted back into the city’s political debate when Congressman Marcantonio ran as a candidate in the 1949 mayoral election. Throughout the 1950s, Puerto Ricans were also accused of being anti-American nationalists. Members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party living in NYC participated in the two attacks carried out by the party in Washington, DC: the Blair House in 1950 (one of the attackers had worked in Marcantonio’s office) and the halls of Congress in 1954. In 1959, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held hearings in NYC and San Juan on the alleged Communist subversion of Puerto Rican independence supporters. This committee implicated members of the Puerto Rican Communist and Nationalist parties in the so-called global communist conspiracy.¹⁰

This book takes a particular look at the insertion of Puerto Ricans in NYC during the 1950s. This decade can be characterized as a period of transition for the Puerto Rican community in the city.¹¹ The massive entry of migrants in the aftermath of World War II transformed the Puerto Rican community that was established before 1945, not only in terms of the social background of its migrants, but also regarding the nature and structure of its community organizations and even the neighborhoods that they inhabited. The large-scale exodus from Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland in the postwar period is known in the literature as the Great Migration, and the 1950s were the years of its greatest intensity. Close to half a million people migrated from Puerto Rico to the United States from 1945 to 1960, and NYC was their main destination. Their growing numbers and ease of entry became main topics of the Puerto Rican problem in that city. From around 65,000 people in 1945, the Puerto Rican population in the city grew to close to 244,000 in 1950 and over 600,000 by 1960. This was the first massive entry of foreign people to the city since the 1920s quota limited European immigration to the United States. Puerto Ricans made their presence felt in the city’s social, cultural, economic, and political fabric. The organizations and structures of the pre-1945 community changed as new community and political leaders and organizations emerged during the decade. The geographical composition of the Puerto Rican community also changed after 1945 in reaction to the massive entry of island migrants and the city’s policies of urban renewal. Manhattan’s pre-1945 communities in East Harlem (El Barrio) and the Lower East Side and the one in Brooklyn were transformed with the arrival of new migrants. The Bronx emerged as the new destination for Puerto Ricans during the 1950s and by the 1960s it had become the center of Puerto Rican social and political power in the city. By the end of that decade Herman Badillo became the first Puerto Rican elected as Bronx borough president; he later became the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress in representation of a Bronx district. Multiple political and community organizations were formed during the 1950s. The Puerto Rican Day Parade, created in the late 1950s, became the symbol of the Puerto Rican presence in the city. By the 1960s, Puerto Ricans participated and created their own institutions in areas of education and public schools, community development, health and welfare, and law enforcement, among others.

The literature on Puerto Ricans in NYC has focused for the most part on the emergence of the community before 1945 and its growth and consolidation after the 1960s.¹² The 1950s has not been so extensively examined in this literature, particularly with regards to Puerto Ricans’ political activities and organizations.¹³ Sherrie Baver characterized Puerto Rican politics in NYC during the 1950s as a tiempo muerto (the dead season after the sugar harvest). Like other scholars, she pointed to the 1960s as the era of awakening of political and community activism of the community.¹⁴ Similarly, community activist Louis Nuñez characterized the 1960s as the coming of age of the stateside Puerto Rican community.¹⁵ José Cruz begins his extensive two-volume examination of Puerto Rican postwar politics in NYC in the 1960s, arguing that it was at this time that New York Puerto Ricans came out of the margins.¹⁶

Although this book will present new insights into the history of Puerto Ricans in NYC during the 1950s, it does not pretend to offer a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the city’s island community during this period. The book examines aspects related to their incorporation in the city of New York during the 1950s from the perspective of how the Puerto Rican problem campaign and narrative influenced their insertion in the affairs of the city. It will focus on subjects that have remained unexamined or ones that have not received an adequate attention until now. For example, even though scholars like José Ramón Sánchez and Lorrin Thomas have looked at MCPRA before, I carry out a more comprehensive study of this institution and its significance for the incorporation of Puerto Ricans in NYC. And while scholars like Michael Lapp have examined the intervention of Puerto Rico’s government in NYC politics before, I look at subjects that have not been studied yet, such as the migration conferences and other areas of interaction between city and island governments.¹⁷

This book will look closely at an aspect of Puerto Rican migration and incorporation in NYC that has not been properly addressed: how the governments of Puerto Rico—representing the people where the migrants were coming from—and NYC—representing the host society—reacted to the Puerto Rican problem and how both governments acted to manage the incorporation of Puerto Ricans in the city. The two governments had their own reasons for doing so. Migration was an essential part of the Puerto Rican government’s postwar modernization program, and its continuation and success depended on the favorable incorporation of its migrants into the communities in which they were settling on the U.S. mainland, including NYC. The NYC government was aware that Puerto Ricans provided a necessary source of labor for the city’s growing postwar economy, and also recognized that it could not legally prevent their entry because they were U.S. citizens.

This book will not provide a comprehensive look at the formation and evolution of the Puerto Rican community in NYC during the 1950s, particularly as it relates to community activism and organizational development. By doing this, I do not seek to deny social and political agency to the Puerto Rican community in the city. On the contrary, my focus departs from the notion that it was migrants who created the social, economic, political, and cultural institutions that made possible the consolidation of the Puerto Rican community in NYC during the 1950s and 1960s. Historically, there have been two waves of Puerto Rican migration to the United States: individual migration, that is, migrants moving on their own; and organized migration, migrants who go to work in U.S. farms under labor contracts in expeditions organized by private contractors or, after 1947, by the Puerto Rican government. Puerto Rican migration to NYC has been mostly one of individuals. The Puerto Rican problem campaign of the late 1940s was a reaction to their massive entry to the city. And although Puerto Ricans were not welcome by many in NYC, they persisted and fought the negative stereotypes that spread in this period and created the institutions that allowed them to make NYC their new home.

This book will present the negative reaction to the entry of Puerto Ricans to the city, the many stereotypes that originated from this experience, and the obstacles Puerto Ricans had to face to become New Yorkers. One of the main tropes of the Puerto Rican problem campaign and narrative was that Puerto Ricans were not like previous European immigrants—essentially arguing that they were different (non-White) and would not assimilate because they did not share the values and culture of the United States. Puerto Ricans were indeed not like Europeans; they were racially mixed U.S. citizens coming from a U.S. colonial territory in the Caribbean, with a Spanish culture and language. Although they were citizens, initially they did not enjoy the support of some important institutions that facilitated the incorporation of Europeans like political parties, unions, and the Church. Nevertheless, even facing these obstacles, they created their own institutions and were able to open spaces in areas of education, culture, health, public policy, and politics that allowed them to gain recognition as members of the NYC community. This is not to say that some of the negative ideas and stereotypes linked to the problem narrative of the 1950s disappeared completely, as discussed throughout this book.

1

The Study of Puerto Rican Migration and Incorporation in the United States

Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States every year after the end of World War II, particularly to New York City. The critical social and economic situation in Puerto Rico pushed many to leave in search of jobs and better living conditions in the United States. A March 1946 report by the U.S. Tariff Commission indicated that one million