Boricua Power: A Political History of Puerto Ricans in the United States

3 The Rise of Radicalism World War II to

The Rise of Radicalism World War II to 1965 Abeses me digo yo mismo que me ubiese muerto aste de aber venido a este paiz es ver que no se ingles y nada Valgo pero para dios valgo1 —Pedro Lopez Pedro Lopez was a Puerto Rican living in Brooklyn during 1965. His letter to Manuel Cabranes, in the New York City Welfare Department , has a weird combination of self-pity and defiance. Lopez might be down but at least God supports him, he claims. The Lopez letter is not unusual. Many Puerto Ricans were denied welfare at that time. Many received it. The Lopez letter, however, symbolizes the complex trajectory of power for the Puerto Rican community in the post–World War II period. A time of relative political influence after the war was followed by a quick decline in power. The entire ride up and down was no accident, however. It was the result of changing interests. What had been an intensive interest in the political and economic value of the Puerto Rican community disappeared by the late 1950s. Meanwhile, never having enjoyed any cultural power in the larger society, Puerto Ricans by the 1960s began to turn inwards , to draw strength from their own uniqueness as a culture and to finally see themselves as a “minority group.” If the larger society had concluded that Puerto Ricans were worth nothing, Puerto Ricans asserted that, yes, they were worth something, even if only to God and themselves. In contrast to the previous period, the Puerto Rican community found that power could no longer be negotiated or fought for in the economic realm. The opportunities to connect and develop influence in the city had become primarily political. Puerto Ricans found more political than economic interest on the part of the larger society. Some of this shift from the primarily economic source of power Puerto Ricans experienced in the cigar makers’ period originated in the social interest to use Puerto Ricans 3 96 as cheap labor after World War II. Puerto Ricans no longer filled an important need for skilled labor in important industries. Puerto Ricans thus became expendable and redundant as labor in the 1950s. The only economic need for Puerto Rican labor was to keep it cheap and plentiful. This movement of interests in Puerto Ricans towards the larger society ultimately moved each farther from the other. The end result for Puerto Ricans as well as for the larger society was a sudden loss of influence. Puerto Ricans sought greater pleasure and meaning from cultural values that were increasingly independent of the larger U.S. society. The emergence of Salsa, Puerto Rican folk music, and Puerto Rican culture in New York are good examples of this movement. Puerto Ricans could not, of course, remove themselves similarly from the political and economic reality of the United States. But whereas in the past they had tried to fit into this foreign system by accepting low wages or turning to labor unions and other institutions to defend themselves, by the 1960s Puerto Ricans had begun to increasingly assert their rights as independent citizens and increasingly came to recognize and resist the deep inequity of their life here. This distancing of Puerto Ricans from the larger society meant a loss of power for both. Since Puerto Ricans started out with less power, however, this separation made Puerto Ricans more powerful in their community but more vulnerable outside it. The consequences for Puerto Ricans were economic (low wages and employment, welfare, etc.) and political (the rise of a more passive, manipulated relation to political authorities that James Jennings called “patron-client politics”). The Lopez letter again symbolizes that loss of power. Pedro Lopez was reduced to begging for help in 1965 from Manuel Cabranes, a mere consultant in the Welfare Department. From 1949 to 1955, in contrast, Puerto Ricans had their own institution within the Mayor’s Office (the Mayor’s Committee on Puerto Rican Affairs) to help them with any problem they might have. Once courted by mayors and congressmen, Puerto Ricans found themselves in the 1960s a community larger in numbers but reduced to making pitiful pleas for the attention of lowly bureaucrats. Puerto Ricans were weakened by a sudden, quick erosion and shift in interests. The political interest that drew others to Puerto Ricans in the late 1940s disappeared a decade later. There are many signs of this shift in interests. In the larger, non–Puerto Rican...