Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How many Puerto Ricans live in Holyoke?
As of the 2010 census, Holyoke, Massachusetts had the largest Puerto Rican population, per capita, of any city in the United States outside Puerto Rico proper, with 44.7% or 17,826 residents being of Puerto Rican heritage, comprising 92.4% of all Latinos in the community.[1] From a combination of farming programs instituted by the US Department of Labor after World War II, and the housing and mills that characterized Holyoke prior to deindustrialization, Puerto Ricans began settling in the city in the mid-1950s, with many arriving during the wave of Puerto Rican immigration to the Northeastern United States in the 1980s.[1][2] A combination of white flight as former generations of mill workers left the city, and a sustained influx of migrants in subsequent generations transformed the demographic from a minority of about 13% of the population in 1980,[3] to the largest single demographic by ancestry in a span of three decades.
Since 2016, every September the neighborhood association of South Holyoke has hosted "El Sabor de South Holyoke" (Taste of South Holyoke) a festival featuring local Puerto Rican cuisine, live music, and other events, including honoring different organizations such as the Holy Trinity Greek Church and Nueva Esperanza for their contributions to the community.
While there would not be a prominent Puerto Rican presence in politics until the end of the 20th century, since the 1970s, a number of campaigns were launched by Puerto Ricans and Latino candidates, many of which were, in the words of the candidates themselves "more to assert a Latino political presence than an expectation of winning".[62]:588 Among these was Carlos Vega. An Ecuadorian community activist who managed Nueva Esperanza for many years, Vega would lose to another candidate for a school board seat in 1971. In 1973 Heriberto Flores would see the same outcome, though he would be the very first Puerto Rican to run for Holyoke City Council, then-known as the Board of Aldermen.[26]:103 It wasn't until 1987 that the first would be elected to city government, with Betty Medina gaining a seat on the school board in 1987 and Diosdado López, one of Nueva Esperanza's former interns, elected to the city council in 1992.[45] By 2018, the representation of Puerto Rican and Latino councilors closely resembled that of the city's demographics, an outcome from gradual integration from the previous margins of municipal politics.[63]
In time the city has become a center of Puerto Rican culture on the mainland, with at least one member of the Senate of Puerto Rico being an alumnus of Holyoke Community College,[4] and the city being honored by both the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in the Chicago, and in New York City's National Puerto Rican Day Parade.[5][6]
In many ways the 1980s would redefine the Puerto Rican community socially and politically to this day, as new independent institutions were formed and the first Puerto Ricans would claim positions within city leadership. From 1980 to 1990 the community's population would more than double with nearly 7,000 new residents.[3] It was also around this time in the city's history that Puerto Rican culture would see greater representation in day to day life in the city as well, with the first Western Massachusetts Puerto Rican Parade and Festival hosted at Springdale Park in 1984.[46]
The growth of Holyoke's own community, coupled with these aforementioned factors and substandard housing, led to an increasing gap between the Puerto Rican community and a police force that was described by a 1973 Police Foundation report as a group of "117 people, many of whom were related to each other" in the city of 50,000. The report goes on to say that representatives from the Model Cities Program and Governor Sargent's office urged greater outreach and would describe the relationship between the police and Puerto Rican community at that time as "the police [being seen] as brutal men with clubs, [while] the police saw the [Puerto Rican] community as tempestuous people with no respect for law and order".[16]
One of the biggest challenges with making inroads with existing communities was the language barrier of the first arrivals, with many only speaking Spanish. Some of the earliest programs working towards integration came from the Greater Springfield Council of Churches, which by 1961 had recruited a number of volunteers, many of whom were retired teachers, to help teach English to Puerto Rican women.[22][23] Other early cultural exchange programs were held in churches such as Holyoke's St. Paul's Episcopal, which in 1956 hosted a lecture on Puerto Rican culture by a native of the island whose father had served as chancellor of the Episcopal diocese there.[24]
From this legacy of more than fifty years of Puerto Rican culture in Holyoke, a number of institutions serving the Puerto Rican and broader Latino community have maintained a presence in the city including, but not limited to, the Massachusetts Latino Chamber of Commerce, the New England Farm Workers’ Council, Nuestras Raices, Nueva Esperanza which now managed the Puerto Rican Afro Caribbean Cultural Center (formerly known as El Mercado), and the Puerto Rican Cultural Project.
"I thought I was the only Puerto Rican in town. Then sometime in 1971 I woke up one day and heard a lot of Spanish. By 1972 I became cognizant of what was a change in attitude. Some of the warmth was gone."—Josephine Carabello, director, Mount Holyoke Office of Compliance"Let's face it, we're here to stay...The first generation gets the brunt. Then it eases up. That's the way with every ethnic group, the Irish, the Polish and French-Canadians. Our tensions will ease."—Efrain Figueroa, sales representative for Nabisco"I don't see any reason why Puerto Ricans...cannot follow the same phases of other migrant groups. But we will always be considered a defined race. If you have a drop of black blood, you are non-white. Race is the most undetermined and difficult to define in terms of sociology. It means different things to different cultures."—José Efrain Martinez, teacher, Holyoke Public SchoolsQuotes from
At the end of World War II, the government of Puerto Rico began the Puerto Rican Farm Labor Program, coordinating with the US Department of Labor to bring seasonal farm workers into the mainland, not unlike the Mexican Bracero program. Between 1947 and 1990 the program would bring in 421,238 Puerto Rican agricultural laborers to the United States.[18] Many of these workers found work in Connecticut and the Pioneer Valley, particularly working for the Shade Tobacco Growers Agricultural Association.[19]
Lower New England has a high concentration of Puerto Ricans. Connecticut has the highest concentration of Puerto Ricans of any state and has large Puerto Rican populations throughout the state, with the largest in Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, Meriden, New Britain, New London, and Willimantic. Though, half of the Puerto Rican population in the New England area is situated along the Interstate-91 corridor, extending from New Haven in Connecticut to Holyoke in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, the largest Puerto Rican populations are in Holyoke, Springfield, Fitchburg, Lowell, Worcester, Lawrence, Lynn, Boston, Southbridge, Haverhill, Chicopee, and Chelsea. The highest percentage of Puerto Ricans in the US can be found in Holyoke. Large portions of the state's Puerto Rican population is in the Boston area. Puerto Ricans continue to dominate in the central part of the state. In Rhode Island, the vast majority of Puerto Ricans live in Providence County, especially the cities of Providence and Pawtucket.
About 83% of Puerto Ricans living in the United States ages 5 and older speak English proficiently, of whom 53% are bilingual in Spanish and English, and another 30% speak only English fluently with little proficiency in Spanish. The other 17% speak only Spanish fluently and report speaking English "less than very well" with little proficiency in English, compared to 34% of Hispanics overall who report doing so. Many first- and second- generation Puerto Ricans living in New York speak "Nuyorican English", a mix of local New York English with Puerto Rican Spanish influences, while many Puerto Ricans living in other US cities speak with a similar English accent. More Americanized Puerto Ricans speak the local English accent with little to no Spanish traces, sounding similar to other local groups including Black Americans or assimilated Italian Americans.
Beginning at the end of World War II, an influx of Puerto Ricans and other Latino groups began to immigrate to the Northeast United States, driven largely by the Farm Labor Program initiated by the US Department of Labor. Not unlike the Bracero program, in the following decades the agency recruited Puerto Rican laborers to work on agricultural land in the United States; in the case of Holyoke, many worked on valley tobacco farms, and arrived in the city in search of better job opportunities at the mills as previous generations had. The first permanent Puerto Rican resident was said to have been Domingo Perez; a landlord who later became among the first to be appointed in city government, he was reported to have arrived in Holyoke around 1955. By 1970 the number of Puerto Rican residents numbered around 5,000, however by that time, many faced a city economy in free fall. Holyoke's mills had closed due to the changing economic landscape of early globalization and deindustrialization; from 1955 to 1970, 1 for every 2 industrial jobs vanished. Despite economic and social difficulties the population grew significantly during the 1980s, and from 1990 to 2016, the buying power of the Latino community at-large increased by nearly 300%. Today Latinos form the city's largest minority group, with the largest Puerto Rican population per capita of any American city outside Puerto Rico proper, at 44.7%. The entire Latino population of Holyoke, as of the 2010 census, was 19,313, or 48.4% of the city's population of 39,880.
While there is a Puerto Rican demographic throughout all of Holyoke today, the neighborhoods of South Holyoke, The Flats, and Churchill are among those areas with the largest Puerto Rican populations proportionally, all having more than 75% residents of Puerto Rican heritage, with South Holyoke having the most proportionally, with 87.5% of all residents being of Puerto Rican heritage.[76]
Although U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans migrating to Philadelphia encountered racism, discrimination, and limited economic opportunities, and to some extant, still do. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, the Puerto Rican community was notorious for being heavily involved in the city's drug trade. During that time, the Puerto Rican community was also the poorest of all ethnic communities in the city. Retaining strong ties to the island, they also worked hard to make a home here and build a community structure of businesses, organizations, houses of worship, and other institutions that have become the foundation of Latino life in the city. The Puerto Rican community is credited for revitalizing North 5th Street in North Philadelphia by opening numerous Puerto Rican-owned businesses, they have also done this to Kensington Avenue, and Lehigh Avenue(between 5th and Front Streets). Philadelphia is also one of the few large US cities with a significant number of middle-class Puerto Ricans, though in Philadelphia, even the middle class Puerto Ricans live in segregated communities, thus they are more visible. Philadelphia is often considered a preferred destination among Puerto Rican migrants, because of its position as a Northeastern city and its cheaper cost of living compared to other cities in the Northeast region. Throughout the 1950s, many Puerto Rican migrants settled east and west along Spring Garden Street. Puerto Ricans were not always welcome newcomers, however, and many faced prejudice and discrimination in their neighborhoods. As the Puerto Rican population continued to grow in the 1960s, it expanded east towards the Delaware River and north towards Lehigh Avenue. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Puerto Rican community grew further north into Olney and into the lower sections of the Northeast.
The city would receive national coverage as Puerto Rico residents on the island became displaced in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria,[73] many turned to relatives in the city, and during the 2017-2018 school year, Holyoke Public Schools saw 235 new students enroll whose families were displaced. In some cases children were sent to live with relatives temporarily while the island rebuilt.[74] In 2018, San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz spoke in Holyoke, describing the gradual recovery of the island as well as its severe lack of resources.[75] Cruz was presented the key to the city on April 28, 2018 by Mayor Alex Morse to honor that "in such a time of despair [she] provided a beacon of hope and opportunity for Puerto Ricans."[74]
In the 1960's, a large segment of the valley's Puerto Rican population was displaced when Springfield launched a massive urban renewal project in part to expand its highway system, razing many of the low-cost brick tenements between Metro Center and Memorial Square. During this time many would find low-cost housing in the blocks of Holyoke's lower wards, moving to former mill worker areas like South Holyoke and Springdale.[25] Seeing the relative success of relatives and friends, in the 1970s a new wave of immigration began when a large number of families emmigrated from New York City and Hartford, moving northward.[26]
The term "Nuyorican" is also sometimes used to refer to the Spanish spoken by New York Puerto Ricans. An estimated 1,800,000 Nuyoricans are said to live in New York city, the largest Puerto Rican community outside Puerto Rico. Nuyoricans are not considered Puerto Ricans by some island Puerto Ricans due to cultural differences; this is a very controversial topic amongst both groups of Puerto Ricans. Nuyorican has a broad meaning; originally it meant Puerto Ricans, both island-born and mainland-born, living in New York, but many island-born Puerto Ricans use the term to describe assimilated Americans of Puerto Rican descent, living in any US state, or very assimilated or "Americanized" people of Puerto Rican ancestry, who largely lost touch with traditional Puerto Rican culture, and grew up culturally American, though still identify with Puerto Rico. Ethnic enclaves centered on Puerto Ricans include Spanish Harlem, Manhattan; Williamsburg, Brooklyn; and the South Bronx.
Among the city's annual events are the Western Massachusetts Puerto Rican Parade and Festival, a three-day festival, held every summer in Springdale Park since 1984.[46][80] Additionally El Sabor de South Holyoke ("Taste of South Holyoke Festival"), which features local Puerto Rican cuisine, has been held annually in the fall since 2016.[81]
A mass migration from Puerto Rico to Philadelphia coincided with an industrialization Puerto Rican economy from the late 1940s to 1970. Most Puerto Ricans came from rural areas. During the period many Puerto Ricans worked in factories. Puerto Rican neighborhoods and organizations formed during the area. By the 1950s Puerto Ricans became the largest Latino and Hispanic group in Philadelphia. In the 1950s many pan-Latino areas were becoming predominately Puerto Rican. By 1954, 65% of Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia lived in three neighborhoods north of Center City. In the 1950s Puerto Ricans were settling in those three neighborhoods and two of them became no longer majority white. Spring Garden, the third, remained predominately White. In the period from 1950 to 1970 the Puerto Rican community expanded by over 60,000. By the 1960s an increase of Cubans arrived in Philadelphia and the proportionate percentage of Puerto Ricans began to decline.
Despite newer migration trends, New York City continues to be home by a significant margin to the largest demographic and cultural center for Puerto Rican on the Mainland United States, with Philadelphia having the second-largest community. The portmanteau "Nuyorican" refers to Puerto Ricans and their descendants in the New York City metropolitan area. A large portion of the Puerto Rican population in the United States resides in the Northeastern United States and Florida, with Holyoke, Massachusetts and Buenaventura Lakes, Florida having the highest percentages of Puerto Rican residents of any municipalities in the country. There are also significant Puerto Rican populations in the Chicago metropolitan area and the South Atlantic States, from Maryland to Georgia, and other states like Ohio, Texas, and California.
The Puerto Rican community of Holyoke holds an annual Puerto Rican Day parade on the third weekend of July as part of an Annual Hispanic Family Festival held by La Familia Hispana, inc. Every year the parade grows in popularity, attracting Puerto Ricans from across the northeast.
Over the years Wistariahurst, which provides historic and cultural exhibits and resources for Holyoke's many ethnic communities, has amassed a substantial collection on Holyoke's Puerto Rican history.[82] The museum, working in tandem with the Holyoke Public Library, has also been in the process of collecting and curating firsthand accounts of this history through the "Nuestros Senderos" program, with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.[83][84]
While the first Puerto Rican immigrants wouldn't arrive in Holyoke en masse until after the Second World War, its own history in Puerto Rican culture begins with Sixto Escobar's mainland debut at the Valley Arena. On May 7, 1934, Escobar defeated bantamweight contender and Canadian flyweight titleholder Bobby Leitham, in a fight that made headlines in local papers and was seen as a dramatic upset in the world of boxing.[13] A few weeks later on May 22, Escobar faced his second opponent on the mainland, Joey Archibald, at the same venue, beating him handily before moving on to a rematch with Leitham in Montreal.[14] These two matches marked an early chapter in a storied career; Escobar would go on to become Puerto Rico's first world champion.[15]
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