Trip to Bronzeville: The Harlem of the Midwest

Oh the agony of writing on this again. I know that I need to develop a consistent discipline in writing and reading, especially before I start school again. Summers/vacations have a way of isolating people from their responsibilities and longtime goals. Its like "live for the moment before it gets cold again! (especially for those who live in the Midwestern U.S.) So, what better way than to write on a blog - the ultimate modern-day vehicle of self-indulgence. 

Anyway, speaking of diddle-dalling, I went to Bronzeville today with my partner and one of my closest friends. Say what you will, but the historical ethnic segregation of Chicago has provided much revenue and fame to the city - all you need is to look at the nickname of this garden metrópolis - the "city of neighborhoods." Of course, red lining and institutional racism is nothing to celebrate, but ethnic segregation has given (and still gives) an opportunity for immigrant groups, especially oppressed immigrant groups (even in the 2nd and 3rd generations) an opportunity to produce spaces of political and cultural resistance to assimilation and to produce an economy on their own terms in the hands of their own compatriotas. Por supuesto, this does not happen everywhere in this city. Bronzeville is an interesting case study, though.

As we went to Chicago's House of Chicken and Waffles (which ironically served great tasting black soul food with white and Indian waiters and Mexican cooks - you see a lot when you're waiting 35 minutes to get seated!) we walked through gargantuan empty lots and storefronts, housing complexes isolated by green lawns separating pedestrians with prison-like black gates, and old stone architectural treasures being engulfed by eager yuppies who work downtown. 

Though, I couldn't help but happily think of the community's golden age when I saw all the black families strolling through its green boulevards, when it was dubbed the "Black Metropolis" (forever memorialized in a 1940s book of the same name). Although, its former infamous alderwoman tried to revitalize the community's black character by promoting a Jazz District, since thousands of its residents have left when red lining became illegal and moved into communities of either greater poverty and marginalization or insular wealth, it still has a long way to go. Hopefully its community residents/leaders and institutions are able to pay justice to its historic hayday while providing a new vision of a black community in the 21st century (that does not have to look the same as the Chicago Housing Authority's ridiculous and racist "mixed-housing" plan that it has already imposed on empty lots and bulldozed housing projects). Awww, a  global city-wannabe waiting for the International Olympic Committee's 2016 OK sticker, full of contradictions and fading historical memory. 

Bikes, Yuppies, and Internet bochinche

“I am going to have a VERY hard time being at the Ciclo Urbano event if the No Se Vende people are talking about wanting white people to get the hell out in front of my children and waving Puerto Rican flags in our faces, ” wrote a new resident of Humboldt Park in an e-mail to the head of West Town Bikes on April 23.

Thus began a comedic fiasco well deserving of the title given to this commentary. But here is some background information first.

Humboldt Park (Chicago), in the last few years, is a community where homes, full of memories, are bulldozed and gutted, where families are pushed away by ridiculous increases in rent and harassment by greedy developers and city inspectors, and age-old murals are covered-up.

It is in this current reality that West Town Bikes, which is a mostly white-owned and frequented bike shop in Humboldt Park, decided to open-up a shop on Paseo Boricua. And with surprise of some, all this took place with the strong support of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC). Why, you must be thinking, would an organization like the PRCC, which has been a leader in promoting and maintaing a Boricua cultural and business corridor along Division Street, facilitate this business' arrival here? Isn't biking like a poor yuppie's form of Starbucks coffee?

Well, one of the answers is because Puerto Ricans bike too! Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park also have huge health disparities, which has pushed-up the rates of diabetes, obesity, and cancer. The PRCC also has programs like CO-OP Humboldt Park and Muévete, which work on the issues of health, including promoting physical activity. And most importantly, it is because being pro-Puerto Rican does not mean being anti-white or anti-new resident.

Those Paseo Boricua flags are gates of welcoming and gates of dialogue. West Town bikes respected what the Puerto Rican community has worked so hard to create on Division Street and decided to join the dialogue with its new shop, Ciclo Urbano. They also planned to celebrate this new relationship by organizing a large procession from their old location with the PRCC's Humboldt Park NO SE VENDE! Campaign (HPNSV). However, not all new residents, including the one who sent the e-mail, is as respectful or understanding of all this.

The e-mail's author (who I will call “angry neighbor,” since her personal identity is insignificant, but her actions is representative of a greater problem) also complained that HPNSV practiced “reverse racism” and had a “nationalist platform.” The angry neighbor made it a point to proudly claim that she was white, despite the fact she is “half hispanic” (her words), as a way to connect with the head of West Town Bikes. To sum it up, the e-mail's tone was along the lines of “we need to do something about these Puerto Ricans.” West Town Bikes did not buy it and we all enjoyed a procession on May 1 that included over 200 people.

Sadly, divisive tactics like those of angry neighbor is something that will only further destroy all the work that people have put into developing Paseo Boricua. There is an ever present sense of “yuppie isolationism,” where many angry new residents, longing for another Bucktown, seek to replace Paseo Boricua with their own visions of community instead of working with the community.

In the “city of neighborhoods” - a slogan that emerges from a horrendous history of racism and urban segregation – one can explore the world in only a few miles and a few minutes. In this global city one can find Pilsen, where México lurks in old Czech architecture and Bronzeville, the historic center of the “Black Metropolis.” One could also hear the loud sounds of Café Colao coffee brewing behind its counter, snapping its customers back home.

Once I gave a tour of this community to a group of young basketball players from Puerto Rico, who never stepped foot outside the island. While I explained the meaning of some murals and pointed to the iron emblems detailing symbols of Boricua culture on the light poles, I overheard whispers of excitement: “Wow, I feel like I'm in Puerto Rico, I feel like I'm home.”

The communities that I mentioned suffers from stains of ghettoization, places where people of color were forced to occupy, but are beginning to experience cultural and economic rebirth - development from the vision of its longtime residents. Sadly, Chicago, like most U.S. cities, is on a path of Disneyland cookie-cutter dreams– a metropolis of Lincoln and Wicker Parks for miles and miles. Like Pilsen and Bronzeville, Paseo Boricua and all of Humboldt Park, is in the path of the slow-moving bulldozer called gentrification. Our destruction will only please people like the angry neighbor and that is why we cannot let it happen anymore. 

Originally published in the May edition of La Voz del Paseo Boricua newspaper

A Puerto Rican Funeral for a Nuyorican Artist

My favorite artist, and probably one of the most influential artist (outside Francisco Oller) in the entire Puerto Rican Archipelago, Rafael Tufiño, is dead, at 86. The governor of the island ordered all government institutions to fly their flags at half staff and Tufiño's body lays in state in the National Gallery of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (where his most famous work, Goyita, is posterized on its pastel, Viejo San Juan building). He will also be buried in the famed María Magdalena de Pazzis cemetary in Viejo San Juan alongside poets and nationalist leaders. The Puerto Rican people (Diaspora and island) has truly lost " A People's Artist" who depicted rural and urban Puerto Rican life with all its music, death, violence, and poverty. Ironically, he was was born in Brooklyn, New York (he moved to PR when he was 10), where he later returned to found Taller Boricua and El Museo de Barrio - two important Nuyorican artistic institutions. One of his sons even told the island newspaper, El Nuevo Día, that his nationalist art was created through his "distinct perspective" as being a Puerto Rican not born on the island, but finding the island later in his life. No one can claim that Puerto Ricans born outside the island are not truly Puerto Rican - New York claims the origin of our flag, the music of salsa, and one of our greatest artists. Even Chicago claims the largest Puerto Rican flag in the world.

Search for Equilibrium: May '07 to March '08

Oh and to answer a few questions: Why Before Infinity? What's that picture on your blog title? What's that picture at the bottom of your page? Why that poem? Why is your url "Xavier's Revenge?" My, my, one at a time. The last line of one of my favorite poems, The Final Act by José de Diego is "before infinity." The poem ends with possibly de Diego's death under a colonized Puerto Rico, where his coffin is draped by the island's flag. Once the island becomes free, he escapes from the coffin and uses the flag as a shroud, "hoisted high...before infinity," which can be interpreted as the glorious experience of freedom that can never be robbed from one's collective memory, even in death. Or that not even death can cease the thirst for freedom.

The main picture is a photograph by Jamel Shabazz, a black New York City photographer, famous for capturing the nascent Hip-Hop scene in the 1980's - a dangerous and creative environment that I was born into. The bottom picture is a piece of a mural by my favorite artist Rafael Tufiño called "La plena." This piece is depicting the famous song called "Le Cortaron a Elena" - "They cut Elena," which can be interpreted as the struggles of life, poverty, and the wonderful rhythms that death may bring, which is also echoed in the sarcastic and political poem by Miguel Piñero.


As for "Xavier's Revenge," that lies at the hands of the resurrection of one of the greatest pleneros Rafael Cortijo by the eloquent and breathe-taking essay by Juan Flores called "Cortijo's Revenge." Rafael Cortijo, being a black Puerto Rican was venerated in life as a great musician but in death he was the center of controversy over the suggestion that his name should grace the title of the Capital's bourgeoisie performance hall of "culture" - Centro de Bellas Artes, which ironically stands where his house once stood. Long story short, after much racist and classist mud-slinging, the hall would be named after Luis A. Ferré (who was rich, half-Cuban, right-wing, white, and a former pro-statehood Governor). Nonetheless, it was Cortijo's revenge that a poor, black plenero (which is a Puerto Rican form of cultural production unlike ballet and symphony orchestras that resonates through the performance hall) from the ghettos of Santurce would spark national debate on race, class, culture, and identity. I am a poor, black Puerto Rican from the ghettos of New York and Chicago, but if you comment on my blog, then you have read what I had to write. Who would of thought that a marginalized human being as myself could capture your attention? Xavier's Revenge!