This is an assumption that some people create (some maliciously, while other do it out of ignorance) that subconsciously reveal their own fears/ notions of what is involved in the process of gentrification. In other words, when people see an anti-gentrification campaign picking up speed they automatically assume its about white hate... why? Well because it is obvious that most of the "new residents" a.k.a. yuppies are white. You don't have to publish an article or host an event or do anything for someone to understand that obvious dynamic. Yes there has been graffiti, signs, and even things people have said in this community that are speak to that antagonism, but as a vision and in our work we have never publically said or done anything along those lines. We are about preserving the Puerto Rican community on Paseo Boricua and in Humboldt Park. We are pro-Boricua community as opposed to anti-white. However, most reactionary folks would automatically define that as racist anyway.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Does Pro-Boricua Community = Anti-White?
This is an assumption that some people create (some maliciously, while other do it out of ignorance) that subconsciously reveal their own fears/ notions of what is involved in the process of gentrification. In other words, when people see an anti-gentrification campaign picking up speed they automatically assume its about white hate... why? Well because it is obvious that most of the "new residents" a.k.a. yuppies are white. You don't have to publish an article or host an event or do anything for someone to understand that obvious dynamic. Yes there has been graffiti, signs, and even things people have said in this community that are speak to that antagonism, but as a vision and in our work we have never publically said or done anything along those lines. We are about preserving the Puerto Rican community on Paseo Boricua and in Humboldt Park. We are pro-Boricua community as opposed to anti-white. However, most reactionary folks would automatically define that as racist anyway.
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Happy Little Rainbow of Gentrification
"To say that it is a pr community that welcomes all is also incorrect. It is an all community that welcomes all. We should not be fighting to keep "white people" out, we should be fighting to keep minorities in. Bringing awareness and business to the minority owned businesses and events being thrown in the park. If we say we are fighting to kick people out then we would be the same as them. Unity Unity Unity" says a Facebook commenter to an upcoming anti-gentrification event (look above).
Monday, July 13, 2009
Yuppies Strike Back
Some more bochinche for you, my beautiful people:
“But also he fails to see that the people within the community are doing it to themselves. Putting the flags up was the action of ghettoization to themselves. My point is my friends is that before publishing a article there needs to be two things to happen here. One please proof read your articles. And second please have a point or take English 101," says a reader (I will call him “angry joe”) of my May 2009 Fíjate article.
“¡Ay míjo, qué revolú!” my grandmother would say if she only know what new drama her grandson got himself into. Well, as you all know, soy sin pelo en la lengua, papá. For new readers, let me explain what I mean by all this and why “angry joe” is so hysterical.
Well, in my last column I highlighted the urgent threat that the Puerto Rican community is facing with its displacement from Humboldt Park, represented in the form of a divisive e-mail by a new yuppie resident. In this e-mail, the resident was trying to persuade a community business owner from mingling with the ¡Humboldt Park NO SE VENDE! campaign, which is a grassroots organization seeking to preserve Paseo Boricua.
As Boricuas in Chicago, we have seen this time and time again: when our communities are “redeveloped” and “repackaged” we are then treated as unwelcome pests. Like the story of a conguero friend of mine who raised his children in Bucktown only to have his oldest son one day be harassed in front of their home because a yuppie could not believe that a Puerto Rican family could live on “his” block, the arrogance of such an e-mail is evident to anyone who can feel human emotions. So, of course, I published a piece of it with a response. ¿Ay bendito, porqué tú hiciste eso,?” my grandmother would say. Well, for long as we have a Puerto Rican community, we must seek to provide an open and democratic forum from which we must discuss pressing and relevant issues. The preservation of Paseo Boricua and its discontents is the issue.
But anyway, what a backlash I got from that! From close friends and associates jokingly saying “don't e-mail Xavi anything, he'll publish it in Fíjate!” to less funny and cute phone calls, e-mails, and even visits to the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, some people, one way or another, was bothered/amused by my column.
All joking aside, I write all this not for ego, but to again highlight the issue: if we do not talk and do something about the displacement of the Puerto Rican community in Humboldt Park, then the forum to discuss, engage, envision, and build will no longer exist.
As for “angry Joe's” e-mail, it does pinpoint an important and dangerous trend in thought by many new yuppie residents (not all are “angry new residents” - some are actually decent people who respect and understand the efforts of longtime residents to build this community and therefore seek to participate in it, not sabotage or bogart it): that Puerto Ricans have no right to claim this area as ours.
Well, if one looks up the origins of ghettos, then one will see that they were areas in European cities where Jews were forced to live because they were beyond the “Kingdom of Christ.” This forced segregation did not deter this group to produce communities full of culture, history, and commerce. Humboldt Park was left to us Boricuas as a poor, worn-out slum by its Eastern European residents who left to the suburbs. Although, it is not perfect, walk down Division Street today and compare it to the street that my mother walked on decades ago, there is a huge, positive difference (businesses, festivals, buildings that look like Viejo San Juan...etc) and with its Puerto Rican identity intact (beginning with those two, 59-feet Puerto Rican Flags). But with “angry Joes” walking around, how long will it last?
Originally published in the "Fíjate" column of the June edition of La Voz del Paseo Boricua newspaper
Change The Flag or Change The Status? Ay, Puerto Rico!
Is it just El Nuevo Dia's reporting or do legislators in Puerto Rico like to use their positions to impose ambiguous and quite frankly, silly laws and regulations on their constituents (and the entire island)? Today in an article in the island's most widely circulated newspaper titled "Representante defiende proyecto para cambiar color a la bandera", reports that a Representative from Ponce is trying to officially change the colors of the Puerto Rican flag (gasps!). The legislator, Luis “Tato” León Rodríguez, (with a seemingly "Ponce es Ponce y lo demás es parking" attitude) says it is in order to "save and protect the integrity of this national symbol" (one that was interestingly created by Puerto Rican exiles in New York in 1895). What color is he trying to change it to? Well, the blue of the triangle - from its official dark blue to its historic light blue (more gasps!).
Now, anyone who knows me would think that I am now going crazy - am I not an independentista who knows and believes that the light blue is the original and revolutionary blue? Is this not what I want the flag too look like when the island is finally free and sovereign? Well, yes and yes! And for all those reasons it just boggles my mind why anyone in a position of (somewhat) power would advocate for the changing of a "national symbol" into its more revolutionary roots but also say in the same breath that this is not about the status issue (yeah, ok) but about filling a "legal gap."
Boricuas, as special as we are (¿Tú no sabías que Diós es puertorriqueño?), we cannot have our cake and eat it too. A legislator cannot legislate nationalism while simultaneously shying away from the idea of a sovereign nation. And you know what is the most ironic thing about all of this? That this man is a member of the pro-statehood party! Ave María, what next, the PNP is going to start advocating for a trade agreement with Cuba?
Anyway, this idea was shot down by Luis Fracaso... I mean Fortuño, who said in a press conference (in none other than in my town of Juncos!) that this never has been an issue of discussion and will not be in the future. ¡Fuácata!
Friday, July 10, 2009
Those Who Opposed Pastor De Jesús Just Didn't Get It!
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Trip to Bronzeville: The Harlem of the Midwest
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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 the column "Fíjate" in the May edition of La Voz del Paseo Boricua newspaper