The urban poor of Puerto Rico: a study in development and inequality

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This book is dedicated to my mother and the memory of my father, without whose constant support and encouragement I would never have

Acknowledgments

become an anthropologist. Parts of this case study have previously been published in other forms in the following publications:

"The Social Isolation of the Urban Poor: Life in a Puerto Rican Shantytown," in Among the People: Encounters with the Poor, Irwin Deutscher and E. Thompson,

Cover photo by James Weber

eds. New York: Basic Books, 1968, Chapters 2 and 4.

"Puerto Rican Adaptations to the Urban Milieu," in Race, Change and Urban Society, Peter Orleans and Russell Ellis, eds. (Vol. 5, Urban Affairs Annual Re

views.) New York: Sage Publications, 1971, Chapters 1, 2, and 4. "The Poor Are Like Everyone Else," in Psychology Today, September Chapter 6.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Safa, Helen Icken.

The urban poor of Puerto Rico. (Case studies in cultural anthropology)

Based in part on the author's thesis, Columbia University. Bibliography: p. 113. 1. San Juan metropolitan area, P. R.—Poor. 2. Slums—San Juan metropolitan area, P. R.

^Rural-urban migration—Puerto Rico—San Juan metropolitan area.

"^

»TEMA &E BJBLIOTECAS JUN24I983

HV4064.S2S23

I. Title. II. Series.

301.44'l

73-6557

ISBN 0-03-085360-5

Copyright © 1974 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. All rights reserved

Printed in the United States o£^\merica 89

059

98 76 543

1970,

Foreword About the Series These case studies in cultural anthropology are designed to bring to stu dents, in beginning and intermediate courses in the social sciences, insights into the richness and complexity of human life as it is lived in different ways and in different places. They are written by men and women who have lived in the soci

eties they write about and who are professionally trained as observers and inter preters of human behavior. The authors are also teachers, and in writing their

books they have kept the students who will read them foremost in their minds. It is our belief that when an understanding of ways of life very different from one's own is gained, abstractions and generalizations about social structure, cultural values, subsistence techniques, and the other universal categories of human social behavior become meaningful.

About the Author Helen Safa has a long-standing association with Puerto Rico, dating from

1954 when she first visited the island as a student in a summer workshop. She became so interested in the Puerto Rican people and their culture that she remained on the island for two years, working in a number of positions for the Common wealth Government. When she undertook graduate work in anthropology at

Columbia University, her study was partially financed by a fellowship from the University of Puerto Rico. She returned to Puerto Rico in 1959 to collect data

for her doctoral dissertation, under a study sponsored by the Urban Renewal and Housing Administration of the Commonwealth Government.

Most of the original data collected in 1959 is reported in this book, as well

, as a follow-up study of relocated shantytown families conducted ten years later. Dr. Safa has published numerous articles on Puerto Rico and on the general themes of urbanization, poverty, and development in professional books and journals. She is presently a professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy Development of Livingston College, Rutgers University, and also associate director of the Latin American Institute there. She hopes to continue her research in urban

ization and development in other areas of Latin America and the Third World.

FOREWORD

About the Book This is a study of a shantytown in the San Juan metropolitan area in Puerto

Preface

Rico. The shantytown, Los Peloteros, like other shantytowns in Latin America, was

established by poor people who found urban poverty to be more endurable than the poverty of landless agricultural laborers in an industrializing economy. Like other shantytowns, Los Peloteros was established on marginal public land and

In a study of this scope, in which data have been gathered intermittently

was built by the people themselves out of the materials at hand. All of the usual indications of poverty found in other shantytowns were found in Los Peloteros

for more than a decade, one becomes indebted to so many people that it becomes

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difficult to express adequately appreciation to all of them. The original study of

the shantytown in 1959-1960 was sponsored by the Urban Renewal and Housing

rainy season. This case study makes clear, however, that the culture of Los Pelo

Administration of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; and credit must be given

teros was not merely a culture of poverty but one that contained within it a

to Rafael Corrada, then Director of the Research Office, and his staff for having

variety of life styles. Particularly surprising is the optimism and hope for personal

undertaken a study in a field which, particularly at that time, had been totally

betterment that characterizes so many of the people of Los Peloteros.

neglected by social scientists and planners alike.

The shantytown studied by Helen Safa in 1959 and I960 no longer exists. The houses were demolished under an urban renewal program and the people_relocated. The description of Los Peloteros as it existed, however, is relevant to the

sertation in anthropology at Columbia University.

many shantytowns still existing in Puerto Rico and the thousands still springing

my close friend and mentor since the beginning of my graduate study. My indebt

up in urban areas elsewhere in Latin America and the Third World. The value of this study, however, does not rest solely upon the applicability of the description

edness to him is evident in these pages. I am also grateful to Dr. Margaret Mead,

to the understanding of other similar cases.

valuable suggestions.

The data gathered in the original study served as the basis of my doctoral dis In the preparation

of my

dissertation I worked very closely with Dr. Conrad Arensberg, who has acted as

Dr. Charles Wagley, and Dr. Marvin Harris for their critical evaluations and many

Helen Safa returned to San Juan in 1969 to do a study of the consequences of

A predoctoral grant from the National Institute of Mental Health supported

relocation for the former inhabitants of Los Peloteros. During the intervening

me during the writing of my dissertation, while two additional small grants from

decade there have been great changes in Puerto Rico and in the conditions of life for the relocated people of Los Peloteros. Dr. Safa makes clear in her analysis that this change is not really an absolute shift for the better. The social structure of

08173-01) and again in the summer of 1969 (PHS MH-17606-01) to gather

the same agency enabled me to return to Puerto Rico in the summer of 1965 (MH additional data, including the restudy on relocation. In addition, through a grant

Puerto Rico itselfjs changing as aronsequenrp of industrialization and urban

from the Research Council of Rutgers University, I was granted a leave from my

ization^ The number of families in the middle-income range has increased and at

teaching duties during the fall of 1971 in order to prepare this monograph. I am

the same time the gap between families with the lowest and highest incomes is

grateful to the Rutgers Research Council and the National Institute of Mental

growing. Also within the urban labor force a sharp differentiation is appearing

Health for their support and interest in my work.

between the unskilled, unemployed, and underemployed workers and a privileged working class. The members of the working class have benefited from the rapid

In 1959-1960 I worked closely with Sila Nazario de Ferrer, then a research assist

Several research assistants have worked with me during various phases of study.

economic growth in Puerto Rico. They have a stake in the system and are strong

ant in the Urban Renewal and Housing Administration and now a Senator of the

supporters of the status quo. Those who remained behind, however, do not blame

' New Progressive party from San Juan. Her avid concern for people, particularly the

society for their condition; they do not understand the wider social circumstances

poor, is clearly demonstrated in both her research and political endeavors. Carlos

that perpetuate a system of inequality in a colonial, capitalist society like Puerto

Chardon helped me gather and analyze data on public housing applicants in 1965,

Rico. They see, rather, themselves as inadequate, as unable to take advantage of the new opportunities in an expanding economy. The reasons for this and the

when he was a graduate student at Syracuse University. He, too, now occupies an

consequences of it are explored in this book.

regional office of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Elena Gon

important government position as Puerto Rican liaison representative to the zalez did an excellent job of the arduous task of typing up the tape-recorded

George and Louise Spindler General Editors Stanford, California

September 1973

interviews conducted during the restudy, while Elvira Craig de Silva assisted in the cataloging of this data. The final manuscript was typed by Mrs. Ronnie Fer nandez of the Department of Urban Planning and Policy Development at Rutgers University, and she has been most patient with my often harried and sporadic method of working.

x

PREFACE

About half of the photographs in this book, including the cover, were taken by James Weber, a young photographer whom I met in Puerto Rico and who has come to love the Puerto Rican people as much as I do. He was kind enough to

contribute his services free of charge, and I hope that the quality of his photo

Contents

graphs will lead him to do further work in this field, for which he is obviously

gifted. The remainder of the photographs were contributed by the Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corporation, who have been most helpful to me throughout this research. My criticisms of public housing policy in this mono graph are in no way meant to offend personally the staff of this highly dedicated government agency.

I am also grateful to my family, who have borne with me through all the years

of data collection and manuscript preparation. These tasks consume so much of one's time and energy that family matters are often neglected, and I thank them for their forbearance.

Most of all, however, I wish to thank the families of U>s Peloterps^who have given so freely of their time and thoughts over the years. Because I have known most of these families since 1959, they have come to be far more than inform ants; they are close friends and, in a true Puerto Rican sense, have treated me as a member of their families. I have tried to recount here a little of their life,

Acknowledgments Foreword

Preface Introduction

1.

The Growth of the San Juan Metropolitan Area The Growth of Shantytowns

of their problems, and of their hopes. In a sense, I have served merely as a vehicle of transmission for their ideas. Without them, and particularly without the assistance of Dona Ana, who served as my "sponsor" since my first days in the field, this study simply would not have been possible. Naturally, the names of the families in this monograph as well as the name of

Patterns of Settlement

Housing

2.

20

Consumer Patterns

22

26

30

Aspirations and Attitudes toward Social Mobility

3.

to the process of social change and to the reduction of inequality, both in our

36

Marriage Patterns and Household Composition Conjugal Relationships and Marital Stability The Socialization Process

book to the families studied here, with the remainder to be contributed to Aspira of New Jersey, a Puerto Rican organization devoted to furthering educational

47

Migration and Extended Kin Ties

4.

56

58

Community Solidarity and Extracommunity Relationships 61

Leadership and Social Control

Relationship with Other Classes

September 1973

37 41

Occupational and Educational Aspirations for Children

Neighbors, Kin, and Friends

New Brunswick, N.J.

33

Family and Kinship The Nature of Matrifocality

I would hope that this study will make such a contribution for the Puerto Rican poor. Therefore I am donating the first portion of the royalties from this

community studied would become a general trend in the field.

Earning a Living: Jobs and Other Sources of Income

Income Differentiation

own country and abroad.

opportunities for Puerto Rican youth on the mainland. I would hope that other anthropologists would follow suit and that the sharing of royalties with the

12

Job Opportunities in the City

thropologists are becoming increasingly aware that their responsibility to the people they have studied extends beyond these traditional formalities. All too

6

8

14

Rural Origins

the shantytowns are fictitious so that their privacy will be protected. However, an

often we have taken far more from these people than we have given in return. Anthropologists who are truly concerned with reducing social injustice can begin with these people to whom they have a direct responsibility and take steps to redress this inequity. This is one way anthropology can contribute meaningfully

Finding a Home: Migration and Its Consequences

Race and Racism Religion

64

66

68

70

Politics and the Power Structure

73

xii

5.

CONTENTS

Relocation and a Decade of Change Relocation in Public Housing Moving to an Urbanization

19 86

Introduction

The Younger Generation 90 Changing Political Attitudes 91

6.

Conclusion: Development, Inequality, and Proletarian Consciousness in Puerto Rico

Economic Structure of Puerto Rican Society Personalistic View of Poverty 105 Migration to the Mainland

104

106

Colonialism, Development, and Dependency 106 Vehicles for Creating Class Consciousness 108

Puerto Rico is a prime example among developing nations of rapid eco nomic growth and social change. In the early 1940s the government of Puerto Rico launched an ambitious development program, known as Operation Bootstrap,

designed to improve the standard of living of the Puerto Rican people through government-sponsored industrialization, land reform, and vast increases in gov

ernment expenditures for education, public health, housing, and other social wel fare programs.

The results of Operation Bootstrap have been impressive indeed. The rate of eco nomic growth has been about 10 percent annually, while annual income per

family has increased from $1,103 in 1940 to $3,979 in 1969

(L. Silva Recio,

1971: 129). The labor force has moved out of agriculture into urban employment, life expectancy has increased to over 70, and illiteracy has dropped from 32 per cent in 1940 to 10.8 percent in 1970 (U.S. Census 1970).

■^This monograph is an attempt to document the impact of these changes on the Puerto Rican urban poor. Though there have been numerous books lauding the Puerto Rican success story (as well as severe criticisms, chiefly from Puerto Rican

advocates of independence), most of these accounts are concerned with national level changes measured in terms of indexes of economic growth and other stand ard measures of modernization. Here, however, I have attempted to describe the

impact of these changes on a particular segment of Puerto Rican society—on the ( migrants who left the rural area in the early

1940s and settled in squalid /

shantytowns to form the core of an urban, industrial labor force. In many respects,

the lives of these families reflect the transformations that have taken place in Puerto Rican society since the 1940s.

Shantytowns represent the principal form of residence of the Puerto Rican urban poor. In 1969, it was estimated that there were a total of 421 shantytowns

In Puerto Rico with a total of 79,382 structures or dwelling units (J. Morales

Yordan, 1971:

114). Although efforts have been made to reduce this figure

through vast slum clearance and public housing programs, new shantytowns are

constantly springing up as the stream of migrants continues to pour into the urban centers—chiefly the San Juan metropolitan area. Earlier migrants to San

Juan settled chiefly along the banks of the Martin Pefia Channel, on marginal public land essentially unfit for either residential or commercial use. Although

the growth of shantytowns along the Channel has been checked, the decline of

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

population in this area recently averaged less than one-half of one percent per year, while new shantytowns are beginning to emerge in more outlying areas (Caplow et al, 1964: 41).

This location along marginal public lands distinguishes shantytowns from what may properly be called a slum. Slums are usually located in the center of the city, close to the central business district, and consist of once adequate structures

which have been converted from their original use to tenements housing many times their anticipated occupancy. Shanties, on the other hand, are from the out

set inadequate structures; most are rather flimsily constructed with makeshift materials by unskilled labor provided by the owner and his friends. Thus, while slums are a form of blight or deterioration characteristic of highly industrialized cities, shantytowns are commonly found in the preindustrial cities of developing areas where marginal public lands still exist on the urban fringe.

Despite the attraction of other cities, the largest number of rural migrants

always headed toward the San Juan metropolitan area, which as early as 1935-

1940 received over one-half of all interregional migrants (Parke, 1952: 13). Though the great bulk came from adjacent regions, particularly in the early period, migrants to San Juan have been drawn from all parts of the island. Thus, in Los Peloteros, the shantytown studied here, the birthplace of rural migrants represents nearly every municipality on the island. There is no apparent tendency

for families from the same region to settle in one neighborhood, as in some African and Asian cities. This may be true of a recently settled shantytown, but where a neighborhood has been established over one generation, as in this case, any initial concentration from one area has been dispersed and replaced by more recent migrants.

. , ,^'

How have these migrants fared in the city? Where do they settle and what

kind of jobs and other opportunities do they find? How has the shantytown facilitated their adaptation to the urban milieu? These are some of the questions that this case study will attempt to answer.

^,

'

However, this is not merely an ethnographic study of a shantytown. While I am concerned with the economic, family, and community patterns developed in the shantytown, my primary interest is in how these patterns promote or hinder the

development of class consciousness and class solidarity among the urban poor. This interest stems from the belief that any movement for radical social change in Puerto Rican society ultimately depends on the ability of the poor to become a potent political force that can alter the present elite power structure. Social

scientists know very little about the processes that lead to protest and radical

3

changes resulting from the relocation of shantytown families in public housing. I spent several months as a participant observer in Los Peloteros, a shantytown,

and in a public housing project that had been chosen at random within the San Juan metropolitan area. On the basis of the data gathered through participant

observation, we drew up a standardized interview schedule which was then admin istered to a sample of 100 families each in both of these neighborhoods. In_alL,_a.

total of 200 families or 47? Individuals were interviewed during the original study, since both husband and wife, and where possible, an adolescent child were

^Interviewed in each family. The shantytown studied in 1959-1960 was completely cleared and by 1962 all of the residents had moved to other parts of the metropolitan area. During the

summer of 1969, I returned to Puerto Rico to attempt to trace all of the shanty town families whom I had known personally as a participant observer ten years earlier. Fortunately, through the network of family relationships maintained over the years, I was able to locate every one of the families and to conduct lengthy, tape-recorded interviews with them, focusing on the changes that had taken place

during the last ten years. I interviewed a total of seven families or fifteen indi viduals, several of whom had been children ten years earlier. The perspectives of this younger generation turned out to be one of the most interesting aspects of

this restudy, and they are reported in Chapter 6. In this case study I have chosen to emphasize the qualitative data obtained through participant observation rather than the quantitative data obtained through

the survey sample. The results of the survey sample are limited to data collected in 1959-1960, and have been reported in this monograph only where they prove

useful in verifying the range of certain patterns and trends observed in the field. Only a few of the original tables have been reproduced here. In addition, I have included only limited data on public housing from the original study, except for a brief description in Chapter 6 on relocation. The focus here rather is on the shantytown and the changes brought about in the lives and attitudes of shantytown families by relocation and the overall development of Puerto Rican society. The variety of life styles described here belies the notion held by many social scientists and the public at large that the poor are a homogeneous, downtrodden, disorganized, and apathetic people. On the contrary, this study emphasizes the ' resourcefulness and optimism of the urban poor of Puerto Rico and their ability to

respond to changing socioeconomic conditions. Is their optimism warranted? Have they obtained their just share of the benefits of the fantastic economic growth that has occurred in Puerto Rico in the postwar period? Can economic develop

social change, yet these are the very forces that have disrupted American society for the past decade and that have brought about vast transformations in many

ment alone reduce the inequalities of a highly stratified society such as exist in

countries of the Third World. Hopefully this study of the Puerto Rican urban

this book.

poor can add to our knowledge of this process.

The data presented here were gathered at various time periods during a decade

of tremendous change in the structure of Puerto Rican society. The original study of the shantytown, presented in Chapters 1-5, was cqnducted in 19591960jioder the auspices of the Urban Renewal and Housing Administration of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which was concerned with determining the

Puerto Rico? We shall return to some of these questions in the last chapter of

1 / Finding a Home:

r

Migration and Its Consequences

Metropolitan San Juan is the economic, political, and cultural capital of Puerto Rico. This vast urban complex comprises most of the island's manufactur ing, financial, trade, government, and educational activities. In I960, the San Juan metropolitan area accounted for almost half of the island's net income and for nearly three of every four nonagricultural jobs created in Puerto Rico during the previous decade. Since I960 airport and dock facilities have been expanded; tall glass and steel office buildings and luxury apartment houses have sprung up

vertically together with the horizontal spread of suburban developments and mod ern shopping centers bordering on new superhighways.

The heavy concentration of activities in the San Juan metropolitan area acts as

a powerful magnet for rural migrants looking for jobs and other urban amenities. Migration began during the depression of the 1930s and has continued to the

present, as rural agriculture stagnated and urban growth soared. Between 1940 and I960, the population of the San Juan metropolitan area more than doubled (from 300,000 to 648,000). According to the 1970 census, the population of the

greater San Juan metropolitan area stands at 851,247 people out of a total island population of 2,712,000. This represents a 31.4 percent increase over the previ ous decade compared to a 15.4 percent increase in the population of the entire island.

This chapter will describe the growth of the San Juan metropolitan area and of the shantytowns in which the rural migrants sought refuge. In the early 1960s, approximately 86,000 people lived in the five-mile belt of shantytowns extending along the Martin Pena Channel (Caplow et al., 1964: 228), property which at the time no one saw fit to develop for residential or commercial use. The emer

gence of shantytowns can be explained largely as the result of the need for an urban labor force to fill the demands of San Juan as the ever-expanding metro politan capital of Puerto Rico. From the very beginning, therefore, the fate of the urban proletariat has been inextricably linked to the development of the urban economy as a whole. We now shall trace that development.

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

7

or agricultural development, which for the first three centuries was limited largely to scattered subsistence farmers living in comparative isolation from the capital. Initially, city growth was extremely slow. But eventually the population did expand beyond the limits of the walls and a new settlement called Rio Piedras was

founded in 1714, in a location far enough inland to be secure from attack without fortifications. Both Rio Piedras and San Juan were laid out according to the Law of the Indies, with streets emanating in gridiron pattern from a central plaza. The plaza represented the nucleus of urban life; surrounding it were the city's most important public buildings—chief among them was the Alcaldia or Town Hall— as well as the homes of the island's wealthier citizens. As

in other Spanish

colonial cities, the social and economic status of the population descended in the move outward from the central plaza toward the periphery. On the outskirts of the capital were the homes of the artisans and laborers, the precursors of the

modern urban proletariat. The intermediate area of Santurce on the narrow strip of land between San

Juan and Rio Piedras did not receive the benefit of any initial planning. It devel oped in stringlike fashion along the main transportation route between the two settlements and apparently failed to attain the status of a fully independent community. Since Santurce was easily exposed to attack on both sides, its growth at first lagged behind that of the newer settlement in Rio Piedras.

Early in the nineteenth century some of the severe trade restrictions hamper ing the commercial and agricultural development of Puerto Rico were lifted. The century was one of rapid population increase for the island as a whole, but this

was not felt to any appreciable extent in the capital. In 1900 the population of San Juan, Santurce, and Rio Piedras combined, still numbered only four percent of the entire island.

&*« /««*» « now a bustling metropolis, with broad expressways and tall office and apartment buildings. (Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corpora

tion)

With the advent of American occupation and the consequent integration of Puerto Rico's economy with that of the United States, the city gained new impor tance. American corporations bought up land for the large-scale production of sugar cane, and overland transportation routes were improved to facilitate ship ments destined to the mainland. Metropolitan San Juan remained the chief port of trade as well as the political and administrative center of the new regime,

THE GROWTH OF THE SAN JUAN METROPOLITAN AREA1

with an ever-increasing volume of business and services. External trade expanded

San Juan is now a true metropolis; but it was not always like this. The capital

enormously.

The rise in importance of the capital was reflected in a rapid population

was once confined to the narrow streets on the tip of the small peninsula now

increase due chiefly to migration from the rural area. From 1900 to 1950 the

military stronghold of San Juan served primarily to bolster Spain's desperate

its total for 1900 (Caplow et al., 1964:

called Old San Juan. For several centuries after its establishment in 1521, the

attempt to retain supremacy in the Caribbean. Thick stone walls encircled the

small settlement at the entrance to the harbor to protect it from attacks by French, British, and other corsairs. San Juan also became a port of call and a servicing depot for ships plying the trade routes between Spain and the American mainland, and the Puerto Rican colonial government was largely sustained by coffers of gold brought from Mexico. Little was done to encourage internal trade 1 Much of the historical material in this section is derived from T. Caplow et al

Urban Ambtance: A Study of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Chapter I.

The

population of Old San Juan doubled while that of Santurce in 1940 was four times

19). Rio Piedras did not experience

rapid growth until 1940, but in each decade following its population more than

doubled. Boundary lines between the three settlements became blurred and eventu ally Rio Piedras was absorbed by the municipality of San Juan to create one large metropolitan complex. Today the legal definition of the San Juan metropolitan area is based on the expected limits of the urban population in 1970 and includes several surrounding municipalities; but in this study the definition is generally limited to the older urban configuration of Old San Juan, Santurce, and Rio Piedras.

8

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Since the turn of the century, the position of the capital in relation to the rest of Puerto Rico has clearly changed from one of relative isolation to one of unques tioned dominance. The internal composition of the metropolitan area has also changed, as the center of the city shifted from the original settlement in Old San Juan to the commercial district strung along the main avenue of Santurce. Thus, the ecological model of the city has changed from the traditional Spanish colonial pattern, focusing on a plaza, to the American industrial pattern, focusing

I

on a central business district. More recently, the center has shifted even further outward to the new bank and office buildings in Hato Rey, reflecting the impor tance of new commercial and credit interests. Santurce is now a hodge-podge of neighborhoods varying in type of housing, per capita income, population density, land use, and other socioeconomic indices (Caplow et al., 1964: 38-39). But the old colonial two-class division between rich and poor is still evident in two rela tively homogeneous areas flanking either shore of Santurce—the luxurious beach front hotels in the Condado and the sordid shantytowns along the Martin Pena Channel.

THE GROWTH OF SHANTYTOWNS

The formation of shantytowns appears to have started at a point close to the mouth of the Martin Pena Channel and to have spread in linear fashion along its banks inland, in the direction of Rio Piedras.* Shantytowns in the San Juan metro politan area have characteristically been confined to marginal public lands along the banks of the Channel or on waterfront property essentially unfit for either residential or commercial use. Residents never acquire legal title to the land, which remains public property, but shanties on.it are bought and sold in per fectly legal transactions. Even the government compensates shantytown dwellers

for the loss of their homes in slum clearance programs.

Because of its location on marginal land, the shantytown is set off both phys ically and socially from the rest of the metropolitan area. The only residential area bordering on Los Peloteros, the shantytown studied here, is the string of equally squalid shantytowns leading off from its western boundary. To the south and east it is bounded by the waters of the Channel and to the north by a main

thoroughfare, now a six-lane highway.

In 1959, a total of 16,947 persons lived in the census tract2 encompassing Los Peloteros, in an area covering approximately 82 acres, giving it a density of over 200 persons per acre. Except for a narrow strip of land bordering the new expressway, every available inch of land had been utilized. Some houses even

extended over the banks of the Channel, supported by wooden piles built into the water. These houses were considered the poorest in the shantytown and their inhabitants are referred to as los de abajo (those below). Plank sidewalks just wide enough to allow two people to pass provided the only means of access. 2 Political or administrative subdivisions, such as census tracts, do not always coincide with

the shantytown residents1 definition of neighborhood boundaries since the former were drawn

up arbitrarily after most shantytowns were settled.

Shantytowns are located in the midst of the metropolitan area, but are physically and socially isolated from other neighborhoods. {Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corporation)

Further inland, conditions improved somewhat and houses were higher priced. Thus, residence within the shantytown itself is ranked differentially depending on distance from the Channel.

The settlement of each shantytown has been built up gradually over many years through the joint efforts of the families settling there. Around 1935, the first fami lies arriving at the shantytown found only mangrove growing in the swampy land destined to become their home. They cleared and filled in a few plots to construct their houses and built plank sidewalks connecting different parts of the shanty town. Today street names such as O'Higgins, Colon, and Pablo Nunez commemo rate the struggle of these first families in the places where they established their homes.

For many years Los Peloteros was without water and electricity. The entire

barrio (neighborhood) depended on a single public faucet. Now running water and electricity have been installed in almost every house, thanks to the work of

barrio committees. In 1959, a group of neighbors went to the Aqueduct Authority to complain about the shortage of water in one section of the shantytown. The

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

•I

The poorest homes in the shantytown are located along the Channel, the waters of which give off a foul, nauseating stench. (Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corporation)

individuals went to see her personally. Eventually a new and larger pipe line was installed.

In the same way, committees were formed to protest the poor condition of the streets in the shantytown. They succeeded in having a few of the principal streets

filled in with gravel, but still none is paved or lighted. When the weather is dry, the air is choked with dust churned up by passing vehicles. In heavy rains, the roads are closed to motor traffic and even become difficult for pedestrians. Because of the low level of the land, water drains into the shantytown from higher ground, turning the streets to mud. Pools of stagnant water are left

behind for days, creating additional health hazards. No sewage system exists in Los Peloteros. Most families have latrines in the

back of the house and a few have flush toilets that empty into the Channel. Refuse

Makeshift plank sidewalks provide the only access to some houses. The house at the right is for sale. (Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corpora

tion)

and waste are also disposed of in the Channel, since there is no garbage collec tion service. Until recently, the Channel served as a main sewage outlet for the city as a whole, and the polluted waters produce a foul, nauseating stench. As we can see, shantytown residents are deprived of many essential services—

garbage collection, a sewage system, street lights, and paved roads. There are

Authority informed the group that no funds could be allocated for installing new pipes in Los Peloteros because the houses were soon to be demolished under an urban renewal program. The group then rallied support among their neighbors, who refused to pay their water bills. They collected signatures for a petition to Dona Felisa, the well-known Mayor of San Juan, and a few of the more articulate

also no medical facilities, schools, or churches in the barrio. Small local stores

sell a limited variety of canned goods and other nonperishable items, while the barrio cafetins (bars) provide a favorite meeting place for men. But usually the big weekly purchase of food {la compra) is made at a larger colmado or grocery store in Barrio Obrero, an old working-class district located near the shantytown.

Clothing and household goods are also bought in Barrio Obrero, where they are

;

!

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

colorfully displayed on racks outside the store. This is where Peloterenos go to movies or dances on Saturday nights or where they can obtain a vaccination or examination at the public dispensary. In a sense, Los Peloteros is considered merely a poorer offshoot of el barrio, as it is affectionately called. Of course, Peloterenos must leave the neighborhood to find work because there are almost no employment opportunities in the shantytown itself. As early as five or six in the morning, they board the buses on the main avenue and scatter to all parts of the city, from the docks in old San Juan to the new suburbs under construction in Rio Piedras. Here we can see clearly the dependence of the -shantytown on the wider metropolitan community.

Obviously, Los Peloteros is by no means a self-contained community. It is a one-class segregation, highly dependent on the resources and services of the wider metropolitan community. In this respect, Puerto Rican shantytowns are even more dependent on the larger urban community than most Latin American squatter settlements, which generally contain a greater variety of small businesses

and other facilities servicing the squatter community (see Mangin, 1967). The Puerto Rican urban poor are far more wage-oriented and, outside of a few storeowners in Los Peloteros, few of them earn their living within the shantytown community.

13

Santurce and by saving, he made me a house of wood, but good, well-made with zinc and all comforts although it was down below (near the water). . . . Then I moved because I couldn't carry the water. ... I didn't have water in the house. Then I had a barrel and he filled it in the afternoon before going to work and with that barrel I spent the day because I saved it so it would last

and the next afternoon he would fill the barrel again. ... It was a lot of work for him. . . . We could not buy piping to carry it so far so we never had water (in the house). So we moved from there.

Dona Ana and her family lived at Stop 23 for two or three years, and then moved to a rented apartment (mirador) for two months, until they were able to buy another home in a shantytown, in which they lived one year. Dona Ana com

plained of the noisy neighbors, so they sold that house and bought the house in Los Peloteros, where they lived nine years.

Like Dona Ana, newcomers to the shantytown often settle near a relative who helps them adjust to urban life. Frequently the relative will have found a home for the migrants and sent for them to come. He assists them in finding employ

ment, shows them where to shop, and takes them to the hospital. The house of one old couple in Los Peloteros was surrounded by the houses of their children and grandchildren, copying the same settlement pattern to which they had been accustomed in the rural area,

PATTERNS OF SETTLEMENT

The shantytown is the first place of settlement for most newly arrived rural migrants. Few of our sample from Los Peloteros have lived in another type of neighborhood since their arrival in the city, contrary to the "step" pattern

described by Turner and Mangin for Lima and other Latin American cities (Mangin, 1967: 68; Turner, 1969: 514-520). In the "step" pattern, migrants, especially single men, often settle initially in an inner-city slum before acquiring the capital to move their family to a self-built house in an outlying squatter settlement. The more central location of the earlier shantytowns in San Juan apparently permitted Puerto Rican migrants to avoid initial residence in an innercity slum.

However, migrants often move around from one shantytown to another, as their economic situation improves and they have a chance to buy or build a better house. (Their financial condition might also deteriorate, in which case the process is reversed.) Migrants often start out in rental housing or live with relatives until the family acquires the capital to invest in its own housing. Thus, Don Francisco moved at least six times before he married and bought the house in Los Peloteros in 1940. Dona Ana, another resident of Los Peloteros, described some of the diffi culties encountered by these earlier migrants as they arrived in the city. She came in 1947 with her husband and two young children. First they bought a house in Catano, near her sister, but after a year moved to Santurce:

. . . We bought on Stop 23s ... a house that was falling to pieces, very bad because there was no money then. He started to work as soon as he came to 3 In San Juan, and especially Santurce, neighborhoods are often referred to by the number of the bus stop. The bus route covers the two main avenues traversing Santurce.

There is a constant flow of people into the shantytown from the rural area, and from the shantytown to other urban neighborhoods. Length of residence in Los

Peloteros varies greatly, from twenty-five years and over to less than five (Table 1). Despite this constant turnover of personnel, however, the core of "old-timers," made up of some of the original settlers of the shantytown, contributes greatly to neighborhood stability. These old-timers form a stable nucleus to whom new

migrants can attach themselves and they also provide an important source of leadership and continuity for the community. Thus, Don Francisco moved to Los Peloteros in 1940 with his young bride and remained there twenty-three years. He was instrumental in forming one of the first local chapters party and one of the streets in the shantytown was named after eight children were born in Los Peloteros, and all have received school education. He built up his own construction and masonry

TABLE 1 Years of Residence as of 1959 Total N Total %

1- 4 5- 8

9-14 15-19 20-30

of the Popular him. All of his at least a high business to the

YEARS OF RESIDENCE IN LOS PELOTEROS OF SHANTYTOWN ADULTS

Female (94) 100.0

18.1 20.2

26.6 18.1 17.0

(176) 100.0

18.7

19.3 23.9 21.6 16.5

14

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

point where he is now quite a successful small entrepreneur. Thus, long-time residents of the shantytown are not necessarily the least progressive for, as we shall see, there is considerable room for upward mobility within the shantytown. Shanties now are generally bought because of the lack of space in the shanty

town for new construction. In some cases, like Dona Ana's, old houses are bought cheaply and repaired and remodeled by the new owner, often with the help of neighbors and friends. The exchange of labor and skills in the repair and improve ment of their homes constitutes one of the main avenues of cooperation among

men in the shantytown. The only compensation in these cases may be in the form of food and drink and, of course, the expectation that these favors will be reciprocated. A man who

fails

to

reciprocate will find

himself without an

assistant when he needs one.

.15

always a resident of the shantytown and his office in Los Peloteros, located promi nently at the main entrance to the neighborhood, is often visited by residents requesting assistance of various kinds.

Although there are differences in size and state of repair, the design of shanty town houses retains many rural features. Most houses are single story frame

buildings with wooden floors and walls and zinc roofs. The front entrance to the house is usually embellished with a small porch, from which most casual conver sation with neighbors is conducted. Sitting on the steps, chatting and watching

the passers-by is a common pastime in the late afternoon. More formal visits are held in the living room, if the house has one. However, some space in the house is always reserved for receiving visitors, even if the only furniture consists of a

few old wooden chairs. Where bedroom space is inadequate, as is often the case in large households, the living room will be converted into a bedroom at night by HOUSING

Few families in Los Peloteros pay rent, which in 1959 usually did not exceed $20 a month. Eighty-three percent of the families sampled in Los Peloteros own

their homes, which has tremendous symbolic as well as practical value for the poor. A house is a symbol of a man's ability to provide for his family, and the

bringing out folding cots, which are stored away during the day. Only the better houses in the shantytown have three bedrooms, permitting parents and children of the opposite sex to sleep separately. Even then, older children generally share I beds with siblings of the same sex. A baby may also be put in a small hammock strung across the parents' bed within easy reach of the mother.

Despite the overcrowding, there is great emphasis on personal cleanliness.

assurance that crisis such as illness or unemployment will not leave them out on

the street. Even when rent is low, as in public housing, the poor would prefer

to own their own home because of the independence it symbolizes. When asked why home ownership is so important to the poor, Tito observed: Well, I would say that it is not just a question of paying money, but that you can consider it your own property which has a value, that you can get money out of it in case of need because it is your property. Because no one likes to have anything from anyone.

Shantytown families are so dependent on the larger society for wages, for public services, and for all their consumer needs that a home of their own is the only

security they can hope for. Families who migrate to New York or other parts of the mainland often rent rather than sell their homes so that they may have a

place to return to in case of need. For example, Tito lived with his mother and family in New York for several years, but his mother's estranged husband remained in their house in Los Peloteros until their return. They gave the house

as one of the chief reasons for their return to the island. Houses vary considerably in size and condition. Some have as many as three bedrooms, while the majority have only one. A few dwellings are just one-room shacks. Some are well kept and painted, while others are in need of major repair, with sagging porches and holes in the floor. Prices, of course, have been increas

ing steadily, but in 1959 a good house sold for under $2,000, which is well below anything a private developer could produce.

Because of the swampy soil, houses periodically must be raised and the land underneath filled with dirt and rocks. In this task, shantytown families are cus tomarily assisted by the local comisario, chairman of the local committee of the Popular party, who supplies men and materials for the operation. The comisario is

Shantytowns are located in marginal areas essentially unfit for residential or com mercial use. Houses now are generally bought because of lack of space for new con struction. (Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corporation)

16

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Following rural custom, showers are taken daily, usually in the late afternoon

when the men return from work. The shower is improvised in a closet-sized wooden shack at the back of the house near the latrine. The water drains off

into the yard through a hole in the floor. Most persons do not own many clothes, so that washing seems to be an almost daily occurrence. Washing is usually done

outside the house, where it is cooler, using an aluminum tub and a wooden

1

dashboard. Only a few families can afford the luxury of a washing machine, though most now own electric irons. Since closets are virtually unknown, clothes are hung on hangers on a pole nailed across one corner of the bedroom or, in more prosperous families, stored in a ropero, or wooden wardrobe.

The variation in house values in the shantytown can be measured by the prices

paid by the government to Pelotereno families as compenstaion for their houses during relocation. They ranged from a low of $350 for a one-room shack, to over

■•■••...

$1800, for a three-bedroom house. Better homes are furnished with a living room set consisting of matching sofa

and chairs and perhaps a coffee table. Brightly colored, cheap plastic covers have replaced the old rural wicker-and-wood combinations. The old-fashioned china closet has been shoved to one side, and the place of prominence is now occu

pied by a portable television set. Large painted photographs of family members hang on the wall, along with the school diplomas in which the family takes such

pride. The floor is covered with linoleum, which is always kept spotlessly clean. No home has a separate dining room and few families ever own dining-room

furniture since its value is mostly symbolic. Dining-room furniture is a sign of

■U

prosperity in the shantytown household but has little practical use. The family

rarely eats together and only the male head of the household or special guests are served at the table. Everyone else eats wherever he happens to be sitting or standing.

The kitchen may be an additional room or simply an extension of the living room, but, in keeping with rural custom, it is always in the rear of the house. A

7

'■

few families are fortunate enough to own a gas stove, with the gas supplied from a tank installed outside the house. Kerosene stoves are still found in most shanty town households, increasing the danger of fire among the closely packed wooden

shacks. A majority of families now own a refrigerator, sometimes second-hand, which is always prominently displayed in the livingroom. Others either have an old-

fashioned icebox, for which they must buy ice daily from local delivery trucks, or are forced to store a few items such as milk in their neighbor's refrigerator. The

The small yards are used for washing and drying clothes, play and general conversa

amount of food stored is usually very small, since most perishable articles are

tion. (Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corporation)

purchased daily. Only staples such as rice, beans, lard, and tomato sauce are bought in quantity and in advance.

The most common article in any household is a radio. All day long it is turned on full volume, blaring out mournful love songs and reporting the latest news,

baseball scores, and winners at the race track. In recent years, television has gained increasing popularity and families without a set often gather together in a neighbor's house to see the latest novela (soap opera). Like the radio, the televi sion is often kept on all day, while people wander in and out, catching snatches of various programs.

The few possessions shantytown families own are usually shared with others. Very poor families may store milk and other perishables in their neighbor's refrigerator, or tap their neighbor's electricity or water supply. Women borrow small articles like cups of sugar or electric irons, while men exchange tools and cooperate in the repair and improvement of their homes. Even food is shared.

Some old men living alone in the shantytown depend almost completely on neigh boring families for their meals, for which they contribute little or nothing. As one

MIGRATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

woman remarked when a neighbor passed by with a plate of rice and beans, "Nadie aqui pasa hambre" (No one goes hungry here). The pattern of sharing and mutual aid acts as a leveling device in the shanty-

town community, much as the sponsoring of religious fiestas redistributes wealth in the peasant community (see Wolf, 1957: 4). The person who shares his posses

sions with others is rewarded with greater prestige than the one who withholds

them for his own use. By his ability to help others, he demonstrate,; his; own relative prosperity. Thus, sharing supports status distinctions based on dtferences in living standards; at the same time it prevents these distinctions from becoming

too great By distributing benefits that might otherwise be confined to a few

famifies, sharing tends to equalize some of the differences in socioeconomic stand

ing in the shLytown. Too high a degree of internal differentiation wou d

weaken neighborhood solidarity by destroying its basic homogeneity. The pattern

of sharing, on the other hand, ties Peloterenos together in a system of mutual aid. Community cohesion is reinforced through the interdependence of its members.

The close integration of the shantytown community serves an important func

tion for both the newly arrived migrant and the older low-income residents of the modern metropolis. The shantytown provides a stable setting within which migrants may gradually adapt to the new way of life in the city. While sh my town residents live in San Juan and work at urban jobs, their life in Los Peloteros

retains important folklike characteristics, with a strong emphasis on primary group

ties Prestige accrues to a man as he serves on barrio committees, or becomes an officer of the local housing cooperative, or helps a neighbor repair his house or

beats him at a game of dominoes. This prestige may not add to his status in the

larger society, but it does give him a position of importance within the primary

reference point of the shantytown community. Thus, the cohesion of the shanty town permits the urban poor to retain an integral, meaningful style of l.fe despite their position at the bottom of the social ladder. In die last years before relocation, families became more reluctant to invest in their homes or furnishings because they were not sure the government wou

compensate them adequately. In addition, shantytown residents always^ fear d

losses to their homes and furnishings due to floods, fire, or chiefly hurricanes^

Peloterefio residents recall vividly how, on numerous occasions, they were forced

to evacuate their homes during a tormenta (hurricane) carrying what possessions

they could with them. Dona Ana remembers, for example, how they carried sheets and blankets to the schools so the children could sleep on top of the tables.

This is one reason why the concrete construction in public housing or a private

urbanization is so highly valued over the flimsy wooden structures in the shanty-

'T'many respects, the Puerto Rican shantytowns closely resemble other Latin

American squatter settlements described in the literature (for example, Mangin,

1967- Turner, 1969). However, Latin American squatter settlements often develop into 'substantial working class neighborhoods, as residents improve their homes and pressure the government for public services such as paved roads, water electricity, and the like (Mangin, 1967). In this way, residents of Latin American squatter settlements are absorbed into the city as part of the overall process of

19

urban growth. Puerto Rican shantytowns also show improvements over time, but

they have little chance of developing into normal working-class neighborhoods. Most shantytowns are eradicated by an ambitious urban renewal program that clears these areas for other residential, commercial, or public purposes and relo cates a large percentage of shantytown families in public housing. Thus, Los Peloteros has been completely cleared to make room for a major highway and new housing under the Model Cities Program.

However, in the next few chapters we shall treat Los Peloteros as a live, viable community, as it was at the time of the original study in 1959. We shall

occasionally refer to changes that have occurred in the lives of Pelotereno fami lies in the last decade, but most of the data collected for the period following relocation will be dealt with in Chapter 6. The next chapter shall deal with changes in occupation and standards of living brought about by migration from the rural area.

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME TABLE 3

SHANTYTOWN ADULT MALES BY PLACE OF BIRTH AND FIRST OCCUPATION

Place of Birth

2/Earning a Living:

First Occupation

Jobs and Other Sources

Rural Area

Towns and Cities

San Juan Metropolitan Area

Total N

Agricultural laborer Service worker Laborer**

of Income

Artisan

Other occupations * The terra

operative" generally refers to factory workers, but may also include taxi

drivers and other occupations listed under this category in the United States census classifica

Economic pressure accounts for the great bulk of migration in the lower

class. Occasionally families are attracted to the metropolis by its superior educa tional facilities for their children or because a member of the family needs special medical attention. But most migrants come in search of higher pay and better job opportunities or, as they say, buscando ambiente (looking for a chance). They are driven by the lack of such opportunities in the rural area.

tion of occupations for Puerto Rico.

* * Laborers include both unskilled laborers and dock workers, who were heavily represented

in our sample.

her father worked as a foreman for a road crew. Raquel's father was a mason, but when he could not find work, he and his wife went fishing. In Raquel's words,

"They fried it (the fish) and sold it fried on the street in order to buy rice and things to make us supper." In other words, they were so poor they could not even afford to eat the fish themselves.

RURAL ORIGINS

Few shantytown residents owned any land in the rural area and if they did, it

Over 70 percent of the sample drawn in Los Peloteros in 1959 were born in the rural area (Table 2). Most of them started working as agricultural laborers,

earning less than $500 a year (Table 3). They could be unemployed during the tiempo muerto or dead season for as long as four or five months a year. Many were forced to live as agregados or squatters on the farm or plantation for which they worked, and thus were dependent on the patron not only for employment, but for housing and other necessities as well. Nearly 20 percent of the men from the Los Peloteros sample were born in towns

and cities outside the metropolitan area, and here the diversity of occupations was even greater (Table 3). A good percentage worked as laborers or in other

manual and service occupations. Julia's family, for example, came from Ponce and

is long since gone. Many were forced to sell their land as crops lost their value

because of a decline in the market or were destroyed by hurricanes, as in the highland coffee region, which showed the heaviest emigration in the decade from 1940 to 1950 (Parke, 1952: 63). The concentration of landholdings by American corporations and the mechanization of sugarcane cultivation contributed to the growing numbers of rural landless.

With the advent of Operation Bootstrap under Governor Munoz Marin and its emphasis on industrialization, financed largely by tax-free United States capital, agriculture has declined steadily. The more traditional coffee and tobacco crops

were the first to diminish in importance; but for more than a decade, the sugar

industry has been unable to meet its quota, due largely to a labor shortage (see G. Lewis, 1968: 179). Even in 1969, the minimum wage in agriculture was only 80 cents an hour. The poor refuse to do backbreaking work in the fields at

TABLE 2

PLACE OF BIRTH OF SHANTYTOWN ADULTS

these low wages when they have better prospects of employment in the city. By 1957 industry had supplanted agriculture as the major income-earning ingredient

Place

of Birth

~~ Total N Total %

Metropolitan area

Other towns and cities

Rural area

of the economy, creating a total of 45,900 new jobs by I960 (G. Lewis, 1968:

Male

Female

(82)

100°

(94)

100-°

229,000 in 1940 to 139,000 in 1964 (Wells, 1969: 159).

15.9

10.6

toward the stage migration characteristic of other Latin American patterns of

19.5

64-6

11.7

170). In contrast, the number of workers employed in agriculture declined from Most migrants head directly for San Juan. Apparently there is no tendency urbanization (Morse, 1971: 22-23) whereby rural migrants first settle in a nearby

town or city before heading for the primate city. This may be partially explained

2

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

by the small size of Puerto Rico, making San Juan easily accessible from any part

of the island, and by the fact that, at least until recently, the growth of other cities such as Ponce, Mayaguez, and Arecibo have lagged far behind that of San

cents an hour. He is proud of having worked on some of the best buildings in the metropolitan area and of being "el taclao numero uno" (the number one man) of

Don Jorge Ramirez de Arellano, head of a large construction firm. But he has never been able to keep a job very long because he drinks and is constantly fighting with foremen and other employees on the job. He was also severely

injured in a 30-foot fall several years ago, which further hampered his employ ment possibilities. Between drinking and job insecurity, he never adequately sup

JOB OPPORTUNITIES IN THE CITY

In San Juan, migrants have a greater variety of job opportunities open to them than in the stagnant rural area, but most are still employed as unskilled laborers. Some men in Los Peloteros work at the docks, or in one of the new factories in the metropolitan area, while the more skilled may be employed as artisans ^in construction projects (Table 4). Most men in the shantytown are concentrated in these blue-collar occupations. Another group are employed as service workers in restaurants, hotels, and other institutions catering to the thriving tourist trade. None of these jobs offer real economic security. The employment of longshore men depends on the volume of the shipping trade and they may go for weeks without working. Construction workers may stay at one job for six months or for as long as two years, but unless they are permanently employed by a construction company, they must constantly look for new projects. Factory and service jobs are also subject to layoffs and slow periods. Thus, the rural migrant has not really escaped the insecurity of agricultural wage labor. Unless he commands some marketable skill, he may find himself in as precarious a position as he was in the rural area.

Although some men may have picked up a skill in the rural area, most appear

to acquire a trade after arriving in 'the urban area. Don Francisco, for example,

worked at a variety of carpentry and construction jobs until he was able to establish his own workshop in 1957. He now works entirely independently, accept ing jobs on a contract basis. On the other hand, Don Lucho, who like Don Fran

cisco also learned carpentry on the job after his arrival in the metropolitan area, has never been able to make any advancement. He began working in 1929 at 12

TABLE 4

23

ported his family of eight children.

Though aggravated in this case by drinking and other personal problems, job instability plagues many urban workers, especially the unskilled. The rate of unemployment among the male sample in Los Peloteros in 1959 stood at 13 per cent, which was slightly higher than the national average of 12 percent. However, this figure hides a great deal of underemployment, due to part-time work in construction, at the docks, and in other unstable urban jobs.

Low educational levels further hamper the urban workers' chances of job advancement and job security. Only 40 percent of the men in the Peloterefio sample have gone beyond the fourth grade, while over 20 percent of the women had no schooling at all (Table 5). In the rural areas of Puerto Rico, where most of the shantytown residents were raised, schools often did not go beyond fourth grade. One had to be willing and able to travel to the nearest town for further

education. Even today, there is a considerable urban-rural differential in level of education (seeG. Lewis, 1968: 463).

The value of education in terms of job advancement varies with the nature of the occupation. Thus, in our sample, skilled artisans tend to have more schooling than men employed in service industries, who barely have completed more than

four grades (Table 6). For employment at the docks or in factories, however, education appears to have little relevance, wjjth Lvels ranging from no schooling at all to those who have gone on to high school. Thus, Don Andres now makes more than $100 a week as an electrician at the docks, in addition to money he earns from his own electrical business on the side. Born in the metropolitan area

and orphaned at an early age, he left school in the fifth grade and started shining shoes and selling newspapers and mavi (a root drink) on the street—a favorite

ADULT MALE EMPLOYMENT PATTERN

Occupation Total N

Total %

Agricultural laborer Professional Clerical Sales worker Artisan Operative

Service worker Proprietors, managers

Laborers Unemployed or out of labor force

Shantytown Males (82) 100.0

1.2 1.2

1.2

4.9

13.4 17.1 23.3

3.7 20.7

13.4

Project Males

TABLE 5

EDUCATIONAL LEVEL OF SHANTYTOWN ADULTS AND ADOLESCENTS

Grade Completed

Adolescents

Total N Total %

None

1- 4 5- 8 9-12

College * It should be noted that many adolescents are still in school and therefore these figures do

not represent their highest educational attainment.

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

TABLE 6 Educational Level Total N u c

o

5- » 9-12

Service

Operative

11

Laborer

Occup.

Worker

17

19

14

Other

■\

2

11

8

11

2

3 3

A

4

4

H

1

1

1

3

i

1 *±

mentary nature of the labor movement in Puerto Rico as a whole (see Wells,

Not

Working

10

A

6

1- 4

report no unions in their place of work (Table 8), reflecting the weak and frag

SHANTYTOWN MALES BY OCCUPATION AND EDUCATION

Artisan

25

1969: 275-276). Jurisdictional disputes between rival unions (local as well as international), corruption, and involvement in politics have led to general disillu sionment with the labor movement among the rank-and-file. Tito, who belongs to a local shop of the Teamsters Union asserted:

I think that unions are an organization of lazy people who are dedicated to living off others. . . . The union of Jimmy Hoffa, for example, there what he did was he kept the union's money. Well here the same thing is happening. . . . They discovered that $7000 is missing which he (the local union chief) used on his own expenses. .. .

2

3

occupation to this day among shantytown boys. Like Don Francisco or Don Lucho, he learned his trade as an apprentice on the job. Few skilled artisans have received formal vocational training.

Service jobs are clearly at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. Not only

do they attract those with less education, but they pay less. In 1959, men in

According to Wells, however, the labor union's gravest weakness has been ". . . the involvement of many union leaders in party politics and in the politicalstatus controversy. They were often so closely identified with a political party or a particular status viewpoint that they could not speak with an independent voice

in defense of labor interests." (Wells, 1969: 276). For example, Don Andres, a

service jobs rarely made more than $2000 annually, while skilled artisans like Don Andres, and experienced longshoremen or factory workers often earned between $2000 and $3000 (Table 7). Only two men in our entire 1959 sample

long-time resident of Los Peloteros, was at the same time secretary of the elec

earned over $3000 annually.

by the government in Los Peloteros. He used his political contacts to secure favors

Since 1959, wages have risen considerably, but they are still low by United

States standards. For example, Tito now earns only $65.80 a week as a machine operator with an ice cream company, although he has been employed by the same

company for fifteen years. At 35, he feels he can anticipate no more than minor salary increases, since his eighth-grade education prevents him from entering a

tricians union at the docks and vice-president of the barrio committee of the Popular party. He also served as chairman of the housing cooperative organized

for the union and the cooperative, while his barrio and union activities assured him of a constituency to promote his standing within the party. Workers tend to regard unions as a way of securing better salaries and work

ing conditions rather than as a means for promoting class solidarity. Since in Puerto Rico these benefits are secured largely through government legislation rather than through collective bargaining (Wells, 1969: 275-276), political sup

higher occupational level.

Service workers not only are paid less, but are also the least unionized of urban workers. The strongest unions are found among artisans, factory workers, and especially longshoremen. Half of the employed men in the Pelotereno sample

port becomes crucial. The weak and fragmented labor union movement among workers in the shanty town is indicative of their lack of class consciousness. Though Peloterenos com monly refer to themselves as los pobres (the poor) and are conscious of similari-

TABLE 7

TABLE 8

SHANTYTOWN MALES BY ANNUAL SALARY AND OCCUPATION

SHANTYTOWN MALES BY UNIONIZATION AND OCCUPATION Unionization

Annual Salary $1000$2000

$2000-

than $1000 11

35

23

Less Occupation

Total N*

Agricultural laborer Professional Clerical Sales worker Artisan Operative Service Proprietors, managers

Laborers

$3000

1

$3000 and over

Total N1

2

i

J.

1

2

2 1

4

6 7

5

7 11

~>

0

1

1

1

1

10

6

* Does not include unemployed or out of labor force.

Occupation

No union in place of work

Agricultural laborer Professional Clerical Sales worker Artisan Operative Service worker Proprietors, managers Laborers * Does not include unemployed or out of labor force.

Union, but does not belong

Union and belongs

!6

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

ties in socioeconomic status, they do not see themselves as a separate social

TABLE

segment cut off from other class groups in the society. Their sense of group

consciousness and cohesion does not extend beyond the boundaries of the immedi ate community. Aspirations for the future are always voiced in terms of individual or familial upward mobility rather than in terms of class solidarity. They are more concerned about the status differences among themselves and with improv ing their position in the shantytown community than with narrowing the status gaps between themselves and other class groups in the metropolis.

INCOME DIFFERENTIATION

10

SHANTYTOWN AND PROJECT FAMILIES BY ANNUAL FAMILY

INCOME AND NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED PER HOUSEHOLD

Annual Family Income—Shantytown Families

Number of persons

employed Less than $500

$500$999

Total N

16

8

None

11

1

5

per

household

1

2-4

Despite limited opportunities for upward mobility and job insecurity, most

$2000-

$2999

$3000 and over

Tot,

15

10(

30

31

6

21

18

12

52

1

9

11

13

34

1

24 64

4

12

2

14

Annual Family Income—Project Families

migrants feel that they have definitely improved their life chances by moving to

the city. They have a wider choice of jobs, they earn more, and their incomes

$1000-

$1999

Total N

are higher than if they had remained in the rural area. With the decline of agri

3 29 4

culture, incomes in the rural area have steadily deteriorated. In 1962, for example,

per capita income in the rural area was $408 compared to $945 in the urban

20 4

area, while 68 percent of the families with incomes under $20004 lived in the

and subsidiary economic activities, to be discussed presently. When a family is

rural area (L Silva Recio, 1971: 131).

In comparison, 54 percent of the families sampled in Los Peloteros in 1959 had

dependent exclusively on the salary of the head of the household, as in over half

annual incomes under $2000, while another 41 percent had incomes between

the cases in the Peloteros sample, income is limited by the man's earning capacity,

(Table 9). The extent of socioeconomic differences in the

which rarely exceeds $3000 annually. However, where more than one person is

shantytown can be shown by the fact that incomes ranged from under $500 to

working, total annual income often exceeds $3000 and may go as high as $5000.

over $5000 annually. Some of these differences are due to the occupational skill

The burden of supporting the household is shared by several wage earners.

$2000 and $3999

of the breadwinner and his corresponding salary level, discussed in the previous

Older children may contribute to the support of the household if they are work

section. Another important source of income differentiation is the number of peo

ing and still living at home. Thus, Dona Lourdes took care of the house and of her

ple working in the family. Where no one is working, income almost always falls

grandchildren while her three children worked. One son and daughter were

below $500 annually (Table 10). This group depends largely on public welfare

separated from their spouses, while the youngest son was recently married, and his young bride also lived with them. Though she had no independent income,

TABLE 9

TOTAL ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME OF SHANTYTOWN AND PROJECT FAMILIES

Number of Shantytown Families

Number of Project Families

Total N

Peloteros have worked at some p'b^t in their lives; less than 30 percent of the

TABLE 11

$500 -$999 $1OOO-$1499 $1500-$1999 $2000-$2499 $2500-$2999 $3000-$3999 $4000-$4999

SHANTYTOWN FEMALES BY EMPLOYMENT STATUS AND OCCUPATION Employment Status Presently

Occupation

Total N

$5000 or more 4 An annual family income of $2000 is considered the poverty line i

However, the most common pattern of multiple family employment in the shantytown is for both husband and wife to be employed. Most women in Los

female sample in the shantytown have never been employed (Table 11). However,

Under $500

to $3000 and over in the United States.

the house belonged to the grandmother and all the children considered her the

boss.

ico compared

Presently unemployed, previously employed

employed

22

45

27

employed

Other occupations Domestic service Operative

8

22

4 6

18 2

Service

4

3

Never

8

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

where her husband is steadily employed, the wife's salary is usually considered supplementary and she may work only sporadically, as

the need arises. Thus,

Dona Ana has worked in a factory from time to time, and she really needed the extra income when the children were young and there were so many mouths to feed. However, now that the children are older and at least supporting them

selves and her husband's salary has increased, she has stopped working.

The effect of a woman's employment on the husband's status in the family

depends largely on his retaining his role as chief breadwinner. Where the husband is unable to support his family because of illness, unemployment, or other factors, the wife's salary may act as a substitute rather than as a supplement. As she assumes his role as economic provider, her authority in the household increases and his correspondingly diminishes. The woman eventually takes over as head of the household, pushing the man into a subordinate position, and she may eventu ally force him out of the family completely. For this reason many men discourage their wives from working because they fear it casts doubt on their own ability as providers and gives the woman too much independence. With rising costs of liv

ing, however, it

has become

increasingly

necessary

for

both

spouses

to

be

employed, particularly in upwardly mobile families with middle-class aspirations. In upwardly mobile shantytown households, incomes are often pooled to achieve a common goal such as the children's education or a better home in an urbani zation. One Pelotereno couple, for example, were putting two children through college on their combined salaries. They owned a home in an urbanization, but rented it out in order to keep up the mortgage payments. They were willing to sacrifice their own comfort in housing for the sake of their children's education. As with the men, the kind of jobs open to women from the shantytown are

very menial because of their low educational levels. Factory jobs are considered the most desirable, but many women are forced to take service jobs or work as domestics (Table 11). Julia, for example, left school in second grade because of a vision problem and began ironing for a private family. She now makes $42 a week in a laundry because it was the only work she ever learned.

Women may be forced to undertake illegal activities as a way of supporting their families, if their husbands are not adequate providers. Don Lucho's wife, Raquel, sold cahita or illegal rum in the shantytown to feed her eight children,

because her husband was an alcoholic and unemployed most of the time. Even when he worked, he spent most of his salary on drink for himself and his

friends. Yet he resented her economic independence so much that Lucho himself

once turned Raquel into the police. She had to put up a bond of $45 and pay a $100 fine; but upon her release, that same night she went after two more gallons of canita, since she had no other way to support her family.

There are periodic raids on the shantytown to uncover the manufacture of canita or other illegal activities. On one occasion the men escaped by hiding in the waters of the Channel for two hours. These raids never succeed in completely eliminating illegal activities because too many people, like Raquel, are dependent

29

ing only as middlemen. No attempt was made in this study to determine the extent of illegal activity in the shantytown, but it would not seem to constitute a major source of income for most Peloterenos.

The poorest elements in the shantytown are found among the aged and among fatherless families where the husband has died

or deserted

his

family. These

families depend largely on the minimal allotments5 provided by public welfare or old age assistance, supplemented by subsidiary economic activities. Thus, Dona

Cantica and her aged husband received only $68 per month in old age assistance. He had been a dockworker and received $1000 in compensation after he broke his back in an accident. But this was quickly consumed in medical expenses,

since both were chronically ill. Dona Cantica was an epileptic and also suffered from an eye ailment which had severely impaired her vision. She used to sell cooked chestnuts or frozen lindberghs (flavored ice cubes) to children in the neighbor-' hood to add to their meager income.

Carmen, a young widow with five small children, received $50 a month from public welfare and also worked three days a week as a laundress. She later took up with an older man who, as she pointed out, could afford to support her because his children were already grown. With his support, she no longer needed to work and could stay home with her children. He also fixed up her house in

Los Peloteros so that they were able to sell it for $1200 and buy a better house a few blocks away. Most Peloterenos would not frown on extramarital relationships

of this type because they are fairly stable and fulfill an obvious economic need. Chiriperos are skid-row type characters who live largely off the charity of the

shantytown community. They are older men, usually alcoholics, who do odd jobs

or chiripas around the neighborhood (like minor repairs or running errands) and in return are fed or paid a few cents or given some empty bottles to collect the deposit. Many have been married at some point in their lives, but have long since been abandoned by their families because of their extreme state of degeneracy. Outside of these isolated cases, however, it is clear that the shantytown cannot

support its residents. It is far more dependent on the resources of the outside world than the peasant village, whose residents still retain a basic means of sub sistence through the land. Only.aSew resident storeowners of cafetins (bars) or colmados (grocery stores) earn their living within the shantytown. The rest are

employed within the wider urban community or are dependent on public welfare

and Social Security payments. This total economic dependency on the outside world makes shantytown residents even more vulnerable to the fluctuations of an unstable urban labor market. Such vital factors as wages and employment rates are controlled exclusively by the international and island economy, and they are

totally dependent, in times of recession, on public forms of assistance for survival. Though commonly considered simply a dole for the poor, public welfare serves an important function for the entire economy in sustaining a supply of cheap reserve

labor for the fluctuating urban labor market (see Piven and Cloward, 1971).

on them for an income. Activities like bolita or the illegal lottery usually have the

support and protection of higher status persons, with shantytown residents act-

r> The allotments under Social Security are substantially higher, but were not extended to the island till a few years ago.

Under $9

Husband and wife disagree on amount.

Total N

Persons per Household

$3000 and over

$1000-$1999 $2000-$2999

Under $500 $500 -$900

Total N

Annual Family Income

TABLE 12

WEEKLY FOOD EXPENDITURE OF SHANTYTOWN FAMILIES BY

1

3 4

2

6

3 11

1

7

2

7 10

6 1

1

2

2

$15-$19

7

$10-$14

$20-$24

Weekly Food Expenditure

$25 and over

ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME AND BY NUMBERS OF PERSONS PER HOUSEHOLD

Do not coincide*

32

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

33

indexes of the standard of living of shantytown families. Thus, the Pelotereno family that can afford an elaborate church wedding will also tend to have a larger home, more furniture, and a better diet. No family with an annual income

over $3000 is without a radio and refrigerator, and most also own a television set.

Roval Crown

On the other hand, families with incomes under $1000, can afford no luxuries and struggle to meet minimal necessities.

ASPIRATIONS AND ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIAL MOBILITY Despite their low standard of living and their total dependence on the urban economy, Peloterenos are remarkably optimistic and believe strongly in the value of work, thrift, and individual initiative. Even the poorest families aspire toward a

better future for themselves and their children. We found little of the hopelessness and apathy that Lewis claims characterizes families in the culture of poverty (O.Lewis, 1966: 47).

Formerly, the Puerto Rican poor depended heavily on luck as their only means of escaping from their miserable condition (see Mintz, 1956: 364-367). They tried to win on the lottery, or on the illegal numbers game {la bolita), or even at a cockfight. In the city, betting on horses has become increasingly popular among all sectors of Puerto Rican society, and the huge racetrack on the outskirts of the metropolitan area is usually filled to capacity. Some of the poor continue to try their luck at gambling, particularly if they see no other way of attaining their

Small tiendas located in the shantytown provide residents with most of their daily needs. {Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Homing Corporation) at home by chancletas or slippers. The cheap, Japanese style, rubber sandal has become very popular among the Puerto Rican poor, especially for use at home. The emphasis on store-bought goods carries over to events such as weddings and funerals. The wedding cake, for example may be purchased at one of the

finer bakeries and in 1959 could cost as much as $15. To cut expenses, the wed ding gown may be rented or purchased secondhand, but it is seldom sewn at home. When they can afford it, families will go to considerable expense to finance a wedding because it is an important reflection of social standing, even within the shantytown. The church in which the wedding is performed, the

number of attendants, and the elaborateness of the fiesta following the ceremony are all status considerations.

In all life-crisis ceremonies there is a conscious attempt to emulate the stand

goals. Thus, Paulita, now a mother of seven young children and separated from her husband, claims that the only way she will ever be able to leave public housing and have a nice home in an urbanizacion is if she remarries a man of means (unlikely in her condition) or if she wins in the lottery. She says she buys

tickets occasionally when she is downtown and has a few extra cents on her. On the whole, however, the fatalistic belief in luck of an earlier era has been replaced by an emphasis on hard work, thrift, and other values normally associ ated with the Protestant ethic. For example, Paulita's estranged husband, Tito, argues that anyone can find a job if he really looks for it. Even Paulita claims she would like to work, if she could find someone to take care of her children: I am so proud ... I prefer to work and not have them giving me help. . . . Now, if one were disabled, right? But while a woman is young she can work. Many of the poor feel that>gublic welfare is demeaning and only suitable for those who are too old or ill to work. They resent the constant prying into one's private life that public welfare imposes: checking to see if one is working (even

taking in a few pieces of laundry) or if one's child is legitimate or if one is living

ards of higher status groups in Puerto Rican society; the closer the approximation

with another man. Besides, public welfare pays very little. Raquel, for example,

to these standards, the higher the prestige. Thus, the gown, the cake, and the

raised an orphan child whose mother had died of tuberculosis and whose father was unknown; she received $2 a month until the child was five and the payment was raised to $5.

reception as part of the wedding celebration all symbolize higher class values that have been incorporated into lower-class life (see Scheele, 1956: 456). Even honeymoons have become fashionable among some shantytown families. The way life-crisis ceremonies are celebrated obviously ties in closely with other

Social Security, on the other hand, is looked at quite differently. The sums paid

are substantial (by Puerto Rican standards); there is no means test and no

34

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

prying into one's private life. Raquel now receives $150 a month in Social Secur ity since her husband has been declared unable to work. She manages very well on this and even puts away a few dollars a month towards the house she hopes to buy. She describes her budget this way:

. . . First I pay the house ($18 a month in public housing). Then I go to the

grocery store and make a purchase of $40 or $45, after I go to the furniture

JOBS AND OTHER SOURCES OF INCOME

35

been poverty and there will always be poverty. According to Don Francisco, any one who has to work for a living is poor; only millionaires like Governor Ferre,

who have an independent source of income, are not poor. Thus, the strong achievement orientation among the poor is combined with an acceptance of the socioeconomic inequalities of Puerto Rican society as they now exist. No one

believes the differences between rich and poor will be eliminated. This does not

store and pay $15 (on the installment plan). And after, if something is left over, I buy some clothing for the boys. And I pay the electricity and the

mean, however, that the poor must accept their low station in life, as they did

water... .

nomic status, and if he doesn't do so, it is his own fault. In other words, anyone

Raquel's account should dispel the notion that the poor are unable to budget

can make it if he really tries.

and live only for the present (see O. Lewis, 1966: 48). On the contrary, Raquel, like many of the poor, is very critical of people who squander their money on drink and other vices and then don't have enough money to pay their bills. Raquel claims that some women are as bad as men. They drink more than eight or ten beers a day, and then when they collect their salary, they owe it all. Raquel claims these people live like "savage animals" and she regards them with utter contempt. Considering her alcoholic husband and her struggle to raise nine children, her strong feelings on this point are understandable.

Many shantytown residents stress the importance of saving and spending one's money wisely. Don Francisco, for example, feels that to improve himself, a man must work hard and give up vices like drinking, lottery, parties, and women, so that his money will reach. Don Francisco is here largely reflecting on his own experience. Before he became a Seventh Day Adventist, he was a free spender

and his family was quite poor. Now he owns a large though modest home in an urbanization and has sent all of his eight children through high school and one is in college. He feels he could not have done this without the discipline that his religion taught him.

Don Francisco believes that life is a never-ending ladder of social mobility, ordained by God, which individuals ascend step by step with His help: Lean on a good tree and good shade will cover you. That means if I stick by someone worse off than I, in what conditions shall I put myself? in the same

conditions as he, right? But if I try to improve I don't try to look back. Behind you there is someone who took coffee, bread and butter. Behind him, there is someone who took coffee but no bread. And behind him there is some one who took black coffee. Behind him ... is someone who took it unsweetened and behind him ... is someone who had no coffee. But in front of me there is

someone who had breakfast, further in front there is another who had a good

breakfast . . . and so on until you reach the top. In such a scale lives humanity. Thus we should all be looking up. He who wants to remain below, it's because he likes it. ... Rising and falling, rising and falling, from that no one can mis lead us, because that is the word of God.

However, Don Francisco cautions against trying to climb this scale too quickly

and advises people to progress step by step. In saving, for example, one can start with pennies, and watch them grow into dollars, and the dollars into five dollars, and so on. It is not necessary to skimp on necessities like food; the important thing is not to waste one's money on vices.

On the other hand, Don Francisco argues, quoting the Bible, there has always

previously. Peloterenos feel that anyone who wants to can improve his socioeco

Thus poverty is explained in terms of personal inadequacies rather than in terms of the socioeconomic structure of Puerto Rican society. Shantytown resi dents feel that Puerto Rican society at present offers sufficient and socioeconomic opportunities to those who work hard to get ahead. They feel they have made

considerable progress in their own lifetimes, starting out as many of them did as low-paid agricultural laborers. And, as we shall see in the next chapter, they have even greater hopes for their children.

It would seem then, that as long as the Puerto Rican economy continues to expand at a rate sufficiently great to absorb at least the most mobile, the Puerto Rican poor will see no reason to challenge the existing socioeconomic system. They will continue to think in terms of individual mobility rather than collective solidarity. Economic growth, by generating new jobs and higher standards of liv ing, has deflected the growth of class consciousness among the poor and enhanced their belief in individual mobility and progress.

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

of a society in which vertical mobility is limited. In this proletarian class, men are usually unskilled wage laborers, holding jobs that confer no prestige on the family as occupation may in the middle class. Nor do men have an opportunity to occupy

3 / Family and Kinship

positions of prestige through the kinship system, as in primitive societies where even matrilineal descent is associated with control by men.

Modern complex

societies with a strong patriarchal tradition, like the Indian or Chinese, may also

give men roles in the kinship or religious system that permit them to maintain their dominant position in the household. However, the trend in modern complex societies toward secularization and the bilateral reckoning of kindred centered on the nuclear family has deprived the man of the kinship and religious roles he may play in more traditional societies and left him dependent largely on his function as

The shantytown family is an adaptation to the depressed socioeconomic circumstances in which most Pelotereno families live. The man's authority is

based largely on his role as economic provider, which is limited by factors such as the high rate of unemployment, poor wages, low skill and educational levels, and

minimal possibilities of upward mobility. The woman, on the other hand, generally confines her activities to the home and children and derives her authority from her close relationship with her children and female kin. The strong emotional

bond between a woman, her children, and her female kin group results in a pro nounced matrifocal emphasis in shantytown families.

economic provider. According to Smith, the degree of matrifocality can vary not only between

families, but also within the same family over time. Smith

(I960:

70)

distin

guishes three phases in the developmental cycle of the matrifocal household: (1) a period of sex experimentation and spouse selection;

the nuclear family in its own house; and

(3)

(2) the isolation of

the matrifocal household which

usually includes the members of a three-generation matriline. Thus, in Smith's

scheme, matrifocality is seen as the final phase of a cyclical process in which the role of the wife-mother gradually gains dominance over the role of the husband-

father. Smith (I960: 68) writes: "Variations over time are thus a part of the system and what appear to be different types of family viewed simultaneously are

THE NATURE OF MATRIFOCALITY

perhaps different growth stages of the same system."

Matrifocality has been denned in various ways (see Gonzalez, 1970), resulting in a great deal of confusion in the use of the term. However, here we shall use

MARRIAGE PATTERNS AND HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION

matrifocality to include not only families where the woman is the actual head of the household (often referred to as female-based), but also families with a stable male head of household, where the man's role is marginal to the primary sphere of mother-child relationships. In these households, typically, kin relations are emphasized in the female line, with the maternal grandmother often assuming the

size the nuclear family phase. Half of the households in the Pelotereno sample

role of the head of the kin group. In the Caribbean, matrifocality often is associ

different picture emerges. Though numerically superior at all stages of the cycle,

ated with consensual unions, commonly involving a series of successive males,

so that the basic family unit consists of the mother and children. Several explanations have been offered for the matrifocal nature of Caribbean focal family among Negroes in the New World as a reinterpretation of West and Henriques

are of the nuclear type, consisting exclusively of parents and children (Table 13). However, if we look at the data in terms of Smith's time perspective, a slightly

nuclear families are most predominant among women who have been married less than twenty years (Table 14). Among older women who were married twenty

lower-class families. Herskovits (1958: 167-186) sought to explain the matri African polygynous patterns. Frazier (1939)

At first glance, household composition in Los Peloteros would seem to empha

(1953), however,

years or more, household composition becomes more complex and we find a larger

percentage of extended families and households headed by females. Extended families, comprising 20 percent of the households sampled in Los Peloteros (Table 13), usually consist of a nuclear core, plus grandchildren or

emphasized the shattering effects of slavery on Negro family organization, point

relatives of the male head of household or his spouse. The presence of grand

ing out that male slaves were not permitted to form permanent marital unions

children is usually due to the separation of the parents, one of whom (usually the

whereas the mother and children were usually sold as a group.

mother) has returned to live with the grandparents. Contrary to Smith's descrip

Raymond Smith (1956: 227-228), on the other hand, while acknowledging the

tion of the Negro family in British O»jkna, (Smith, I960: 70) it is not common

importance of slavery in terms of the origin of the present-day West Indian fam

for girls to have children before marriage and while still living at home. Premarital

ily

sex does occur; but where it results in pregnancy, there is usually an attempt to

structure,

largely rejects

historical

explanations

in

favor

of

a

structural

approach. According to Smith, matrifocality is associated, not with particular

cover it up by marriage as soon as possible, or the man may simply take the

historical or cultural circumstances, but with a class position at the lowest rank

woman to live with him in consensual union.

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

TABLE 13

FAMILY AND KINSHIP FAMILY TYPE

TABLE 15

Number of Shantytown

Family Type

of Project

Families

Families

Total N

Total N Total %

Single Legal marriage Consensual union

Nuclear

Extended Female-based households Mother and children only Mother, children, and additional relatives Single men Single men and older sons Single men, children and additional relatives

Widowed

Divorced Separated

series of consensual unions after she left her first husband, to whom she was legally married. She now lives alone with her four young children in a public housing project. Here we see the tremendous variability in marital and mobility

Spouses only

Spouses with relatives (no children)

patterns that can occur even within one family.

Consensual unions appear to be more unstable than civil or church marriages. Not only has the first union often dissolved but it has been followed by as many

In our sample, less than 25 percent of men and women reported being married in consensual union

MARITAL STATUS OF SHANTYTOWN ADULTS

Number

(Table 15), which is much lower than that reported by

Mintz for the Puerto Rican plantation area (Mintz, 1956: 375) or by Oscar Lewis for the shantytown he studied (O. Lewis, 1966: 36). The number of respondents who report that their first marriage took place in church is almost three times

the number who report a civil ceremony at their first marriage

(Table 16).

Church ceremonies undoubtedly have high status value. As Smith (1956:

181)

has indicated, consensual unions are a symbol of class differentiation and a sign of lower-class status, which many shantytown families are anxious to shed. Thus, Dona Ana's niece Ines, who now lives in a modern urbanization with her husband and two small children, was married in a fancy Catholic wedding ceremony,

complete with gown, attendants, studio photographs, and so on. In comparison, her cousin Evelyn, who was also raised by Dona Ana, has been engaged in a

as two, three, or, in the case of one man, four additional unions, usually also

contracted on a consensual basis (Table 16). Those starting out in consensual

unions have been married an average of two times compared to 1.4 unions for those first married in religious or civil ceremonies.

The start of a consensual union is usually signified by the couple establishing their own household, and involves the man and woman in a set of mutual

obligations despite the absence of legal marriage. A consensual union must be distinguished from a casual liaison, where the couple usually continue to live separately while having sexual relations and incur no mutual obligations even when there are children. Thus, Paulita has had two children by two different men since she separated from her husband; but she lived only a short time in New York with the first man and never lived with the second. Neither of these men regularly support their children, but Paulita's husband continues to give her a weekly allowance for their five children, although they have been separated for several years.

TABLE 14

SHANTYTOWN FEMALES BY NUMBER OF YEARS SINCE MARRIAGE AND FAMILY TYPE

Family Type

Like Paulita's, 20 percent of the households in the Pelotereno sample are headed

by females. In keeping with Smith, nearly all of these female-based households are found among women who have been married twenty years or more (Table 14). In part, this is due to the shorter life-span of men; eight of the twenty

Numbers of Years Since Marriage 20 and over

women in this group are widows. Except for two divorces, however, the remainder

are separated from their spouses. Divorce is rare in the Puerto Rican lower class Nuclear

Extended Female-based Spouses only Spouses with relatives (no children)

because of the prevalence of consensual unions and because of the expense and difficulty in obtaining a legal divorce, even where a mJhitiage has been contracted. However, the absence of divorce does not prevent either the man or woman from

establishing casual liaisons or consensual unions with others; a household may include children of several men, as in the case of Paulita. Generally, the children remain with the natural mother.

This pattern of unstable unions following the breakup of a marriage appears to

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

41

be more common in the Puerto Rican lower class than premarital sexual activity. It would seem that once virginity is lost and the marriage broken, the ban of extramarital activity becomes very weak (see Seda Bonilla, 1969: 85).

Despite the prevalence of consensual unions and extramarital activity, how ever, most marriages in the shantytown are stable. Two-thirds of the Peloterenos

in the sample have remained with their first wife, which is much higher than the

30 percent cited by Lewis for the shantytown he studied (O. Lewis, 1966: 36). Among my principle informants, there are a number of couples who have been married over twenty years. Dona Ana, for example, was married twenty-three years ago in a civil ceremony to Juan (her second husband) and notes:

Up to this time I am happy because he is a good man without vices, he doesn't drink or smoke, or go out anywhere unless it is with me. Sometimes on Sundays we go to the movie or if they invite us to a party we also go, but we are already

old, we are not for parties, but we go. He is a very good person, very humble.

The number of three-generation matrilines in the Pelotereno sample is very small, which represents a departure from Smith's model. However, we must remember that we are dealing here with a relatively recent migrant population, where the grandparents in many cases have remained in the rural area. As Hammel (1961: 1001) has pointed out in a study of changing family structure among rural-urban migrants in Peru, migrant households appear to be extended laterally to include siblings and other relatives of the same generation. In addition, it is necessary to look beyond the individual household for the kinship network in the shantytown (see R. Bryce-Laporte, 1971). For example, all but two of the eleven women in the Pelotereno sample who live alone with their children have relatives residing in the same neighborhood. This kin group is particularly important to households headed by females since the assistance of relatives compensates in part for the absence of the father.

Seen in this light, even the predominance of the nuclear family in the shanty town takes on a new look. Separate residence would appear to be more an

expression of the nuclear family's economic independence rather than of its social isolation. Though the kinship group may cease to operate as an income-producing unit, as it may have been on a rural farm, it still operates as a tightly-knit social unit providing support and companionship to its members.

CONJUGAL RELATIONSHIPS AND MARITAL STABILITY

Every adult in the shantytown is expected to marry, at least once. There are widows and separated or divorced women in the sample from Los Peloteros but no spinsters (Table 15). Even the four men in the Pelotereno samfcle who live alone have either been separated or divorced. Most Peloterenos were married at an early age, particularly women (Table 17).

Two-thirds of the women in the sample married between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, while the majority of the men were first married in their twenties. The early age of the marriage for women could be attributed to their rural origin, but

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

TABLE 17

AGE AT FIRST MARRIAGE OF SHANTYTOWN ADULTS

Total N Total %

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

43

any pleasure from the sexual act. Dona Ana observed that intercourse is terrible for a woman until she becomes accustomed to it, which usually takes about nine days. During this time, she is not supposed to leave the house so that no one but her husband may see her. Some men, Dona Ana noted, are patient and gentle on

the first night while others are interested only in satisfying their own desire.

Under 15 15-19

Even after marriage, there appears to be little communication between husband and wife on sexual matters. As Stycos (1956: 208) and his associates observed

25-29 30-34 35-44

in their study of fertility patterns in Puerto Rico, sex is seen as something shame ful which the spouses do not discuss openly. Though these attitudes are changing rapidly among the younger generation, they may help to explain why some shanty

20-24

town women continue to have so many children, even when there is little hope of apparently many low-income Puerto Rican girls in the urban area continue to marry as young as fourteen and fifteen. Thus, several of Raquel's daughters

entered into consensual unions at fourteen, while Carmen's daughter was married at fifteen.6 It would seem that only the upwardly mobile delay marriage in order to finish their education, find a job and, hopefully, find a better husband.

Newlyweds may move in with the parents of the bride or groom temporarily,

but seldom continue to live there after the birth of their first child. Where doubling up is necessary, the girl's parents are preferred, because a girl commonly has built up a close pattern of cooperation with her own mother that can be easily continued after marriage. But space is also a decisive factor in the cramped quarters of the shantytown; and where the groom's parents have more room, the preference for matrifocal residence may be set aside. When Tito and Paulita married, for example, her mother lived alone in a rented room while his mother owned a six-room house down the street. Even before her marriage Paulita spent most of her time in her mother-in-law's house helping with the housework. One bedroom was set aside for the young couple and they shared other facilities with the rest of the family.

Fear of sex is built up in the female throughout the socialization process and she is taught to guard her virginity as a precious possession, to be given only to her husband. However, as we noted earlier, premarital sex does occur, and even women who marry in church are not always virgins. Thus, Paulita was already four months pregnant when she married. No mention was made of the fact and the wedding took place with a gown, cake, and all the other paraphernalia. In this case, however, the minister was Evangelical (following the mother-in-law's faith) and the service was conducted in a relative's home in a public housing project. A bride is expected to weep at her wedding. Shortly before the newlyweds take leave of the wedding party, she customarily bursts into tears and is at once sur rounded by female friends and relatives who try to comfort her. "Sabe la que le espera" (She knows what awaits her) remarked Dona Ana wryly at one wedding.

Kathleen Wolf (1952: 414) has attempted to explain such outbursts as signs of submission to men. Women are not expected to show any' interest in or derive 6 Fitzpatrick notes that age at marriage has been declining for both sexes in Puerto Rico. In 1950, for example, 31.7 percent of the women entering marriage were under twenty, com

pared to 36.1 percent in 1960 (Fitzpatrick, 1971: 88).

establishing a stable marital union. Dona Ana's niece Evelyn, for example, had four children with four different men before she was sterilized, largely because of her rapidly failing health. As with Paulita, it would seem that these women hope that each relationship will bring them some measure of happiness and stability, and when they are disappointed, they move on to another.

Sterilization is the most popular form of birth control, though douches, jellies,

and the pill are also known. Some men object to their wives' use of birth control methods because of the freedom it gives to women to experiment sexually, which tends to belie the notion that women are disinterested in sex. Raquel's husband, for example, forbade her to be sterilized, maintaining that she would then cease to be a woman (deja de set mujer). Raquel claims she would have been sterilized anyway, but at that time a woman had to wait until she had eight children, and that was too late. Raquel had a total of eleven children, of whom two died, and she also raised an orphan as an hijo de crianza or "adopted" child. Still Raquel insists it is better for women to have only three or four children:

If they were to operate (sterilize) them after they had one or two, then the world would end. At least since there are so many women, at least each woman should have three or four children. At least that should be the limit.

Pregnancy does not draw a woman closer to her husband; on the contrary, she

becomes increasingly dependent upon her own kin group, especially her mother. The birth of a child reinforces the bond between mother and daughter. If it is her first child, the daughter will consult her mother on what she is to eat and how she is to prepare for the baby. If the birth occurs at home, the mother or other female relatives will usually be present to assist the comadrona or midwife. Births now take place more commonly in the hospital, but because of the shortage of beds in the public hospital (which is free), women are often discharged 24 hours after giving birth. If they have no assistance at home, then returning so quickly with a newborn child can be very difficult, particularly when there are other

children to attend to. Ines spent the last month of her pregnancy at Dona Ana's house and returned there with her baby for several weeks)* until she felt strong enough to reassume the care of her own household.

A woman can expect little or no assistance from her husband. A rigid division of labor marks the shantytown household. A man is rarely responsible for more than a few odd tasks around the home, such as repairs and painting, and he may

44

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

also do the shopping. Tasks such as cooking, cleaning, washing, or ironing are considered women's work; if a man were to have to do these duties, it would be a violation of his machismo or virility. Since Dona Ana was not well, her husband sometimes helped her with some of the heavier housework such as mopping the

floor or taking out the garbage, but he was ridiculed even by members of his own

family. Since Dona Ana is in many ways the more articulate member of the house hold, their children looked upon his behavior as further proof that he was dominated by her.

Even in this case, however, when asked who held the authority in her home, Dona Ana answered: "Aqui manda el, pero en cuestiones de la casa mando yo. Se supone que sea el hombre el que manda en una casa'.' (He's the boss here, but

in household matters, I am. It is assumed that a man should rule the house.) In other words, as Smith notes (I960: 69), "it is socially prescribed that he should be the authoritarian figure in the household."

A woman would not attempt to answer for her husband or her family in official dealings with the government or other public agencies unless, of course, she is the recognized head of the household. The man represents his family in most matters relating to the outside world. His role as their spokesman gives him a rather important role in neighborhood affairs: On barrio committees, political parties, and the housing cooperative, for example, the bulk of the membership was male. Responsibility for social control in the shantytown also rests largely with the men. For example, men may attempt to end a fight between neighbors or

tell a drunkard to do his drinking elsewhere, while women are hesitant to inter vene in nonfamily affairs.

The man's principal role in the shantytown household is an economic provider. A good husband is expected to work hard and be responsible, that is, support his family and not spend all his money on vices like drinking or other women. He generally decides how much to spend on food, clothing, and other necessities, and may also do the buying. For example, the man often makes the large weekly purchase of food {la compra) while the woman usually does the daily shopping in one of the local tiendas. She may be given a weekly allowance or he may prefer

to retain complete control of the purse strings and give her money only when she asks for it. She may not know how much money he earns or spends on him self, like Julia, whose husband has been involved with several other women and thus has additional children to support. Julia has always been forced to work herself and has never been able to buy a house or give her children a good educa tion. Yet to my knowledge, she has never threatened her husband with divorce, and still defers to him as the head of the household. Raquel also remained with her husband though he was a chronic alcoholic and never supported her and their nine children.

He constantly threatened

them

with violence and on one such occasion, Raquel called the police and had him committed to a mental institution. He left her several times, but always returned because she "was the only one who understood him." Raquel herself is unable to explain why she did not break with him completely, but apparently feels vindi cated for all the years of cruelty and hardship now that she is able to collect on his Social Security. She refuses to give him any money, including the amount she

45

collected from the government as compensation on their house in the shantytown, even though he has threatened to take her to court. Now that she has financial

independence, she has clearly assumed a more dominant role in the household. Younger women are not as likely to put up with the hardships Raquel or Julia

endured. They have more resources open to them and are not as willing to make sacrifices for

the sake of preserving their marriage and

keeping

the

family

intact (see Lewis, 1966: 27). They may even leave a good husband like Paulita did, simply because she no longer loved him and was attracted to another man. Although Paulita now admits she should not have gone off with this other man, she also refuses to reconcile with Tito, her husband. Asked if it would not be

better for her children if she went back with Tito, she replied: "Me? Sacrifice myself for those spoiled girls. They will grow up and marry tomorrow."

As women become more independent, the rate of marital instability appears to be growing. There is little to hold a man and his wife together except their children. There is no investment in property, no status position to uphold, no deep emotional tie. Instead, each is bound to his own kin group and blood ties are

regarded as far more important than marriage, a contractual relationship. Even where marriage has taken place in church, there appears to be little religious sentiment on the part of the poor against divorce or separation. As Don Francisco

observed, a spouse is not kin but a separate being (un ser particular) and there fore is free to leave whenever dissatisfied.

If a couple separates, the children generally remain with the mother. Women who desert their children are severely criticized because it is considered impossible

for a man to care for them properly. Several women, such as Julia, Paulita and Raquel, came to the metropolitan area as children with their mothers, who had

left their husbands in the rural area. Their mothers found jobs as domestics or doing laundry, and the children left school in the early grades and were forced to fend for themselves. Paulita and her two sisters and

brother were often

separated as the children were dispersed to various households of relatives and friends, since their mother could not take care of all of them. Often the mother's lodging consisted solely of a single room in the house where she worked. Reflecting on her own experience and the plight of uneducated women previ ously, Paulita remarked: In those times when women had the problem of leaving their husbands, the majority became pagans, (prostitutes), right? Because they couldn't do any thing. . . . And if they were very young they didn't want them working in private families, because they fell in love with the mistress' husband. And then since they could not find work those women turned to a life of sin because they knew nothing of school. . . .

There are now more job opportunities open to women in the urban area, if they are forced to work and support themselves and a family. Still women are largely restricted to low-paying jobs as domestics, waitresses, or chambermaids, or if they are lucky, they may find a factory job (Table 11). It is also difficult for women to work if they have small children and no one to take care of them. Paulita, for example, can hardly leave the house with seven small children. Yet

46

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

47

she wants to work because she doesn't want to spend her life "waiting for them to give me a few crumbs of bread."

THE SOCIALIZATION PROCESS

Sometimes female relatives take care of the children while the mother works. Dona Ana, for example, continues to take care of Ines' two small girls while she works. Carmen's grandson also lives with her during the week so that her daugh ter-in-law can finish nursing school. However, with the dispersal of kin (not only

The shantytown family functions largely as a child-rearing unit. Given the strong segregation of conjugal roles and the weakness of the marital relationship, the emphasis is not on the emotional tie between husband and wife, but on the

on the island but also to New York) and the consequent weakening of kin ties,

the family no longer provides the security and support it once provided for at least some female-based households.

Instead, the female head of household in the shantytown has grown to rely increasingly on institutional means of support, chiefly public welfare. Almost half

the households headed by females in Los Peloteros received some public assistance. This also helps to explain the preference for legal marriage, since a legal wife is in a better position to request public assistance than a common-law spouse (see Mintz, 1956: 378; Fitzpatrick, 1971: 85). However, as we have noted previously, the amounts provided under public welfare are very small in Puerto Rico. Carmen, for example, received only $50 a month for herself and five small children when her husband died; now it has

been raised to $85. Paulita feels it is not even worth asking for public assistance in Puerto Rico, since they give you hardly anything and ask so many questions. Raquel's daughter also receives no aid, although her husband is in jail for drug

abuse and she has a young child to support. She supports herself by taking in laundry and with the help she receives from her family. Raquel notes: It's not worth asking for public welfare. Here, what they pay to the people is a pittance. . . . Then they are always waiting to see if someone comes and they say look, she is washing clothes and earns so much. . . . Right away they think that they are giving you help and they take it away. To earn two or three dollars more in addition, for that reason she has not wanted to solicit public welfare. Thus, though they have greater public sources of support open to them than

formerly, female-based households are still seriously handicapped in their possi bilities for upward mobility as compared with stable male-based households. This helps to account for the higher percentage of female-based households in public housing; they have few alternatives in the private housing market and may be

forced to remain in public housing indefinitely (see Safa, 1965). As we shall see

in Chapter 5, all of the female-based households restudied in 1969 are living in public housing. They form the basis of a large, dependent welfare population. The contrast between households headed by males and by females points up the importance of family structure in terms of the mobility patterns of the urban poor. Where the marriage is stable, the family may be able to accumulate enough resources to break out of the cycle of poverty and perhaps provide for the educa

tion of their children or the purchase of a house. Where the marriage breaks up or is unstable, however, the family often becomes dependent on public welfare and other subsidiary sources of income, and their chances of upward mobility are very slim indeed. Not only do the parents suffer, but they severely impair the future of their children.

Mothers have full responsibility for child-rearing and the mother-child tie is very close. (Courtesy ]ames Weber)

;

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

intensity of the mother-child relationship, which persists long after the children are grown and have families of their own. Shantytown families in Puerto Rico seem somewhat smaller than

the rural

norm (see Landy, 1959: 27). Few Peloterefio households contain more than five

children under eighteen, and the average number is three

(Table

18). This

includes hijos de crianza or adopted children, a fairly common form of child-

rearing in the Puerto Rican lower class. Adoptions are rarely legal; the children retain their parents' name and, if the latter are still alive, may see them regularly.

Thus, Dona Ana had taken Ines to live with her when she was only eighteen months old; her sister, Ines' mother, already had ten children and was too poor to raise another. Dona Ana was divorced and had no children, and was living with her sister at the time of Ines' birth. Later Dona Ana married Juan and Ines con

tinued living with them, but Ines saw

her mother frequently.

Ines

always

addressed her aunt as tia, but Dona Ana referred to her niece as her daughter because she "loved her as a daughter even though she wasn't hers." To this day, Dona Ana seems more attached to Ines than to her own son, who was born shortly after she married Juan, and is certainly more attached to her than to the three children of her brother, whom she also raised because their father was in prison.

Adoptions are largely limited to relatives' children but in cases of emergency, where the mother has died, children of neighbors may be included. Raquel, for example, took in the child of a neighbor woman who died of tuberculosis. The father was unknown, and apparently there were no other relatives to take care of

her. Public welfare gave Raquel $5 a month for the care of the child.

49

According to custom, a child should be baptized as shortly after birth as possi ble. As in the rural lower class, there are two forms of baptism practiced in Peloterefio families, the bautizo de agua (by water) and the bautizo de pila (by baptismal font) (see Mintz, 1956: 387). The bautizo de pila is generally post poned until the family is financially able to afford the cost of a church ceremony and the accompanying celebration. The bautizo de agua, held at home without

benefit of clergy and preferably with holy water stolen from the church, is

deemed sufficient to save the child's soul in case of death.

Godparents or padrinos are named for both forms of baptism. As in most

Latin American countries, the most important relationship is not between the child and his godparent but between the child's parents and their compadres (see Wolf and Mintz, 1950). Compadrazgo is thus a form of ritual kinship

whereby nonkin are incorporated into the family network or ties with relatives are strengthened. Neighbors are frequently chosen as compadres for shantytown families, reinforcing the close cohesion of the shantytown community (Table 19). Significantly, few shantytown families mention employers as compadres, a com mon practice in the rural area of Puerto Rico but lost in the impersonality of the urban labor force.

Some shantytown families still retain such traditional folk beliefs as mal de ojo or the evil eye. Infants wear charms made of small black hands on their wrist or pinned to their garments to protect them. The more beautiful a child is, the more susceptible he becomes; intelligence also is supposed to make him vulnerable. One mother, who had lived in New York, told me that her oldest boy was so beautiful she hardly dared to take him to events where other Puerto Ricans were present. She claimed that Americans were not so dangerous since they did not

TABLE 18 Number

NUMBER OF PERSONS AND MINORS PER SHANTYTOWN FAMILY Persons per Family

Minors per Family*

believe in mal de ojo. The fear of envy thus seems directed primarily at the in-group; in fact, close friends and even relatives are considered more harmful than strangers.

Total N

TABLE 19 SHANTYTOWN ADULTS' CHOICE OF COMPADRES (RITUAL KIN) FOR SONS AND DAUGHTERS

Relationship to father or mother

Father's Choice of Compadres Son Daughter

Mother's Choice of Compadres Son Daughter

Total N*

164

188

Neighbor Relative

l> 3,

Friend Employer Other No compadre

chosen

Average N

5.90

3.0

* Includes all persons under 18 years of age, whether or not they are children of the head of the household.

No son and /or daughter Does not remember

164

188

71

14

8

i

i

12

6

2'

* Doubled because two persons (male compadre and female comadre) chosen for each child.

50

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

Among the older generation of shantytown families, children were still gen

erally breast-fed because the mother's milk is considered healthier for the child, though bottle-feeding may be used as a supplement. Bottle-feeding is more pre valent among the younger generation, but is seldom kept on schedule. When

Paulita had her first child, her husband tacked up a schedule on the wall so that

the baby would be fed regularly. A woman normally stops breast-feeding when she becomes pregnant again, since the milk of a pregnant woman is considered harmful to the nursing child if he is of a sex opposite to that of the fetus. Since it

51

is impossible to determine the sex of the unborn child, nursing must terminate anyway. It is interesting, however, that sex differentiation starts

even before

birth and continues throughout the socialization process.

Sex differentiation is expressed in many different ways. For example, boys may run naked or with just a shirt until school age while girls are covered from birth on. When one little girl in the shantytown pulled off her pants, a neighbor's

boy called her mother who rushed to the rescue. Play groups may include children from three years of age to teen-agers, but they are generally of the same sex. Groups walking to school or gathering in front of a store follow the same rule. In general, contrary to the United States middle-class pattern (see Parsons, 1950), the distinction between the sexes is emphasized far more than differences in age.

Girls are much more sheltered than boys. They seldom go anywhere without their families or at least their mothers. Instead, they are expected to stay at home and help their mothers in the household tasks, particularly in the care of younger siblings. It is common to see a five-year-old girl carrying around her infant sibling. Thus, girls are initiated into their child-rearing role at an early agi In fatherless families, older daughters assume even more authority and respon sibility since their mothers may work and be away a good part of the day. At the age of eleven, for example, Berta took care of her two younger sisters, while her widowed mother, Carmen, worked. She also helped her mother in cooking, clean ing, and other household tasks. But she had no control over her older brother, who was seldom at home.

w • a i • ■ ■ t f

Similarly, Paulita's eldest daughter, now nine, is often left with her five younger sisters when her mother goes out shopping or to the clinic. Contrary to Berta, however, she appears to resent her responsibilities, probably because Paulita is not very affectionate or attentive to any of her children. Paulita is not able to cope with seven children; she is mentally retarded and continues to suffer from "nerve attacks." Her sudden departure to New York with another man can partly be

interpreted as an attempt to escape her maternal responsibilities. Instead, she ended up with still another child. ■•■••* i ■

III Iff

# *»

.•U

| • If »•* It **

Girls are initiated into their child-rearing role at an early age. {Courtesy James Weber)

Boys are expected to be more difficult to control than girls and their where abouts are rarely questioned as long as they keep out of trouble. They appear for meals and then vanish again to join their friends for a game of baseball or a swim. Jumping off the Martin Pena bridge into the polluted waters of the Channel is a favorite sport and no amount of admonition by parents seems to do any good. Like their fathers, the boys are rarely responsible for household tasks, although they may be asked to run errands. As adolescents, they may begin to earn a few pennies shining shoes or selling newspapers, but this does not compare to the contribution made by girls.

Boys as well as girls are more dependent on and attached to their mothers than to their fathers. The father is away from home most of the time. He seldom plays with his children; he does not work with his sons in the fields (as in peasant communities) nor teach them a trade. There is little demonstration of affection

between father and son. If anything, the father is more likely to caress his daughter, because he feels she needs protection, while the boys must learn to

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

53

*

Children have jew toys to play with, and there are no playgrounds in the shanty town. (Note the exposed pipes on the left.) (Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corporation)

V Men are often more affectionate with their daughters than with their sons. (Courtesy James Weber)

behave as machos. Young boys know they are expected to behave like machos and

correct such feminine behavior in boys at an early age or they would not grow up to be machos. Thus women as well as men support the macho mystique.

During adolescence, many boys turn to the peer group as an alternative model for male behavior. Little cliques of teen-age boys from the same neighborhood meet regularly at the same corner or in front of the same tienda. As in the rural

area, they may belong to the same baseball team, go to dances and drink together,

and generally help each other out (see E. Seda, 1959: 82). At teen-age parties,

following the pattern set by adults, girls gather at one end of the room and boys

will be ridiculed for any feminine behavior. One young boy in the shantytown was teased by his companions for playing with dolls and an umbrella (used only

at the other.

by women in Puerto Rico); a neighbor woman noted that it was important to

of the community as a separate group. There is no "adolescent culture" in Los

But traditionally in the shantytown, teen-agers are not isolated from the rest

54

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

Peloteros; there is no sharp break between the world of the child and that of the adult. Children are expected to act like little adults at an early age and gradually grow into the full realization of their role. Little boys are affectionately addressed as papito while little girls are correspondingly called mamita. From birth onwards

they are incorporated into the family's social life; even if the affair lasts late into the night, no one is disturbed if the children fall asleep on the couch or on their mother's lap.

Children's play is often based on an imitation of adult life. Thus, after a wed

ding in the shantytown, the girls turned on the radio and danced like they had

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

55

father did. Tito himself continues to visit his children weekly, now that he and Paulita have separated. He also supports them, though he is living with another woman with whom he has two children. Many children of separated parents,

however, hardly know their father. Paulita, for example, came to the metropolitan area with her mother and three siblings when she was four. She did not see her father again until she was thirteen and accidentally met him at her aunt's house. She never saw him again; he died the following year, but she did not learn of his death till much later.

seen the adults do the night before. A few of the younger boys were persuaded to join them. Shantytown families cannot afford to buy their children expensive toys,

but children improvise with whatever is available—empty bottles, old tires, and more recently, a rather lethal bazooka made up of old tin cans fitted end to end and filled with gas which is then ignited.

There are few organized club activities, such as are found in such abundance in American middle-class neighborhoods. A local chapter of the Young Catholic Workers met in the shantytown, drawing its membership largely from the most upwardly mobile families. Many of the girls were high school graduates working in white-collar jobs for whom membership in such a club is a mark of middle-class respectability. Their primary interest seems to be in social activities, since the

club offers one of the few opportunities for young, unattached girls to meet and mix with boys outside the home. The leader, a young man who heads another

•,;r •-.. ....

..;.;■,.-..:■•

,S

...

•'

• ^. .

,M

k

chapter in his own shantytown nearby, proudly announced that in the latter group, two marriages had already taken place.

Los Peloteros also has its own baseball team, with most of the membership

drawn from the local community. As in the United States, the uniforms and other equipment were financed by a local merchant who hopes to win prestige through

his team. Baseball is a favorite sport among the Puerto Rican urban poor. Many

of the most famous players on professional teams are persons who came from lower-class status, and many Puerto Rican boys hope to emulate their achieve ments.

Children in the shantytown are well known to everyone in the community and neighbors play a very important role in child-rearing. In the evening, children may gather in a neighbor's house to watch television. If they are hungry, they are fed. Neighbors will rush to comfort crying children, or try to entice them out

of a temper tantrum with a bright new penny or a lindbergh (flavored ice cube). At the same time, they do not hesitate to scold a naughty child or ask a neighbor's child to run an errand for them. As among the rural proletariat, "the community thus becomes a huge extended family, a place where the child does not feel strange and alone" (K. Wolf, 1952: 417). The parent-child relationship is robbed

of the unique intensity it has in the nuclear family and the child has many adult models with whom he can identify.

The presence of substitute adult role models is particularly important in fatherless families. There are often adult male relatives living in the neighbor hood who come to act as father substitutes for the children. In cases where the parents have separated, the father may continue to visit the children, as Tito's

Children learn early to share their few toys with others. (Courtesy James Weber)

56

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

The mother often has difficulty disciplining her children, particularly adolescent

boys, when there is no father present. Thus, when Carmen's thirteen-year-old son hit another neighborhood boy and was taken to court, the widow asked that he be placed in the Juvenile Home because she could not manage him. Carmen was then living with another man, but claimed he could not discipline the boy since he

was not the boy's father, nor was he even her husband.

Parents in the shantytown still use severe physical measures, like beating with a leather strap, to punish children. The mother is generally the disciplinarian,

though she may appeal to the father when her own actions prove ineffective. The father acts then as a kind of "higher court," appealed to only in emergencies. His marginal position in the family actually aids him in fulfilling this function, since his actions are not subject to the conflicting emotions arising out of the more intense mother-child relationship.

Respeto or respect is a very important element in parent-child relationships in Puerto Rican families. Traditional signs of respect for adults are still observed by

some shantytown families. Most children are forbidden to pass in front of an adult or to interrupt an adult conversation without permission. Children may ask for

bendicion or blessing upon entering a room where an adult is present. Above all,

children are forbidden to question their parents' word; if they are told to do something, they must obey without discussion. Children who try to defend their own viewpoints to their parents are thought to lack respeto and must be punished.

Peloterenos complain of a loss of parental control and undoubtedly children in the shantytown today enjoy greater freedom than children a generation ago. Tito notes, for example, that when he grew up, parents were very strict with children. There were punishments meted out to children "that were not given to oxen or animals." Nevertheless, Tito continues to believe in strict discipline, and observes:

If you plant a tree and the tree twists and you don't correct that twist, then

the tree will continue growing with that twist. Well, from when they are little

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

57

point out in their study of social class and social change in Puerto Rico, "high school education is the crucial point in ascending the occupational ladder." (Tumin, 1961: 301). It enables the person to pass from the ranks of manual

labor to white-collar jobs as secretaries, salesmen, or government employees. All of these jobs guarantee a degree of security that most workers in the shantytown have never known.

Significantly, not one boy in the Los Peloteros sample wants to become a common laborer or agricultural worker nor do many girls aspire to become domes tic servants or service workers—jobs that are low in pay, security, and social status (Table 20). There is a distinct urban trend in occupational aspirations, as Tumin and Feldman discovered (Tumin, 1961: 378). Boys would like to become

skilled artisans or factory and service workers, while over half the girls aspire to professional occupations like teachers or nurses, or white-collar clerical jobs. One of the most notable changes among the younger generation of the Puerto Rican poor is the new emphasis on equality of education for the sexes. It will be recalled that the educational attainment of women in the shantytown is much lower than that of the men. Several women complained that their parents lacked interest in their schooling, reflecting the traditional view that education is wasted on women. With increasing occupational opportunities for women, however, its utility has been quickly realized. Girls in Los Peloteros are on a par with boys in

their educational achievements (see Table 5) and, often have higher occupational aspirations (see Table 20).

Lidia, for example, the oldest of Don Francisco's eight children, now has a wellpaid job as a court stenographer and is completing college at night. She wants to be a Spanish teacher so that she can one day teach Spanish in the United States. Though Lidia herself is undoubtedly very ambitious, she admits she has had considerable support from her parents, who always encouraged her to study and did not make excessive demands on her at home. Lidia also credits her success to her religion (Seventh Day Adventism), which places considerable stress on indi-

one has to straighten it so that they grow right.

TABLE 20

OCCUPATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS FOR CHILDREN Every shantytown family wants their children to have a better and more com

fortable life than they have led. As Tito declared, referring to his ambitions for his daughters:

That they get to where I didn't. That whatever way they can, they secure a job

that they can earn their daily bread . . . without going to the factories that is that they have an occupation (trade). That they can earn good money in the future and develop a good life.

Education is stressed as the principal avenue to upward mobility. In general the educational level of members of the younger generation in the shantytown is well above that of their parents (see Table 5). In 1959, over one-half of the adolescents in the sample drawn from Los Peloteros had completed their eighth grade and over two-fifths had gone on to high school. As Tumin and Feldman

OCCUPATIONAL ASPIRATIONS OF SHANTYTOWN ADOLESCENTS

Occupation

Boys Boys

Girls Girls

Total N Total %

(18) (18) 100.0 100.0

100 0 100.0

Agricultural worker Professional Clerical Sales worker Artisan Operative Domestic service Service Proprietors, managers Laborers Does not know Does not plan to work

11.8 11.8

29.4 17.6 5.9 23.5

(36) (36)

32.5 27.0

13.5 10.8

5.4 5.4

58

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

vidual initiative and mobility because ". . . God wants each individual to progress

and prosper." Comparing herself to other girls in the shantytown, Lidia notes:

In general terms we had the same opportunities. . . . That is, we came from poor homes and at home we had more or less the same education in the moral and material sense. Nevertheless, many of them today are married, they have

no further preparation. I even know of some girls who would like, if they could,

to return and start their life over again. . . . The desire to excel (superarse) has

not been as great in them as in others. The desire to excel of each individual, it doesn't matter where he is or where he lives, that helps a great deal to enable

him to move forward.

Not all shantytown parents feel it is necessary or important for children to have an education. Don Lucho, for example, felt that education made children

disobedient and disrespectful to their parents, and exclaimed: "As soon as they

reach eighth grade—out!" The only one of his nine children who has succeeded in

finishing high school thus far is his oldest daughter, Flor. She used to study at

night under the street lamp because her father would not allow her to study at home. She wore her school uniform to bed because she was afraid her father would throw it out of the house during the night and she would not be able to go to school. Flor had a government scholarship given to gifted and needy students,

but it was only $60 a year, so she also worked after school and earned $23 every 15 days.

Because of their father's cruelty and drinking, all of Flor's sisters left home and

some married and had children as young as fourteen. Flor's mother, Raquel,

however, has hopes that her younger sons who are still at home may finish high school. She is very proud of Flor and thinks it is important that children study:

That they know how to take care of themselves, right? And that they know

something and that they don't have to go begging to anyone. . . . Because he

who doesn't know how to read or write feels humiliated and has to be pleading so that they give him work. And you will understand that today even to collect

garbage it's necessary to have a diploma and to know English, for all these things.

The problem, as we shall see later, is that even those with a high school edu cation may have difficulty securing jobs. As Tumin and Feldman noted more than a decade ago, the educational system on the island has expanded faster than the

occupational system (Tumin and Feldman, 1961: 444). Since then, the problem

has been aggravated as the volume of high school graduates has increased

steadily.

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

59

returned to the island from the mainland, particularly in years of recession when

jobs on the mainland are hard to find (The New York Times, September 7, 1971). Almost all shantytown residents have close relatives and friends in the

United States, and in 1959 about 15 percent of the Pelotereno sample had actu ally visited the mainland. Since that time, of course, this figure has increased greatly.

Most of the younger generation we interviewed have been to the United States, to work or for a visit, but only one remained more than a year. Thus, Carmen's oldest daughter, Berta, went to New York after graduation from high school and

worked in a factory in Brooklyn. She returned to Puerto Rico when she was laid off her job just before Christmas. However, Berta plans to return to New York with her boyfriend as soon as they are married, because "there it is better, here

one does not get work where one can earn much money or anything." Berta's boyfriend now works in construction, but Berta claims he earns una porqueria (a worthless amount).

Parents often complain that when their children go to the mainland, they

forget their family and fail to keep in touch with them. For example, when Raquel's daughter Yvette went to New York she stayed with Raquel's sister, and at first she wrote and sent her mother some money. Later, however, months went by when Raquel did not hear from her daughter, although she now has returned to Puerto Rico. Raquel notes: "I heard it said that he who goes there (to New York) it's like he dies. Because afterwards they don't remember." Raquel complains that she has several siblings who have been in New York for more than twenty years; they never write to her mother, who is now very old, but "she doesn't lose hope of seeing them again before dying."

Undoubtedly, kinship bonds have been weakened by both geographic

and

social mobility. We have seen that there is a considerable range of socioeconomic differences within families, so that even siblings may be of substantially different status positions. For example, Paulita's sister Carola lives in an urbanization with

her husband. Both work and have no children, so they have adopted (informally) one of Paulita's seven children, a little girl who is lighter skinned than the rest and who Paulita says looks very much like Carola. Carola pays a lady to take care of the little girl while she works. They have a car but seldom visit Paulita,

although the husband occasionally brings the daughter to her mother for visits. Outside of taking the girl, they have offered Paulita no assistance. Closest kin ties are still maintained between women, but even this is changing in the younger generation. When Carmen's daughter Berta went to New York

MIGRATION AND EXTENDED KIN TIES

One outlet for the Puerto Rican poor who could not find a decent job on the island has long been migration to the mainland, especially New York. The incen tive to migrate seems strongest among the younger age groups who are attracted

by higher salaries and a wider choice of jobs, especially in factories. Tito, for

example, worked in a factory while his family lived in New York, but he has no plans at the moment to return to New York. Many Puerto Ricans have, in fact,

after graduation from high school, she stayed with friends who rented an apart ment together and did not even look up her mother's sister, who has been living in New Jersey for more than twenty years. Nor did Paulita seek out her brother or any of her husband's family when she ran into serious difficulty in New York. The young often leave for the mainland in order to get away from family obliga tions and make a new life for themselves. If they run into difficulties like losing their job or being abandoned by their husbands, they are more likely to turn to

institutional sources of support like public welfare or employment agencies, rather than relying on relatives.

60

FAMILY AND KINSHIP

Thus, there are several forces at work that are bound to change the structure of the traditional Puerto Rican shantytown family. Geographic and social mobility have weakened extended kin ties and made the poor more reliant on public forms of assistance. At the same time, the position of the male in the household is strengthened as his occupation begins to take on a status-defining function

for the family and he no longer faces severe economic insecurity. In addition, the

new emphasis on education for women is leading to an emancipation of' the

female from her traditional household role and gradually reducing the strong

segregation of conjugal roles.

However, the traditional shantytown household is still beset by problems such as low wages and job insecurity, limited opportunities for upward mobility, and a high degree of marital instability. As long as these conditions persist, they will tend to perpetuate a marked matrifocal emphasis in shantytown households.

4/Community Solidarity

and Extracommunity Relationships

The shantytown is a very cohesive community. It is knit together by bonds

of kinship, compadrazgo, and friendship and by patterns of mutual aid and cooperation that have been built up in the neighborhood over many years. Shanty town residents tend to have their closest associations with people in their own

neighborhood and with people of similar class levels in other

parts of the

metropolis. Their relationship with people beyond the boundaries of the local community, however, tends to be impersonal and highly utilitarian. Shantytown

residents are largely excluded from meaningful participation in dominant institu tions such as political parties, labor unions, and the church, which are controlled

by elite segments of Puerto Rican society. We shall explore these patterns of shantytown community life in this chapter.

NEIGHBORS, KIN, AND FRIENDS The cohesion of the shantytown community clearly distinguishes it from the

anomie normally thought to characterize urban neighborhoods. In his classic article, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," Wirth (1938) has described the weakening of kinship and neighborhood bonds and the replacement of primary group ties with the secondary associations that usually accompany the urbanization process.

In the urban community, according to Wirth, relationships are generally utilitar

ian and specialized, leading to widespread depersonalization and the growth of competition and formal control mechanisms.

In contrast, relationships between shantytown residents are reciprocal, highly personal, and largely nonutilitarian. We have seen in Chapter 1 how Peloterenos

cooperate with one another and share what little they have with less fortunate neighbors. Raquel observes: Poor as we are, but we always had something for someone in need. . . . Always if anyone needed anything, food or money (chavos), we gave it to them with out looking for problems. If they paid us for it, good, if not. . . . And thank God we always had many friendships and we have many.

62

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

Cooperation in this shantytown is generally on an ad hoc basis and is most evi

dent in times of crisis such as accidents, childbirth, or other emergencies. For example, fire enlists the aid of all able-bodied men in the neighborhood. Neighbors know that a fire can spread rapidly in the wooden, tightly packed houses of the shantytown and are quick to form bucket brigades to help extinguish it. Fires

are often brought under control long before the fire trucks arrive, particularly

in areas difficult to reach near the Channel.

Los Peloteros is a very friendly neighborhood. Almost everyone in the shanty town knows everyone else, and the outsider is spotted immediately. Even men tend to find most of their friends in the immediate neighborhood and spend much of their leisure time in a local cafetin, or bar. The same crowd of men com monly congregates in a favorite locale nightly to drink, gab, listen to the jukebox, or play a game of dominoes. The proprietor often becomes one of the "gang" and it pays to be his friend, since he may be called upon to extend credit when cash

is low.

Stores are a favorite meeting place for people of all ages in the shantytown.

Like the cafetins, the small tiendas and ventorrillos in Los Peloteros usually serve a rather steady clientele drawn from the immediate vicinity. Customers who stop to talk as they shop are customarily neighbors for whom this functions as an

additional point of contact.

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

<

Kinship provides an important link between residents in the shantytown. More

than half the Peloterenos in our sample had relatives living in the neighborhood and they generally see each other daily (Table 21). Though they may not occupy

the same dwelling unit, such a kin group is often a tightly knit functional unit, cooperating extensively in the care of children and other household tasks. Thus, Dona Ana's niece was a frequent visitor to her aunt's house and her children were often left there for days at a time. Shortly before the birth of her third child, the niece moved into a house across the street so that she would be close to her aunt. Dona Ana assisted during the delivery, which took place in her home, and took care of her niece and children until the young mother was able to resume her household duties. Relatives are particularly important to women, for bonds of kinship are empha

sized in the maternal line. Though they associate extensively with their neighbors, women often remark that their only real

friends are relatives—usually other

females such as a mother, sister, or daughter. Children come to know their moth

er's relatives far better than those of their father, simply because they see more of the former. The bond to the maternal grandmother may be particularly strong, reflecting her dominant position in the kin group. Julia's

daughter, for example, spent every summer with

her

grandmother

though she lived only a few blocks away. She had been born while her parents still

lived in the maternal home and her grandmother took care of her as a baby. Julia expressed no jealousy or resentment at her daughter's attachment; on the con trary, she commented on it admiringly.

Close social contact is generally restricted to relatives living in the same or

nearby neighborhoods. Visiting with nearby relatives is a favorite Sunday pastime, particularly among women, who usually take their younger children with them. Even when men are present, there is little mixed conversation. A group of women gather in the kitchen or the bedroom to talk over family gossip or admire a new household appliance, while the men remain in the living room, discussing

incidents at work or the latest political news. Most social life is centered in the home, as the following quotation from my field notes illustrates:

The barrio was very much alive when we returned about six, with visits in every house. Carmen's mother was there, and a friend with a teen-age girl. The nurse's husband lay on the porch playing with his child, until his mother TABLE 21

SHANTYTOWN ADULTS BY RELATIVES IN THE

NEIGHBORHOOD AND FREQUENCY SEEN

Relatives in neighborhood See each other daily See each other weekly

Mothers are seldom envious of their children's attachment to other relatives, par ticularly their grandmother. Women often remark that their only real friends are relatives. (Courtesy James Weber)

See each other monthly See each other yearly Never see each other No relatives in neighborhood

Number

Percent

176

100.0

96 71 17

54.5 40.3. 9.6

4

2.3

3 1

80

1.7

0.6 45.5

64

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

came to take her in. Don Francisco talked to a male friend in his living room. Lucho was drinking with two or three friends in his house. Children of all ages

played together in the street.

While there is no stated preference for endogamy, marriage between members of the local neighborhood seems to be fairly frequent as a natural consequence of limited contact with the outside world. The social life of girls in particular is largely confined to the immediate neighborhood. Thus, Paulita lived a few doors away from Tito and spent much of her time in his house even before their marriage. Two teen-age sisters in Los Peloteros were severely criticized by their neighbors because their mother allowed them to go unchaperoned to dances in Barrio Obrero until late at night. Their mother lived alone with the children of two consensual unions, and it was generally assumed the girls would end up the same way.

As we noted in the previous chapter, neighbors are most often chosen as compadres for shantytown children (see Table 19). This tends to widen the already existent kin ties in Los Peloteros, and to provide another link between shantytown

residents.

Ties of kinship, marriage, and compadrazgo also integrate a neighborhood indirectly, since they provide an additional point of contact among unrelated

people. For example, Pedro knows not only Uncle Juan in the next block, but also Luis, who is Juan's next-door neighbor. Thus, Peloterenos live in what Bott (1957)

has termed a "highly connected network" of relatives, neighbors, and friends. This leads to a closely integrated neighborhood with a strong sense of group iden tity and cohesion.

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

65

upwardly mobile elements-of-the shantytown community, but otherwise do not

differ markedly from other residents

(see Ramirez, 1971:

14). Leaders usually

serve on barrio committees and work with the comisario or ward boss for the

Improvement of the neighborhood. For example, Don Francisco, who was very

active in tRe early settling of Los Peloteros, recalls how they had to petition the municipal government for water and electricity and other necessities. Though the government supplied the materials, residents normally provided the labor, such as putting up the posts for electric wires or filling in the streets with gravel. Don Francisco relates how, on one occasion, early in the settling of Los Peloteros, a

committee presented a petition for fill dirt to Dona Felisa, then the Mayor of San

Juan; within an hour she visited the shantytown and the next day the dirt was delivered.

■"""Outside of the barrio committees, the only significant formal association among adults in Los Peloteros was the housing cooperative. The cooperative had been created around 1952 by the government to interest shantytown families ineligible for public housing in building a new community on public land to be provided to them at cost. Members of the cooperative were expected to use the compensation for their old homes in the shantytown as down payment for the new construction and to pay the remainder in installments on a Federal Housing Administration mortgage. The cooperative had strong political overtones; weekly meetings were

held at the local office of the Popular party and the president of the cooperative, Don Andres, was also vice-president of the party's barrio committee.

The cooperative ran into several difficulties and delays as responsibility for the project shifted from one government agency to another, and the cost of each house rose from an original estimate of $3000 to over $5000. It was also difficult

LEADERSHIP AND SOCIAL CONTROL

Social control in the shantytown rests not so much on outside authority as with neighbors themselves. The highly connected network of relatives, neighEofs, and friends permits no deed to go unnoticed, and deviant behavior reflects not only on the person himself, but also on his family and friends as well. Responsi bility for the regulation of neighborhood affairs rests largely with the men who

generally represent the shantytown in its dealings with the wider" community.

However, the shantytown is characterized by a dispersed and fluid form of leadership rather than by a rigid hierarchy of authority. There is no central authority in the shantytown community, or even a central point at which people may gather such as the plaza in the Puerto Rican rural town. The integration of

the community, instead of being based on a hierarchy of established authority, is built up through a series of small, overlapping segmentary groups, each of which is composed of perhaps a half-dozen neighbors. Contact between the groups is maintained by persons who are members of more than one group, because of close friends, compadres, or relatives living in other parts of the neighborhood. Such persons serve as connecting links through which the more extensive associa tions of kinship and friendship operate to build up an overall neighborhood unity. Local leaders are often drawn from the core of old-timers and from jjit.jnore

to secure mortgages for families with such a low credit rating. However, in

1961, nine years after the cooperative was first formed, 216 families eventually moved to the new subdivision, located on the outskirts of the metropolitan area near the San Jose Lagoon. Their homes cost them approximately $6000, which they are paying off in monthly mortgage installments of about $35, depending on

the size of their down payment. Dona Ana, a member of the cooperative from Los Peloteros, describes the experience this way:

Eight years of fierce struggle. And we were saving pennies in the cooperative; two or three dollars or five, as we could, until we got together the down pay ment . . . and then when they were ready to give us the house we already had the money. We didn't have to use the money from the house (in Los Peloteros) to secure that house.

Many members were skeptical of the success of such a cooperative endeavor,

and persisted largely because of their desire for decent housing and their confi dence in the president, Don Andres, a long-term resident of Los Peloteros. How

ever, even he is accused of having used his position to secure a larger and betterlocated house site for himself. It is assumed that outside the primary group, that is, outside the small circle of relatives, neighbors, and close friends, everyone is out for himself. Don Andres attempted to keep the cooperative functioning after the group

66

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

moved to their new homes in the urbanization, and to create a consumer

cooperative with its own neighborhood store. But he failed, noting:

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

67

which are very family-oriented and serve largely to reinforce existing primary group ties.

Puerto Rican custom, you see. . . . These people as soon as they achieved their exclusive purpose which they sought which was their own house they aban doned the idea of cooperative. . . . They withdrew one by one until the

men of higher socioeconomic position to keep mistresses in the shantytown. The

encourage it, I have not succeeded.

sufficient resources to maintain her and her five children. Another

cooperative stopped functioning completely and as much as I have tried to

In the last years before relocation, Peloterenos often complained of a loss of social control in the shantytown community. They claimed robberies and assaults

were increasing, and there was a much greater tendency to use institutional

forms of controls such as the police and court cases to maintain order in the neighborhood. Many of the social problems were blamed on the titeres or trouble makers, groups of young boys who often hung around together on the street

corner or in front of a store. However, at this time these groups were hardly the

formally organized gangs found in New York slum areas (see Padilla, 1958:

226-248) or even in other low-income areas of Puerto Rico; membership in these

groups was unstable and included various age levels and no marked leadership patterns. There is a noticeable increase in these types of gang activities in public

housing, due to the breakup of old kin and neighborhood bonds and the loss of localized social control. Undoubtedly, the process of relocation, which had already removed some of the key families from the shantytown, contributed to the disin tegration of the community.

Peloterenos seldom marry out of their own class, but it is not uncommon for widow Carmen, for example, was supported for years by an older man with frequent

visitor to Los Peloteros was a policeman who lived with his wife in another part of the city. His wife could have no children, and when his mujercita (little woman) in the shantytown gave birth to a son, he took the child home for his wife to raise.

It would seem that the exchange of sexual services for support on a semi permanent basis is more common than outright prostitution in the shantytown. Even in social activities, contact with other classes in the metropolis is minimal.

The bars, movie theaters, and

dance halls

frequented

by

people

from

Los

Peloteros are largely located in Barrio Obrero, a working-class neighborhood

nearby. Peloterenos rarely go to one of the more fashionable movie theaters in the center of Santurce. Nor would they think of patronizing a nightclub or restaurant in one of the luxury hotels, although they may work in these places. Price is only part of the explanation and serves primarily to mark off class distinctions. The urban poor follow a particular pattern of activity that sets them apart from other class groups in the metropolis and draws them closer to people of similar class standing.

This pattern can be seen clearly in the fiesta patronal of San Juan Bautista, the patron saint of San Juan. The eve of San Juan Bautista on June 23 is undoubt

RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHER CLASSES

The highly personal and essentially egalitarian nature of relationships in the shantytown contrasts markedly with the impersonal nature of relationships with other classes in the metropolis. Most transactions with persons of higher status leave the shantytown resident in a subservient position, as a customer in a store, a worker in a factory, or a patient in a clinic, dependent on others ". . . who own the instruments of production, provide the work opportunities and sell the com

modities to be bought" (Mintz, 1953: 141).

Bonds of kinship, compadrazgo, and friendship rarely cross class lines Most mention people of higher status levels as close associates. Only one case in the sample reported choosing an employer as compadre, largely because, as we men tioned earlier, employers are seldom known on a face-to-face basis. Where men

have worked in the same place for many years, fellow employees are occasionally named as compadres; thus Tito chose as compadre for his oldest child a co-worker in the ice cream factory where he has worked for sixteen years.

Life-crisis events such as weddings, baptisms, funerals and important holidays

such as Christmas, New Year's, and Three Kings Day serve to bring the larger

kin group together. At New Year's, for example, Dona Ana may cook a pernil (a fresh ham) to which all family members and close friends are invited to eat. However, persons from higher status levels seldom participate in these festivities,

edly the most important, single festivity for the urban poor as a whole, though any religious connections have become remote indeed. In keeping with the legend of St. John, it is considered good luck to bathe in the ocean on this night. People

begin to flock to the beaches when the sun sets, and by midnight the most popular places are packed solidly. Many families come with food, drink, and blankets,

prepared to spend the whole night on the beach. Vendors of piraguas (flavored ices), chicharrones (dried pieces of fried bacon), and other cheap refreshments favored by the urban poor set up their stands to sell their wares. Crowds form around small conjuntos (bands) that spring up spontaneously from enthusiastic

amateur musicians playing the latest hit tune. Groups of girls stroll up and down, paseo fashion, while boys stand on the sidelines to watch. This seems to be one occasion during the year when open flirtation is allowed. Though all ages are

represented, teen-agers predominate. Other classes also celebrate the fiesta patronal of San Juan, though not with

the same vigor and enthusiasm (see R. L Scheele, 1956: 451). Afraid to go to the beaches frequented by the urban poor because of wild stories of robbery, sex, drinking, and other licentious behavior,

they generally confine themselves to

parties at home or around the pool of one of the luxury hotels. Above all, in the

higher classes, the fiesta patronal loses its flavor as a family festivity in which all ages participate.

For the upper classes, Carnival is a much more important holiday. The status value of the festivity is emphasized at the elaborate ceremonies for the coronation

of Carnival queens, held at one of the better hotels (Scheele, 1956: 454). But the

68

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

extent to which Carnival has fragmented as a genuine community festival is

marked by the number of different queens selected, each by a different social club or professional organization. Queens may even be elected to represent the working classes, such as La Reina de los Artesanos, or Queen of the Artisans But participation by the urban poor is limited to this rather rudimentary imitation of upper-class patterns. In Carnival it is the urban poor who become the onlookers. This pattern of interaction does not break down the physical and social isolation

of the shantytown. On the contrary, it draws Peloterenos into closer association with members of their own proletarian class within the wider metropolitan com

munity, while in effect minimizing contact with other classes in the city. Thus

despite their dependence on the outside world, Peloterenos remain encased in a web of lower-class relationships.

69

Racial discrimination exists in Puerto Rico, but on an individual rather than on

an institutional basis (see Carmichael and Hamilton, 1967: 46). Darker-skinned persons certainly are at a disadvantage in getting

jobs,

education, and

other

opportunities for upward mobility. Tito relates how a "colored" man (muchacho

de color) was denied a job at his factory, simply on the basis of race, although he was a good worker and had a family. Instead the boss, whom Tito labeled a racist, hired a single, blond fellow who would make a better appearance to the public. Most discrimination in employment appears to occur among white-collar work

ers dealing with the public, such as employees of banks, hotels, and offices. Rafael notes that the highest proportion of "poor and colored" personnel in a

government office is found at the State Insurance

Fund, an agency dealing

largely with the poor. According to Rafael, a colored person does not have the same opportunities in Puerto Rico as a white man, although he may be just as

RACE AND RACISM

well prepared. Rafael insists, however, that the situation is improving.

Although shantytown residents are socially isolated from other class groups in the metropolis, they cannot be set apart as a separate racial group. Class differ ences coincide with racial composition to the extent that as one moves from lower

to higher social status in Puerto Rico, the proportion of lighter-skinned persons increases (see Seda, 1970: 60). However, Puerto Rico is characterized by a con

tinuum from very dark-skinned persons (prietos) to very light-skinned persons (blancos), rather than by separate racial groups as in the United States where

any person with Negro blood is classified as black (Harris, 1964- 56)

The

explanation for this lies in the way the black man was incorporated into Puerto

Rican society.

The number of black slaves brought to Puerto Rico was never very large and

certainly never reached the proportions found in the British and French Carib bean, or even in the American South (Steward, 1956: 46). This largely reflected the late and slow development of sugar plantations in Puerto Rico, which began to be exploited commercially in the nineteenth century only after the loss of Spain's richer colonies in the New World, and especially following American occupation in 1898. Even in 1846, the peak year for slavery in Puerto Rico the number of free "colored" people was more than three and a half times the num ber of black or colored slaves (Steward, 1956: 56); this was due largely to a liberal policy of manumission sanctioned by the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church. There was also considerable miscegenation between white slave owners and their black mistresses, and the children usually took the status of their fathers as free men. In the United States, in contrast, the children customarily

belonged to the mother and continued in their slave status.

Historically, then, there is no basis for the development of a separate black subculture in Puerto Rico. Blacks have been largely assimilated into Puerto Rican

society and race is merely another element in the social differentiation of indi viduals rather than the basis for the cultural differentiation of distinct ethnic

groups, as in the United States. Social class thus supplants skin color as the primary determinant of a person's status in Puerto Rican society.

Both Tito and Rafael also claim that racism exists only among high-status groups and not among workers themselves. Tito notes: . . . Among the workers we all get along like brothers, we get along well. There are coloreds, there are whites, there are pharos (peasants), and we all get along well.

In short, racism increases the higher one ascends the social ladder. Don Fran

cisco, for example, insists that there is no racism among the poor, and that color is no obstacle to upward mobility in Puerto Rico, that "the man of money needs all kinds of men, all kinds of workers. It doesn't matter to him if they are white

or black. . . ." On the other hand, Don Francisco admits that a colored person J cannot attend a party of a rich person. Racism is thus also more evident in social rather than impersonal economic relationships. In Puerto Rico, as in most societies, racial attitudes vary with social class and with the intimacy of the social situation. Some social clubs, professional associa tions, and private schools practice discrimination in their membership selection

(Seda, 1970: 62-65), but this would not affect the poor, since they are disquali fied on the basis of class status anyway. Most Puerto Ricans would also object to their children marrying a colored person (Seda, 1970: 64), although certainly the

person's social status would have greater importance. Dark-skinned persons of high social status are considered "painted white" {pintado de bianco) and therefore more acceptable. However, in the lower class, where status considerations are minimal anyway, color is not so important a consideration in the choice of a marriage part

ner. Don Francisco says he would not object to his children marrying colored

persons, since ". . . all humanity descends from two persons created by God." None of our informants spontaneously mentioned color as an important considera tion in choosing a marriage partner, though a lighter-skinned person would clearly be considered more desirable.

Caucasoid features are generally considered prettier than black racial features such as kinky hair, black skin, and wide lips and noses. The poor often use the term prieto y feo

(black and ugly) in conjunction, much as they also tend to

associate black and poor. Dona Ana is almost apologetic about her husband, whom

>

70

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

she describes as prieto pero bueno (black but good), and about IneY children, who have turned out quite dark, yet she loves them dearly. There is no overt discrimination against darker-skinned children in shantytown families, except that they may not be considered as pretty as their lighter-skinned siblings. Lucho openly rejected his youngest daughter, a dark girl born late in their marriage, but

TABLE

22

CHURCH ATTENDANCE OF SHANTYTOWN ADULTS AND ADOLESCENTS

Adults Male

largely because he insisted she was not his. He had been in a mental institution

(

during his tirades for being black. But Raquel accepted this as part of his illness and said one could not hold mentally ill persons responsible for what they said. Clearly, then, the poor are aware of racial differences and recognize that they

are an important attribute of social status, particularly among higher status

groups. The lack of competition among shantytown families, all of whom find

themselves in the same low socioeconomic position, tends to minimize the impor

tance of racial differences among the poor. But as these families become upwardly

Male

Adolescents Femali

(82)

(94)

(18)

(36)

Total %

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

18.3

23.4

47.0

56.8

20.7

39.3

11.8

18.9

11.0 50.0

6.4 30.9

5.9 35.3

13.5 10.8

Once or twice a month Once or twice a

\

Female

Total N

Every Sunday

much darker than his other children. Lucho, himself quite fair and of selfproclaimed Spanish ancestry (de raza espanola), frequently attacked his wife

71

year

Never

the urban poor, they have become smaller, family-type affairs rather than com munity rituals. Certainly people from higher-status groups are seldom present at these events.

Only some of the fundamentalist Protestant sects hold religious services right in

mobile and more status conscious, the importance of racial differences also

the shantytown. For example, Don Francisco often held services for the Seventh

largely a reflection of their low social status and their inability to compete with

sionally a minister was present, but more often a member of the congregation led

increases. Thus, the much lauded racial tolerance of the Puerto Rican poor is

higher class groups in the society.

Race tends to accentuate the individualism already found among the urban poor. Since blacks are discriminated against as individuals, but not as a separate social group, they see no common ground for protest, like blacks in the United States. Instead they are intent on promoting their own personal mobility, even if this means unholding the tenets of white supremacy. Under these circumstances,

race can only deflect from the growth of class consciousness in Puerto Rico.

Day Adventists in his home, with hymn-singing, Bible-reading, and prayers. Occa

the service. Similarly, Tito's mother, who belonged to a Pentecostal sect, organized a Bible school in her home on Sunday afternoons, which several Catholic chil

dren in the neighborhood also attended. The parents seemed to feel that any religious instruction, even if it be of a different faith, could do the children no harm.

The weakness of doctrinaire religious faith among the Puerto Rican poor and the tolerance of opposing views prevents religion from acting either as a unifying-, or divisive force in the community. For example, Tito and his siblings have not followed their mother's faith, and his children now go to the Catholic church.

RELIGION

Religion does not bridge the gap between shantytown residents and higher-

status groups in Puerto Rican society. Though, like the great majority of Puerto

But as Tito says ". . . it doesn't matter, as long as they go to church, it's alright." The" poor may be attracted by Pentecostal or other fundamentalist sects, but leave when they find their strict rules regarding personal behavior too difficult to observe.7 Dona Ana, for example, returned to Catholicism when the nieces

Ricans, most Peloterenos are nominally Catholic, they have little opportunity to

she was raising reached adolescence and wanted her to accompany them to

Unlike the rural area, where members of congregations often knew each other on a face-to-face basis, the urban churches serve a far more transient and imper sonal population. The poor seldom belong to the social or charity organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church, and even the masses attended by the poor tend to be at a different hour than those attended by the more affluent. In addi tion, only one-fifth of the Peloterenos sampled attend church every Sunday; half of the men and 30 percent of the women in the sample never attend church

church after her husband died and she took up with an older man who helped

meet people from other classes in the impersonal setting of public worship.

(Table 22).

The communal nature of Catholicism, particularly in the rural area of Puerto Rico, was always expressed more in rites such as rosarios (in payment to a saint

for a promise fulfilled), velorios (wakes), and baptisms than in attendance at

mass (see Fitzpatrick, 1971). Although these rites continue to be observed among

dances, which the Pentecostals would not permit. Carmen left the Pentecostal support her and the children. However, she returned to the faith sixteen years later when one of her daughters died in childbirth. She now lives alone with her

children in a public housing project, and attends church services several times a

week, either in the community center of the project or in nearby neighborhoods. Like many fundamentalist sects, this congregation has not had the money to acquire its own building.

The tremendous growth of sect movements in Puerto Rico in recent years8 7 Most Pentecostal seas prohibit their members from drinking, smoking, using cosmetics or jewelry, and other "vices." 8 The Pentecostal church has more than 300 churches in Puerto Rico and the other sect

movements more than 311 (Silva Gotay, 1971: 215).

72

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

undoubtedly has built up a new form of spiritual community among the urban poor and may serve as a springboard for various forms of interneighborhood

cooperation. They offer services geared to the needs of the poor, such as helping

the sick, the bereaved, or the destitute; and the ministers are generally Puerto Rican, while Catholic priests are often from the mainland. They also place con siderable emphasis on proselytizing. Don Francisco, a devout Seventh Day Adventist, feels that by proselytizing, his church is helping everyone find his salvation through religion:

You live near your neighbor and your neighbor appreciates and loves you hen you make a good dinner in your home and you would like your neighbor

to share in it, no? ... And what do you do if they don't come? You take a plate '

—«.vi wuu.

we want you to snare the same that we are

73

his own standard of living to his conversion fourteen years ago. He notes that earlier he wasted all his money on gambling, drinking, and other vices; though he gives freely to the church

(a

now,

10 percent tithe is required), what

remains is enough "because there is no vice, it doesn't go anywhere else, it remains at home in the family."

It would seem, then, that the predominant ideology of the new fundamentalist^

sects in Puerto Rico hinders the growth of a sense of class consciousness among

j

the urban poor. The upwardly mobile tend to be attracted toward religions such

I

as Seventh Day Adventism, which stress material success and personal achieve- ( ment, and in effect sanction the present system of social inequality. The very

poor, on the other hand, tend to drift into the other-worldly orientation of the Pentecostal churches, which offer the poor a momentary escape from reality

going to share if we are saved. Teach them Evangelism and the love of God.

rather than an improvement in their present condition. Though they do serve to

Don Francisco notes that the same scriptures are taught at the same time in Adventist churches throughout the world, all of whose members are "hermanos

of new religious sects in Puerto Rico prevents religion from acting as a unifying

de fe y de corazon" (brothers of the faith and of the heart). Much of their time is spent in reading and studying the Bible, from which they quote constantly and they attend church services several nights a week and spend all day Saturdays in religious activities. (The Adventists observe Saturday as the Sabbath ) As Don Francisco's daughter Lidia explained: ". . . we believe that religion is not a dress for a special occasion but a dress which should be worn always, a uniform " She

feels Adventists should not marry outside their faith because it is difficult for

anyone else to understand their religious devotion.

For Don Francisco's family, religion provides a way of life and an explanation for everything. The Adventists believe, for example, that all signs of strife such as strikes, protests, and war are signs that the end of the world is coming, and that Christ will again descend to earth. They say it is useless for man to combat these evils because only God can do away with them. They feel that governments will never eliminate unemployment and poverty, because Christ and the Bible says 'there will always be poor." Lidia notes:

frnT Ww arC lhC middk daSS and the rich n<»*&«d if not the poor? And

tS I k'Saifk phoor nouilsiied l{ not from the rich and the middle class? Lor L -am class f ChWi lndiT poor, the middle and the rich. the Chain t0 exist there must ^ links: the Thus, social inequality is given a religious justification. This does not prevent the Adventists from engaging in active relief projects, and Lidia notes that they they have established hospitals, schools, and universities throughout the world mcluding Puerto Rico. In fact, Lidia is very critical of the Catholic Church for neglecting the poor and feels that many are leaving Catholicism because the

church seeks only "to benefit itself."

However, among Adventists material success is highly esteemed and even given religious sanction. For example, Lidia justifies her continued pursuit of education on religious grounds: "I know that the rest need my knowledge, the help I can

give them, and the best help I can give them is trying to better myself, trying to

obtain more knowledge." Don Francisco attributes much of the improvement in

set up a new kind of community among the poor, the fragmentation and diversity force for the urban poor community.

POLITICS AND THE POWER STRUCTURE

The strongest link between the shantytown and the outside world is through politics. All three main parties in Puerto Rico in 1959 were represented in Los

Peloteros—the Popular Democratic party, the Republican Statehood party, and the Puerto Rican Independence party—but the shantytown was clearly dominated by the party then in power, the Populates. This party came to power in Puerto Rico in 1940 under the able leadership of Luis Munoz Marin, governor for sixteen

years. The Populares based their appeal largely on the rural landless, or jibaro, who in his pava or large straw hat, has always been the party emblem. The recent rural origin of many Peloterenos undoubtedly contributed to their support.

In our 1959 sample, over 61 percent of the respondents favored the Populares, while statehood supporters drew over one-fourth of the sample, and independence almost none (Table 23).

This strong support for the Populares is based largely on the services they could provide for shantytown residents. After many years in power, the Populares

controlled a huge government bureaucracy, which dispensed jobs, goods, and TABLE 23 Political Status

ADULTS' PREFERRED POLITICAL STATUS FOR PUERTO RICO Shantytown Adults Male Female

Male

Project Adults Female

Total N

(82)

(94)

(68)

(95)

Total %

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

Commonwealth

61.0 2.4 32.9

61.7

38.2

57.9

55.9 5.9

32.6 9.5

Independence Statehood No report

3.7

1.1

21.3 15.9

/

74

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

75

ranging from a faulty sewer pipe to the need for special medical services, or an

application for public housing. Though they were open to everyone, these sessions were naturally most popular among the poor, who utilized them principally to

circumvent the red tape of government bureaucracy and secure preferential treat ment. However, as Seda has pointed out, in such a personalistic system, "demands from the electorate were

dealt with as

personal

needs and

met

within

the

personalistic model of political interaction as personal favors" (Seda, 1965: 271). Demands were not presented as the rights of citizens in a democracy, to which everyone was entitled.

Through her well-organized party machine and her dramatic display of atten tion to the needs of the poor, Dona Felisa had a large following among the urban poor. The comisario served mainly as her representative, as a vehicle through

whom government services and favors were secured. He was not a leader in his own right, representing the interests of his shantytown constituency. Party mem

bers served on barrio committees, collected funds, and drummed up support for the party in election years. When called upon to do so by the mayor, the more enthusiastic Populares would board a caravan of cars headed for a show of party strength. But active support of the party on the part of most shantytown residents

is largely limited to these momentary outbursts of allegiance. As Ramirez (1971: 13) points out in a study of political participation in another shantytown, by limiting their participation to voting and other symbolic acts, shantytown residents find it easier to transfer political allegiance should their party fail to win at the polls.

The problem then is not political apathy or alienation, as Lewis would suggest

(O. Lewis, 1968: 7-8). Shantytown residents vote;11 they belong to barrio com mittees and sign petitions; and they are well informed and interested in political issues, especially the men. But their participation in the political process is limited to this rather passive role, in which they receive favors and orders handed down

Shantytown residents protect their right to squat illegally on public land by raising a political party banner, here the palma of the New Progressive party. (Courtesy

James Weber)

services often in return for political allegiance and support. For example, in order to protect their right to squat illegally on public land, the first thing most shanty

town residents do after erecting a makeshift house is to hoist a party banner—then the pava of the Populares, now more likely the palma of the New Progressive party (which succeeded the Populares in 1968). The main job of the comisario or ward boss is to provide services for the party faithful—gravel for roads, lum

ber for the repair of homes, bail for the jailed—in exchange for votes on election day. The barrio committees mentioned earlier depended heavily on political influ

ence and consisted entirely of party members. Even the housing cooperative, which was started by the government, was limited largely to party members and was finally pushed through by the mayor and several powerful legislators. Dona Felisa Rincon de Gautier, then Mayor of San Juan, held regular weekly "open houses" at which people could present their particular problem of request,

from above. No political party has ever really represented the interests of the urban or rural poor, although they constitute the majority of the Puerto Rican population. The

Populares rose to power with the backing of the highly organized agricultural workers on the basis of a platform aimed at the injustices of American colonialism

and chiefly the large U. S. absentee-owned corporations (see Quintero, 1971: 20). However, as Quintero has pointed out, the decline of agriculture and the strong

support of the industrialization program by the Populares diminished the impor tance of the agricultural worker and his political strength (Quintero, 1971: 21).

As a new and highly diversified labor force, the urban proletariat are not yet sufficiently organized to make their interests felt. Rafael, a labor union organizer, points out that those who attempt to speak out

for the poor and the worker are often accused of Communism: ... As soon as a leader, and if he is a worker much more so, stands up and tries to make a party or they catch him speaking a lot about a party or they hear him speaking in defense of the workers, immediately he is a Communist. 9Ramirez (1971: 12) reports a turnout of 75 percent in the 1968 election in the shanty town he studied.

76

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

... He wants to make a political party because we believe the workers should have a political party which represents them. Ah, well, that is a Communist.

The people in power, no? the capital.

Rafael speaks of the need to control monopolies like the insurance companies and the racetrack, largely owned by Americans. He feels the government, rather than restricting them, often facilitates the operations of these monopolies for la gente gorda . . . que tiena algun capital (the fat people . . . who have some capital). Like Rafael, most shantytown residents are aware of the inequalities of Puerto Rican society and of the advantages enjoyed by the rich. But they feel inequalities have always been a part of Puerto Rican society and they can do

little to change the situation.

Their pessimism extends to Puerto Rico's colonial dependency on the United States. Most of the poor feel that Puerto Rico is too small and too poor to survive on its own, echoing what political leaders like Muiioz Marin have told them con stantly over the years. They recognize that Puerto Rico is a colony, and that the

Americans are the "duenos y senores" (owners and gentlemen), but they feel the poverty of the island leaves them no choice. Don Francisco notes:

Puerto Rico is not prepared for independence. In the first place a people need raw material to live. . . . Those 20 Latin American republics . . . within which is Santo Domingo and Cuba are 200 years behind us. With us being a colony ... an American colony . . . Puerto Rico scarcely has water to support itself. Tell me, what agriculture does Puerto Rico have? None. What flag does Puerto Rico have to represent the country? What we have is a little lamb. What does a lamb do? At least ... an eagle or a lion in the symbol.

Colonialism thus has convinced most of the Puerto Rican poor of their need to

depend on the United States and of the superiority of American economic and political systems. However, colonialism has not diminished the sense of national ism among the Puerto Rican poor. Don Francisco sees no conflict in his strong nationalistic identification and in his support of Puerto Rico's continued associa

tion with the United States. He observes:

I feel purely Puerto Rican and an American citizen, I am proud that I am Puerto Rican and that I am a citizen of the most powerful nation of the entire world ... I am 100 percent with the American, 100 percent with my country. Most of the Puerto Rican poor are intensely nationalistic and identify strongly with the island culture. Contrary to Lewis' findings (1970: 76), shantytown

families do not feel alienated from Puerto Rican society. In fact, according to Rafael, "mientras mas pobres, mas puertorriquenos nos sentimos" (the poorer we

are, the more Puerto Rican we feel). According to Mintz (1967: 152) this strong nationalism of the poor has deep historical roots, going back to the early

development of a stable Creole culture in the Spanish colonial period. Certainly today the Puerto Rican poor show less signs of acculturation to American tastes than the middle class, with their mini-skirts, rock music, and fast, flashy cars.

Poverty in itself has preserved a more traditional way of life among the lower class.

However, strong nationalism has not led to greater class consciousness among the Puerto Rican poor. On the contrary, nationalism has in a sense hindered the

COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY

77

development of class consciousness among the Puerto Rican poor by softening the sharp distinctions prevalent in Puerto Rican society. As Tito observes, "la naci-

onalidad es sobre todas las cosas"

(nationality is above all things). Thus, dis

crimination and exploitation of the poor in Puerto Rico become less obvious than if they were members of a clearly distinguishable ethnic or racial minority, like

blacks in the United States—or even Puerto Ricans on the mainland. As members of the same culture, and deeply nationalistic, the Puerto Rican poor tend to feel that the only thing that differentiates them from the rest of the society is their lower-class status. And this they feel they can overcome. As Don Andres noted: "I don't believe that [the poor] feel less Puerto Rican than the people who live in

mbanizaciones because they have a perfect right that someday they will also have the opportunity to live in an urbanization." In other words, social mobility and

its rewards are open to everyone.

Shantytown residents also feel there has been marked progress in Puerto Rico in the years since 1940, when the Populares took power. The inequalities are not as great as they once were. Peloterenos point to the tremendous increase in

public services such as water and electricity, as well as public schools and hospi tals, which were formerly reserved largely for the rich. They feel that there are

far more opportunities now for the poor to raise their status in sdriety because of better education, more jobs, and higher salaries. They expect the government to constantly provide more of these services, since, as Seda has noted, they ". . . per ceive the government as an entity with limitless authority and inexhaustible

resources" (Seda, 1965: 274). Government is seen as the source of all progress. Thus, shantytown residents tend to look upon the government to solve all their

problems. As Quintero

(1971: 24-25)

has pointed out, they have transferred

their allegiance from the old landowners to the government, which is now seen as the great benefactor. This tradition of dependency greatly inhibits the growth of class consciousness among the urban poor. It forces them to look for solutions to established political parties, in which they have no real power, rather than devel oping political power within their own ranks.

The strong solidarity of the shantytown community does not extend beyond narrow neighborhood boundaries. There are no mechanisms for fostering a sense of class solidarity among the urban poor as a whole. There is no marked racial or

religious difference between them and the rest of the Puerto Rican population. Labor unions among the urban poor are weak and fragmented, while political

parties are controlled by the elite. Both unions and political parties seek the support of the poor, but give them no decisive role in formulating policy or pro grams.

The relocation of shantytown residents through urban renewal has also hin

dered the formation of a sense of class consciousness. The older shantytowns, often with the strongest sense of community solidarity, have been cleared and the

residents dispersed to public housing projects, private mbanizaciones, or some times other shantytowns. This process, by breaking up old neighborhood bonds, weakens further the highly localized

solidarity of the urban poor and

their

potential for independent political action. In the next chapter, we shall see what

effect relocation has had on the families in Los Peloteros.

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

But the distribution of income has not changed, and if anything, the gap

between the rich and the poor is growing wider. In 1963, for example, the lowest

5 / Relocation

and a Decade of Change

20 percent of the population had only 4 percent of total income, while the upper

20 percent had 51.5 percent {San Juan Star, January 2, 1972:

12). Between

1963 and 1969, the situation worsened as economic growth failed to keep pace with population increase, due partly to a slowdown in migration to the mainland. Thus, although the industrialization program created 62,000 new jobs in manu facturing between I960 and 1969, unemployment at the end of this period still stood at 10.6 percent. According to one report, unemployment actually increased 22.1 percent in the decade from I960 to 1970 {The New York Times, October 25,1971: 20).

Los Peloteros no longer exists. By 1962, most of the shantytown had been

cleared to make room for a major highway linking the metropolitan area and for new housing under the Model Cities Program. Although once considered

marginal, this land located in the center of an ever growing city now has

acquired new value and the poor have been forced to leave.

In 1969, ten years after the original data were collected, I returned to Puerto Rico to see what had happened to my principal informants in the shantytown, who were now living in various parts of the metropolitan area. With the help of Dona Ana and her family, with whom I had kept in touch through the vears we Much had happened during those ten years. First, of course, all of the families had moved from the shantytown. Two families were living in the housing coopera

tive set up under government auspices and one in a privately built urbanization.

Three other families had moved to public housing projects, which receives a great bulk of relocated shantytown residents. One family was living in a rented house in a run-down working-class area after leaving public housing because the rent

was too high.

In these ten years, clearly, there had also been marked changes in the life cycle of these families. Adults had grown older and some were approaching retirement; two of the men have since died, though they were still living in 1969. Children had grown to adulthood, and were completing their education, looking

for jobs, and starting families of their own. They are now about to face the prob

lems their parents confronted a generation ago.

The greatest change in the lives of these families, however, were brought about

by the sweeping changes in Puerto Rican society as a whole. There was an accel eration of the modernizing trends begun earlier: High-rise office buildings and luxury hotels and apartment houses came to dominate the landscape along the beachfront and in the central business area, while sweeping new six-lane express

ways reached out to connect up the sprawling new urbanizations or subdivisions,

home of the growing middle class. Shopping centers with stores like Woolworths,

Grand Union, and other American retail chains sprang up all over the suburban area, along with brand new movie theaters and enclosed shopping malls. The new consumer society reflected an increase in standards of living, as average income

per family rose from $2563 in I960 to $3979 in 1969 (L. Silva Recio, 1971: 129).

What has this meant for the families from Los Peloteros? How do they view the changes taking place in their society? How has the process of relocation and social mobility affected their attitudes and values, and in particular their sense of class consciousness and class solidarity? We shall address ourselves to these questions in this chapter.

RELOCATION IN PUBLIC HOUSING

The shantytown acts as a filter, through which migrabts are sorted out and launched on their respective urban careers. Clearly the most upwardly mobile families from the shantytown try to buy a home in an urbanization, while the poorer segments of the shantytown are forced to live in public housing. As we

found in our original study ten years ago, public housing tends to draw on the lowest income segment of the shantytown, including a high percentage of father

less families, unemployed, welfare cases, and other socially handicapped families (Safa, 1965).

While most public housing residents live in projects out of necessity rather than choice, they do not deny the distinct physical improvements in housing as com pared to the shantytown. They have more room, more facilities, and far better sanitation than in the shantytown. Raquel, for example, pays only $18 a month

for a five bedroom apartment compared to the single bedroom she and her 10 children shared in the shantytown. In general, there is far less overcrowding in

public housing, than in the one and two room shacks of the shantytown. TABLE 24

INCIDENCE OF DISEASE IN CHILDREN* Number of

Diseases

Shantytown Families

Number of Project Families

Diarrhea or entiritis Tuberculosis Pneumonia Anemia Internal Parasites * The numbers given here are the number of families whose children have suffered from these

diseases since they lived in the neighborhood.

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

81

illnesses due to unsanitary conditions such as diarrhea, pneumonia, anemia, and internal parasites, particularly among the children in public housing (Table 24). Fire and hurricanes are no longer such a hazard since the buildings are totally constructed of concrete, replacing the makeshift wood and zinc construction in the shantytown.

According to Raquel, there is also a marked improvement in "law and order" in public housing as compared to the shantytown. Project management assumes total

control of the project, taking it out of the hands of residents themselves. There are rigid rules and regulations governing maintenance of the apartment and grounds which, however, seldom are strictly enforced. Families are threatened with eviction if they fail to pay their rent (supposedly for three months) or if they are noisy or otherwise cause a lot of trouble in the neighborhood, though again management tends to be quite lenient. Raquel claims there are more police patrols in public housing, and certainly it is easier (and safer) for the police cars to cruise around the wide, paved streets of the project than in the narrow, muddy alleys of the shantytown. Raquel claims she lived in fear in her last shantytown residence (not Los Peloteros), from which she moved to public housing. Her husband was frequently drunk and would force his way into the house with a crowbar and try to beat them up. They had to jump out of the window to get away from him. In addition, there were many titeres (troublemakers) in the neighborhood who were noisy and even dangerous. Raquel notes: I lived there in the alleys and sometimes after the people were asleep, they (the titeres) would be up all night in the channel in a small boat (yawl) saying bad words, ugly words and even throwing stones.

There have been increasing problems of vandalism and theft in both shantytowns and public housing projects in recent years due largely to an alarming increase in drug addiction, especially among the young. All our respondents men tioned drugs as a major problem, particularly those living in public housing, where the higher percentage of adolescents and loss of neighborhood social control appears to have aggravated the situation. Paulita recalls how she witnessed teen agers injecting themselves on the stairs of the project where she lives, while Dona Ana claims drugs were sold openly in the small project stores bordering their neighborhood. However, everyone maintains that the extent of drug activity has diminished considerably since the Ferre government cracked down on addic

tion in 1968. It is difficult to tell, however, whether the addiction problem has not simply been driven more underground.

The kitchens of public homing projects are modern and well-equipped compared, to the primitive facilities in the shantytown. (Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Re newal and Housing Corporation)

All public housing apartments are equipped with modern bathrooms complete with showers and flush toilets (replacing the outside latrines in the shantytown) and separate kitchens with a sink, cabinets, and gas stove or electric hot plate (in some of the older projects). This has contributed to a marked decrease in

Men appear to dislike public housing more than women, because many of the traditional basis of male authority in the shantytown have been taken from them (Safa, 1964). They no longer own their own home, they must depend on project management for repair and maintenance, and they must report every change in occupation or salary to management, since rent is based on income and the size of the family. Social control also is taken out of the hands of local residents. As one project resident complained: "Aqui todo es publico y uno no puede mandar en

nada" (Here everything is public and one has no authority in anything). Rafael claims there was more respect among neighbors in the shantytown than in public housing, where most disputes are referred to housing management:

82

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

We don't like living in public housing. It's because if I live in a house and alongside of me lives a person with vices, of bad conduct like he drinks and . . . what the people call atomicos (persons who drink natural alcohol). Well I simply leave the house and move somewhere else or I look for a way of chang

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

83

their own. In the data collected in 1959, the percentage of female-based house

holds increased from 21 percent in Los Peloteros to 35 percent in public housing

ing that.

Rafael says complaints to the housing administration often do not bring results. Many men claim not to have a single friend living in the project. Complaining

of the isolation, one man exclaimed: "Aqui se muere uno y no hay quien le haga un favor. No hay hermandad, ni buenos vecinos" (One can die here and no one would do you a favor. There's no brotherhood or good neighbors). Men do not

There is a loss of social control in public housing, particularly among the teenagers who often use the stairs for taking drugs and other illegal activities. (Courtesy James Weber)

even have a place to get together in the project. The local bars and stores have

been eliminated, and the community center doesn't attract them because it is not

conducive to informal meetings between friends who just want to chat a while. The old kin and neighborhood bonds developed over many years in the shantytown have been broken; and the traditional patterns of cooperation and trust have been weakened. Puerto Ricans of all class levels are always on guard against gossip or bochinche, as it is locally called; but in the project fear of bochinche

seems exacerbated by the fact that neighbors do not know each other very well

I 'I

and are constantly afraid of being reported to project management. As a result, project residents tend to keep more to themselves and to be very cautious in developing close friendships. For example, Raquel observes:

IIHIIllFlif mi i

■•■

If they come by here and ask me for something and I have it, I give it to them. But from outside (that is, on the balcony or at the door), I never ask them to enter nor do I stop to converse with anyone so that there are no problems. That's what brings problems, entering houses and looking for gossip, talking about everybody, that brings problems.

Bitter disputes between neighbors in the project are common, and often involve a question of jurisdiction or responsibility. Thus, arguments frequently occur over

the clearing of stairways, which serve six to eight apartments each. Each resident feels it is his neighbor's responsibility and most would prefer to leave it to project management.

Women often become the spokesmen for the family in public housing, because

Illli:

they are home most of the day and are often more effective in dealing with the largely female staff. The disadvantages for men in public housing often turn out to be advantages for women, because they now have someone to take care of repair and maintenance and to preserve law and order in the neighborhood, both areas of male responsibility. Fatherless families with very low incomes often pay

little or no rent in public housing. Paulita, for example, originally paid $18 a month for her three-bedroom apartment, but now that she has separated from Tito and has two additional children, she pays nothing. Carmen, the widow, pays only $10 rent for her three-bedroom apartment out of her monthly Social Security check of $82.

Fatherless families like those of Paulita or Carmen usually plan to remain living in public housing indefinitely because they have no hope of owning a home of

r1"

1

**• Ml

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

85

was being punished by God for her sins and she broke her relationship with Don

Basilio and returned to the Pentecostal church. She manages very well on the $82 she receives every month in Social Security, plus the $15 a week her daughter

gives her from her job at the project nursery school. Her youngest daughter is now twelve and Carmen hopes to find a factory job, but in the meantime she is

taking care of her grandson during the week while her daughter-in-law finishes a nursing course. Her life has been made much easier since her children are older and contributing to the household income and her rent is low in public housing. In her own words, estoy viviendo mas desahogada que en aquel tiempo (I am living less suffocated than in that time). It would appear, then, that public housing rein forces the matrifocal nature of Puerto Rican low-income households by under mining the authority of the man and replacing it with the paternalistic support of project management.

The wide variations in income found in Los Peloteros are sharply reduced in public housing. Thus, in 1959, only five families in the project sample had incomes over $3000 yearly, compared to three times that number in the shanty town sample (see Table 9). At the same time, there was a larger concentration

of project families in the lowest income group due largely to the high percentage of fatherless families in the project.

The communal areas of public housing are supposed to be used for play, drying clothes, and other outdoor activities, but are seldom kept up by the residents who take no pride in the projects. (Courtesy Puerto Rican Urban Renewal and Housing Corporation)

Project regulations often discourage tenants from increasing their earning capacity. Increases in income are penalized by raises in rent, and if families pass beyond a certain income level, they are evicted. Many families prefer to deliber ately restrict their earnings in order to stay within the income limits. Women in the project are less likely to have a steady job than women in the shantytown and many prefer temporary employment as domestics or laundry women because these activities can more easily be hidden from project management and welfare offi cials. In addition, the 1959 data show that the rate of unemployment for men is higher in public housing than in the shantytown, while the number of wage earners per family also decreases (see Table 10).

(see Table 13). An analysis of Housing Authority records showed that the higher

percentage of female-based households in public housing is due largely to differen

tial selection and turnover rates (Safa, 1965). That is, female-based households

are attracted and held by public housing because their low incomes severely limit

their chances of obtaining adequate private housing. It could not be determined on the basis of the data available whether residence in public housing actually leads to a weakening of the conjugal relationship and marital separation, although we have shown how public housing threatens the man's authority. It does seem that public housing tends to recruit families with a history of marital separation,

so this would also contribute to the higher number of fatherless families. The paternalistic policies of project management make it easier for women to live alone than in the shantytown. Thus, when Carmen lived in Los Peloteros with her five small children on a welfare check of $50 a month, she depended heavily on Don Basilio, an older man who helped support her and with whom she lived in a stable consensual union for over ten years. However, when she moved to public housing, and one of her daughters died in childbirth, Carmen felt she

Some women, like Julia, feel that the only way they will be eligible for public housing is to separate from their husbands, so their incomes will not be so high. Julia and her family lived in public housing for three years after leaving Los Peloteros and she would like to return to the project. However their rent in the project was raised to $82 a month and Rafael, her husband, refused to pay such an exorbitant sum. Now they pay $50 a month for a two-room wooden house with only primitive kitchen and bathroom facilities, whereas in public housing they had three bedrooms and all modern facilities. Julia claims that when it rains the house gets wet inside, though it is located on a paved street in a modest workingclass area. Even a house of this kind would cost them $3500 to purchase, and Julia feels they will never have the money. She is very angry at the government because ". . . they took away my house where I lived (in the shantytown) and

where I paid nothing to send me to live in a place where we paid a lot (in public housing). And that we had to leave." The ever-increasing price of private housing undoubtedly represents a hardship for many families who formerly owned their own homes in the shantytown.

i

Most project families would prefer to own their ovln home, despite low rents

86

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

and better facilities. Raquel, for example, still plans to buy a concrete house "for

14000 or $5000" and has saved the compensation ($1855) she received from the

government for her house in the shantytown for this purpose. However, the income of most project residents is so low that they have little hope of owning a home of their own.

One might expect the rigid and restrictive nature of life in public housing to be

reflected in a greater sense of class consciousness. Project residents come much closer than shantytown residents to being a true, full urban proletariat; they are an older, urban population (most having come from older, already cleared shantytowns), a lower and more homogeneous socioeconomic group, and most are

very resentful of the paternalistic control exercised by project management. In

the data collected in 1959, resentment was reflected in increasing dissatisfaction with the Popular party, which as the government then in power was closely identified with project management. Compared to Los Peloteros, there was a marked increase in the number of Estadistas or statehood sympathizers in public housing, particularly among the men (see Table 23).

However, the Estadista vote of project residents is basically conservative and

expresses a desire to extend the benefits of paternalism rather than end the sys tem. They feel that full incorporation of Puerto Rico into the United States will

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

87

owners of a new concrete house located in a modern subdivision, complete with

paved streets and street lights, shopping centers, and all public services. They feel they have become members of the newly emerging middle class that has grown so rapidly in Puerto Rico in recent years.

All of the families have invested considerable money in their homes since its purchase. Even more than in the shantytown, there has been constant attention to repair and improvement of the house. For example, Don Andres' house in the government-sponsored cooperative cost him $6347.74 (he remembers the figure

exactly) while the government provided another $6000 as subsidy. Originally the house consisted of three bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen and bath.

In eight years, he has added three bedrooms, two baths, a large terrace, and a carport; he is also thinking of adding a second floor.

Dona Ana also lives in the housing cooperative, and has concentrated more on "finishing touches" rather than enlargements. Thus, they have put in an iron rail ing fence; they added a room in the back for a dining room; they installed screens; they put tile on the floor (which was simply cement) and modernized the

bathroom; they built kitchen cabinets; and most recently they added paneling in

bring an automatic increase in standards of living to the island, especially to the

poor. For example, one Estadista sympathizer felt that if Puerto Rico became a state, welfare payments would equal those paid in New York (now they are much lower). Thus, far from supporting any movement for radical social change, Estadista supporters merely reaffirm their dependency by seeking greater aid from the United States.

Relocation in public housing, then, increases the dependence of the poor on the government and diminishes their possibilities of upward mobility. It weakens the authority of the man and strengthens the matrifocal nature of the low-income family. The tremendous increase in public housing projects in Puerto Rico dur ing the past decade10 points to the growing paternalistic control of the welfare state over the lives of the urban poor, and reduces the possibility of the develop ment of class consciousness in this dependent population.

MOVING TO AN URBANIZACION

Home ownership has tremendous symbolic value for the Puerto Rican poor. Given the marginal existence in which most of the poor are forced to live, a home of their own represents security, independence, and status. It means that the migrant's hopes for attaining a better life in the city have been realized.

Those shantytown families who have purchased a home in an urbanization (subdivision) are particularly proud of their achievements. They are now legal 10 By mid-1965, a total of 16,600 housing facilities had been provided by the governmental

housing agencies through their various types of programs (not just public housing) bene-

Homeowners in urbanizaciones take great pride in their houses and have made

Grant Application, 1967, Part III: 82).

here. (Courtesy James Weber)

hting not less than 78,000 persons within the municipality of San Juan alone (Planning

considerable improvements, such as the new terrace and porch furniture shown

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

89

... If I had been in ... (the housing cooperative) I would have been in the same condition as in Stop ... (the shantytown), there's no doubt you know! But then I came here and here I met a new and different atmosphere. With a

different personality, different people, people I didn't know, people whom I had to get to know, to try to get along with them. Certainly I suffered a lot and I am suffering because I think I have gone there (next door) two times to do some work for them for which I haven't charged anything. I never go here, I

never go there, I don't know who they are ... I don't know the names of the

neighbors here. Since no one visits me here, well I don't dare to visit anyone

there, do you see?

Clearly the adjustment to life in an urbanizacion is difficult for some. They miss the friendliness of the shantytown where everyone knew each other and had been neighbors for a long time. Don Francisco noted that in the urbanizacion, families are often forced to move because they cannot keep up the payments; among their neighbors, several houses have already been sold twice in eight years. Rafael noted that many people who live in urbanizaciones are heavily in debt because they live beyond their means:

The middle class is the class that has a regular little house which is worth

$18,000 or $20,000 and some up to $30,000 and some up to $40,000, and

they have a luxury car—this year's if possible or slightly used. But this middle class . . . lives completely "squeezed" (apretada). . . . His house is completely mortgaged. He has a car, a car which he owes or is paying for it. ... He owes, embrollado (ensnared) as we say here." In the urbanizacion there is clearly more emphasis on competition and con

The furnishings in urbanizaciones are also more elaborate. (Note the artificial Christmas tree on the left.) Television, a favorite form of family entertainment, is found in almost every home. (Courtesy James Weber)

the living room and built a large carport. Since they have no car, the carport (as

in many families) serves principally as a large outdoor recreation area where the children can play and store their toys, protected from sun and rain.

As in the shantytown, many of the improvements to the house are made by the owners themselves, with the aid of neighbors and friends. Where a man has building skills, the improvements, of course, are much less costly. Thus, Don Francisco, a mason, made numerous additions to his house, including two bed rooms, a bathroom, a laundry room, a carport, and a small terrace. He bought the house for $19,000 but sold it to his daughter, less than ten years later, for $29,000. He planned to retire and buy a home in the country with 24 acres of land planted in citrus fruit for $6500. Actually these plans were never realized because Don Francisco died in 1971. However, his family continues to live in the

house he bought and fixed up for them.

Don Francisco lived in a privately developed urbanizacion, where the houses

are somewhat more expensive than in the housing cooperative where Dona Ana

and Don Andres live. Don Francisco said he could have entered the cooperative

but chose not to because he wanted a "better" environment:

spicuous consumption, which often forces the family into debt in order to "keep

up with the Joneses." Even the improvements to the house can be regarded in this light, though they also reflect a genuine pride in home ownership. When a family moves into an urbanizacion, they not only encounter additional expenses in hous

ing, but they also are pressured to buy new furniture, new appliances, new clothing, and other items in order to imitate the middle-class life style. A car is often a necessity because these urbanizaciones are all located in suburban areas with poor public transportation. Don Francisco, for example, has a truck that he uses in his masonry business, and Lidia, his daughter, has her own car that she daily drives to work, almost 50 miles away. Ines and her husband also own two cars to get to their work.

Lidia observes that competition in the urbanizacion is certainly more pro nounced than in the shantytown where ". . . we were all equal so we treated each other as equal." Despite considerable socioeconomic differentiation in the shantytown, the emphasis was on sharing and cooperation rather than on compe tition and material accumulation. In the shantytown, the primary motivation was survival; many people were living at a subsistence level and even those who were better off shared with their less fortunate neighbors. In the urbanizacion, the

emphasis is on getting ahead, on individual mobility; families now have acquired the minimum elements necessary for basic subsistence and strive to have more

than their neighbors. Lidia notes:

. . . Everyone wants to live better than his neighbor, everyone wants to have things in his house, which show that he has a higher income than his neighbor.

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RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

... For example, there are individuals . . . that change their living room set every year for a better one, a more expensive one, to show the neighbor that

they can. There are others who change their car every year and try to make it a better and prettier car with more new gadgets ... But the debts are eating them up as we say currently.

The new emphasis on conspicuous consumption and status rivalry in the urbanization can only weaken further the development of class consciousness

among the Puerto Rican poor. For one thing, these families no longer consider

themselves poor, but part of the middle class. Their emphasis on conspicuous

consumption can be largely interpreted as an attempt to break with their humble

beginnings and to establish their middle-class status. They feel that if other families have worked and saved so much, they could do the same. Dona Ana

observes:

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

«

young families with small children. The children are dependent on the parents; the man may not yet have found a decent job and the wife is often too burdened

with child-rearing to seek employment. If plagued with problems such as unem ployment, illness, or marital breakdown, the family may sink into a cycle of poverty from which it is difficult to emerge.

This can be seen most clearly in the case of Paulita and Tito. Paulita was mar ried in I960, and ten years later had six children (now seven), the oldest of whom was nine. She had separated from her husband and had a child by another

man, with whom she left for New York. She returned to Puerto Rico because this man treated her badly and is now living alone in a housing project with her chil

dren. She likes living alone and does not want to return to Tito, because she no longer cares for him. Paulita admits he was a good husband who did not drink nor

beat her, but having so many children caused her nervous distress and she ran

One has to try to improve. If we hadn't tried to improve, we never would have improved, ever. We would have always gone backwards, because we aren't rich,

and we have no income other than what my husband earns. One has to try to

improve, to do his part. If you have a vice and leave it and save for something else that you need, right? Well, that is what we have done and saved. What's

more, there are times that we don't go to the movies so as not to spend.

The acquisition of property and other material possessions has given these families a stake in the system and has reinforced their belief in economic individualism and the possibilities of upward mobility in a capitalist society. Although their grip on middle-class status is clearly very shaky, these families feel they have benefited from the existing system and they are strong supporters

of the status quo.

away.

Although Tito continues to support his children and they pay no rent in public housing, there is little hope that Paulita and her children will ever have much opportunity in life. Paulita is the only one of my informants to admit that her

life now is worse than it was ten years ago. She regrets having run off to New York with another man, and yet she has had still another child by a married man

after returning to Puerto Rico. She thinks her only hope for improvement lies in winning the lottery or in remarrying a man of means—and with seven children,

that is highly unlikely. Thus, luck and fate still provide an outlet—however unrealistic—for the poor when conventional channels of social

mobility

are

blocked.

Even Paulita, however, would like her children to study so that they will not be trapped as she is and will have something to fall back on, if their marriages do not work out. They do appear to be quite bright, especially the oldest, Silvia, who received a lot of attention from her grandmother when she was still alive. But

THE YOUNGER GENERATION

Silvia is often left with the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings; she

Whether they are living in public housing or in an urbanization, most of the older generation of shantytown families feel that they have made a distinct

young in Puerto Rico. It is doubtful whether she will have the strength to over

housing and steady jobs; salaries and welfare benefits have increased (though so have prices); and now that their children are grown, they no longer need

quite well. Flor is the oldest of Raquel and Lucho's nine children and is the only

improvement in their lives. Compared to ten years ago, most have found better

worry about so many mouths to feed. In fact, where the children are working

and continue to live at home (which is customary in most Puerto Rican house holds until the children marry), they may contribute significantly to the family

income. Don Francisco noted, for example, that since his children were working,

he could afford to be more selective in his work, and take only construction jobs that pay well. In 1969, Don Francisco planned to retire shortly to a farm in the

country, but his premature death prevented the realization of this dream-

But what of the younger generation? What problems are they facing, compared to the problems their parents faced a generation ago? How do they view these

problems and attempt to cope with them?

In Puerto Rico, as elsewhere, the problems of poverty are most critical for

also suffers from fatiga or asthma, a common ailment, especially among the

come the difficulties inherent in her family situation. On the other hand, Flor, who came from a very unstable background, has done

one of their children who has finished high school. Most of her sisters ran off with men in their early teens in order to escape their tyrannical father who drank continually and severely abused his family. Flor blames her father for her

sisters' failure to achieve a better life and notes: If he had not been like that, we would all still be there. . . . They were not going to stand for such a thing, and not only drinking but beating and all those problems. And he didn't care about anything and thought that one came to the world to live like an animal thrown around like that. ... I was the champion, because you know what it is to withstand twelve years of studying with so many problems, with that man being beaten up on the street in the middle of the

night, running around and drinkingyrum. Well, I don't know how I didn't leave

school, because I adored school. I d^n't know how I fought so hard to finish high school.

!

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

Flor, too, is married to an older man who already has grown children, and they have two children of their own. But unlike her sisters, some of whom have now separated from their husbands, Flor's marriage seems to be stable and

productive. Her husband works in construction and is building them a concrete house in the country on a plot of land given to her by her mother. They add to the house little by little, as finances allow, because they have been unable to get a mortgage loan for building, which makes Flor very bitter. She thinks the gov ernment should give more help in the way of loans, scholarships, and such to

people who are interested in improving themselves.

Despite the constant shortage of money, Flor manages because she has a good husband who works and spends his money judiciously. He is good to her and does

not hit her; nor would he dare, because, as Flor notes, women today have more rights than they did previously. She thinks it is as important for women to study as it is for men, because ". . . women can do everything as well as men." She her self plans to continue studying after her children are grown, and would like to learn secretarial work or computer programming. Flor feels that Puerto Rico today offers limitless opportunities to those who are willing to study and work hard:

Today anyone, no matter what age or class, can study all that he wants to. If he doesn't study it's because he doesn't want to, he's lazy. ... He can progress, because there are so many kinds of work. . . . Every day they invent more

occupations, more careers, more training. . . .

Flor is also determined not to have any more children; however, her mother, now in her forties, has borne two more children recently. Flor believes that too

many children are an obstacle to progress, both for the individual family and for

the country, and thinks that the Puerto Rican government should undertake a

more intensive birth control campaign. In contrast to her mother—who had a total of eleven children, all of whom were born in poverty—Flor wants to plan

for the future of her children and offer them a better life than she has had. Since both came from extremely poor backgrounds, why should Flor and Paul ita have such different attitudes and potentialities for upward mobility? Educa tional level undoubtedly plays an important role. Paulita never went beyond third grade because she is slightly mentally retarded (another common problem in these poor families) and had difficulty learning to read and write. Paulita is also the product of a broken home, and her mother, a chronic alcoholic, lived with a series of men and never paid much attention to her children. On the other

hand, Flor's father Lucho was also a chronic alcoholic and beat his wife and children, but her mother always stood by them and is very proud of her daughter's achievements. Parental support, even if only by one member, would appear to be another important determinant of a child's level of aspiration. It is fairly easy to predict, for example, that Flor's children will have more opportunities in life than Paulita's children have.

Most women continue to marry in their early twenties, but those who are particularly ambitious may postpone marriage in order to fulfill their career aspira tions first. Thus, Don Francisco's daughter Lidia, now twenty-seven, works during the day as a court stenographer and studies at night at the University of Puerto

f

Rico for a bachelor's degree in education. She hopes someday to teach Spanish,

possibly in the United States, although she now earns more at her present job than she would teaching—at least in Puerto Rico. She learned her trade through a stenotype course taught by the government, and was paid $125 a month during her year and a half of training. She feels there are now many such opportunities for youth in Puerto Rico, but people do not take sufficient advantage of them: The young person who doesn't study in Puerto Rico it's because he doesn't want to. ... Because presently the government offers scholarships, offers help to young people who demonstrate outstanding abilities in their studies which per mits them to develop the field which they desire. . . . And in whatever field, in the occupational field, in the manual field . . . well the government has schools for this subject.. ..

Lidia feels that a person's achievements depend largely on his own ability and preparation, but that family support is vital. She thinks that girls who marry

young lose a chance to make something of themselves and she plans to travel and

finish her studies before she marries. She sees marriage as the end of the inde pendent and interesting life she now enjoys:

At the moment I consider marriage as the end of the independence I now enjoy. I now have certain freedom in my house that if I married, it doesn't seem to me that it would be possible. In my house my father has much confidence in me. I have the opportunity to go out where I wish. Of course, I know the

places where I should go and with whom I should go.-1 can go out and most of

the time I go out with my sisters and the young people from church. . . . But my father does not prohibit me to go where I want to go. ... If I want to

spend a weekend in a town on the island, well, I can go all weekend. And my father doesn't say anything. If I were married I couldn't do it. Certainly Lidia is not subject to the tight controls most Puerto Rican women

have experienced at home, especially in the lower class. Many women marry

young simply to escape this tyranny, only to find a worse situation with their hus

bands. Although Lidia contributes a certain amount to the household income, she

can do what she wants with the money that is left over. She has already made two trips to the United States, one to New York and one to California, where she

visited Los Angeles, Disneyland, Yosemite Park, and other attractions. She liked California so much that she hopes to return there to work when she finishes her studies.

Most of our younger informants are women, and we have dwelt here largely on the changes in women's roles and attitudes evident in the younger generation. Men's attitudes appear to have changed less, and undoubtedly many Puerto Rican

men are threatened by the new independence and freedom of women. However,

if they share in their wives' aspirations for upward mobility, as most men do, they have little choice.

For example, Ines' husband may not like his wife to work, but they cannot afford a new house and car without her additional salary. Together Ines and her husband make abouk $200 a week. He works in a furniture factory and earns about $118 a week with overtime. Ines has worked for four years in the same brassiere factory and, on a piece-work basis, earns about $85-$90 a week. They

94

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

95

bought their house, in a private urbanization in 1969 for $18,000 and are paying $111 a month on a 25 year mortgage. Since they moved, they have bought two new cars, so that each will have a way to get to work, and have also invested

heavily in home furnishings. The children's room is gaily decorated with cafe cur tains and modern white furniture, and the two girls have all the latest toys, including a Barbie doll and doll house. In contrast, it will be recalled that children in the shantytown seldom had any toys to play with. Ines received a six-week maternity leave with each of her two children, both of whom were born in the public hospital free of charge (in contrast to the private clinics used by most middle-class families). Ines pays her aunt, Dona Ana, a nominal sum for taking care of them during the week while Ines works. Even

with their combined incomes, however, nothing is left over. They cannot afford to go out much, and spend most of their leisure time at Dona Ana's house or at home with the children. Thus, even when both husband and wife are working, life is not easy for the

newly married couple with middle-class aspirations. They must work hard and put all their money into the house, car, and other items that are a part of the middle-class way of life. Women like Ines seldom think of work in terms of a career. Ines left school in the tenth grade and had secretarial training, but she

prefers factory work because it pays more. For her, work is solely a source of income and she does not think in terms of job satisfaction or career advancement. Though occupational opportunities for women in Puerto Rico have increased sharply, few lower-class women derive any real satisfaction from their work. They hope to finish high school and then learn a trade like beautician or secretary, two favorite occupations among young women because they are "clean" work (that is,

not manual labor). Julia's daughter, Marta, has finished high school and would like to be a beautician, but her parents cannot afford to send her to private school and she has not been able to find a public training program for which she is qualified.11 Julia would like to help her daughter, but notes:

"Quien no

tiene padrino, no se bautiza" (He who has no godfather is never baptized) — an old Puerto Rican saying that means one must have connections to achieve

anything. Thus it would seem that, despite the importance placed on education for the young, universalistic criteria have not totally replaced particularistic ties. With the increasing supply of high school graduates, the job market is obviously tightening up and connections are very important.

The qualifications for jobs open to the low-income group are also rising, which presents a particular dilemma to the young who have not kept up with rising educational levels. Don Andres' son is such a case. His father wanted him to become an electrical engineer and was prepared to send him to college. But Sixto dropped out of school at fourteen and went to New York with a girl the

same age. They had two children and later separated. Sixto now has married another Puerto Rican girl whom he met in New York, and they have returned to Puerto Rico with their six-month-old baby. They are living with Sixto's parents

Children in urbanizaciones have many oj the latest toys, such as the Barbie doll

shown here. (Courtesy James Weber)

11 Several such vocational training programs now are offered in Puerto Rico through the

Office of Economic Opportunity or Johnson Plan, as it is known locally.

96

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

temporarily, until they are able to set up their own home. His father finally

CHANGING POLITICAL ATTITUDES

The demand for a solution to the problem of inequality in Puerto Rico ulti

found Sixto a job as a watchman at the docks, where the father has worked for

mately depends upon a growing political awareness among the poor of the eco

"big bosses" better. Without a high school diploma, it will be difficult. He cannot

voiced by our informants a decade after our original study show little sign of

even seem to get a union card.

increased political awareness or class consciousness. On the contrary, the Puerto

Sixto would like to stay in Puerto Rico and buy a house with new furniture a car, and even talks of buying a yacht! He also hopes to study at night and at least earn his high school equivalency diploma. He was enrolled in a Job Corps camp in New Mexico where he was to learn to be a medical assistant. However there were racial problems between the black and white students at the camp, and Sixto

Rican poor are quite content with their modest gains and identify strongly with

it is doubtful he will ever be able to see through any long-range plan. Though Sixto does not talk of returning to the mainland, it is highly likely he will do so if he does not find a decent job in Puerto Rico, since he has already made several trips back and forth. In general, the need to migrate is strongest in those families who have not established a firm base on the island. Thus, Ines and her husband do not think of going to New York, though her husband spent many years there, nor do Flor and her husband. On the other hand, Paulita sees migration as one solution to her problem, particularly if she can leave some of

of these facilities, since the majority do not own cars, or live in luxury apart

over twenty years; but Sixto hopes to get a better job when he gets to know the

dropped out after only two months. Considering his present family responsibilities,

nomic exploitation by higher status groups

in the society. Yet

the attitudes

the progress that the island has achieved in the postwar era. The

1960s was

a

decade of rapid

growth,

particularly

in

the

San

Juan

metropolitan area. The poor point with pride to the new expressways, shoppingcenters, luxury apartment houses, and office buildings, ". . . as big as those in

New York," that have sprung up all over the metropolis. The poor seldom use any ments, or even shop in modern supermarkets. (Most continue to shop in small

stores or the traditional native public markets.) Although the poor have benefited little from these signs of modernity, they are viewed as clear evidence of Puerto Rico's growing prosperity.

Many of the poor identify the progress that Puerto Rico has made in the post war era with the Popular party. They credit the Populares with the increase in public services such as water and electricity and public transportation. Schools

the children with her former husband.

and hospitals became available for all, and now have been amplified by newer

Though the mainland continues to represent an outlet for the young who are dissatisfied with life on the island, the resentment and frustration experienced by this generation is likely to be much sharper than that of their parents. Most of the older generation were rural migrants, whose primary motivation for moving to the city was to improve their own life chances and those of their children. Even if the older generation were disappointed in their own achievements, they could justify their limitations by arguing that they had not met the requirements of the

programs such as Medicare and the Office of Economic Opportunity manpower

system; that is, they had too little education, too few skills, and suffered other personal inadequacies. However, they worked hard to give their children these opportunities, so that they might meet the requirements of the system. Some chil

dren have succeeded, but many with high school diplomas are finding it more difficult to get a job than their parents did with far less education. Of course, with

more education, they are not willing to take the menial jobs their parents were forced into.

The failure of the occupational system to keep pace with educational expansion

is a source of growing discontent among the Puerto Rican poor, particularly in

the younger generation. If, after meeting the requirements of the system, the

young are still denied an opportunity, or if the system keeps raising requirements

in order to continue excluding the poor from their just share of material pros perity, then conditions may become ripe for a growing political and class con sciousness among the poor that demands an end to this continued inequality in Puerto Rican society.

training programs. Public housing for the poor has increased tremendously, while welfare payments have risen and the federal Social Security system has been extended to the island. The industrialization program and the booming tourist

industry also created new sources of employment. Don Andres, an active worker in the Popular party, notes:

I feel very happy, very satisfied, and very grateful for the glorious Popular Democratic party and for the honorable Don Luis Mufioz Marin and for that great lady Dona Felisa Rincon de Gautier, and for the other companions who

fought in the Popular Democratic party, who struggled hard for the progress of our island and had great success. Because at present, no one of the island of Puerto Rico can be blind and no one can deny that gigantic progress which our

Puerto Rican people had in such a short time. I would say that over a period of

twenty to twenty-eight years we achieved a progress comparable to any country in the world.

Why, then, did support for the Popular party fall in the 1968 election? Why did many of the poor, especially in the urban areas, abandon the candidate of the Populares and vote for Ferre, the candidate of the New Progressive party, which had split off from the old Statehood Republican party? (See Ramirez, 1971; M. Quintero, 1970.)

Several of our informants, including Don Andres himself, blamed the defeat of the Populares on the split within the party itself. Sanchez Vilella, Governor of Puerto Rico under the Populares from 1964-1968, broke with the party in 1968

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

and formed his own political party in support of his candidacy in the guber natorial elecaons. The result was a split in the Popular vote, which contributed to i-erre s success.

The internal dissension within the Popular party, however, reflected a differ

ence in philosophies as well as personal rivalries. Munoz had refused to support

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

especially among the youth) and the parcelero program, whereby poor families

resettled by the government in planned rural communities have been given title

to their land for the first time. Though the program has been in operation since the early 1940s, under the Populares, the government retained title to the land

Sanchez Vilella for another term as governor partly because Sanchez Vilella had refused to carry out his orders and wanted to steer the party in new directions According to Rafael, the labor union organizer, Sanchez Vilella had much more

to prevent speculation and resale, which would have defeated the original pur

who never did anything for the workers. On the contrary, on several occasions he opposed legislation which would have benefited the workers, like the Christmas

tremendously in value because of its strategic location. Nevertheless, the program

support among labor leaders than Negron Lopez, the 1968 Popular candidate

bonus and I don't know what else." Rafael notes that although Mufioz had

stepped down as governor, he wanted to continue to control the party and through it, the government. Though he was revered as the leader who had brought

Pl°Me-S Z r RiC°' many °f the P°°r Were tired of the a™a«c policies or Munoz Mann after twenty-four years in public office Like many Puerto Ricans, the poor felt that the Popular party had been in

pose of the program and resulted in the creation of a new landless class. It would seem that the sale of land to the parceleros could benefit real estate speculators who now have easier access to this land, which often has increased has been tremendously popular among the poor, who place great emphasis on the security and status provided by property ownership.

The criticisms of the Ferre government by the poor tend to be voiced in terms of specific "bread and butter" issues such as the increase in bus and taxi fares, the shortage of doctors and medicine in the public health centers, and spiraling inflation. Complaining of the lack of medicine in the public health centers and other services to aid the poor, Flor says:

power too long and it was time for a change. Rafael complains, for example that

No one helps anyone. . . . The welfare authorities always say they help, but they don't help. ... I don't say it for myself alone, but there are a lot of people

public.

here who have many children, who are in need and don't receive any help. One goes there and they don't pay any attention to you because they say that if one has a husband and he works, well.. . .

the government bureaucracy had become unresponsive and did not attend to the One went to a person in one of those agencies and many of them

thought they were generals."

Even Don Francisco, a strong supporter of the Populares, feels that the only

^M I uP, u1 ^^ C0UW fegain P°Wer is f0r Mufioz t0 run a^n, and this

would be bad because he would bring with him the same clique he had before: '

h CliqUC ^"^ hC had' he is g°inS t0 mak* ^e same WaMed tO make himself absolute- On wanting to make are going to have the same condidons' ■* - »«* <*-

bee^d f'"I500at 7CS th,Et "has^everPOlitkal hiStOfypower °f Pue"° no does Pa«y not th« feel has been defeated the polls regained later, Ric°' and he

that the Populares will be an exception to this rule

Despite dissatisfaction with the autocratic and unresponsive policies of the Populares, the poor who supported Ferre in the 1968 election did not want any radical change in public policy. Most supporters of Ferre and the New Progres sive party fdt that he could offer more than Mufioz and the Populares What

they wanted was more of the same: more public services, higher welfare pay

ments, more factory jobs and higher wages, in short, more "progress." When asked why she voted for Ferre in 1968, Dona Ana answered:

Wen because we have to look for improvement for our country, so that our

country progresses more every day. And since the StatehooderT (EstJistT)

Wages apparently have not kept up with the constant increase in prices, particularly in the last few years, and many of the poor are feeling the pinch,

particularly those on fixed incomes such as Social Security or welfare. One of the most popular measures of the Ferre government was the institution of a Christmas bonus to all government employees as well as steady employees of private enter

prise, provided these companies showed a profit during the year. Agricultural

laborers and employees who had worked less than 700 hours a year or had worked for various employers were not eligible for the bonus, thereby eliminating many of the unskilled labor force who have no steady employment (L. Silva Recio,

1971: 139). It would seem that Ferre's policy is consciously aimed at the creation of a privileged working class composed of public employees and the stable employees of private enterprise, which he can count on for support in future elections. Under Ferre, the government bureaucracy has

expanded

considerably, raising

the number of public employees to 121,000 and making the government the third most important employer in the economy. Salary increases have been granted to all government employees and they have benefited from Christmas bonuses, new health plans, and other fringe benefits. Ferre seems to be applying within the government the same paternalistic policies that worked so successfully for

are complying with what they promised, although they have given me no

him as a private industrialist.

statenooders have been in power.

continued progress .through private investment and economic growth. There is

th?nCe rTV ^ hUSlTd ,dOeSn>t W°rk' aS the Pe°Ple «7. ! don't havTany tatehood hC CTtryhaS already P~«re«ed much in the short time that the Among the achievements of the Ferre government, Dona Ana notes the cam

paign to combat drug addiction (a serious and increasing problem on the island,

The ideology of this new industrialist class, whom Ferre represents, emphasizes

is seen as a threat to their profits and high standard of living. The poor are well

aware of Ferre's status as a millionaire, "the owner of the largest corporations

100

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

there are here in Puerto Rico" as well as his investments in Miami California and elsewhere. But some feel this makes him less corruptible because Ferre does not have to use his political office for economic gain—at least directly. The election of Ferre basically represents a continuation of the economic poli

cies of the Populares with increased government support for private investment and economic growth. Thus, the lagging construction industry was stimulated by a large-scale public works program emphasizing the building of highways, schools and industrial buildings, from which Ferres own monopolistic cement industry stood to make considerable profit. Perhaps the most glaring example of public subsidies for private enterprise was the purchase of the bankrupt Central Aguirre sugar mill by the government for 3.5 million dollars, which was justified on the grounds that the government was thereby preventing the employees of the mill from losing their jobs. At the same time, however, the government cut the

budget of the unemployment program designed to provide training to the unskilled labor force from $15 million in 1968-1969 to $5 million in 1970-1971 (L Silva

Recio, 1971: 137-138).

Ferres election also represents support for greater political incorporation of Puerto Rico into the United States, since Ferre remains ideologically committed to statehood status while avoiding the issue immediately for tactical political reasons. Many of the poor feel that Puerto Rico can only benefit from increased association with the United States, since they identify the mainland as the source of all progress. The poor recognize that many government programs such as public

housing, public welfare and Social Security, and public health depend heavily on federal support, and would like these programs to be increased rather than reduced. They would also like to see more American investment in Puerto Rico,

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

101

Communism. Rafael, who notes that most of the Cuban exiles were wealthy capitalists "who had the people of Cuba exploited," nevertheless is skeptical of Castro and his policies. He feels the poor are as oppressed under one system as the

other, although in theory Communism should benefit the working class: I can't say if it has gone well for the poor there (in Cuba) or not. ... If the Communist governments carried out their program as it really should be, then it would be a great thing, a good thing. Now the way many governments carry it out, well clearly it is a failure, especially for the working class. Others are far more vehement in their rejection of Communism. Tito, himself a worker and a union member affirms: Communism is a manner invented to oppress the poor. To live from the poor

like the unions, that the poor man cannot express himself, nor can he do any thing, except live under the boot, under the yoke of the government. That is Communism.

Tito claims Communism takes advantage of the poor and the hungry to instigate revolts, such as the Black Power movement in the United States. He accuses

Stokely Carmichael, who has spoken publicly in Puerto Rico, of being a Commu nist, and feels that blacks may have reason to revolt in the United States because of discrimination and exploitation, but not in Puerto Rico. Workers like Tito feel that the only way the poor can solve their problems is through individual effort and hard work. They have no faith in radical political

ideologies that profess to benefit the worker through a redistribution of resources in the society. In fact, many of the poor who have acquired some material posses

sions such as a house, a car, or a small business, fear that Communism will take

particularly in industrialization, and more American tourists come to spend their

away the small gains they have struggled so hard to achieve. Don Francisco, a

can investment in and aid to the island, though they realize this increases Puerto

Cuba has regressed instead of improved. He comments:

money on the island. In short, like their leaders, the poor favor greater Ameri

Rico's dependency on the United States.

The poor are afraid that if Puerto Rico becomes independent, it will experience bloodshed and revolution such as have occurred in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. They are well aware of the recent disturbances in these sister Spanishspeaking islands in the Caribbean, with which they seem to identify more closely than with any of the Latin American republics or other Caribbean islands, and

do not want the same to happen in Puerto Rico.

Many of the Cuban exiles have fled to Puerto Rico, where they have become

an important commercial class in restaurants, retail trade, and other businesses.

The Cubans are often disliked by the Puerto Rican poor, who find them arrogant and difficult to deal with both as employers and shopkeepers. Cubans are forced to deal more directly with the Puerto Rican poor than most Americans, who

generally occupy only top managerial positions, and thus Cuban oppression is more direct and noticeable. Rafael complains that Cuban workers often have been

used as strike breakers, and that while they should be given an opportunity to work, it is wrong for them to displace Puerto Rican workers from their jobs. The example of the exiles from Cuba and even from the Dominican Republic has frightened many Puerto Ricans regarding the consequences of revolution and

self-employed mason who lives in an urbanization, feels that under Communism,

The Communist calls Yankee imperialism where everyone has rights, that is, a democracy . . . where everyone has his things in his house. . . . But Communism is much more because under Communism all the money stays in one pocket. And that pocket does what it pleases and buys what it pleases, and not as he wishes.

In addition, Don Francisco feels that Communism comes

from hunger and

misery, and Puerto Rico is too "civilized" to fall for Communism. Like many who have made some gains under the present capitalist system, Don Francisco feels he

has a strong stake in that system and he is not about to tear it down. There is some discontent among the poor over inflation, the tightening job market, continued unemployment, and the Vietnam war and the draft. Our informants do not understand why Puerto Ricans have been asked to fight in a war (in which many Puerto Ricans died) and in which even the interests of the United States are so vaguely defined. Recently there have been rather massive

protest marches organized by supporters of independence in which the poor have participated in significant numbers for the first time. Considerable opposition has also been aroused over the Model Cities Program, which threatens to demolish most of the remaining shantytowns among the Martin Pefia Channel to make

102

RELOCATION AND A DECADE OF CHANGE

room for more expressways, high-rise office buildings, and apartment houses. For the first time, residents from various shantytowns have joined in a cooperative effort under the Residents Council of Model Cities to press for their demands, but

thus far their efforts have not been too successful. Large-scale, organized inva sions aimed at obtaining land for squatter settlements have also occurred in Puerto Rico for the first time and have been met with police brutality and repression. The present political system offers no hope for radical change in the continued system of inequality in Puerto Rican society. The change of government in 1968 merely intensified the power of the elite, and brought into power a new industrial ist class that is even less committed to the needs of the poor than the Populares who preceded them. Until the power of the elite is challenged from below, the poor will continue to be exploited and oppressed members of Puerto Rican society.

Inequality, and Proletarian Consciousness in Puerto Rico

Despite the fantastic economic growth of the postwar period, it seems clear that not all segments of society have shared equally in Puerto Rico's progress. The benefits of modernization have trickled down to the poor in terms

of better health, better education, and better housing, but it has not noticeably altered their subordinate position in the larger society. In fact, it would appear

that while the income of all classes has increased, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider.

Still there has been no large-scale protest movement by the Puerto Rican poor directed

against

this

continued

inequality.12

Rather

than

emphasizing

class

solidarity or radical ideologies aimed at the overthrow of the existing order, the poor seem intent on promoting their own individual mobility within that order. They are remarkably optimistic and profess a strong belief in the possibility of upward mobility based on individual initiative, thrift, education, and other values commonly associated with the Protestant ethic.

Why? What explains the poor's commitment to the status quo? What factors inhibit the growth of class consciousness and class solidarity among the Puerto Rican poor? We have touched on several factors throughout this monograph. Let us attempt to summarize them here.

PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF MOBILITY

The Puerto Rican poor tend to view mobility in terms of their own life history

rather than in terms of their socioeconomic position in the larger society. Most of these families started out as poorly paid rural agricultural laborers, and migrated

to the city in search of better work opportunities or, as the Puerto Ricans say, 12 Protest by the poor has increased markedly since 1970, with militant labor strikes and increasing numbers of illegal land invasions. Support for these actions has been given by the P.I.P. (the Puerto Rican Independence party) and the newly formed P.S.P. (the Puerto Rican Socialist party), both of which have adopted a socialist platform and have moved away from an exclusive focus on political status.

I

103

104

CONCLUSION

buscando ambiente. They now work on the docks, in construction, or in one of the

numerous service jobs available in the San Juan metropolitan area. Though these

jobs are still poorly paid and offer limited possibilities of advancernemTmlgTalns feel they have improved their own life chances and those of their children by moving to the city. The choice of jobs is wider than in the rural areas where they

faced "an inescapable future in the cane fields" (Mintz, 1956: 352); there are more educational opportunities (evidenced by the dramatic rise in educational levels between the adult and adolescent generation); and the city offers a greater variety of public services such as hospitals, schools, and even water and elec tricity. Many rural families have actually experienced a decline in living standards during the past decade. As one of my informants stated: "Amanecen sin el cafe de la man-ana" (They get up without coffee in the morning). Thus, migrants have improved their own standard of living, even if they have not raised their socioeco-

nomic status in the larger society.

ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF PUERTO RICAN SOCIETY

The economic structure of Puerto Rican society is open enough, at least at

present, to absorb those who are upwardly mobile. The Puerto Rican poor do not

feel oppressed because, in their opinion, the present"society offers sufficient

opportunities for advancement for those who work hard to get ahead. They save their money, try to send their children at least through high school, and, if

possible buy a home in one of the new urbanizations or subdivisions that have

surrounded the periphery of the metropolitan area. They aspire to become mem

bers of the new middle class in Puerto Rico, which has grown rapidly in recent

years (see Wells, 1969: 182-184).

CONCLUSION

105

However, with increases in automation and other labor-saving technologies, it is

not likely that this skilled work force will increase rapidly in the near future. On the contrary, we are likely to see an increase in the unskilled labor force who cannot find work even in the low-paid services sector and therefore become

increasingly dependent on public forms of assistance such as public welfare. Thus, government is asked to place on public dole those human resources that private

enterprise can no longer utilize profitably. Once again, however, the blame for the "relief explosion" is placed on the poor, who are thought to be demanding too much from a system that has rendered them useless (see Piven and Cloward, 1971).

PERSONALISTIC VIEW OF POVERTY

Due to rapid economic growth and evidence of upward mobility for the

privileged few, the Puerto Rican poor tend to blame poverty on personal inade

quacy rather than on the socioeconomic structure of Puerto Rican society. This has long been a cherished belief among conservative higher-status groups in the society, who condone poverty by blaming it on the poor themselves. But it would seem that the poor also subscribe to this belief. Thus, they feel that if a person is poor, it is his own fault; he is lazy, ignorant, and spends all his money on vices like drinking and gambling. This effectively removes the responsibility for poverty from the shoulders of society and helps to deflect the growth of class consciousness based on a sense of common oppression.

There is little recognition among the poor of conditions in the larger society that perpetuate the system of inequality in Puerto Rico, such as colonialism, a monopolistic agriculture and industrialization, and continued economic and politi cal dominance by the elite. The poor are aware of the differences between them

tries. The gap between families with the lowest and highest incomes may be growing, but the number of families in the middle-income range has also increased

selves and the elite; but they do not believe these differences will ever be eliminated. Inequality is considered part of the natural order of things, because the very success of the elite proves that they are endowed with a natural superiority and are therefore entitled to greater prestige and wealth. In this per spective, the only escape from poverty lies not in collective action but in individual initiative and personal gain. The poor feel they must model themselves after

(Andic, 1964: 88-89).

members of the elite in order to be accepted in their ranks.

Class lines are not so rigid in Puerto Rico that they constitute absolute empediments to social mobility, as in some Latin American and other developing coun

(Andic, 1964: 112). This increase appears to be due largely to the growth of urban white collar employment and the decline of poorly paid agricultural labor Within this urban labor force, there appears to be emerging a privileged working class composed largely of lower-level government bureaucrats and the skilled and steady employees of private enterprise. This privileged working class is becoming increasingly differentiated from the unskilled, unemployed, and under employed workers who still form the bulk of the urban labor force and the bulk of shantytown residents. This privileged working class has been the primary beneficiary among the urban labor force of the rapid economic growth in Puerto Rico and has thereby acquired a stake in the system which makes them strong

The families studied here no longer subscribe to the fatalistic attitudes of a static, agrarian society, in which peasants jealously guarded their few possessions

and felt that no one could improve his own position except at the expense of others. This "image of limited good," as Foster (1965) has termed it, coincides with an economy of scarcity in which there are no new opportunities or possibili ties for upward mobility. However, it would seem that as societies develop and the economy expands, this fatalistic ethos is replaced by a new value system

emphasizing competition and conspicuous consumption. Property and material

supporters of the status quo. They serve as a convenient buffer between capital

acquisitions, especially home ownership, take on added value as important status

the other. Far from resenting their comparative prosperity, the unskilled tend to

property have a real stake in the society, and these families have now acquired

and management on the one hand, and the unskilled and unstable labor force on

look up and aspire to their privileged status.

items in the new consumer society. In a capitalist society, only those with

that stake.

106

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION

Similarly, they tend to identify the palpable effects of economic development with the efficiency of the majority party of the government, or with the political

MIGRATION TO THE MAINLAND

protection or economic help of the United States. [Author's translation]

Another important factor underlying the lack of strong class consciousness among the Puerto Rican poor is migration to the mainland, especially New York.

Migration has long provided an outlet for the Puerto Rican poor who could not succeed on the island; it seems most widespread among younger age groups who are attracted by higher salaries and wider choice of jobs, especially in factories. Because of cheap air fares, they often visit the mainland for short periods of six months to a year and then return to Puerto Rico when they lose their jobs or for other personal reasons. Many Puerto Ricans have, in fact, returned permanently

to the island after years of residence on the mainland, as the

107

1970 census

demonstrates. Return migration is particularly heavy in times of recession when jobs on the mainland are hard to find {The New York Times, September 7, 1971). Although migration to the mainland is perhaps not the panacea it once was

for the Puerto Rican poor, it still helps to siphon off discontented Puerto Ricans who have been unable to find a decent job on the island. Resentment appears to

be growing among the young, who often have difficulty finding jobs even with a high school education. Yet excess labor can always be drained off to the main

land, and resentment and frustration never build up to the point where the poor begin to seriously question the inequalities of Puerto Rican society.

The process of modernization in Puerto Rico has reinforced the sense of dependency on the United States. The poor identify strongly with the progress that Puerto Rico has attained in the postwar era, and feel that all of this is dependent on continued United States aid and investment. They fear that independence might result in bloody violence as has occurred in the Dominican Republic or

Cuba and reject Communism and other radical political ideologies as a method designed to deceive the poor and to take away the few small gains they have made.

The changeover from an agricultural to an industrial economy has made Puerto

Rico even more dependent on the United States. The industrialization program

relies almost exclusively on imported raw materials, sold mainly on the continental , market and financed largely by American business investors. Industrialization has resulted in the creation of a new industrial elite, even more heavily dependent on the United States than was the landowning classes who preceded them. Gordon Lewis (1968: 143) a cogent and longtime observer of Puerto Rican political developments, sums up the results of Operation Bootstrap thus:

The Puerto Rican Populates, truly, have worked with magnificent energy and

devotion towards lifting their people up by their own bootstraps. But they have

not been so much planners, in any traditional collectivist sense, as imaginative

promoters seizing vigorously what they can obtain from a game whose rules

they have had no share in shaping. Their economy, resultantly, has become COLONIALISM, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEPENDENCY

Colonialism has also inhibited the growth of class consciousness among the Puerto Rican poor. As many Puerto Rican writers have noted (for example, Rene

Marques, 1962; E. Seda Bonilla, 1969; Milton Pabon, 1967), over 300 years of despotic Spanish rule succeeded by American domination have created a tradi tion of dependency and docility at the personal as well as at the national level. Following the ideology of the Popular party and other elite leaders, the poor feel that Puerto Rico is too small and lacking in resources to go it alone, and that con tinued expansion of the economy and their own welfare is predicated upon con tinued political and economic dependence upon the United States. In the words of Milton Pabon (1967: 182), a Puerto Rican political scientist and strong advo cate of independence:

. . . The Puerto Ricans, in their great majority, have not yet experienced a clear subjective sense of exploitation, discrimination, privation or exclusion, which would lead them logically to complete their political system on a national level, through a massive movement in the style characteristic of the new nations. This hypothesis rests on the premise that the Puerto Ricans, in the great majority, do not conceive of the political imperialism of the United States as exploitative and discriminatory in reference to their participation in economic opportunities, educational opportunities, social mobility, and the enjoyment of political rights. On the contrary, the great majority of Puerto Ricans tend to identify the limited electoral participation which they enjoy within an incomplete political system with the existence of full democracy.

more and more tied to American capitalist enterprise. As much as in the pre-

1940 period, it is subject to widespread absentee ownership in its means of production. Indeed, the old type of sugar absenteeism has merely been suc ceeded by a new type of industrial absenteeism. The absentee landlord of the old days has been replaced by the absentee shareholder of the new. And the rationalizations of the absenteeism have not altered much for the arguments

that were once paraded to defend the sugar interests of the United Sta es are now advanced to justify the American industry interests. The end result may not have been consciously desired by the architects of the new Puerto Rico. It is nonetheless real for all that.

This type of industrialization does not diminish dependency, in Puerto Rico or elsewhere. On the contrary, it has made nations all over the world dependent on the international capitalist economy. As the multinational corporations of highly developed capitalist societies seek new sources of cheap labor and outlets for their products in the underdeveloped world, development is often based on the needs of these multinational corporations rather than on the needs of the people in the developing countries. Because the multinational corporations supply capital, technology, markets, and other necessary components of industrialization

the control of these developing countries over their own economy diminishes and

they are forced to set priorities favorable to the corporations rather than to their own people (see Sunkel, 1973). For example, because of the decline in agriculture following upon industrialization, Puerto Rico today is even more dependent on highly priced imported foodstuffs from the United States than in the pre-1940 period As Gordon Lewis (1968: 164) notes: "In effect, this means that the

108

CONCLUSION

Puerto Rican worker, especially the urban worker, is expected to pay mainland

commodity prices with submainland wages."

The Puerto Rican poor are thus trapped in the emerging alliance of big business and big government. Under Ferre, this alliance has intensified, since the New Progressive party which Ferre heads need no longer compromise with the Popu lares prolabor commitments. With the New Progressive party, Puerto Rico has entered a new phase of efficient and streamlined government and business which subordinates the needs of the poor to the primary goal of greater productivity and profits.

CONCLUSION

109

I has seriously crippled the effectiveness of strikes as a weapon of the working class.

The Populares found it difficult to reconcile their defense of the interests of the poor with their courtship with American capitalism. As they became increas-

I

ingly reliant on United States business interests, they were

forced

into ever

deeper compromises, in order to maintain a high rate of U.S. investment and economic growth. Labor was asked to cooperate with the government's develop

ment program, on the grounds that the rapid growth of the economy would stimulate the creation of new jobs, higher salaries, and better opportunities for all.

VEHICLES FOR CREATING CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

However, we should have learned by now that economic development alone will

I not eradicate poverty and social inequality. The persistence of poverty in the most

Even if conditions were ripe for a radicalization of the urban poor in Puerto Rico, at present the poor lack institutional vehicles for developing a sense of class consciousness and solidarity in their own ranks. As we have shown here, the

I developed nations of the world, including the United States, should have long

together by bonds of kinship, mutual aid, the work of barrio committees, and a core of "old timers" who are often leaders in neighborhood activities. However, as

the elite who already own property and other economic interests. Development

shantytowns in which the urban poor live are quite cohesive communities,' tied

since destroyed that myth; yet it continues to be applied to developing nations

with the same blind faith. It is not recognized that in a class-stratified, capitalistic, colonial society, like Puerto Rico, the benefits of modernization accrue mainly to by itself does not destroy their differential access to sources of power, prestige,

in the peasant village, the sense of solidarity stops at the boundaries of the shantytown. There are no mechanisms for transcending the boundaries of the shantytown to create a collective sense of identity with the poor in the society at

and wealth. This can be accomplished only by a redistribution of the resources of

There is no racial or ethnic basis for class solidarity in Puerto Rico as compared to the former British West Indies, where class strata are marked by distinct color differences. As Mint2 (1967), Hoetink (1967), and other writers have noted, there has never been a marked racial dichotomy in the Hispanic Caribbean. The relatively small number of black slaves imported to Puerto Rico, their arrival late in the nineteenth century due to the retarded development of sugarcane plantations on the island, the high degree of interracial marriage, and the rapid rise of intermediate mulatto groups all contributed to a color continuum in Puerto Rico, which made it impossible to set blacks apart as a separate social group. Thus, it is difficult to see how racial unity can become a vehicle for class

ment services such as public welfare, public health, and public housing. In Puerto

consciousness in Puerto Rico.

do is to attempt to extend greater government services and benefits to the poor,

Unions and political parties are traditional mechanisms for creating class con sciousness among the proletariat; yet in Puerto Rico both are controlled by the elite and used as a means of garnering the support of the poor and of co-opting their most able leaders. Unions have been ridden by corruption, rivalry, and fragmentation, and tend to be viewed cynically by the poor, many of whom do not belong to the labor movement. Some of the labor legislation passed under the Populares has actually been harmful to the labor movement. Thus, the Populares

while at the same time not discouraging private investment and economic growth.

large.

the society.

Capitalistic societies have attempted to assuage the interests of the poor by providing them, through the welfare state, with an increasing variety of govern Rico under the Populares, there was a great expansion in government services

for the poor, which represented a substantial portion of the public budget. These reformist measures adopted by the Popular party undoubtedly served to ameliorate the most acute symptoms of poverty in Puerto Rico. However, they have merely shifted the dependency of the poor from the old landowning class to

a new government paternalism. The largesse of the welfare state is distributed among the poor in return for electoral support of government candidates. The ambitious development program of the Popular party in Puerto Rico shows the limits of reform within a capitalist framework. The best the government can

Such a program maintains the class-stratified and inegalitarian nature of the soci ety; though, as in Puerto Rico, it may also lead to a rather dramatic rise in the standard of living for all class segments. The overt signs of prosperity may, as in Puerto Rico, create the illusion that anyone can get ahead if he really wants to.

But in reality the poor continue to receive a small and often diminishing share of the nation's total productivity. There is a larger pie, but the rich still consume

prevented the extension of federal minimum wage legislation to Puerto Rico in

most of it.

tivity of Puerto Rican workers, most of whom were new to factory jobs, could not approach United States levels. However, the Taft-Hartley law, prohibiting surprise

program of radical social change aimed at a basic redistribution of wealth in the

order to protect the growing industrialization program, arguing that the produc

strikes or strikes of solidarity with other unions, was extended to Puerto Rico and

This system of inequality will persist in Puerto Rico as long as there is no society. At present there appears to be little support among the poor for such a

program. Prosperity has-been of sufficient benefit to the poor to reduce the likeli hood of any strong opposition to the existing order.

110

CONCLUSION

The Puerto Rican poor lack the fundamental basis of proletarian consciousness

in a capitalist society: a sense of oppression, an identification of the elite as the

source of oppression, and a belief that oppression can be overcome by collective action and class solidarity. On the contrary, the Puerto Rican poor have been taught to accept the guidance of the elite, both the native bourgeoisie and the

Glossary

American colonial power, whose interests are clearly based on the maintenance of the status quo. Any program of radical change in Puerto Rico must involve the repudiation of this elite and a new recognition of the power of the poor Independence is not enough; for as the history of other countries in the Carib bean as well as other developing areas has shown, the native bourgeoisie can be

as oppressive and exploitative as their colonial predecessors. On the other hand

only independence will free Puerto Rico from the colonial, capitalist framework which severely limits any possibility of radical social change. Thus, independence must be linked to a socialist program which aims at ending the present system of

inequality in Puerto Rico through a redistribution of wealth and power in the society. Such a program, which offers tangible benefits to the poor, may eventu ally win their support.

'

agregado:

Squatter (in rural area).

apretada: atomicos: barrio:

Squeezed (tight financial situation). Persons who drink natural alcohol. Neighborhood.

bautizo de agua: bautizo de pila:

blancos:

,

Church baptism at baptismal font.

White or very light-skinned persons.

bochinche: bolita:

,

Baptism by water (at home without benefit of clergy ).

Gossip.

Illegal lottery.

bueno: Good. buscando ambiente:

Looking for a chance.

cafetin: Bar. camarilla: Clique. canita: Bootleg rum. chavos: Pennies or money.

chicharrones:

chkiperos: colmado:

Dried pieces of fried bacon.

Men who do odd jobs around the neighborhood.

Grocery store.

comadrona:

comisario:

compadres:

Midwife.

Ward boss of political party.

throueh

Godparents of a person's child who thus become related through

compadrazgo or ritual kinship. compra: Large weekly shopping. conjuntos: Small bands of musicians. duenos y senores: Owners and genltemen.

embrollado: Ensnared (also financially). Estadista: Supporter of statehood for Puerto Rico. fatiga: Asthma. feo: Ugly. fiesta: Party or fair.

fiesta Matronal:

Patron saint festival.

hermanos de fe y de corazon:

hijTdecrianza:

Brothers of the faith and of the heart.

legally adopted. jibaros:

Peasants.

lechon asado: Barbecued pig. lindberghs: Flavored ice cubes. machismo:

Masculine virility.

maldeojo:

Evil eye.

malta:

mamita:

M

A child raised by other than his natural parents, though seldom

A nonalcoholic beverage made from grai

Little rnVther.

Ill

112

GLOSSARY

mayi:

A cool drink made from a root.

mirador:

Small apartment ( usually over a garage )

muchacho de color: Colored man. mujercita: Little woman or mistress. novela: Novel or soap opera. padrino: Godparent.

palma:

References

Palm tree, symbol of New Progressive partv

papito:

Little father.

/weo: Stroll in a circle. patron: Boss or employer.

£**"*:

pernil:

Large straw hat, symbol of the Popular partv Fresh ham.

pintado de bianco:

Painted white.

piraguas: Flavored ices. porqueria: A worthless amount. prtetos: Black or very dark skinned persons. raza espanola: Spanish race or ancestry.

Le Reina de los Artesanos:

Queen of the Artisans

"TpromtXSd.0' TpromtXSd. Pe°Ple Wh° Iedte thC r°Sary in ^mCnt » a <** ^

San Juan Bautista:

tia:

Aunt.

tiempo muerto:

St. John the Baptist.

Dead season.

tiendas or ventorrillos:

titeres:

tormenta:

Troublemakers. Hurricane.

urbanization:

velorio:

Small grocery stores.

Housing subdivision.

Wake.

Andic, F. M., 1964, Distribution of Family Incomes in Puerto Rico. Caribbean Monograph Series No. 1, Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico.

Bott, Elizabeth, 1957, Family and Social Network. London: Tavistock Publica tions.

Bryce-Laporte, Roy S., 1970, "Urban Relocation and Family Adaptation in Puerto Rico: A Case Study in Urban Ethnography." In Peasants in Cities, Wm. Mangin (ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Caplow, Theodore, Sheldon Stryker, and Samuel E. Wallace, 1964, The Urban

Ambience: A Study of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Totowa, N. J.: The Bedminster Press.

Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles Hamilton, 1967, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books.

Feldman, Arnold, and J. M. Kendrick, 1968, "The Experience of Change in Puerto Rico." Howard Law Journal, Vol. 15, no. 1, 28-46.

Fitzpatrick, Joseph P., 1971, Puerto Rican Americans: The Meaning of the Migration to the Mainland. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.

Foster, George, 1965, "Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good." American Anthropologist, Vol. 67, no. 2, 293-315.

Frazier, E. Franklin, 1939, The Negro Family in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gonzalez, Nancie L, 1970, "Toward a Definition of Matrifocality." In Afro-Ameri can Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives, Norman Whitten and John Szwed (eds.). New York: The Free Press.

Hammel, Eugene, 1961, "The Family Cycle in a Coastal Peruvian Slum and Vil

lage." American Anthropologist, Vol. 59, no. 1, 101-111. Harris, Marvin, 1965, Patterns of Race in the Americas. New York: Walker Press.

A radical and comprehensive treatment of the historical development of race relations in the New World, exposing many of the myths of Latin American "tolerance."

Henriques, Fernando, 1953, Family and Colour in Jamaica. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.

Herskovits, Melville J., 1958, The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon Press, revised edition.

Hoetink, H., 1967, The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations: A Contribution to the Sociology of Segmented Societies. London: Oxford University Press.

114

REFERENCES

REFERENCES

Landy, David, 1959, Tropical Childhood: Cultural Transmission and Learning in a Rural Puerto Rican Village. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.

Lewis, Gordon, 1968, Puerto Rico: Freedom and Power in the Caribbean. New York: Harper Torchbooks. (Original and uncut edition, 1963, Monthly Review Press.)

One of the most comprehensive and elucidative accounts of Puerto Rico's transformation under American occupation by a long-time resident of the island and cogent observer of the political scene.

Lewis, Oscar, 1966, La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty, San Juan and New York. New York: Random House. A controversial but penetrating study of one large Puerto Rican family in the slums of New York and San Juan; it takes quite a different viewpoint from this study. The differences between Lewis' study and my own are due partly to the differences in the shantytowns we studied. Lewis' shantytown is located in Old San Juan near the waterfront and therefore attracts a large number of residents engaged in prostitution, gambling, and other illegal activities. This reinforced Lewis' tendency to emphasize the pathology of the poor rather than their attempts to cope with a very hard and unrewarding existence.

, 1968, A Study of Slum Culture: Backgrounds for La Vida. New York:

Random House. , 1970, Anthropological Essays. New York: Random House.

Mangin, William, 1967, "Squatter Settlements." Scientfiic American Vol. 217, no. 4, 21-29. Marques, Rene, 1962, "El Puertorriqueno Docil." Cuadernos Americanos, CXX, 144-195. Mintz, Sidney, 1953, "The Folk-Urban Continuum and the Rural Proletarian Community." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LIX, no. 2, 136—143, 1956, "Cafiamelar: The Subculture of a Rural Sugar Plantation Pro letariat." In The People of Puerto Rico, J. Steward et al. (eds.) Urbana: Uni versity of Illinois Press.

One of the best studies of the effects of American-owned corporate plantations on the Puerto Rican workers. Mintz is one of the few anthropologists to have

worked in the Spanish-, French-, and English-speaking islands of the Carib bean and his work must be read by all interested in this area.

, 1967, "Caribbean Nationhood in Anthropological Perspective." In Carib bean Integration, Sybil Lewis and T. G. Mathews (eds.). Institute of Caribbean

Studies, University of Puerto Rico. Mintz, Sidney, and Eric Wolf, 1950, "An Analysis of Ritual Co-parenthood (Com-

padrazgo)." Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 6, 341-368. Morales, Yordan J., 1971," Desarrollo Politico y Pobreza." Revista de Adminis tracion Publica. Escuela de Administracion Publica, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

*Morse, Richard, 1971, "Trends and Issues in Latin American Urban Research, 1965-1970." Latin American Research Review. Part I, Vol. VI, no. 1; Part II, Vol. VI, no. 2.

The most comprehensive review to date of Latin American urban research gathered from a variety of disciplines by a noted Latin American historian. The New York Times, September 7, 1971, "Puerto Rican Migration Dwindles in a Recession," pages 1 and 43. , October 25, 1971, "Puerto Ricans Tied to Welfare Rise," page 20. Recommended reading.

115

#Pab6n, Milton, 1967, "La Integracion Politka en Puerto Rico." In Caribbean

Integration. Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico. An excellent analysis of the political status of Puerto Rico from the perspec tive of an ardent independista and highly respected scholar. Several of the

articles in this collection are very valuable for students interested in the political development of the Caribbean area. Padilla, Elena, 1958, Up from Puerto Rico. New York: Columbia University Press.

Parke, Robert, 1952, "Internal Migration in Puerto Rico." Unpublished M.A. thesis, Columbia University. Parsons, Talcott, 1950, "Age and In Personality, Society and New York: A. Knopf. Piven, Frances F., and Richard Functions of Public Welfare.

Sex in the Social Structure of the United States." Culture, C. Kluckhohn and H. Murray (eds.).

A. Cloward, 1971, Regulating the Poor: The New York: Pantheon Books. Quintero, Marcia, 1971, "Voting Patterns and Socio-economic Structure in San Juan, Puerto Rico: An Analysis of the 1968 Election." Unpublished M.A. thesis in Sociology, University of London. Quintero Rivera, A. G., 1971, "El Desarollo de las Clases Sociales y Los Con flicts Politicos en Puerto Rico." In Problemas de Desigualdad Social en Puerto Rico, R. L. Ramirez, B. Levine and C. Buitrago (eds.). San Juan, Libreria Internacional, 1972.

An excellent historical analysis of class formation and class consciousness in Puerto Rico by a young and very gifted Puerto Rican scholar, who is currently working on a more comprehensive study of class structure in Puerto Rico. The book in which this article appears represents the collective effort of a group of young Puerto Rican scholars who have helped to underwrite the cost of publication by a Puerto Rican publishing house. Ramirez, Rafael L., 1971, "Marginalidad, Dependencia y Participacion Politica en el Arrabal." In Problemas de Desigualdad Social en Puerto Rico, 1972. Safa, Helen Icken, 1964, "From Shanty Town to Public Housing: A Comparison of Family Structure in Two Urban Neighborhood in Puerto Rico." Caribbean Studies, Vol. IV, no. 1, 3-12.

, 1965, "The Female-Based Household in Public Housing: A Case Study in Puerto Rico." Human Organization, Vol. 24, no. 2. San Juan Star, January 2, 1972, "More Island Families Face Poverty." Frank Ramos, page 1.

Scheele, Raymond, 1956, "The Prominent Families of Puerto Rico." In The People

of Puerto Rico, J. Steward et al. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Seda Bonilla, Eduardo, 1965, "Personalism as a Pattern of Political Interaction." In The Caribbean in Transition, F.M. Andic and T.G. Mathews (eds.).

Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico. , 1969, Interaccion Social Y Personalidad en Una Comunidad de Puerto Rico. Second revised edition. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Juan Ponce de Leon.

-, 1970, Requiem por Una Cultura. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editorial Edil.

A collection of essays by this astute Puerto Rican anthropologist commenting on the effects of neo-colonial status on Puerto Rican culture and values. Silva Gotay, Samuel, 1971, "La Iglesia Ante la Pobreza: el Caso de las Iglesias Protestantes

Historicas."

Revista

de

Administracion

Administracion Publica, Universidad de Puerto Rico.

* Recommended reading.

Publica,

Escuela

de

116

REFERENCES

Silva Recio Luis, 1971, "Aspectos Economicos de la Pobreza." Revista de Admin-

S3dT?£SSLV0L ^ ^ 2' ESCUCk dC ***£** WS* UnivTrsi-

thheerarrSihSKyItemaKCKbreak T* ejhnohistorical analysis of family structure in Sce^on fam?I

I

e™Pha^ed the importance of external socioeconomic

rorces on family roles and authority

TlHnoisUpS;et a1"' 1956> ^ Pe°ple °f Puen° Rk°- Urbana: University of rOPO/OSiCal KmlySiS °f the subcultur« of Puerto Rico, which sis for much current research on the island. One of the few Udlef attem.PdnS t0 en«™Pass an entire culture.

Vnd 5 HlU> 1956' "Pr°blemS Of Communication between

t°etS RdatlnS& " FamllX —™n. Liki'' H««»» KelaRd

tions, Vol. 9, no. 2, 207-217.

Sunkel, Osvaldo, "Transnational Capitalism and National Disintegration" 1973 *t ComParat!ve Stud'es in International Development, Vol 9 no 1 ' Tumin, Melvin, and A. Feldman, 1961, Social Class and Social Change in Puerto Rico. Princeton: Princeton University Press. The first comprehensive island-wide study of social class in Puerto Rico but seriously deficient in explaining the economic and political base of the current power structure.

TUT' rth 19%"U™ol;ed Urban Settlements: Problems and Politics." A!beJlP™ NeWil P^lopmg Countries, G. Breese (ed.). Endewood * P^° *™' Abridge, Mass,

XLIV lli

treatment °J the Political ™<* economic development of ii\mOte tradmonal viewpoint than that of Gordon Lewis.

UrbanlSm as a W^ of Life'" American Journal of Sociology,

10^ C0rpOrate PeaSaM Com™unities in Mesoamerica and uthwe^rn Journal of Anthropology, Vol 13 1-8

Wl°ne ? ?e m°St rCadarble and insightful analysis of the Puerto Rican

fami y and the processes of socialization among the rural sugarcane prole tariat, on a coffee hacienda, and among the town middle class.

Recommended reading.