Project Background

Puerto Rican activism in Chicago can be traced back to the political and cultural atmosphere that Puerto Ricans confronted when they migrated to the United States beginning in the late 1940s. Although Puerto Rico was politically and economically tied to the United States, many migrants inhabited a foreign land with a foreign language and foreign customs. Many of the migrants found much hostility and racism when they arrived and as such began developing survival and resistance mechanisms in order to navigate the turbulent waters of the racist society in which they now found themselves. Puerto Ricans experienced sub-standard housing, housing discrimination, police brutality, sub-par education, and displacement.

This came to a head in the late 1950s and again in the 1960s, when urban renewal projects completely destroyed the Puerto Rican communities of “La Madison” and “La Clark,” as they were unofficially called, and later the Lakeview and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. This pattern of gentrification not only led to Puerto Ricans settling further north and west, primarily in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, but also the rioting, activism, and general civil unrest all throughout the community in 1960s and 70s.

In recent years, Puerto Rican activism has once again focused on the issue of displacement and gentrification, this time in Humboldt Park and Paseo Boricua, both considered the economic political and cultural capital of the community living in the Midwest. Although many Puerto Ricans have moved away from the area, Paseo and “La Humboldt,” nevertheless, continues to function as a “home.”