The Barrio Congressman: Vito Marcantonio and the Puerto Rican migration

New York Daily News ^ | 08/14/2017 | Jay Maeder

[cll]

What with a depression and a war and federal quotas, the great waves of the tired, poor and huddled had dried to a trickle, and in the late 1940s there was a full generation of New Yorkers quite unaccustomed to immigrants. It was at this moment that the city suddenly found itself overwhelmed by the largest influx of human beings in 40 years.

They came from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico catastrophically overpopulated, desperately impoverished, devastated by decades of sugar company plantationism. All at once there were many thousands of them in the city, where it was said a man might earn in a week what he labored for a year to earn at home. Thus did a new people arrive, as had the forlorn others before them.

But in fact, several things distinguished the puertorriqueos from the immigrant hordes of days past. One was that the earlier travelers had come in boom times, when, whatever their other difficulties, employment opportunities abounded; this was no longer the case, and many of the newcomers found here only wretchedness. Another was that many were of color, doomed to suffer greater daily indignities than had most of their predecessors.

Another, on the other hand, was that Puerto Ricans happened to be U.S. citizens already. Which meant that, indignities or not, they were free to travel as they pleased.

And which meant that they could vote.

This was not lost on U.S. Rep. Vito Marcantonio of Manhattan's 18th Congressional District.

[cll]

IMO, the greatest thing that happened to Puerto Rico was when the U.S. wrested it from Spain. But worse than Spanish monarchical rule, the "highly encouraged" mass migration to New York of a deeply humble and naïve people, for leftist political purposes, was one of the worst atrocities suffered on Americans - and Puerto Ricans ARE Americans - in the 20th Century. It altered the character of both the island and the mainland in the worse possible ways. Puerto Ricans are not bad people. They are a good people thrown into a miserable situation for cheap "liberal" electoral purposes. This was in the first half of the past century and we have learned nothing from it.

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Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.

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The money quote:

“The “callous exploitation” of Puerto Rico’s tired, poor and huddled, wrote the Daily Mirror’s Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer in 1948, “is one of the dirtiest crimes in the long and shameful record of practical American politics. None knows better than those who have primed and prompted and financed the exodus what they are doing to their victims and what they are doing to the city where they bring them. . . . These poverty-numbed, naive natives are sold a bill. . . . They are told that here fortunes await many and the rest can quickly go on relief. . . . The result is a sullen, disappointed, disillusioned mass of people.”

[wita]

I’m quite sure the passage of time has written an entirely different story, or has it?

[elcid1970]

Google Vito Marcantonio. He was a communist without a party card, the most far out leftwinger in Congress until a heart attack took him out in 1954.

[Roccus]

Not really.
Those who assimilated often did well here. Many have retired and moved back to PR. But those who chose to live as gov’t. dependents, not learn/speak English (who needed to when even the ballots could be attained in Spanish?) remain impoverished thanks to the carrots proffered by vote hungry politicians. Add to that the tens of thousands of other Caribbean Islanders who make their way to PR and then come to Nueva York as “Puerto Ricans” and you find el Barrio still exists.

[T-Bone Texan]

I have read first hand accounts here on FR that the turning point between “Safely walking across Central Park at night with my little sister” and “Not safe” was the influx of Ricans.

They apparently raised the crime rate quite a bit.

[amnestynone]

I heard that Marcontonio was actually an easy going man of good nature. I read where him and Wm Colmer a Mississippi Congressmen of opposing points of view would each stand up and make speeches on the floor of Congress attacking each other in the most brutal way involving the worst of character assassination and ugly rhetoric which normally would not be allowed. But, what the country who rad about these attacks did not know is that Colmer and Marcontonio were the best of friends in reality and that the whole thing was a put on. Fishbait Miller in his book of memoirs stated that he knew for a fact that the speeches made by Marcontonio attacking Colmer were actually written by Colmer and vice versa the speeches by Colmer attacking Colmer were actually written by Colmer. Just goes to tell you how things can be fake!

[Liz]

And remember.....then-pres Clinton's notorious midnight pardons included
the vicious Puerto Rican FALN.....to get latino votes for Hillary's Senate run.

[bert]

Ten kids per family killed Puerto Rico.

Guess what prompted that situation?

[Oatka]

I touched on this sometimes back. I grew up in NYC at that time in the old Chelsea District - 22nd St, and 8th Ave.

Those PRs came flooding into our neighborhood (Brownstones) and we went down pretty fast. They’d pack a dozen people into two bedroom apartments. The landlords got wise and started charging by the person.

Marcantonio brought ‘em over here, promising ‘em $54 a week welfare check when a good job paid $80. With the large families, they racked up a bunch but still lived like they were back home. They sat on the stoops all day drinking beer and harassing the women, not just flirting, but getting lewd. A couple of times I took my BB rifle to ‘em to clear the front steps (they bugged my sister and I was 16 and stupid).

There were letters to the editors from people in PR saying not to judge them by the bunch coming up as they were their dregs.

We started getting them in high school and I made friends with a few, one who later became an engineer. Some good ones in the lot but by and large, their arrival was a downer for our area.

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They are told that here fortunes await many and the rest can quickly go on relief

Then, there were the proud, who would take whatever job existed, to take care of their families.

My mother was one of those proud ones, who I remember saying to her 4 children (including me), that she would never take welfare or any kind of public assistance. She did so for many years, working at several "factorias" as a seamstress and stuffed animals maker. She worked hard, and we could all see the pain in her body every time she came home in the late afternoons. We grew up poor, knowing that accepting some public assistance would have helped us live a bit better life. But, NO!!!, her pride was more important to her, and she made sure that we too learned what that pride was about. My sneakers had to last me one whole school year, even with holes in them everywhere, including no soles. It was embarrassing, but I learned to appreciate the lessons my mother impacted on all her kids.

None of her kids ever went on any kind of public assistance, unless one wants to classify social security as a handout.

We all ended up as middle-class workers and we all ended up with our own homes, and now, our own kids have a much better future than my mother's kids. The lessons we all learned from our mother, is being passed on to our kids.

I'm a very proud American. I'm also proud of my Puerto Rican heritage. My biggest source of pride is still my mother, who left us in 2014, but her memory and ideals are still with her kids and grand-kids.

[cll]

Gracias! Stories like this are many, including my own dad’s who told us when we gave up on Jamaica-Queens after only six months: “I’d rather be poor in Puerto Rico than on welfare here”. This was the early seventies and he couldn’t find a job over there, even as a skilled tradesman. So we chose to eek out a living back on the island until the situation improved in the 80s.

God Bless your mom.

[wita]

Thanks to all contibutors.

[gleeaikin]

That’s what happens without Planned Parenthood/sarc.