Puerto Ricans who migrated to the United States in the early 20th century were not the first to do so. Trade and commerce linked Puerto Rico and the United States before the 19th century and movement between the two has continued since then. Piecing together the migration stories of Puerto Rican women who came to New York City after the Great War is quite challenging. These women were regular people, and until the 1960s and 1970s, there was little incentive to collect or archive their experiences.
Podcast Interview: All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York
Rob Snyder Interviewed by Bruce Cory
All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York by Frederick M. Binder, David M. Reimers, and Robert W. Snyder (Columbia University Press, 2019) covers almost 500 years of New York City’s still unfolding story of cultural diversity and political conflict, economic dynamism and unmatched human diversity.
Podcast Interview: Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York
Edgardo Meléndez Interviewed by Jesse Hoffnung-Garskoff
Edgardo Meléndez's book Patria: Puerto Rican Revolutionaries in Nineteenth Century New York (Centro Press, 2019) examines the activities and ideals of Puerto Rican revolutionary exiles in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century. The study is centered in the writings, news reports, and announcements by and about Puerto Ricans in Patria, the official newspaper of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. Both were founded and led by the Cuban patriot José Martí.
Mexican (In)Visibility: Melissa Castillo Planas's Journey Into New York's Mexican State of Mind
Reviewed by Nelson Santana
When one thinks about Mexican migrants, often what comes to mind, partly due to conservative narratives, are Mexican-descended people in the US-Mexico border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. However, the Mexican community — some whose ancestors lived on Mexican land prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and who suddenly went from living in Mexico to living in the United States on the same land[1] — is dispersed throughout the United States with significant populations in Illinois, Washington, DC, and New York. The Mexican population in New York City is one that has been booming for quite some time.
In the political ferment of early 20th century New York City, when socialists and reformers battled sweatshops, and writers and artists thought a new world was being born, an immigrant Jewish woman from Russia appeared in the Yiddish press, in Carnegie Hall, and at rallies. Her name was Rose Pastor Stokes, and she fought for socialism, contraception and workers’ rights.
Though post-COVID statistics will reflect restaurant closures, downsizing, or “ghost kitchens,” as of the summer of 2020 there were 27,556 restaurants operating in New York City, 977 of which were Mexican. To some, this latter number might not be surprising (and even seem low given the popularity of Mexican cuisine). Yet just a few decades ago, New York was a place where Mexican food was hard to find. It lagged behind other cities like Chicago, San Antonio, or Los Angeles that claimed larger Mexican-origin populations and a longer history of Mexican restaurants.
In Radical Imagination, Radical Humanity: Puerto Rican Political Activism in New York, Rose Muzio analyzes how structural and historical factors — including colonialism, economic marginalization, racial discrimination, and the Black and Brown Power movements of the 1960s — influenced young Puerto Ricans to reject mainstream ideas about political incorporation and join others in struggles against perceived injustices. This analysis provides the first in-depth account of the origins, evolution, achievements, and failures of El Comité-Movimiento de Izquierda Nacional Puertorriqueño, one of the main organizations of the Puerto Rican Left in the 1970s in New York City.
Review: Malgorzata Szejnert's Ellis Island: A People’s History
Reviewed by Sarah Litvin
Ellis Island: A People’s History, by Polish journalist Malgorzata Szejnert, tells an undulating history of the island through a chronological series of character studies and vignettes. Five sections, aptly entitled “Rising Tide,” “Flood,” “Becalmed,” “Pitch and Toss,” and “Ebb Tide” chart the rise and fall of New York’s famous immigration station that processed more than twelve million people between 1892, when it opened, and 1954, when it closed. Immigration through Ellis Island peaked in 1907, when 3,818 ships delivered more than 1.2 million people, a flood that calmed at the outbreak of WWI, and ebbed as deportations increased during the Red Scare and immigration was restricted by quotas created by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924.
“Young people are making their voices heard”: From Harlem’s Youth Movement in the 1930s and 1940s to DSA-NYC
By Mary Reynolds
The ongoing press scrum over New York’s 2021 mayoral election has obscured the down-ticket candidates in the June 22 primary races for the City’s fifty-one Council seats. These contests could be better bellwethers for the city’s future, and recall a little-known era of the city’s radical past.
Claiming the Right to the City: Timo Schrader's Loisaida as Urban Laboratory
Reviewed by Hongdeng Gao
In the 1970s, New York City witnessed an unprecedented level of housing abandonment and disinvestment, especially in low-income neighborhoods including Harlem, the South Bronx, Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and the Lower East Side. Amid the citywide housing crisis, one local newspaper in Loisaida — a term coined by the activist and poet Bittman “Bimbo” Rivas in 1974 to refer to the largely Puerto Rican and low-income community on the Lower East Side — proclaimed a “Miracle on Avenue C.”
