How many Puerto Ricans live in Holyoke?
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While there is a Puerto Rican demographic throughout all of Holyoke today, the neighborhoods of South Holyoke, The Flats, and Churchill are among those areas with the largest Puerto Rican populations proportionally, all having more than 75% residents of Puerto Rican heritage, with South Holyoke having the most proportionally, with 87.5% of all residents being of Puerto Rican heritage.
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
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As of the 2010 census, Holyoke, Massachusetts had the largest Puerto Rican population, per capita, of any city in the United States outside Puerto Rico proper, with 44.7% or 17,826 residents being of Puerto Rican heritage, comprising 92.4% of all Latinos in the community. From a combination of farming programs instituted by the US Department of Labor after World War II, and the housing and mills that characterized Holyoke prior to deindustrialization, Puerto Ricans began settling in the city in the mid-1950s, with many arriving during the wave of Puerto Rican immigration to the Northeastern United States in the 1980s. A combination of white flight as former generations of mill workers left the city, and a sustained influx of migrants in subsequent generations transformed the demographic from a minority of about 13% of the population in 1980, to the largest single demographic by ancestry in a span of three decades.
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
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Lower New England has a high concentration of Puerto Ricans. Connecticut has the highest concentration of Puerto Ricans of any state and has large Puerto Rican populations throughout the state, with the largest in Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, Meriden, New Britain, New London, and Willimantic. Though, half of the Puerto Rican population in the New England area is situated along the Interstate-91 corridor, extending from New Haven in Connecticut to Holyoke in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, the largest Puerto Rican populations are in Holyoke, Springfield, Fitchburg, Lowell, Worcester, Lawrence, Lynn, Boston, Southbridge, Haverhill, Chicopee, and Chelsea. The highest percentage of Puerto Ricans in the US can be found in Holyoke. Large portions of the state's Puerto Rican population is in the Boston area. Puerto Ricans continue to dominate in the central part of the state. In Rhode Island, the vast majority of Puerto Ricans live in Providence County, especially the cities of Providence and Pawtucket.
List of Puerto Rican-American communities
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By the time many Puerto Rican families were being uprooted by Springfield's redevelopments, a large upsurge in new arrivals had occurred. In 1967 this new population was mainly low income and very young, with more than half of all Puerto Rican residents being school-aged children, while public agencies remained poorly equipped to provide for the community's needs. Reception to the community from those already in Holyoke and Springfield proved difficult not only due to social discrimination and racism but also as many businesses and government agencies lacked resources for Spanish speakers at a time when substantially fewer in the community spoke English. Far fewer translators were available at that time than today, and growing up in schools that did not speak their mother tongue, many in the younger demographic remained unable to read or write. This was exacerbated by a time when Holyoke saw a level of economic decline it had not witnessed before, or since, with 50% of all industrial jobs disappearing from 1955 to 1975; in this period, Puerto Ricans were witness to a changing colonial economy, leading many laborers to emigrate from the island. While more Puerto Ricans arrived in Holyoke in the 1970s, bringing the population to 5,764 or 13% of the total population by 1980, their numbers were fewer than the subsequent decade, and due to these economic circumstances the city as a whole would see a population decrease of nearly 11%, the most in its history.
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
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Holyoke's history in Puerto Rican settlements first began around the mid 1950s, when a landlord named Domingo Perez, purportedly became the city's first Puerto Rican resident. By 1956 an article in The Republican reported on 1,000 Puerto Ricans in a self-described immigrant colony in the Greater Springfield area. The first to settle in the area were met with racial discrimination and open hostility, with one Boricua restaurateur describing their people being "treated like animals" at the time. This same family had followed a similar route many others would, having previously moved to the area from New York where they had previously settled in 1948. By 1958, the Springfield Union, a local newspaper, had begun referring to a Puerto Rican community in The Flats neighborhood of Holyoke, also known as Ward 1.
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
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The city would receive national coverage as Puerto Rico residents on the island became displaced in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, many turned to relatives in the city, and during the 2017-2018 school year, Holyoke Public Schools saw 235 new students enroll whose families were displaced. In some cases children were sent to live with relatives temporarily while the island rebuilt. In 2018, San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz spoke in Holyoke, describing the gradual recovery of the island as well as its severe lack of resources. Cruz was presented the key to the city on April 28, 2018 by Mayor Alex Morse to honor that "in such a time of despair [she] provided a beacon of hope and opportunity for Puerto Ricans."
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
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Beginning at the end of World War II, an influx of Puerto Ricans and other Latino groups began to immigrate to the Northeast United States, driven largely by the Farm Labor Program initiated by the US Department of Labor. Not unlike the Bracero program, in the following decades the agency recruited Puerto Rican laborers to work on agricultural land in the United States; in the case of Holyoke, many worked on valley tobacco farms, and arrived in the city in search of better job opportunities at the mills as previous generations had. The first permanent Puerto Rican resident was said to have been Domingo Perez; a landlord who later became among the first to be appointed in city government, he was reported to have arrived in Holyoke around 1955. By 1970 the number of Puerto Rican residents numbered around 5,000, however by that time, many faced a city economy in free fall. Holyoke's mills had closed due to the changing economic landscape of early globalization and deindustrialization; from 1955 to 1970, 1 for every 2 industrial jobs vanished. Despite economic and social difficulties the population grew significantly during the 1980s, and from 1990 to 2016, the buying power of the Latino community at-large increased by nearly 300%. Today Latinos form the city's largest minority group, with the largest Puerto Rican population per capita of any American city outside Puerto Rico proper, at 44.7%. The entire Latino population of Holyoke, as of the 2010 census, was 19,313, or 48.4% of the city's population of 39,880.
Holyoke, Massachusetts
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The growth of Holyoke's own community, coupled with these aforementioned factors and substandard housing, led to an increasing gap between the Puerto Rican community and a police force that was described by a 1973 Police Foundation report as a group of "117 people, many of whom were related to each other" in the city of 50,000. The report goes on to say that representatives from the Model Cities Program and Governor Sargent's office urged greater outreach and would describe the relationship between the police and Puerto Rican community at that time as "the police [being seen] as brutal men with clubs, [while] the police saw the [Puerto Rican] community as tempestuous people with no respect for law and order".
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
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Over the years Wistariahurst, which provides historic and cultural exhibits and resources for Holyoke's many ethnic communities, has amassed a substantial collection on Holyoke's Puerto Rican history. The museum, working in tandem with the Holyoke Public Library, has also been in the process of collecting and curating firsthand accounts of this history through the "Nuestros Senderos" program, with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
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One of the biggest challenges with making inroads with existing communities was the language barrier of the first arrivals, with many only speaking Spanish. Some of the earliest programs working towards integration came from the Greater Springfield Council of Churches, which by 1961 had recruited a number of volunteers, many of whom were retired teachers, to help teach English to Puerto Rican women. Other early cultural exchange programs were held in churches such as Holyoke's St. Paul's Episcopal, which in 1956 hosted a lecture on Puerto Rican culture by a native of the island whose father had served as chancellor of the Episcopal diocese there.
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke