page_title: Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
section_title: Mass migration and exclusion
hierarchical_section_title: Puerto Ricans in Holyoke / History / Mass migration and exclusion
caption_attribution_description: English: Mayor William Taupier (center, in polka-dotted tie) is confronted by members of the Puerto Rican community and other residents of Ward 1 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and presented a list of demands and allegations about police actions and a curfew previously imposed under his administration.
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: 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.
  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".
  The growing tension between the two groups reached a breaking point when on July 27, 1973, a 20 year old Boricua man was arrested for stealing a bicycle, struggling with officers before being handcuffed on the hood of a police cruiser. In the short time of this scuffle a crowd of some 400 people had amassed, with some shouting down officers and pelting the police squad with stones, bottles, and bricks. In response the police called in 60 additional backup officers in riot gear from more than a 21 agencies, including a state police unit, bringing between 125 and 200 officers to the area, with numbers differing across news reports. By the end of this disturbance one police officer had been injured and nine individuals were arrested for disturbing the peace. In response to the unrest Mayor William Taupier imposed a curfew during which he directed police himself. From the 27th until the 31st the entirety of ward 1, better known as The Flats was under lockdown from 6pm to 6am with no traffic entering or leaving for reasons other than to reach one's residence or for emergencies, with residents required to present identification to enter or exit the area.
  While Taupier would state that no charges of police brutality were found substantive, the police response to the unrest was met with demonstrations and even rebuke by the ward's own Model Cities Program, which had managed the community outreach portion of the city's team policing program. In a report at the organization's policy board meeting, the chairman outlined narratives from both sides of the conflict, concluding that 90% of those reported in the crowd that had formed were spectators, and that the language barrier between police and the community had been one of the key causes of the incident. Following some discussion between a group of residents and representatives of the US Department of Justice, on August 1, 1973
caption: Protesters from Ward 1 confront Mayor William Taupier over police actions and the curfew imposed on them several days prior, providing a list of demands
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