I dedicate this piece to all Puerto Rican's in Milwaukee who do not know the history of how we arrived to this city. This is preliminary historical archival research within my larger body of work of anti-Blackness, the body and the Puerto Rican diaspora. *I edited this piece for length and readability.
Puerto Ricans in Milwaukee: A History of Migration, Identity and Place Between 1950 - present
Puerto Rican History 1898-1950
In 1898, after U.S. troops occupied the shores of Puerto Rico at the end of the Spanish-Cuban-American War, the Island was purchased as one of two remaining Spanish colonies.[5]Three years later, in 1901, the U.S. declared that the Island was foreign in the domestic sense and not yet a territory.[6]It was not until 1917 that all Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship. During the period between 1917-1940, we began learning of the documented control of Puerto Rican women’s bodies that began with the suppression of prostitution and extended to issues of reproduction and birth control with state ambitions of eugenic families that might lead to a decrease in “overpopulation” on the Island.[7]In the majority of these cases, women who were poor or working-class living in rural areas were accused of prostitution and often sentenced (in many instances without due process) to six months in jail.[8]
According to Laura Briggs’ extensive research on state control of Puerto Rican women’s bodies, “Birth control provided the policy issue, and eugenics, overpopulation, and maternal health provided the terms in which a number of larger issues were debated: nationalism and the status question, modernization, poverty and capitalism.” In this article, I will focus on aspects of the “nation,” nationalism and identity in order to explore the ways that it might have influenced migration to the continental U.S. and the City of Milwaukee. The growing independence movement of Puerto Rico, referred to as the Nationalist Party, marked this period due to its extensive involvement in resistance against state control of Puerto Rican women’s bodies that, as Briggs argues, included birth control and motherhood. Both of which were contrasting ideas to the nationalism in the continental U.S. that sought to protect white Americans from the “others”—namely, “working-class and or dark-skinned people.”[9]
Puerto Rico was also experiencing a type of ‘othering’ in their analysis of their own nation. Pedro Albizu Campos, a notable leader of the Independence movement (Independentistas), along with Catholic bishops on the Island, provided resistance and opposition to birth control. Robyn Longhurst writes, in her extensive research on bodies, that bodies contain “an undeniable materiality and fluidity.” Further, these bodies “leak” and “seep” and pregnant bodies, in particular, “expel matter.” It is because of these differences that they are culturally and biologically “othered.”[10]Evaluating the materiality of Puerto Rican women’s bodies is crucial in exploring the historical analysis of the Independentistas in the context of nationalism.
It is also important to note that the idea of the “nation” and nationalism are concepts that are both socially constructed and gendered— that male leaders of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico actively imbued into their rhetoric.[11]Tamar Mayer argues that, “Nationalism frequently becomes the language through which sexual control and repression are justified and through which masculine prowess is expressed and strategically exercised.”[12]As I dove into the literature of Puerto Rican identity and nationalism, I found that the nationalist language was used to repress Puerto Rican women by way of resisting birth control and their views on women’s bodies as only expressing a specific materiality: birth. Although I agree with Mayer’s other arguments regarding nationalism and the ways it “pressures people to negotiate their identities in complex ways,” I discovered one woman that resisted this definition—Julia de Burgos. In both her story as an Independentista and her embodied experience as a Puerto Rican woman, de Burgos serves as a counter story to this narrative. (I will explore her story in a separate post.)[13]
Turning now to comments by Nationalist party leader Albizu Campos, his expressed views of Puerto Rican women’s bodies in the context of the imagined “nation” bring much to light:
The brazenness of the Yankees invaders has reached the extreme of trying to profane Puerto Rican motherhood; of trying to invade the very insides of nationality. When our women lose the transcendental and divine concept that they are not only mothers of their children but mothers of all future generations of Puerto Rico, if they come to lose that feeling, Puerto Rico will disappear within a generation.[14]
The “very inside of nationality,” Briggs writes, reflected that “mothers made citizens, reproducing both bodies and culture.”[15]Puerto Rican women’s bodies were seen not only as matter that could expel future generations but bodies fully encompassing the materiality of a nation. Further, Briggs writes that the Independentistas and the Catholic church should not be seen as mutually exclusive, since feminist nationalists advocated for birth control.[16]That Puerto Rican women’s bodies were both contested and imagined as pregnant, not only by the state but the Independent movement itself, lacks no irony in its analysis.[17]
Unlike nationalist leaders like Albizu, feminist Independentistas advocated for birth control “as an unmitigated good thing in the face of attempts by both colonialist and nationalist men to manipulate woman, and woman-as-mother, as a symbol.”[18]To Independentistas like Albizu, birth control was a forced manipulation of Puerto Rican women’s bodies, the same bodies that were the symbol of the Puerto Rican nation as whole.[19]I will discuss this argument further in the next paragraphs.
The struggles against and for birth control were blurred and multi-faceted in nature. “The independentista nationalism of Albizu” yearned for a Puerto Rico that existed before the occupation of the U.S. and Puerto Rican women bodies again, in this context, were seen as embodying the nation and carrying all future generations. It was because of this imagined purpose of Puerto Rican women’s bodies by male leaders like Albizu that birth control was seen as a U.S. plot towards genocide of the Puerto Rican population.[20]This imagined purpose was indeed problematic; however, it provides the context by which to evaluate how Puerto Rican women’s bodies were central to the imagined nation.
The perception that birth control was a U.S. genocidal plot against Puerto Ricans stemmed from controversial cancer experiments by white North American physician Cornelius Rhoads beginning in 1931. In 1932, after writing a disparaging and racist letter against Puerto Ricans, he admitted to killing and injecting cancer cells into several of his patients. He later denied any wrong doing and claimed the letter was a “joke.” It was this letter that lead nationalists to argue that the U.S. was counseling these measures to exterminate and displace Puerto Rican’s through birth control and emigration.[21]
According to the Independentistas, “Not only did economic exploitation work to impoverish Puerto Ricans […] but the mainland government was also actively trying to kill insular citizens by inducing disease, to displace them through emigration, and to prevent their reproduction through birth control.”[22]Nationalists argued that these were the U.S. intentions. Yet, in a stroke of irony, it was mainly Puerto Rican women who were advocating for birth control on the Island at that time. Nevertheless, Independentistas “equated Puerto Rican-ness, and birth control, in this dualistic universe, could only be a North American plot.”[23]Rhoads and the Rockefeller program, through which he conducted his philanthropic research, were later exonerated.
Later that year, in 1932, the debate over birth control and Puerto Rico’s “overpopulation” problem emerges in the pages of Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Review, in which life on the Island was described as dismal with “overpopulation” being identified as “the largest contributing factor.” Further, these dismal conditions, which included poverty, lack of education, disease and poor housing, were all seen as stemming from overpopulation on the Island. U.S. writer Theodore Schroeder argued and suggested that the only way to address these problems were through measures of birth control. He advised that the U.S. government employ the military, if necessary, to “restore civil order.” In a very disturbing statement he also describes the use of machine guns as a means of controlling the population by U.S. soldiers on the Island.[24]
It was under these tumultuous debates and statements over birth control, that Puerto Rican Independentistas responded to threats of using military force to control the Island’s population. Their impassioned statements interpreted concerns over “overpopulation” as capitalism in disguise. They argued that the very reasons Puerto Rico was experiencing these socio-cultural problems was due to thirty-four years of American intervention, dispossession of their land and “the actual control by American capital” of virtually all of their wealth that led to their dismal conditions. They urged for the U.S. to leave the Island at once.[25]
In the 1940s, “rhetoric” that maintained for continued control over Puerto Rican women’s bodies and sexuality and “persisted in the midst of evidence that contradicted it.”[26]As the Puerto Rican population on the Island expanded, so did per capita income, which tripled by 1952. Nevertheless, all of these factors taken together failed to answer why insular poverty persisted on the Island.[27]Agricultural workers that lived in these poorer areas were some of the first Puerto Ricans to migrate to the U.S. Then, in 1952, Puerto Rico became a Commonwealth of the U.S. and a territory. During this time period, migration greatly increased, including to Milwaukee.
Puerto Rican Migration to Milwaukee
The early 1940s and the end of World War II marked the beginning of Puerto Rican migration to Milwaukee with an influx of the first ten contract agricultural laborers arriving into the city. According to the Wisconsin Historical society, it was not uncommon for Puerto Rican workers to be acquired for work in Milwaukee “at the expense of employing tanners, founders, and other industrialists.”[28] Many other Puerto Rican migrants traveled to Milwaukee by way of Michigan after work in harvesting field crops and by way of Lorain, Ohio, after work in industry.[29] During this period, the majority of Puerto Ricans lived on State Street from Jefferson Street to Thirty-Fifth Street with the greatest concentration in the near South Side in the area known as Walker’s Point.[30] In only two years, the Puerto Rican population in Milwaukee rose to over 2,000, which quickly led some local officials to conclude that there was a “Puerto Rican Problem.” Specifically, there was perceptions of Puerto Ricans not assimilating at a fast-enough rate.
In 1953, Dr. Rudolph Morris of Marquette University’s Sociology Department, conducted a survey among the Puerto Rican population to determine the factors that led Puerto Ricans to migrate to the city. This survey, however, had serious shortcomings and did not focus on the “root causes […] nor the deep socio economic and cultural circumstances that conditioned the migrating process.”[31] Additionally, the survey, for all intents and purposes, functioned as an admonishment directed at the Puerto Rican community in hopes to increase assimilation efforts.
Nonetheless, the survey established that about ten percent of migrants were recruited to work in industry, more than half had previous work experience in the sugar cane and other agricultural fields on the Island, a large number were natives of the municipality of Arecibo, and the majority moved to join family, spouses and friends already living in the area. Further, concerns about the growing population of Puerto Ricans in Milwaukee led local officials to establish a “Puerto Rican Civic Committee” to address issues of “orderly assimilation.” This committee printed pamphlets on Milwaukee’s to help the Puerto Rican population assimilate faster—writing of the “customs, churches and schools” in the area. [32]
In John Gurda’s 1976 historical report of Milwaukee’s Latin community, he describes the arrival of Puerto Rican migrants as “warm” and that the Milwaukee community accepted them “with open arms,” this was in contrast to the Mexican migrants already working in agriculture and industry since the early 1920s in the city. He wrote that all of this happened for “some inexplicable reason.” He cites the “Puerto Rican Civic Committee” as being one distinct factor in the welcoming process. According to Gurda, this committee was responsible for informing the law enforcement that playing guitars on street corners was a Puerto Rican custom and not a “willful disturbance of the peace.” Further, Gurda writes that the Journal Sentinel wrote about a “sympathetic” police inspector that suggested Puerto Ricans wear identification cards to avoid run-ins with the law enforcement.[33]
I was very curious when I came across this statement in his report, since it is one of the only complete research studies conducted of the wider Latinx community in Milwaukee. Why would Puerto Ricans be given different “privileges” than other migrants moving to Milwaukee? Further, did these “privileges” allow Puerto Ricans to achieve mobility at a faster rate than other Spanish-speaking migrants in the area? Finally, what factors might have influenced their identity?
I began looking for clues in the archives and found several pieces of primary sources that suggested that, perhaps the reason Puerto Ricans received a so-called warmer reception by local officials, was because of open communication between Congressman Reuss and the Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marin, at that time. Further, their cultural ties to the Catholic church may have woven a connecting thread to the local fabric and positioned Puerto Ricans as more like local white Milwaukeeans than not. I also found correspondence from 1970 suggesting the political leverage that the Puerto Rican community held as U.S. citizens with the potential to vote. Although the former documents date between 1955-1958, it is possible, I think, that all of these factors taken together may have led to similar discussions that influenced their “warmer” reception at earlier dates. Further research into the archives must be conducted to confirm or disprove these cursory findings.
Image 1: Official letter from the governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marin to Congressman Henry S. Reuss.[34]
Image 1.5 Official statement from Congressman Reuss about the anniversary of Puerto Rico as a Commonwealth.[35]
Image 2: Document outlining 5 points to help Puerto Ricans assimilate and adjust to the city of Milwaukee (possibly one of the pamphlets that were distributed); refers to the Catholic church in point 3.[36]
Image 3: Letter to Mayor Maier discussing the political leverage the Puerto Rican community held.[37]
Gurda writes that additional welcoming tactics from local officials were brief and no other historical documentation suggested that the Puerto Rican community was afforded any more privileges moving forward.[38] On April 14, 1956, Congressman Reuss was to deliver a speech that addressed the continued “Puerto Rican problem” in the city of Milwaukee, which outlined the struggles Puerto Ricans faced in the U.S.:
In the struggle to adapt themselves to the physical and material aspects of life in the U.S., the Puerto Ricans have not been able to develop, to any marked degree, cultural centers reflecting their heritage. Jobs and education are key factors in Puerto Rican migrants’ adjustment to U.S. life. Through proper education, they will qualify to fill higher positions, live better and provide healthy, normal environments for their children. Thus, the questions of sustenance and social acceptance will be taken care of.[39]
It is clear that Congressman Reuss was, to some degree, dedicated to helping the Puerto Rican community in Milwaukee. Nevertheless, the majority of Puerto Ricans lived in dilapidated housing with 4-6 persons to a room, they lacked literature in their language, there was an increasing educational gap due to a lack of bilingual education and discrimination, segregation and racism existed in every aspect of life.[40] It was unclear as to how Congressman Reuss and other local officials planned to address these issues at that time. Although conditions and the adjustment period for the Puerto Rican community was bleak, Puerto Ricans continued to migrate to Milwaukee. Further, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society, financial instability in the 1960s led many Puerto Ricans to return to the Island, this period marked the beginning of va y vén, also known as circular migration, for Puerto Ricans in Milwaukee.[41]
In the early 1960s, writes Gurda, many Puerto Ricans intended to move back to the Island after accruing enough money.[49]Migration was seen as open-ended with the ability to travel back-and-forth. Similar to my own migrational experience, el va y vénthen became less ominous and more hopeful. Finally, I argue that both va y vénand vaivénare manners in which Puerto Ricans assert their power. They name the process of back-and-forth migration in their own words. In doing so, they enact a sense of liberation and embody a sense of liberation in the process.
Continuing into the early 1960s, Puerto Ricans continued to struggle with low-educational levels, poor housing, low employments rates and a lack of community services that could have otherwise cultivated a sense of place and identity in the Milwaukee. It was because of these factors that on January 19, 1961, the Puerto Rican Democratic Organization, Inc., was established as a platform for the community to “promote the welfare of the community and the city” as well as “stress patriotism and civic pride in order to live harmoniously in the true spirit of Americanism.”[50] According to the same historical report, this organization stemmed from the temporary “Puerto Rican Civic Committee” that was established in 1952. By 1966, the same Puerto Rican organization changed its name to “The Puerto Rican Organization of Wisconsin, Inc.” (PROW). It was at this time that Puerto Ricans in the city began to feel as if their needs were being served.[51]
Between 1966 and 1975, before the second survey among the Puerto Rican population was conducted, social movements erupted in over 200 cities and universities all across the U.S., including Milwaukee.[52]In 1966, the NAACP Youth Council, alongside Father James Groppi, joined the several years long efforts by Alderperson Vel R. Philips to implement a fair housing ordinance in the City of Milwaukee. These events ignited the 200 nights of marches led by Father Groppi and the NAACP Youth council. The marches were consistently met with resistance by large portions of the White community of Milwaukee.
On March 30, 1968, after 200 consecutive nights of marching, the NAACP Youth Council announced they were ending the marches. However, in a tragic turn of events, Civil Rights giant, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and the group decided to organize a peaceful rally to honor his life. It resulted in a march of 15,000 people—the largest in the city’s history. Following the death of Dr. King, the U.S. passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that included “robust provisions” in housing for people of color. By April 30, 1968, Milwaukee finally followed suit and passed a fair housing ordinance across the city.[53] It is important to note that none of these events, which undoubtedly affected all communities of color, were acknowledged and/or discussed in any of my archival research dealing directly with the Puerto Rican community of Milwaukee. Further research into the archives would be needed to help develop this argument.
As I spent more time in the archives, certain characters began to emerge—among them community leader Angel Luis Santiago. He was the acting head of PROW. He was also responsible for the extensive background research of the Puerto Rican population of Milwaukee leading up to the summer of 1976 survey in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the City of Milwaukee. It quickly became evident that Santiago was a fierce advocate for the Puerto Rican community in Milwaukee. He wrote about the lack of resources and was very clear in his argument that the Puerto Rican population was experiencing a unique set of challenges that were not being met by public officials or the city. Further, he wrote that there was not enough “manpower” to help bridge the gap between the resources available and Puerto Ricans in Milwaukee.[54]
According to the survey, forty-seven percent of those interviewed listed PROW as the main organization servicing Milwaukee’s Puerto Rican population. Santiago’s major pilot project “Plan P’alante” was drafted following the 1976 survey responses and set out to re-organize and expand the organization in order to provide resources in social services, economic development and the political interests of the Puerto Rican population. Further, the organization wrote that these tasks were unable to be fulfilled in the past due to “insufficient funds” and that “often times, public monies are directed to other ethnic or racial groups, or to other geographical areas […] such as the Southside, where sizeable Hispanic (Chicano) populations are located.”[55]
The 1976 survey was significant for several reasons; however, it’s focus on the “crisis of identity” was arguably one factor that Puerto Ricans all across the country were experiencing at different times and scales.
Today the Puerto Rican community is facing a major crisis of identity. Half-way between an island culture, rich in history, folklore and literature, and an Americna [sic] society with cultural characteristics that are alien to the Puerto Ricans, and that often doesn’t value the culture of the Puerto Ricans, the youth feels lost, rootless.[56]
In the 1976 survey in the City of Milwaukee, Puerto Ricans lacked a comprehensive cultural program and continued to struggle in areas of education. The average Puerto Rican adult completed 8.7 years of schooling, in contrast to a 9.8-year average for their African American counterparts. It is unclear, however, whether or not PROW was in communication with other major Latinx community organizations such as the Council for Education of Latin Americans (CELA), who advocated for the expansion of educational opportunities for the Latinx community. CELA proposed that a Spanish-Speaking Institute be established at UW-Milwaukee as a solution to meet these specific educational needs. The Spanish Speaking Outreach Institute was established in 1971 and acted as both a bridge and resource for the wider Latinx community.[62]Why did the Puerto Rican community feel that the Institute was not meeting their needs, which aligned with the very reasons that the Institute was established? Further research into the archives could answer this question.
By 1978, PROW established Milwaukee’s first Puerto Rican newspaper and the population rose to upwards of sixteen thousand.
Image 4: Editorial Section of “Soy Yo” Puerto Rican newspaper, 1978.
Another Puerto Rican activist and educator, Luis Antonio “Tony” Baez, emerged from the archives. In the early 1970s, he joined other Latinx leaders, including Mercedes Rivas and Aurora Weir, to create the Citywide Bilingual Bicultural Advisory Committee (CWBBAC).[63]The CWBBAC successfully advocated for the legal and bilingual educational rights of Latinx students. In June 1980, Baez also joined a panel of experts on race and national origin desegregation in the city of Chicago to establish sound educational practices. According to historical documents, this panel was the first such meeting to “compile and analyze existing precedents in a systematic manner” to delineate effective strategies “for courts and desegregation planners to follow” in Milwaukee, Chicago and other heavily segregated areas of the U.S.[64]
By the early 1980s, PROW failed to secure and renovate an old firehouse that it had hoped would serve as the new training center for the action items proposed in Santiago’s “Plan P’alante.” In a tragic turn of events, according to the Journal Times, PROW “closes its doors under a cloud of suspicions of its operations.”[65]Later, in an inexplicable act of terror, on November 4, 1985, Luis Santiago murdered Aurora Weier by rifle in front of her 7-year-old son while they walked into the charter school she established for local Latinx youth. The murder of Weier and his subsequent trial left the wider Latinx community without two major leaders. Santiago maintained his innocence until 2001, when he confessed to the crime while in prison.[66]It is undoubtable that these events had a lasting effect and marred Milwaukee’s Puerto Rican community organizing efforts. No other organization with the sole purpose of supporting the Puerto Rican community has since been established in the city of Milwaukee.[67]
In 1999, the first Latinx is elected to the Wisconsin State legislature, Puerto Rican attorney Pedro A. Colón. Other notable Puerto Ricans like Tony Baez and Carlos E. Santiago, the seventh chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, continue to contribute to the wider Latinx community as a whole.[68]In much of my archival and internet-based research, the history of the Puerto Rican diaspora ends with Weier’s murder. This is not to say that cultural groups did not exists following her death; nonetheless, more extensive research must be conducted to explore in detail more aspects of the effects of the end of PROW, Santiago’s actions and Weier’s subsequent death.
Conclusion
The history of the Puerto Rican diaspora in Milwaukee has been marked with transition and struggle.Extended research into the archives, additional surveys and interviews must be conducted in order to establish further analysis of the Puerto Rican community in Milwaukee and bridge the gap in understanding their continued struggles and the embodied experiences of Puerto Rican women.
