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[lang_en]

Xavier “Xavi” Luis Burgos

“I am going to have a VERY hard time being at the Ciclo Urbano event if the No Se Vende people are talking about wanting white people to get the hell out in front of my children and waving Puerto Rican flags in our faces, ” wrote a new resident of Humboldt Park in an e-mail to the head of West Town Bikes on April 23.

Thus began a comedic fiasco well deserving of the title given to this commentary, but here is some background information first.

Humboldt Park, in the last few years, is a community where homes, full of memories, are bulldozed and gutted, where families are pushed away by ridiculous increases in rent and harassment by greedy developers and city inspectors, and age-old murals are covered-up.

It is in this current reality that West Town Bikes, which is a mostly white-owned and frequented bike shop in Humboldt Park, decided to open-up a shop on Paseo Boricua. And with surprise of some, all this took place with the strong support of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC). Why, you must be thinking, would an organization like the PRCC, which has been a leader in promoting and maintaining a Boricua cultural and business corridor along Division Street, facilitate this business’ arrival here?

Well, one of the answers is because Puerto Ricans bike too! Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park also have huge health disparities, which has pushed-up the rates of diabetes, obesity, and cancer. The PRCC also has programs like CO-OP Humboldt Park and Muévete, which work on the issues of health, including promoting physical activity. And most importantly, it is because being pro-Puerto Rican does not mean being anti-white or anti-new resident.

Those Paseo Boricua flags are gates of welcoming and gates of dialogue. West Town bikes respects what the Puerto Rican community has worked so hard to create on Division Street and decided to join the dialogue with its new shop, Ciclo Urbano. They also planned to celebrate this new relationship by organizing a large procession from their old location with the PRCC’s Humboldt Park NO SE VENDE! Campaign (HPNSV). However, not all new residents, including the one who sent the e-mail, is as respectful or understanding of all this.

The e-mail’s author (who I will call “angry neighbor,” since her personal identity is insignificant, but her actions are representative of a greater problem) also complained that HPNSV practices “reverse racism” and has a “nationalist platform.” The angry neighbor made it a point to proudly claim that she was white, despite the fact she is “half Hispanic” (her words), as a way to connect with the head of West Town Bikes. To sum it up, the e-mail’s tone was along the lines of “we need to do something about these Puerto Ricans.” West Town Bikes did not buy it, and we all enjoyed a procession on May 1 that involved over 200 people.

Sadly, divisive tactics like those of angry neighbor is something that will only further destroy all the work that people have put into developing Paseo Boricua. There is an ever-present sense of “yuppie isolationism,” where many angry new residents, longing for another Bucktown, seek to replace Paseo Boricua with their own visions of community instead of working with the existing community.

In the “city of neighborhoods” – a slogan that emerges from a horrendous history of racism and urban segregation – one can explore the world in only a few miles and a few minutes. In this global city one can find Pilsen, where México lurks in old Czech architecture and Bronzeville, the historic center of the “Black Metropolis.” One could also hear the loud sounds of Café Colao coffee brewing behind its counter, snapping its customers back to la isla.

Once I gave a tour of this community to a group of young basketball players from Puerto Rico, who never stepped foot outside the island. While I explained the meaning of some murals and pointed to the iron emblems detailing symbols of Boricua culture on the light poles, I overheard whispers of excitement: “Wow, I feel like I’m in Puerto Rico. I feel like I’m home.”

The communities that I mentioned suffer from stains of ghettoization, places where people of color were forced to occupy, but are beginning to experience cultural and economic rebirth – development from the vision of its longtime residents. Sadly, Chicago, like most U.S. cities, is on a path of Disneyland cookie-cutter dreams– a metropolis of Lincoln and Wicker Parks for miles and miles. Like Pilsen and Bronzeville, Paseo Boricua and all of Humboldt Park, is in the path of the slow-moving bulldozer called gentrification. Our destruction will only please people like the angry neighbor and that is why we cannot let it happen anymore.[/lang_en]

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Roz Diane Lasker and John A. Guirdy recently published the book, Engaging the Community in Decision Making, summarizing how five community partnerships attempted to address the growing field of community participation, which promises to include formerly excluded community members from decision-making process. One chapter of the book is dedicated to the saving of the Humboldt Park Mural, La Crucificación de Don Pedro, located on the corner of North Avenue and Artesian Street. The chapter deals with the community’s attempt to save the mural against the backdrop of the forces of gentrification and the intersection of the work by Alderman Billy Ocasio, Near Northwest Neighborhood Network (NNNN) and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.[/lang_en]

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Humboldt Park community residents gathered at Batey Urbano (2620 W. Division) to prepare for one of Puerto Rico’s most cherished cultural traditions. This tradition, which has taken place for over a century in Puerto Rico, has finally made its way onto the streets of the chilly Windy City.

Despite the wicked wind, nearly 100 people came out to participate in the 2nd annual ¡Humboldt Park NO SE VENDE! Parranda on Paseo Boricua on December 20. The sounds of panderetas, tamboriles, güiros, maracas and palitos unleashed into the eardrums of everyone on Paseo Boricua.

The Parranda visited Paseo Boricua businesses such as Café Colao, La Bruquena, Yauco Liquors, Latin American, Lily’s Record Shop, La Plena, Luquillo Barbershop, and Papa’s Cache. It ended at the Teresa Roldán Apartments on Paseo Boricua, where the building residents and all who participated in retaining the holiday spirit were welcomed to dance, sing, drink hot chocolate, play dominoes, and eat a delicious Puerto Rican meal. All in all, old man winter could not ruin our Caribbean ritual as it turns out that the spiritual warmth inside of all Puerto Ricans proved more powerful. Organized by the ¡Humboldt Park NO SE VENDE! campaign, which is a project of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, with support from Alderman Billy Ocasio (26th Ward) the parranda was yet another example of how important it is to maintain our culture as we fight against gentrification and in the process, keep our traditions strong for future generations.[/lang_en]

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Internationally recognized artist Manny Vega made a unique visit to Chicago last week to install an original 19-foot mosaic in the courtyard of the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture (IPRAC).  Mosaics are one of Puerto Rico’s most fundamental traditional art forms.  The finished mosaic will be on permanent display at IPRAC.

Vega, known for his public art projects in New York City, constructed the mosaic in his New York studio and shipped the piece to Chicago.  It is constructed of granite, marble and slate tiles.  In the center of the mosaic, is a map of Puerto Rico surrounded by symbolic representations of Puerto Rican life and culture.

“This mosaic is a reflection of all the things that make us who we are – the music, the culture even the nature,” says Vega.  “I am honored to have my work become a part of the rich history of the Chicago Puerto Rican community.”

IPRAC hosted on-site workshops and visits from youth and schoolchildren of the community during the installation.  Students from neighboring Roberto Clemente Community Academy’s Radio/Television Program filmed the installation as part of a documentary about IPRAC and its historic location in the former Humboldt Park Stable.

The Institute of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture (IPRAC) is an arts and educational institution devoted to the promotion, integration and advancement of Puerto Rican arts and culture.  IPRAC has been bringing visual arts and exhibition programming and arts education workshops to the community since 2001 and is nearing the completion of the interior renovation of the historic Humboldt Park Stables.  Once open, IPRAC will be the only museum in the nation dedicated to Puerto Rican arts and culture.  The museum will be home to a permanent collection of works created exclusively by Puerto Rican artists and will offer a year-round exhibition program, an oral histories program, a lecture series, educational workshops, a film series, an annual fine arts and crafts festival, art instruction and performing arts presentations.[/lang_en]

Some might say that if you look-up the word “pride” in the dictionary what you will find is a picture of an exuberant Puerto Rican holding our one-stared flag attached to a six-foot stick. And if the picture could speak, it would be yelling “BORICUA!!!” Some might say this with a smile or rolling their eyes, but we could care less, because according to us there is something about being Puerto Rican that one who isn’t could ever understand. Puerto Ricans sometimes don’t understand pride ourselves, which can be dangerous. If we learn about our pride, our history, our identity, even partially only, then can we understand our obligation as Puerto Ricans to our fellow compatriots. If we really know who we are, then we could stop the crisis that is swallowing our community – before it is too late.

“How do you expect Puerto Ricans to move back here?” says Manuel Saldaña, 20, rhetorically, pounding his fist on a table, holding a list of phone numbers for vacant apartments in front of him. As he turns to look at me, his sky blue eyes reveals his frustration and a searches for answers, I wonder if we are reaching our last days as a Puerto Rican Humboldt Park.

Manuel had spent the day walking the inner blocks of a community that he once walked everyday, in search for a way to return home from a life of displacement. When he came from the island as a child, he lived in this ‘pedacito de patria,’ but like many other children of Borinquen, moved west to Belmont-Craigan. However, while yearning for the sights and sounds of this concrete tropical homeland, he realized that it is simply too expensive to return. When asked why he wanted to come back, he simply said, “Because I’m Puerto Rican.”

It is not to say “ya se nos vendieron” as some might comment cynically, masking their feelings of hopelessness in the name of “keeping it real” (When has cynicism produced anything positive or helpful?). Humboldt Park is still full of affordable rentals, homeownership programs, and even affordable condos for those who do want to return, but they are dwindling. Puerto Ricans are still one of the largest groups in East Humboldt Park and our political participation in electoral and community issues is unmatched. But for how long? If you are truly proud to be Boricua, you cannot just visit or show that pride once a year with a visit to the park and a cheer during the parade. If there are no Puerto Ricans living here, then there will be no power to make sure that we can justify having a weeklong fiesta, amongst other cultural and political events, organizations, and programs. Come back and Humboldt Park will welcome you with open arms. Stay and Humboldt Park will be thankful. Participate and Humboldt Park will grow and improve. Leave, and it will be only a few years until new residents have enough power in numbers and votes to make sure we have nothing to come back to. What does “Yo Soy Boricua” mean if there is no community to attach it to?

“No, I hate it. The white people are coming in and it’s getting too expensive to live here.” That is a common response amongst the Humboldt Park community when asked about gentrification, and how it is affecting the community.

The reason many long-time Puerto Rican residents feel resentment toward the white population moving in is because they don’t want to succumb to change and they want to preserve their culture within Humboldt Park. Rafael González, 30, who used to live in Humboldt Park, refers to it as “Little Puerto Rico.” For years the community has worked towards establishing a strong Puerto Rican presence. The fact that condominiums are being built here, slowly flushing out the Puerto Rican residents, is upsetting. Property taxes are rising and the cost of living here is becoming unaffordable.

However, for some the effects of gentrification are not all negative. Some people living in the community are happy to see it improving. They want to see the community thrive and prosper and are happy to see the betterment of its conditions. Residents also like to see gangs being pushed out of the Humboldt Park community, making the streets safer and more comfortable to them.

While some see the effects of gentrification improving the community, residents are unhappy to see the preservation of the Puerto Rican culture sacrificed in order to do so. It all depends on a person’s beliefs and needs. If someone feels threatened walking down the street, then seeing gangs pushed out of the community will be their main priority. Although, that person or group out on the street may not feel threatened, and want to see their friends and family remain in the community.

In order to counteract gentrification, Puerto Ricans and other longtime residents have united in order to ensure that the same would not happen in Humboldt Park that has happened in the Lincoln Park and Wicker Park communities. The Humboldt Park Empowerment Partnership was created out of concern for the Puerto Rican residents being forced to move out due to unaffordable housing and previous attacks on service organizations. As described on their website, in order to stop gentrification, the Humboldt Park Empowerment Zone Strategic Plan was founded in 1996 to uphold the character of the community through programs dealing with cultural traditions, business, and housing.

Whether we like to admit it or not, gentrification is becoming prevalent in the Humboldt Park community. It is up to the community’s residents to ensure that gentrification is stopped, or a peaceful medium is found where the residents can still retain their cultural roots with a condominium here and there.