Lizette Piedra with her sister Arlene. Photo provided by Alexander Piedra
By Alexander Piedra
The 1970s were a horrific time for the South Bronx, the poorest section of the most impoverished borough of New York City. Living conditions for low income families were abysmal and unsanitary. The Hispanic community suffered intensely during this time. Hispanic communities comprised the majority of the South Bronx, but were “redlined” by the New York City government and denied improved housing due to racial discrimination. The government did little to improve living conditions for Hispanic families. It wasn’t until President Jimmy Carter’s visit to the South Bronx in 1977 that people realized the severity of the problems at hand with the South Bronx. At the time, the South Bronx appeared no different than a warzone.[1] By 1975, the South Bronx was the most devastated urban area in the United States. Crime spread rampantly across neighborhoods. It was a city riddled with violence, street gangs, drugs, homelessness, and other ghastly crimes. The borough was falling apart from within. The rapid decline of the South Bronx demonstrated a multitude of government failures. The government failed to maintain infrastructure in the Bronx leading to physical decay. At the same time, there was an overwhelming wave of crimes being committed throughout the borough.[2] The South Bronx had fallen 57 percent in population from 383,000 people in 1970 to 166,000 people in 1980.[3] This drastic drop in population was the most striking decrease in an urban area in United States history and shows how the Bronx was almost uninhabitable due to the appalling living conditions at the time.[4]
My mother, Lizette Piedra, grew up on Valentine Avenue in the South Bronx projects. In an oral history interview, she has narrated her experiences of the living conditions and crimes committed in her neighborhood during the 1970s and 1980s. Lizette grew up impoverished in a family of seven and had to start working at the age of 14 to contribute financially to her family.[5] Growing up as a Puerto Rican woman entailed a life full of hardships, traumas and challenges. Lizette’s childhood was shaped by the environment in which she grew up in, and by her parent’s endeavors to keep their family safe in a dangerous neighborhood. Faith and religion helped to shape my grandmothers’ methods of raising children in an atmosphere that had become nearly impossible to prosper in. Despite the difficulties of life in the South Bronx, the Hispanic community and my mother found pride in Puerto Rican culture. In time, the community went to great lengths to rebuild its demolished neighborhoods. The attempts to rebuild the South Bronx gradually took effect over the course of the 1980s through the efforts of the Hispanic community and other humanitarian organizations. The South Bronx eventually transformed from being covered by ash to being paved with new asphalt roads.
The Hispanic community underwent significant changes from 1945 to 1970. The influx of Hispanic immigrants to New York escalated dramatically within a few decades. Thousands of Puerto Ricans left the island of Puerto Rico after the Second World war due to the economic and social policies that were instituted at the time.[6] After many attempts to aid the Puerto Rican economy, the United States government developed a large program for the industrialization of Puerto Rico in the post-war years. With the cooperation of the Puerto Rican government, the United States government encouraged the establishment of labor intensive enterprises in an effort to reduce the unemployment rate and create jobs for Puerto Rican residents.[7] American investors received tax benefits, free land, low interest loans, and other financial incentives from the United States government in order to expand the number of enterprises and jobs in Puerto Rico.[8] However, these incentives became insignificant due to the problem of overpopulation and the threat of inevitable economic collapse that widely affected agrarian businesses in Puerto Rico. Instead, the implemented policies were designed to encourage unemployed residents to leave Puerto Rico and migrate to the United States.[9] Puerto Rican residents sought better labor opportunities and economic relief in the United States. They were encouraged to migrate to New York where employment was supposedly plentiful and various labor opportunities could be found. There were many policies implemented by the United States government to help the flow of immigrants from Puerto Rico to New York. Shipping companies, charter airlines, air travel services, and reduced fares were established to aid Puerto Rican immigrants in their move to New York City.[10] The enormous influx of Puerto Rican migrants to the city greatly increased the population of Puerto Ricans living in New York City.
The Puerto Rican migration after 1945 significantly changed the landscape of the city. The population of Puerto Ricans living in New York City rose from 61,436 people in 1940 to 612,574 people in 1960 and continued to rapidly increase throughout the next decade, reaching a total of 811,843 people in 1970.[11] The majority of Puerto Rican immigrants were working class and found employment in labor-intensive manufacturing jobs and vegetable farms in the surrounding rural areas.[12] There was a special agricultural contract program that was created for Puerto Rican workers living in the city and in Puerto Rico. This helped Puerto Ricans acquire jobs and housing in the city.[13] The majority of Puerto Rican immigrants from 1945-1970 were impoverished and unemployed with minimal education or skills, so they were forced to seek “Blue collar” jobs in factories along with other manufacturing jobs. Furthermore, Hispanic neighborhoods expanded rapidly due to the influx of immigration and the rapidly growing Hispanic population. Spanish Harlem expanded from Park Avenue to the East River between 1948 and 1955 and the Puerto Rican community became concentrated in the South Bronx by 1960.[14] Puerto Ricans displaced mostly Jewish residents and other Caucasian ethnic groups and became the “majority minority.” Puerto Ricans outnumbered every other Hispanic ethnic group living in the city by 1970 and comprised 67% of all Hispanics living in the South Bronx.[15] Moreover, Puerto Rican families typically lived in high rise buildings and project developments which were neglected by landlords and fell into a state of urban decay. As the population of Hispanics increased in the South Bronx, vandalism, housing abandonment, arson, and rising homelessness became widespread problems.
The decay of the Bronx occurred gradually during the influx of Puerto Rican migrants into New York City, but the South Bronx was burning by the early 1970s. The South Bronx was ravaged and multiple neighborhoods were decimated by arson and New York City’s policy of urban renewal. The collapse of the South Bronx was mainly due to the implementation of racist government policies, widespread lack of jobs, negligence of city leadership, arson, and communal racism against Puerto Rican and African American neighborhoods.[16] In the early 1960s, fifty-one apartment buildings stood on Charlotte street, Wilkins Avenue, and East 172nd street, containing more than one thousand apartments and three thousand residents.[17] By 1977, only nine of these buildings were left and according to an article in the New York Times, “Six of the buildings have their windows and entrances blocked off with cinder blocks and concrete, and two of them are fire-blackened hulks.”[18] Puerto Rican families typically lived in section 8 housing and other project developments which were usually the targets of arsonists.
Puerto Rican neighborhoods were “redlined” by the New York City government due to racist policies.[19] “Redlining” is a government policy which entails excluding Puerto Rican and Black communities from acquiring government subsidies and improved housing. There weren’t any government policies implemented to financially assist impoverished Puerto Rican families or to improve housing which displayed the negligence of the city government. Any neighborhood that had 5%-10% African American or Puerto Rican population was seen as a declining neighborhood by the city government.[20] Puerto Rican families were segregated and forced to live within the projects of the South Bronx that were surrounded by violence and collapsing from arson. If a community was “redlined,” banks and insurance companies were reluctant to give out loans, fire insurance, and homeowners insurance.[21] “Because municipalities had discretion on where and when to build public housing, the projects invariably reinforced racial segregation.” [22] Puerto Rican communities suffered deeply from this policy which continued to reinforce racial and economic segregation within the South Bronx.
Furthermore, approximately 1 million white residents of New York City left the city between 1960-1970 and received government subsidies and financial assistance for mortgages. Puerto Ricans and African Americans were denied financial assistance to move out of the Bronx, which demonstrates how government policies surrounding the Bronx were racist and significantly impacted and hindered Hispanic communities from thriving and achieving financial stability.[23] Buildings within “redlined” communities were left to rot and were neglected. Matters became worse for Puerto Ricans when the city government implemented the policy of urban renewal. Over 100,000 impoverished Puerto Ricans were displaced from their homes in New York City and forced to move to the South Bronx as the city government demolished entire neighborhoods for the sake of building new middle-class housing.[24] Robert Esnard, who was the chairman of the Bronx office of the City planning commission during this time, stated, “By the late 1960s half of the buildings were gone. Abandonment had begun. The middle class had begun to leave, replaced by minorities and the poor. Those on welfare and those unemployed moved into Charlotte Street.”[25] Most Puerto Rican families were impoverished and struggled to live amongst the chaos that surrounded them. The city government ignored the rapidly growing population of Puerto Ricans in the South Bronx and disregarded the collapse of entire neighborhoods without hesitation. As stated by Ensard, “Buildings were left to rot. Landlords left. Bankers wouldn’t loan a dime. There was no such thing as insurance, fire or otherwise. The population turned over. Add to this the fact that Charlotte Street was selected as a site for two new schools, a public school and a junior high, and site clearing went on and you have the final irony: two school sites cleared for a population that doesn’t exist anymore.”[26] The severity of the numerous problems in the South Bronx wasn’t recognized until President Jimmy Carter visited the South Bronx in 1977 and when a burning building in the South Bronx was broadcasted nationally during the world series that same year. The Puerto Rican community suffered greatly throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The best way to understand what a typical day in the South Bronx was like for a Puerto Rican is to listen to the oral history of one who grew up during this time in this traumatic environment.
Growing up in the South Bronx as a Puerto Rican entailed a life full of hardships and trauma. Lizette Sierra (maiden name) grew up in the projects on Valentine Avenue in the South Bronx. She was one of five siblings in a family of seven. Lizette attended nursery school on Washington Avenue with her brother Chris.[27] Their mother, Anna Sierra, would walk them to nursery school every day through the rubble, garbage, and broken glass riddled throughout the streets. Despite the constant noise, burning buildings, and piles of demolished buildings, Anna would make the decaying environment an innocent game for Lizette and Chris by playing games with them in the rubble in an attempt to preserve their childish innocence.[28] Lizette was physically and verbally abused in nursery school by her teacher Ms. Figueroa, who had racist views of Hispanics who did not speak Spanish. Lizette suffered this abuse for a few months before her parents moved her to another nursery school where she met her new teacher, Ms. Ortiz, who was benevolent and helpful to her.[29] Anna and her husband, Richard Sierra, worked several jobs to provide for their family. Neither one of them had more than a high school education. Anna worked at St. Joseph’s church for Brother Patrick, who helped get Richard a job working security for the same company Anna worked at as a secretary.[30] Anna was Brother Patrick’s personal secretary; he came to respect her immensely for her hard work ethic and because she was a dedicated parishioner. Anna was widely respected by other Puerto Rican families in the community due to her involvement with the Catholic Church.
Valentine Avenue apartment that Lizette lived in. Homicide occurred on the stoops of this building in 1989. Photo provided by Alexander Piedra.
Growing up in the Catholic Church had a huge impact on Lizette and her family.[31] The Catholic Church was the foundation of Lizette’s childhood. Catholicism is deeply entwined in Puerto Rican culture. Within the predominantly Puerto Rican and African American community that Lizette grew up in, many Puerto Rican families attended church every Sunday and participated in church events. She attended church four days a week and was involved in the Spanish/English choir and youth group. The Church was a safe space in a neighborhood environment riddled with chaos. Lizette passed junkies, beggars, and many homeless people living on the streets when she walked to church with her mother.[32] Anna was a kind Christian woman- despite her financial struggles, she would buy strangers food out of kindness. Being surrounded by violence, chaos, domestic conflict, and drug addiction taught Lizette to be tough but also to have a kind heart since she was surrounded by injustice.
The severity of arson escalated dramatically during the 1970s and widely affected poorer Hispanic communities. In 1975, there was an instance where forty fires erupted in the span of three hours destroying entire project developments and high rise apartment buildings on East 138th street, East 149th street, and Bruckner Boulevard. Over fifty people were killed and 1,500 were injured in the fires.[33] Lizette witnessed multiple buildings engulfed in flames every month as a child. “I saw at least two buildings burn each month. I could smell the fire as the buildings were burning in the distance and the noise outside was constant.” [34] Additionally, Lizette lived through the Blackout of 1977 where the streets of the South Bronx became utter chaos. During the electrical blackout of 1977, extensive looting of stores and armed assaults took place in the streets of the South Bronx. The violence escalated throughout the night and there were reports from eyewitnesses that claimed “The police were pelted with rocks and bottles from the rooftops.”[35] The streets were filled with chaos and teams of police with baseball bats trying to mitigate the situation. Lizette witnessed multiple buildings burning, heard the sound of gunshots, the screams of men and women getting assaulted in the streets, glass breaking, and rioting as the scent of fire filled the air during the Blackout of 1977. Lizette stated “I was terrified. Listening to the screams of people in the streets, the constant sound of glass breaking, and hearing gunshots was traumatic. It was the most terrifying experience of my childhood.”[36] The blackout in the South Bronx resulted in an estimated $4.5 million in damages on more than 350 stores and other private properties that had been vandalized or destroyed.[37]
A few months later, one of Lizette’s neighbors was brutally raped in broad daylight in the hallway across from her apartment. Lizette moved from Valentine Avenue to Arthur Avenue in 1979 after the rape in her apartment building.[38] Brother Patrick helped Lizette and her family move out of Valentine Avenue after hearing about the rape by prioritizing their application for section 8 housing ahead of everyone else that had applied on Arthur Avenue.[39] Arthur Avenue was a dilapidated neighborhood that wasn’t much safer than Valentine Avenue but it was in a slightly better area of the South Bronx. “I lived next to a drug den and a methadone clinic on Arthur Avenue. When I stepped outside there was heroin on the left and methadone on the right and the park across the street was always full of winos.”[40] Even though Arthur Avenue was a slightly better neighborhood, Lizette was still surrounded by crime daily. There was another instance in 1972 where a 7-year-old girl was raped by two 12-year-old boys and hurled off of a 6 story building.[41] Crime rates in Puerto Rican communities continued to rise rapidly within the projects as the city government failed to take action to mitigate crimes in “redlined” neighborhoods. Many Puerto Rican families could relate to each other due to the trauma they endured living in the South Bronx.
Arthur Avenue apartment that Lizette lived in (on right). Methadone clinic next door (on left.) Photo provided by Alexander Piedra.
Crime was rampant in Puerto Rican communities. Arson, murder, and assault were at an all-time high. The South Bronx was taken over by street gangs who held sections of the Bronx. The most prominent street gangs in the Puerto Rican community were the Hells Angels, Zulu Nation, 5%ers, Chingelings, and Savage Skulls- who were all rival gangs.[42] By 1982, Lizette heard multiple gunshots a week related to street gang violence. “There were a lot of shootouts in the park across the street on Arthur Avenue. Gunshots were common at night.”[43] A few months later, a girl that Lizette knew from the neighborhood was shot and killed by several members of the Hells Angels in a street shootout.[44] Many Puerto Rican families experienced some form of violence on their block. Additionally, when Lizette was 18 years old, there was a murder in front of her building on the stoops. She walked out of her building and saw the blood on the ground and a chalk outline of the victim’s body before being confronted by the police who were investigating the crime.[45] Lizette’s mother knew she had to get her family out of the South Bronx by any means necessary. Lizette and her family moved north to Throggs Neck immediately after the murder. Crime plagued Hispanic communities in the South Bronx for decades but there were other political problems, such as racial prejudice and segregation of communities, which played a large role in shaping the collective Puerto Rican experience of living in the South Bronx during the 1970s and 1980s.
Racism impacted the Puerto Rican community in various ways in the South Bronx. The topic of race in Puerto Rican culture is complicated due to the fact that Puerto Ricans can be both black and white. Dark Skinned Puerto Ricans faced racial prejudice in employment and in public establishments whereas light skinned Puerto Ricans faced racial prejudice within their own communities for being too “White” or not Hispanic enough. “There is no Puerto Rican race, but there are white and black Puerto Ricans and all sorts of mixtures in between.”[46] Lizette faced racism growing up on Arthur Avenue because she and her family were the “whitest” Puerto Ricans on the block. African Americans judged her to be white and bullied her, whereas Puerto Ricans believed that she wasn’t Hispanic enough because she did not speak fluent Spanish. Due to not being fluent in Spanish and racial tension between African Americans and Hispanics, she was judged within her own neighborhood. “We were the whitest Puerto Rican family living in section 8 housing. The other Puerto Ricans didn’t think I was Hispanic enough because I couldn’t speak Spanish and the African Americans at catholic school didn’t want to talk to me because they thought I was white.”[47] The ability to speak Spanish was imperative for Puerto Ricans living in the South Bronx. Their language and culture distinguished them from African Americans and whites. However, if a Puerto Rican could not speak Spanish, they were largely shunned and treated with prejudice. Lizette faced verbal racism as well as physical racism on one occasion in 1981. Lizette was 10 years old at the time and borrowed her neighbor’s bike to ride down the block with her brother Chris.[48] Since they were poor, like most Puerto Rican families in the South Bronx, they could not afford their own bikes. They rode down the block about fifty yards before being jumped by four large African American males who stole their bikes and left them on the pavement bruised up. Lizette and Chris tried to fight back but they were overpowered by the size of their attackers.[49] Lizette and Chris were racially profiled and attacked on the street because they were white. “Nowhere was safe, not even fifty yards outside your apartment living in the South Bronx.”[50] It did not matter what a Puerto Rican’s skin tone was-both dark skinned and light skinned Puerto Ricans struggled because of racism.
On the other hand, life was tough for dark skinned Puerto Ricans in the community as well. Discrimination in employment played a significant role in blocking Puerto Ricans from reaching middle class status. The institutional racism of real estate steering, bank and insurance “redlining” of Hispanic neighborhoods, and mortgage insurance scams prevented Puerto Rican communities from thriving.[51] Dark skinned Puerto Ricans encountered racism from employers and suffered economically because of prejudice. There was an employment census done that determined “colored” Puerto Ricans earned less money than white men and experienced less leniency due to racial prejudice by employers.[52] Dark skinned Puerto Ricans often struggled to obtain jobs, thus the unemployment rate continued to rise within the Puerto Rican community throughout the decades. Dark skinned Puerto Ricans were paid even less than white Puerto Ricans who already faced economic racial discrimination.[53] “When he comes to the states, the Puerto Rican newcomer who is colored may experience his first difficulty getting a job or finding a place to live because of his color. He becomes a minority within the minority.”[54] Racism impacted everyone in the Puerto Rican community economically, socially, and politically regardless of skin tone. Enduring racism was part of the Puerto Rican communal experience and life itself in the South Bronx throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
The Federal Housing Act of 1934 bolstered the racial exclusivity of New York City’s suburbs and discouraged the building industry from serving South Bronx residents.[55] Not only were poor Hispanic communities deemed ineligible for loans, but federal mortgage agencies transferred funds from the heart of the South Bronx where it was most needed to suburbs in other states.[56] “A typical result was that savings banks in the South Bronx invested only about 10% of their funds in the 1970s in the borough and 30% in New York State. The rest for investments elsewhere in the country. The Dollar Savings Bank, the biggest bank in the Bronx, gave only thirty-two mortgages in the entire borough, while the Bronx president’s office released a 1977 survey showing that even after the uproar about “redlining”, the bank had reinvested less than 7% of its assets in the area.” [57]The negligence of the city government and banks prevented Puerto Rican neighborhoods from thriving economically and allowed poverty to swiftly escalate.
The Puerto Rican community shared many hardships living in the South Bronx throughout the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. The South Bronx was riddled with violence and collapsing by the day. The Puerto Rican community collectively faced racial discrimination politically, economically, and socially. The communal experiences of the Puerto Rican community proved how the city government was purposefully negligent and implemented policies within the Hispanic community that racially segregated neighborhoods. The oral history of Lizette Piedra’s experiences growing up in the South Bronx in an impoverished Puerto Rican family vividly depicts the daily struggles of a Hispanic and the dangers that were ubiquitous on every street corner. Through Lizette’s oral history, the shared experiences of the Puerto Rican community in the South Bronx are properly represented and solidified in history indefinitely.
Endnotes
[1] Jim Rooney. Organizing the South Bronx (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 34.
[2] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 35.
[3] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 37.
[4] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 37.
[5] Lizette Piedra, interview by author, Yorktown Heights, NY, November 16, 2019.
[6] Sherrie L. Baver, Falcón Angelo, and Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), 12.
[7] Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 13.
[8] Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 14.
[9] Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 16.
[10]Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 18.
[11]Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 19.
[12] Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 20.
[13] Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 21.
[14] Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 22.
[15] Baver, Angelo, and Haslip-Viera, Latinos in New York, 24.
[16] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx 50.
[17] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 32.
[18] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 33.
[19] Vivian Vazquez Irizarry, Gretchen Hildebran, and Julia Steele Allen. Decade of Fire (Public Broadcasting Service, November 2019).
[20] Irizarry, Hildebran, and Allen, Decade of Fire.
[21] Irizarry, Hildebran, and Allen, Decade of Fire.
[22] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 46.
[23] Irizarry, Hildebran, and Allen. Decade of Fire.
[24] Irizarry, Hildebran, and Allen, Decade of Fire.
[25] Jim Rooney. Organizing the South Bronx (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 34.
[26] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx 33.
[27] Piedra, interview by author.
[28] Piedra, Interview by author.
[29] Piedra, Interview by author.
[30] Piedra, Interview by author.
[31] Piedra, Interview by author.
[32] Piedra, Interview by author.
[33] “40 Fires Hit South Bronx in Three Hours,” (The Washington Post, June 4, 1975).
[34] Piedra, Interview by author.
[35] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 44.
[36] Piedra, Interview by author.
[37] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 45.
[38] Piedra, Interview by author.
[39] Piedra, Interview by author.
[40] Piedra, Interview by author.
[41] David Vidal, “Life Is Hard Amid Ashes of a Block in South Bronx,” (The New York Times, June 4, 1975).
[42] Piedra, Interview by author.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Piedra, Interview by author.
[45] Piedra, Interview by author.
[46] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 110.
[47]Piedra, Interview by author.
[48] Piedra, Interview by author.
[49] Piedra, Interview by author..
[50] Piedra, Interview by author.
[51] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 56.
[52] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 110.
[53] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 112.
[54] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 113.
[55] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 50.
[56] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 51.
[57] Rooney, Organizing the South Bronx, 52.