Atlas of Hispanic-American History

economic progress than most of their

Latin American neighbors. Critics of the

Operation Bootstrap policy had charged

that the program would increase Puerto

Rico’s dependence on the United States,

and indeed it had made independence

less imaginable for many Puerto Ricans.

But most Puerto Ricans felt that the pro-

gram had made effective use of Puerto

Rico’s relationship with the United

States, putting the power of the United

States to work for the people rather than

against them.

New York’s Puerto Rican

Community

While Operation Bootstrap improved

conditions in Puerto Rico, many Puerto

Ricans sought to improve their conditions

in a more direct way: by migrating to the

mainland United States. As U.S. citizens,

they were able to do so without immigra-

tion papers. Furthermore the low cost of

commercial air travel after World War II

made migration affordable to many Puerto

Ricans for the first time. From 1940 to

1950 alone, the number of Puerto Ricans

in the United States more than tripled,

from about 70,000 to 226,000. By the

1970s, nearly 1 million people of Puerto

Rican descent lived in New York City

alone, giving it an even larger Puerto

Rican population than San Juan. Actual

travel from Puerto Rico to the United

States during this period was even greater

than these numbers indicate, because

many migrants returned to Puerto Rico

each year, either permanently or tem-

porarily. Net migration—the number of

arrivals to the United States minus the

number of departures from the United

States—was usually a small fraction of

each year’s total Puerto Rican traffic.

During this Great Migration, New

York City remained the principal terminus

for Puerto Ricans seeking a better life on

the mainland, largely because New York

had boasted the largest Puerto Rican pop-

ulation on the mainland since the first

immigrants arrived to work in the city’s

tobacco factories in the late 19th century.

They were assisted by the Office of the

Commonwealth, founded in New York

City in the 1940s. But Puerto Ricans set-

tled in other parts of the country as well,

particularly Chicago and New Jersey,

where additional Offices of the

Commonwealth opened by the mid-1950s;

other cities easily accessible from Puerto

Rico via a short flight, such as Philadelphia

and Miami, were also popular places to set-

tle. The ease of migration out of Puerto

Rico was beneficial to the commonwealth,

since it acted to relieve population pressure

and job competition on the island.

In New York City, Puerto Rican

Americans built a community that

retained strong cultural ties to the home-

176 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY

1949 1972

1. sugar 1. chemicals


2. apparel 2. food products


3. beverages 3. apparel


4. construction materials 4. electrical equipment


5. chemicals 5. fuel oil


6. bakery products 6. scientific instruments


7. printing and publishing 7. fabricated metals


8. furniture 8. construction materials


9. ice 9. textiles


10. tobacco 10. tobacco

Top Ten Manufacturing Industries

in Puerto Rico

Average Annual Per-Capita

Income in Puerto Rico

$200

1940 1977

$2,000

Average Life Expectancy

in Puerto Rico

48 Years

1940 1977

75 Years

A CULTURAL

FLOWERING

As the Puerto Rican–American com-

munity grew, it engendered artists,

musicians, and writers who gave voice

to their experiences. These included

poets Juan Avilés and Victor

Hernández Cruz and prose writer Piri

Thomas, renowned for his autobio-

graphical account of barrio life, Down

These Mean Streets(1967). Band-

leader Tito Puente, born to Puerto

Rican parents in Spanish Harlem in

1923, helped popularize the mambo

in the 1950s and salsa in the 1970s. His

Latin jazz continued the fusion of

Caribbean rhythms and American jazz

that had begun with Cuban musicians

in the 1930s. A Puerto Rican–born

musician, José Feliciano, who moved

with his family to New York in 1950,

became a pop star in 1968 with his

Latin-soul recording of The Doors’

“Light My Fire.”