The Great Migration

Long attracted by the lure of the American Dream, the Puerto Ricans rank alongside the Irish in their long-standing tendency to the United States – in particular to New York City. Indeed, by the late 1990s, the Puerto Rican diaspora in the US was as large as the island’s total home-based population, with close to 3.8 million expats living stateside. Puerto Rican émigrés have even fermented their own US-based culture, creating such hybrid musical genres as salsa and reggaeton, and spawning a plethora of foreign-based – but proudly Puerto Rican – superstars such as Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Mark Anthony.
Although migration to the US has been common since the early 1800s, the largest exodus didn’t occur until the mid-20th century, when the granting of US citizenship to all Puerto Ricans, coupled with a lack of economic opportunities on the island, led to tens of thousands of people flocking north. The process snowballed in the late 1940s when a new air link to New York sent another wave of homecoming GIs and dispossessed agricultural workers to the Big Apple where they settled in East Harlem, a quarter that was promptly rechristened “Spanish Harlem” or – in Latin lingo – El Barrio. In the year 1953 alone an estimated 75,000 Puerto Ricans arrived in New York City and by 1960, over half a million called the Big Apple home.
In the early years, the migrant experience wasn’t always a harmonious one, with Puerto Ricans invariably gravitating towards New York’s poorest neighborhoods, where the faced economic hardship and discrimination. The situation wasn’t aided by a failed assassination attempt on President Truman in 1950 and an abortive shooting on Capitol Hill four years later, both acts by Puerto Rican nationalists. Subsequently islanders came to be seen as unpatriotic and were often viewed with distrust and suspicion. As a defensive mechanism many Puerto Ricans banded together in groups and began to re-assert their cultural identity. This led, in part, to the birth of the art-house Nuyorican movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. Centered at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café on New York’s Lower East Side, this progressive artistic movement helped to promote salsa music and showcase classic Puerto Rican-inspired movies such as Carlito’s Way.
With economic conditions improving since the 1980s, many Puerto Ricans have worked their way up the career ladder and moved towards more white-collar jobs. As a result, sizable Puerto Rican enclaves now exist in the affluent suburbs of cities such as Miami and Chicago, and a number of US-born Puerto Ricans have moved back to the old country where they have invested in second homes.

Aus: Lonely Planet Puerto Rico 2008