Phillipe Bourgois

13 Pages 3236 Words

a poor island since the day of its foundation by Christopher Columbus in 1493. “Puerto Rico’s residents have arbitrarily distorted the political and economic administration of the Island for almost five hundred years” (Bourgois, 48). Puerto Rico had never had a prosperous economy and was always easily controlled by other countries through the use of military force. According to Bourgois (2002: 49), “in 1992, more than 50 percent of the Puerto Rican population qualified for food stamps.” Even Caesar believes that Puerto Rico has nothing, not even natural resources.
The amount of Puerto Ricans that immigrated to New York from Puerto Rico was overwhelming. According to the 1980 census, “thirty-six percent of all Puerto Rican born between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four were living in the mainland United States” (Bourgois, 51). Hence, around 1.5 million Puerto Ricans have immigrated to the United States, which is an enormous amount. As United States was changing rapidly from being mostly agricultural to becoming industrial, Puerto Rican immigrants had to adjust to these changes, which was very difficult for them. According to Bourgois (2002: 52), over the past two or three generations, Puerto Ricans emigrants started out as peasants in New York, to becoming agricultural laborers to factory workers, to sweatshop workers, to service employees, and then to underground economy entrepreneurs. These variations of ways Puerto Rican immigrants earned a salary was not too different from each other, since all of these ways of earning an income for a living was not enough to live a normal life and support their family. These conditions of not having good income have caused the Puerto Rican immigrants to live in poverty.
New York City compared to East Harlem is distinct even though it is part of New York. East Harlem throughout history has been known to be as one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York. There are two...