Abstract
Currently Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group and the largest minority group in the United States. The 2010 U.S. census estimates that by 2050 the number of Latinos will reach 130 million. At such a growing pace, their political influence and economic power can no longer be ignored. However, for people who live in the Latino neighborhoods or barrios of New York City, especially in the South Bronx, the options available to achieve the American Dream have been difficult to find. Their challenges, hopes and dreams merit attention. As Latino migrants from Honduras to the barrios of the South Bronx, my family’s journey to the United States helps engage a variety of topics and place them into a larger social perspective of home building, community, diaspora, and identity.
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Notes
- 1.
The term Hispanic is associated with a eurocentric perspective and, hence, the preference for the term Latino.
- 2.
See 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data for additional projections on demographic changes. http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf.
- 3.
For the purpose of this chapter, home refers to “three components of a critical geography of home: home as simultaneously material and imaginative; the nexus between home, power and identity ; and home as multi-scalar. These elements are not mutually exclusive but overlap” (Blunt and Dowling 2006. p. 22).
- 4.
Sendero Luminoso was a Maoist guerrilla insurgent group that sought to establish a government of the proletariat with an agrarian focus. They routinely terrorized and assassinated government officials, educators, and trade union organizers.
- 5.
The Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18 originated in the streets of Los Angeles, California in the 1980s. Young Central American refugees created these groups in response to constant assaults by local gangs like the Bloods and Crips. Many Salvatrucha and 18 members where deported back to Central America and continued the criminal activities there. What started as a defense mechanism in the United States metastasized as two international organized crime syndicates that are currently responsible for the larger number of deaths and kidnapping for ransom throughout Central America and Mexico. These Maras operate with impunity and currently no system in place can effectively address this ongoing social crisis.
- 6.
Policies such as the Wet Foot, Dry Foot policy allow Cubans the right to pursue legal residency upon arrival.
- 7.
Salsa music’s birthplace is New York City and combines music genres from Cuba and Puerto Rico.
- 8.
Ethnicity emphasizes the cultural traits of a group that allow the expression of a sense of belonging and solidarity. Culture can be seen as the shared practices, the know-how of a group, and a learning process that deals with everyday challenges. Everyday challenges emerge out of the social, economic, and political changes in a given system over time. As these conditions change, the culture adapts; therefore, the cultural practices of a group ethnic identity adopts new traits. Therefore, the aggregate behaviors of an ethnic group can change across time and space (Leung and Lau 108–109).
- 9.
Latifundista is the Spanish word for a wealthy landowner.
- 10.
Coyote is the Spanish word for a human smuggler.
- 11.
The population consisted of 171,000–192,000 Puerto Ricans, 73,000 blacks, and 6000 designated as “others”. To cover this area the captain had 336 patrolmen, no policewomen, 22 sergeants, and 4 lieutenants. The precinct had a detective squad with a reputation for getting quick results. The Four-one was 2.5 square miles in area with 60 miles of streets for the beat cops (Walker, 7).
- 12.
Jamaican DJ Kool Herc is known as the father of hip-hop for creating the blueprints of the genre. Hip-hop has five components: Oral/Rapping, DJ’s mixing skills, graffiti as art, b-boys/b-girls dancers, and fashion.
- 13.
“[In Mott Haven alone], nearly 4,000 heroin injectors, many of whom are HIV-infected, live here. Virtually every child at St. Ann’s knows someone, a relative or neighbor, who died of AIDS and most children know many others who are dying of the disease” (Kozol 1996, p. 2).
- 14.
South Bronx High School’s Motto: “Home of the High Flying Phoenix”.
- 15.
A few years ago, the New York City Board of Education closed South Bronx High School due to poor academic performance. The renamed South Bronx Campus today is home to Mott Haven Village Preparatory High School and University Heights High School.
- 16.
“The average expenditure per pupil in the city of New York in 1987 was $5500. In the highest spending suburbs of New York (Great Neck or Manhasset, for example, on Long Island) funding levels rose above $11,000, with the highest districts in the state at $15,000” (Kozol 1992, p. 83–84).
- 17.
See New York Times article on the Physical Fitness Program and how it changed the lives of hundreds of SBHS students. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/25/nyregion/in-bronx-pushups-cut-dropout-rate.html
- 18.
“Nearly three quarters of the New York state prison inmates come from the same seven neighborhoods of New York City: the South Bronx, Harlem, Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, South Jamaica, East New York, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan” (Kozol 1996, p. 160).
- 19.
Morris High School was the first high school built in the South Bronx. The name honors Governor Morris, a signer of the United States Constitution. Four Stars Army General Colin Powell and former Secretary of State during the George W. Bush first presidential term, is an alumni.
- 20.
The current Bronx Community College (CUNY-BCC) campus was home to The New York University’s undergraduate college and engineering school (NYU). In 1973 NYU moved to upper Manhattan and CUNY-BCC occupied the campus. Other prominent universities like Columbia University and CUNY-City College of New York followed the footsteps of NYC and also moved to Manhattan.
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Robles, Y. (2018). Latino Experience in the Barrios of the South Bronx, New York City: The Other Side of the American Dream. In: Compton, Jr., R., Leung, H., Robles, Y. (eds) Dynamics of Community Formation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53359-3_3
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