Poverty,Culture and Social Capital in Puerto Rico Urban Communities
CENTRO JOURNAL
VOLUME XX NUMBER I
SPRING 2008
REVIEW ESSAY
Poverty, culture and social capital in
Puerto Rican urban communities
FELIPE PIMENTEL
Understanding Mainland Puerto Rican Poverty
By Susan S. Baker
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002
235 pages; $24.95 [paper]
Growing Old in El Barrio
By Judith Noemi Freidenberg
New York: NYU Press, 2000
310 pages; $22.00 [paper]
Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal City
By Arlene Dávila
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004
260 pages; $21.95
Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio
By Mario Luis Small
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004
226 pages; $20.00 [paper]
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High poverty levels among Puerto Rican populations living in the mainland
and on the island have been serious public issues and the subject of a
considerable number of research publications and policy reports. According
to Census data, Puerto Ricans have one the highest rates of poverty and substandard
living conditions among Latino residents in the United States. While in early 2000s
the poverty rate in Puerto Rico was about 45 percent, that of Puerto Ricans residing
in the mainland was close to 26 percent; and that of Puerto Rican children under 18
years of age was about 33 percent.
The poverty rate for this ethno-national minority
is only exceeded by the poverty rate for Dominicans (about 30 percent)—together
both groups are considered the poorest among Latino subgroups in this country.
Endemic urban poverty among racial and ethnic minorities has been explained
from different theoretical perspectives in the social sciences. For instance,
the so-called culture of poverty's approach became popular in the 1960s with the
publication of Oscar Lewis's books about Puerto Rican and Mexican families living
in deprived socioeconomic conditions. According to this view, urban poverty among
Puerto Rican families reflects certain normative orientations and cultural values that
predispose them to live in marginality, lacking essential social and cultural resources
needed to break out from self-reproduced circles of poverty. During the 1970s and
early 1980s other approaches inspired by political economy and Marxist analyses
became popular.
These radical views focused on structural inequalities rather than
cultural explanations and presented a different set of structural explanations to
account for the material disadvantages of Puerto Ricans. Within that context,
one can recall the dual labor market and under-class theories that have explained
severe poverty and socioeconomic inequalities suffered by minority racial and ethnic
groups in America. These inequalities have occurred as an outcome of structural
discriminatory mechanisms embedded in the labor market and reproduced in the
class structure of a capitalist economy. From that perspective, Puerto Rican workers
are poor and earn lower wages because they have been concentrated in low-paid,
unskilled jobs in a segmented labor market in which income and wage differentials
reproduce patterns of structural socioeconomic inequalities.
In recent years we have seen a redefinition of these structural explanations and the emergence of
interdisciplinary analyses that address the contentious question of Puerto Rican
urban poverty from new angles, grounding their analyses on both quantitative and
qualitative data sources.
In this review essay, I examine four books that address, in one way or the other,
the problem of urban poverty in Puerto Rican communities located in the United
States. These books present thought-provoking ideas about socioeconomic issues
affecting these communities and advance exciting interpretations about social,
economic and cultural questions that are vital for the critical understanding of the
Puerto Rican populations residing in the United States.
Understanding Puerto Rican Poverty analyzes the socioeconomic experiences of
Puerto Rican populations located in the United States, concentrating its analysis on
the last two decades of the 20'*^ century. Focusing on aggregated data from Census
sources, the book examines the complex situation ofa colonized minority group,
which historically has been excluded from most of the benefits of the speciously
named American Dream.
The book is divided in three interrelated parts that interconnect the themes and issues discussed by Susan S. Barker in a systematic way.
In the first part. Barker frames Puerto Ricans in a comparative historical
perspective by making pertinent socioeconomic comparisons between them and rames Puerto Ricansin a comparative historical
perspective by making pertinent socioeconomic comparisons between them and Mexicans and Cubans in the United States.
To summarize Barker's point of view:
Let's point out that she disagrees with sociological analyses that have lumped together
Puerto Ricans and other Latinos without taking into consideration the peculiarities
and specificities of each group. In essence. Barker argues that significant differences
among Latinos cannot be ignored when analyzing each group.
While the first section of her book examines the Puerto Rican experience vis-à-
vis other Latinos, and how Puerto Rican immigration processes have shaped their
early integration and current socioeconomic stratification, the second part seeks to
map geographically the Puerto Rican community. Mapping data by regions, the book
makes an important contribution to the sociological understanding of Puerto Ricans
in the U.S. by highlighting how and why their situation varies across the United
States. Grounding her analysis on primary and secondary data, the author argues
that, in general, the socioeconomic situation of Puerto Ricans in the South and the
West (the so-called Sun Belt) has been much better than that of the communities
located in the Northeast region, where the strong Puerto Rican enclaves have been
historically rooted. In this part. Barker examines the distribution of median-income
family incomes and poverty rates tabulated by regions. Using data from 1990,
she argues that:
The average median family incomes for Puerto Ricans in the Northeast and
Midwest (Rust Belt) are much lower than those in the South and West (Sun Belt).
The Northeast's average Puerto Rican family income was only $18,708 and the
Midwest's was $19,740. However, the South's was more than $23,000 and the
West's was above $26,500. (p. 75
This Evaluations are from the 1970-1985, things had change in a positive way for the Puerto Rican Community.
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