Danitsa Andaluz
Professor Bonastia
MHC Sem. 2: The Peopling of NY
February 1, 2014
Personal Migration History
In the late 1960s, fleeing domestic violence and pursuing a new life outside of the island of Puerto Rico, my great-aunt Myrna Escalera was the first of my family to come to New York City. Though facing a physical disability caused by polio when she was a child, she managed to establish a home here and soon sent for the second wave of migrants. My grandmother with only the youngest of her five children unmarried came to the city in 1984, followed by her three sons shortly afterwards.
My mother, the oldest of her siblings was married with two daughters and at the time had no plans of leaving her cushy life as a housewife on the island. However, in the summer of 1993, attempting to put physical distance between herself and my soon-to-be father, she arrived in NYC. In December of 1995 (when I was nine months old), trying to reconstruct her family, she flew back to Puerto Rico, only to dejectedly return to the city in August of 1996.
As she tells the story, she came to this city with three young girls, 30 cents in her pocket (though the number gets smaller every time she tells it), and a pair of broken flip-flops. We lived in a city shelter for a short time afterwards and were placed in the South Bronx on the corner of Park Avenue in Andrew Jackson Houses, where we have remained for the last seventeen years.
My family faced many hardships, including language barriers, discrimination, poverty, ignorance, and emotional stress. My older sisters struggled with bilingualism. They tried their best to adapt to a new culture, throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the Hip Hop era of the 90s and 2000s. My mother worked for public park sanitation briefly but eventually became a home health aide, working twelve-hour shifts in order to put food on the table. Through persistence and hard work she became a home health aide coordinator, a position she has held for eight years. My sisters took a large portion of the responsibility of taking care of me. My oldest sister began working at the age of fourteen. All the while, my sisters and I maintained a strained relationship with my father physical distance only made worse and he soon fell out of our everyday routine.
However, my mother argues that if she had the chance to do it all again, she would. She believes moving to the city brought us stability. Working hard as a single mother gave her a newfound independence. Finding a career she was both good at and passionate about gave her pride. Most importantly, watching her daughters live happy and healthy lives brought her joy. So was it worth it to get on that plane and leave everything she ever knew behind? She says of course!
Why did my family choose New York City as the place to start their little colony on the mainland? New York City was and remains the Emerald City to most Puerto Ricans. Records show that there are currently more Puerto Ricans in New York City than on the island itself. It has not been until recently that Puerto Ricans have ventured outside of the busy cities of the East to the quiet small towns of the Midwest. Cities mean people, and people mean jobs. Jobs are always the motivation of impoverished peoples. Today the island continues to struggle with high poverty and unemployment rates, and in a 2012 referendum its people voted to become the 51st state of the United States, hoping to receive a federal bailout. Like most immigrants my family came to New York City for a better life.
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