EXHIBITION
The symbolic marks of the
boricua diaspora in the public space of
Preface
Dr. Alessandro Filla Rosaneli tells a story of his initial impressions living in Cambridge, Massachusetts during his six-month stay as fellow of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He tells me initially, he was impressed by the orderliness of life outside his apartment, the cleanliness of the street, the extreme care in communicating upcoming landscape changes via small wood posts cordoning off sections of street planters with brightly colored tape, the relative quiet of pedestrians. He was impressed with the amount of infrastructure, social agreement, and collective restraint needed to maintain this street as such day in, day out. In the following study on the small, post-industrial city of Holyoke that lies about two hours northwest of Cambridge, Dr. Filla finds a radically different New England urbanity; one of ethnic and racialized diversity reflecting the diaspora of Puerto Ricans over the last century or more. A city divided that also denounces social asymmetries and setbacks to the promised American Dream becomes significantly more interesting than its more wealthy and socially privileged neighbor. He shares he realizes his initial amazement with the Cambridge street underscores its lack of vitality compared to Holyoke’s Main Street and its vibrant engagement with public space.
We, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have had the distinct pleasure of hosting Dr. Alessandro Filla Rosaneli, professor at the Federal University of Curitiba, Brazil this year. Needless to say, our esteemed colleague has become my friend and intellectual interlocutor. Together with colleagues from Amherst College and across disciplines, we have begun a dialogue on public space, diaspora, architecture, and cultural politics of minoritized groups in the United States and in Latin America that we hope to continue through hemispheric collaborations. Evident in his provocative project on urban space that follows are Dr. Filla’s expertise, his generosity of time and spirit, and fine eye on our beloved neighboring city, Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA. We are grateful to Dr. Filla for his deep interest in the talent, intellectual prowess, heart, and resiliency of one of the most impactful Boricua communities in the United States.
Dr.ª Stephanie Fetta
Associate Professor of Latina/o/x Literature and Culture
Chair of the Latino/Latin American Five Colleges Council
Executive Committee member and Ex-Officio Director of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies
October 17, 2024
When I was provoked by my friend Professor Stephanie Fetta to pay attention to Holyoke (an inner city in Massachusetts) while I was a visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, I didn't expect to be so deeply moved. As I had never had any contact with this location, I looked for information in different places and managed to build a first impression remotely. Thus, as I have done so many times, I was already preparing for the foreign gaze, the necessary estrangement, to investigate this specific landscape. But I was surprised as soon as I entered Holyoke for the first time in May 2024—I had never felt those sensations before: a mix of discomfort, disorientation, and incomprehension.
Holyoke has a remarkable industrial past in North American history, especially as it is in New England and on the banks of the mighty Connecticut River. It was one of the first planned industrial cities in the USA, and, at one point in the 19th century, it was the center of paper production in the world and, therefore, nicknamed “Paper City”. This industrialization motivated several waves of immigration, in which Irish, Canadians, Poles, Germans, and Scots, among others, were building their lives in the region during the Industrial Revolution. However, with the end of the Second World War, two movements would change its history: the first came from the decline of the industrial strength that until then had supported Holyoke's economy, causing many industrial buildings to be emptied and, later, abandoned. The second began with the government program to allocate foreign populations to agricultural areas, which initiated a flow of foreign migration and allowed Puerto Ricans to come and work in the region. Currently, Holyoke has the highest concentration of boricua (as Puerto Ricans call themselves) outside the island, especially occupying this historic region of the city (Triverdi, 2017). This past remains latent because the State of Massachusetts itself considers it a “gateway city”, a city with an industrial past that no longer meets the expectations of the contemporary world and needs to reinvent itself economically. It was this social and constructed legacy that surprised me when I was in Holyoke for the first time, which gradually gave way and allowed me to enter this unknown universe to learn with this landscape.
FIG1 Reconverted industrial building in Holyoke, on the banks of the canal built at the city's founding
This project is entitled “The symbolic marks of the Boricua diaspora in the public space of Holyoke” and deals with the signs that emanate from the urban landscape shaped by public space. It was held in the central portion of Holyoke and its surroundings, especially on Main Street (FIG2). The objective was to understand how the Puerto Rican diaspora has manifested itself in public space and contributes to strengthening this population's connection with their homeland (FIG3).
FIG2: Downtown Holyoke area and its vicinity, Massachusetts (inside the red line)
Source: Google Maps
Compared to the State of Massachusetts overall (13%), Holyoke has an outstanding score: most of its resident population is formed by Latinos (51%), as shown by the 2020 Census (Grandberry & Agarwal, 2022). These authors point out that the municipality has experienced a population decline (mainly Whites) in the last decade, although the Latinos have remained stable.
This demographic scenario converts the Boricuas diaspora community at Holyoke into an interesting case of study about the symbolic dimension of the public space.
FIG 3: Mural by artist David Flores installed on the walls of the Holyoke City Hall parking lot after being removed from its original location, a private building, due to a contestation to its local representation, a clear indication of the difficulties arising from the demographic transition.
Public space is an analytical category that arouses continuous interest within the disciplines that deal with urban studies. Given human beings' social nature, the presence of a common space in urban agglomerations is geographically and temporally unequivocal, as Kostof (1991) already stated. To deal with contemporary urban issues, public space has been considered a “visible ethical compass of society” (Mitrasinovic & Metha, 2022) and a “cluster concept” (Kohn, 2004).
Thus, it is understood that studies on public space are increasingly relevant, as they contribute to the understanding of everyday urban life and allow us to investigate the advances, achievements, and maladjustments of a given society. However, public space is established as a category of multiple understandings, and different disciplinary fields explore it and, so, ends up having “often ambiguous, complementary or controversial meanings” (Innerarity, 2010, p. 10).
This exhibition makes a deliberate choice of analysis, observing the symbolic dimension. This option is justified by its incisive contribution to the understanding of one of the constitutive essences of a public space, that is, that which connects with the potential for openness, for belonging, that a given space can (or should) offer; of how it can freely house diverse manifestations, communications, experiences. Cassirer (2014 [1944]) points out that “man (sic) is a symbolic animal” and that human consciousness is symbolic by nature. This fact allows one to defend public space as an element of urban landscape loaded with meanings, many conceived as a representation of certain social groups (Cosgrove, 1998), which push people away or welcome them. It can be affirmed that this analytical perspective has evident connections with the concept of landscape, especially when it is characterized as a “representational medium” (Doherty & Waldheim, 2015). Indeed, the symbolic dimension of public space is hidden and, therefore, requires a careful look to be captured as it is a special way to identify the hidden dimensions in daily life.
This reading key also allows a special approach to what has been called the “city of migrants”. Amin (2018), when exposing that migrants have faced extreme fragility, hostility, and suspicion, daily and in various cities around the world, highlights that the urban landscape is active in the construction of places and in the bodily direction of people.
In other words, the symbolic dimension of public space emerges as an important “arbiter” of collective mediations, whose messages can contribute to the achievement of greater well-being (or not) for everyone.
To better approach the symbolic dimension of the central portion of Holyoke public space, some trip fields were done in May, June, and September 2024, walking from morning to evening, using a professional camera and a field notebook. The aim was to register physical marks in the urban landscape to better understand how public space can be a stage for disputes, contestations, and affirmations.
The visits allowed us to observe that there is a visible division of the landscape in the region studied, with emphasis on two public spaces among all those visited: Main Street and High Street. Both are concentrated in a set of marks that confirm what Hall, Finlay and King (2018, p. 465) define as “migrant streets”: “migrant streets are anything but the acquiescence to the singular strictures of nationalist assimilation or community cohesion, […] (they had) a capricious capacity for marginalized groups to organize variously, an accommodation of an array of subjectivities”. They are not simple expressions of a certain “comfort” abroad; there is combat, dispute in and over space. But there is a distinction between the two streets: while High Street shows signs of widespread migration, Main Street houses the struggles of Puerto Ricans, and this can be seen by observing the shop facades and the ground.
click on the frames to access the photographs
This distinction was decisive in focusing our attention on this specific street, Main Street. It is recognized by the Holyoke community as an expression of the Boricua culture and the “El Corazon de Holyoke” project (https://nuevaofholyoke.org) has been prominent in this spatial construction.
FIG4: One of the many murals spread throughout the central area of Holyoke, which well summarizes the affirmation of Boricua identity in the city
This researcher-walker in action in Holyoke's public space
By Alessandro Filla Rosaneli
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