When a community embraces both progress and heritage
Source: The Boston Globe (By Micho Spring)
Posted in Hispanic Trending by Juan G. Tornoe
May 10, 2008

THIS YEAR, Boston - with the rest of the country - marks the 40th anniversary of a year that generated history like few others. In 1968, President Johnson shocked the nation by declining to run for reelection. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and the next night in Boston , James Brown took the stage for a concert whose calming words helped keep our city from burning in the riots that engulfed so many others.

Each of those events deserves the attention it has received. Amid them, Boston ought not forget another, one whose legacy lives on in our city today: 1968 was the year a small group of Puerto Rican activists refused to let their community be pushed from the city in the name of urban renewal - and in so doing, created a national model for renewing urban areas without suffocating their heritage. It was a critical step to our becoming the multicultural city we are today.

In 1968, there was little reason to doubt that the Puerto Rican community in the South End would suffer the same fate as other ethnic communities whose neighborhoods had gentrified - and whose sense of shared identity had therefore been diluted, making them collateral damage in a broader effort to reinvigorate downtown.

Conventional wisdom held that this was the price of progress. Boston 's downtown was being transformed into a world-class business and tourism center replete with gleaming skyscrapers. It was a choice - or so the assumption went - between advancing that vision and preserving Boston 's once-vibrant ethnic neighborhoods.

Then something extraordinary occurred: Having been asked to accept eviction, the Latino community of the South End - a powerless and largely poor Puerto Rican population in the heart of Irish Boston - said no. When they stood up and demanded that their heritage be both respected and preserved, Boston 's new, 38-year-old mayor, Kevin White, said something equally remarkable in reply: He said yes - and gave the community the rights to develop 30 acres in the South End. The result was a historic and still-thriving community of affordable housing called Villa Victoria .

The Villa Victoria community was and remains different because it was precisely that: a community. Plazas modeled on San Juan Colonial architecture created public spaces that fostered the growth of social capital. Elderly housing alongside a preschool ensured multigenerational connections. A credit union facilitated development.

Today, the community remains anchored by the Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center , whose namesake left a legacy of activism that remains a model for Boston 's Hispanic community today.

Villa Victoria stands as a great example of "New Urbanism" - strategies for growth that reject the false choice between progress and heritage, seeking instead to embrace both.

Meanwhile, the spirit of activism that mobilized Boston 's South End Latino community in 1968 is also the key to addressing some of our community's challenges today. Leaders like Jorge Hernandez showed us the transforming potential of civic engagement.

On the day when the cultural center that now bears his name opened, I called Jorge to offer my congratulations. He replied: "I have done my job so you can raise your children and they can raise their children in a fully bicultural Boston ."

Today, Jorge's legacy at Inquilinos Boriquas en Acción - as well as the legacy of the pioneers in activism who refused to be evicted four decades ago - stand as an enduring lesson in raising not simply our children but our city to be multicultural. The development of Villa Victoria reminds us that economic progress is not all - or even primarily - what makes a city. It reminds us that Boston's heritage, reflected in richly diverse ethnic communities, is itself an important economic asset. Most of all, Villa Victoria made 1968 the year that taught Boston our city could shed its skin without losing its soul.
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