Spanish Streets

[This is the first of a two-part series]

Walk down Columbia Street at night and the chances are good you will hear music with a Latin beat escaping from the windows. Winter has driven the guitar-strumming, beer-drinking knots of friends off the stoops, it's true. The windows are shut tight against a cold which seems even harsher compared to the tropical warmth of Havana and San Juan. But though forced inside by an inhospitable climate, the music will not be imprisoned. The salsa sound of Puerto Rico, or perhaps a Mexican ballad, filters faintly out to the street, signalling to the passerby that he walks in the heart of Cambridge's Hispanic neighborhood.

In 1950 the local Spanish community consisted of no more than three or four families in East Cambridge, but it is now large enough so that groups of Hispanics are found all over the city, in North Cambridge, East Cambridge, and Cambridgeport. Columbia Street remains the center, however, for the majority of Hispanic families live in the area north of Mass Ave midway between Central Square and MIT, which includes two low-rise public housing projects, Newtowne Court and Washington Elms.

Just a subway stop from Harvard, the people of el barrio, the neighborhood, are playing out their roles in the largest wave of immigration in recent years, the wave of Latin Americans from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Central and South America which has swelled the United States Spanish-speaking population to an estimated eight to 12 million people. They are repeating the drama which built this nation, the drama of the immigrant. Like those who came before, they are finding these shores of promise to hold a mixture of reward and tribulation.

In Cambridge, as in many other parts of the country, exact count of the number of Hispanics is close to impossible. In Boston, for example, the 1970 U.S. census counted 17,900 Spanish-speaking residents, but this estimate may fall far short of the actual number because of the high mobility within the Spanish community, and a lack of bilingual census takers.

A careful study of linguistic minorities by the Association for Boston Community Development in 1972 yielded an estimate of 40,000 Spanish-speaking residents in Boston, probably closer to the truth. One official in the Massachusetts State House estimated there are 120,000 to 250,000 Spanish-speaking residents Massachusetts, although the U.S. Census counted only 64,000 such residents in 1970.

According to Manny Trillo, assistant director of tenant selection for the Cambridge Housing Authority, the number of Hispanics in Cambridge lies somewhere between two and ten thousand. "In my ten years in social service, the biggest problem has always been getting a count. These people are not registered to vote, not registered in schools."

Perhaps 70 to 80 per cent of Cambridge's Spanish-speaking Cubans and Dominicans form the next largest groups, followed by a smattering from most Central American and even some South American countries. While there are hazards in generalizing about Cambridge from information gathered on Boston Hispanics, such statistics are valuable as ballpark figures, given the lack of studies specifically concerning Cambridge. In Boston, according to the 1972 community development association study, 70 per cent of Hispanics speak little or no English, and 35 per cent are unemployed. Welfare recipients comprise 42 per cent of the population, 50 per cent are under 18, and of young people aged 16 to 19, nearly 60 per cent are not in school.

The Puerto Ricans of Cambridge come overwhelmingly from two small cities in Puerto Rico, Coamo and Jayuyah. They started to move here in the '50 s, drawn off farms in Puerto Rico by the boom-time of the Korean War. The first to come sent back for relatives until whole extended families had migrated.

At first the only work available to them was in car washes or New England orchards and farms. The doors to Cambridge factories were closed to Hispanics according to Roberto Santiago, a Cambridge Hispanic who is a community liason worker for the city school department. But if some types of work were off limits, employment for unskilled laborers was abundant.

As employers realized that Puerto Ricans could be hard workers despite language difficulties, the barriers to factory work eased, Santiago says. Currently Cambridge industrial concerns such as Nabisco and Polaroid, and the newer electronics companies such as Advent and Cambion all hire significant numbers of Spanish-speaking employees.

At the same time that some companies began to hire Hispanics, however, they also began a policy of replacing non-immigrants with immigrants at a lower wage, according to Santiago. Hispanic workers were willing to take lower pay for the same job, having few alternatives, Santiago says. Unions were lax in protecting the wage standard of Hispanics. Exploitation of the workers resulted as it had in previous years with other immigrant communities, he says.

Manny Trillo says his work at the housing authority makes him believe Spanish-speaking people have no more problems with housing discrimination than any other low-income group, certainly not in public housing in Cambridge. If Hispanics have more trouble in the private housing market, it may be because of "a cultural stigma against what Hispanics do in their homes," says Trillo. "We are loud, we talk very loud, and that scares people. It's a cultural thing. When I'm with Anglo friends I'm very calm, talking like I just got out of college. But when I'm with Hispanics, suddenly I become very loud." As a result of this cultural difference, Trillo reports, some private landlords have complained about public housing tenants placed with them under leased housing subsidy programs, charging that the tenants have stayed up late with visitors, or have disturbed neighbors with loud talking.

Santiago stresses the extent to which Hispanics live outside the Columbia Street area. "We don't want to create a ghetto, to have all puerto Rican people live in one project. We want people distributed around the city."

But for many, el barrio provides the relatives, friends, food, and Spanish-language newspapers that can't be found elsewhere. Trillo considers this affinity for the barrio a natural tendency.

"There are a lot of ethnic neighborhoods in this country; there's nothing wrong with that per se," says Trillo. "In public housing the question is, do you want to give a government subsidy to start a Spanish ghetto (in public housing)--with no bad connotations to the word? Black pressure groups will push for affirmative action in the smaller, more desirable housing projects, but Hispanics are not interested, Trillo says. In fact, the racial integration concept in public housing may be responsible for hostility between blacks and Hispanics.

According to Trillo, for many Hispanics seeing friends, hearing the kind of music they like, and going to stores where they can buy the foods they are accustomed to is more important than upgrading their living standard by moving away from Washington Elms Newtowne Court to a smaller, newer project.

"By and large these are very poor people," Trillo says. "While you and I might think otherwise, to them Washington Elms is a mansion. A warm home, running water, a separate bedroom for the kids--you can't beat it." The trouble comes when housing authority regulations seem to block Hispanics at the door. Recently, Trillo went down his list past 80 minority families, mostly Hispanic, before reaching a white family whose preferential entry was required by Washington Elm's replacement rule designed to promote racial balance. Another problem arises when Hispanics who would prefer to stay near Columbia Street are assigned to the predominantly white Jefferson Park project in far-off North Cambridge. "How can I explain to them that 200 years of history means they have to go to Jefferson Park?" Trillo says. "I try."

While Hispanic newcomers to Cambridge have left much behind, they have also brought some of home with them. Cambridge is not New York City, where over a million Spanish-speaking people have two UHF television stations serving their needs. But Cambridge can tune in on Boston-based Radiolanda 1600, an AM station featuring Spanish-language broadcasting in the bombastic announcing style of stations in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Cambridge Hispanics also play in Boston's amateur soccer league, where teams like Hispanos Unidos and El Salvador compete against other immigrant and domestic clubs, with the league standings published every Thursday in The Boston Globe.

Living in the barrio may mean living in Columbia Terrace, a complex of 62 apartments built as mixed-income housing five years ago with federal and private monies, and now jointly run by the Cambridge Association of Spanish-speaking Tenants (CAST) and the landlord, Abrams Management.

In the barrio, bodegas (grocery stores) like El Coloso on Broadway which cater to Latin American tastes are close at hand. Also close by is Casa Alegre, a Latin-American record store which sells Spanish newspapers and statuettes of the saints as a sideline. Around the corner in Central Square is the Latin-O Restaurant. Its authentic Hispanic cuisin attracts a 90 per cent Anglo clientele, however. After all, local Hispanics can buy in the neighborhood bodega the same ingredients the Latin-O uses, and make equally authentic Latin cuisine in their homes.

Perhaps the sweetest reminder of home is the dance party, costing up to $15 a couple, where Latin-style bands play the marimba of Guatemala, the cumbia of Colombia, and Puerto Rican salsa. A band may be flown specially from Puerto Rico or Central America for the event, if enough tickets can be sold. Otherwise there is plenty of local talent, such as Los Estrellos Latinos de Boston.

Recently the Union Juvenil Hispana of Cambridge Rindge Latin School sponsored a tund-raising dance at the Santo Cristo Club on Cambridge Street which featured a Dominican band, the Conjunto Imperio Latino, door prizes, and lots of dancing. Such events are much more than mere moneymakers.

The tantalizing rhythms and familiar refrains of the music abolish distance for the space of an evening, carrying listeners back to the warm friendships, relaxed pace, and traditional ways of the homelands that, for better or worse, they have left behind.

Hispanic newcomers to Cambridge have brought some of home with them