Luis Muñoz Marín, the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, is well known for pushing the idea that the island's prosperity would come not from statehood and not by independence. It wasn't enough to build houses if you couldn't create an economy in which people could afford to stay in them. So there were members of Munoz's government who looked for another solution to what they saw as the problem of overpopulation. And la brega is a word that came to the states with the diaspora who have had to find a way to deal with a new language to navigate somehow being immigrants and citizens at the same time. When I hear or use La brega, I'm referring to the struggle. Hilda was 5 when they moved in in 1964. Nunca olvido que mucho comí patitas de jueyes. ALANA CASANOVA-BURGESS Well, it depends on what you consider beauty. They originally planned to build 3,000 homes, but by 1977 there would be over 11,000, and just a short walk from the beach, they sold out quickly. audio. [END CLIP], NEWS REPORT I see the plight of the Puerto Rican people. Pompa de agua. PAOLA RODRIGUEZ Las personas caminaban todos los paseitos que hay, que ahora todos básicamente. And maybe after so many years of hearing about the U.S. Levittowns, this is what success looked like to them. Coming up, was Levittown, a failed experiment? Sí yo estoy tratando de ver la belleza in Levittown. HILDA RODRIGUEZ  y coge el periódico. Collectiva and individual too. Abuelo, bendito abuelo, sabía mucho de eso. CHEO SANTIAGO But that's la brega in Puerto Rico. People on the island often joke about it, comparing the roads to the surface of the moon. People laughing at me because you know, I didn't know Spanish. WNYC Studios logo vector. Governor Munoz would promote a massive program, Operación Manos a la Obra, also known as Operation Bootstrap, to transform the island and reach that porvenir. Es decir. Hilda, the resident we heard from earlier, says her family had a hard time making ends meet after returning from the states. That doesn't mean we will succeed. BOB GARFIELD It's all coming up after this. Coming up, my grandparents left Puerto Rico to live in the Bronx, but they went back to the island and connected with the American dream. ALANA CASANOVA-BURGESS Today, we might take it for granted that by the mid 1960s, over a million Boricuas had moved to the states, over 600,000 just to New York City! Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. La Brega Season 1 Branded Logo ( WNYC Studios ) Summary Transcript. That's Sixto Isaac Ortiz, A friend of Paola's and longtime Levittown resident. He was from that generation, she says, that went from being really poor. Nearly 20 years shorter than it was in the States. ALANA CASANOVA-BURGESS This is audio from WNYC Radio in New York, which sent a crew for a live broadcast. Arcadio has been thinking about those outraged people who went into the streets to march against the governor – los indignados, and what happens when people see their power. He has too much to do. ALANA CASANOVA-BURGESS Did Levittown fail? I think often about a video I saw after Maria of a woman in Bayamon showing off her dad's invention. Hilda says that the way life is in Puerto Rico, she wants to leave. But this is not only Levittown. But when he made the argument, what he said was that Puerto Ricans deserved to go looking for jobs as much as anyone else in the States. HILDA RODRIGUEZ y la gente quedaba encantada porque Lo de nosotros era bailar. [END CLIP], You know what it means. I had hoped to end this journey in my grandparents Levittown, but then the pandemic hit, so instead this summer, I drove from Brooklyn to Long Island and peered up at this other water tower in this other Levittown. It's a detail I hadn't thought about until Sylvia described that longing. JORGE LIZARDI POLLACK A lot of people used to live with no running water, no electricity, no baths. There are videos of this happening. Their story is entwined with Levittowns. A few streets away, his sister was also struggling to pay. These had built in planters and carports, marquesinas, framed in decorated cinder blocks, and the catalog really pushed the cinder blocks. JOSEPH MONSERRAT Puerto Ricans come here to New York and to elsewhere to find jobs, to get better educational opportunities and other opportunities for their children. [END CLIP]. The government was trying to transform Puerto Rico's economy, moving from agriculture to industry and making a middle class. DOÑA FELA The miracle was that we create that middle class, which was created from one day to the other. It was a common story in the 70s, featured in news reports quoting teenagers and Puerto Rican high schools. What does it say about us that we are so often pragmatic that that's our go to? FIESTA ISLAND Everybody grows and loves flowers in Puerto Rico. A symbol of a failure to have functional infrastructure, and yet it's still an icon visible from the highway, from the streets and from the sky. So much so that there was a backlash against that word. The government was trying to transform Puerto Rico's economy, moving from agriculture to industry and making a middle class. To get families like mine to leave. It wasn't just those flights that got people to leave, of course, but it's true that many of our families were changed forever as more and more planes filled the skies above the island. Now, the Levittown is an important phenomenon because it's basically an area built by return migrants. They won't do that. For returning Puerto Ricans, there was a nostalgia, as several people have told me, for a life in the countryside that existed before Puerto Rico's big transformation, before people left. The historian Sylvia Álvarez Curbelo says Levittown was a bridge between the U.S. and Puerto Rico. It wasn't just dancing in the streets. He has too much to do. Someone was walking their dog. This is so dark, but the truth is that there are so many empty homes in Levittown now. Our theme song is By IFE. WNYC Studios is a subsidiary of New York Public Radio and is headquartered in New York City. EDGARDO MELENDEZ They argued well for migrants, it'll be easier to incorporate assimilate in Latin America because of the common culture and language, but even in the early 50s, the government sent a representative to Brazil to consider creating a colony of Puerto Rican migrants there. And that newly minted middle class moving from the campo to the city needed homes. WOMAN Bueno, llevamos un mes lavando en la famosa bicilavadora. Today, a community of 60,000 persons living in 15,000 homes, all built by one firm. All the networks that were formed to try and meet the needs that weren't being met in a desperate situation. I used to wonder why my grandparents, who met and made a family in the mountains of Ciales in the center of the island would decide to leave the cement grid of the Bronx and move here...To another cement grid. EDGARDO MELENDEZ Now, the Levittown is an important phenomenon because it's basically an area built by return migrants. “We are so happy to welcome WNYC Studios to our family of subscribers,” noted Edison Research SVP Tom Webster. [END CLIP]. Observe usted lo atractivo de los bloques ornamentales que resguardan el patio [END CLIP]. This is so dark, but the truth is that there are so many empty homes in Levittown now. At the same time, the U.S. government wanted cheap labor in cities like New York and Chicago, and so encouraging migration was also in their interest. That we have a society and a government that requires us to be in la brega all the time? Maybe someday her parents would have returned to the island, but they wouldn't have kept the house. My grandparents would see an altered landscape out of the plane window when they returned, places that didn't exist when they first left. I asked him, after all this historical research, if I'm trying to see the beauty in Levittown, could he give me some pointers? Showcasing our true Puerto Rican, brilliance. Right. Me podrías dar algún consejo? ALANA CASANOVA-BURGESS For Arcadio, that's part of la brega. Another specialty for Edison is its work for media companies throughout the world, conducting research in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe. ALANA CASANOVA-BURGESS And the opportunity for him to own his own home. In the room where I sleep when I visit, there's a view of the water tower. Maybe someday her parents would have returned to the island, but they wouldn't have kept the house. Trust me. There were so many that people would collect them in metal buckets, clean them, and cook them. Of course, it was the agriculture of sugar, one crop agriculture. [cling cling cling] [LAUGHS]. Silvia Álvarez Curbelo is a Puerto Rican historian. A story about finding the American dream far from the mainland United States and what it means to be in La Brega. Mami está en la cocina. Everybody hitting the same pothole with the same damage. Estan son las cosas que pasan. And yet he keeps painting the hoyos and posting them because he's hopeful that the effort helps people. Imagining a better reality, together. Perhaps just the second or third family there. Yo pienso que mami tuvo la mejor etapa de Levittown. Trust me. They discussed the awful experience of the hurricane and they talk about a book of short stories based in Levittown. CHEO SANTIAGO I got white spray paint with me in the car, and I used to stop the car and go walk to the pothole and I mark it with white paint. These are red, ginger-blossoms. This isn't only true of the Puerto Rican Levittown. It looks like a blue jellyfish with rigid legs looming at least nine stories over a public library. ALANA CASANOVA-BURGESS When Hilda's mother opened the front door, the marquesina, the carport would be full of crabs. The utopia of freedom. y la gente quedaba encantada porque Lo de nosotros era bailar. Puerto Ricans are constantly bregando, with the jobs that don't pay enough, the electricity that comes and goes, their kids schools that are closed, the broken traffic lights that never get fixed, the hospital that doesn't get built, the government's debts that aren't paid, the frustration over status, austerity, colonialism. A Brega Collectiva. For as long as I can remember, on flights from New York, I've looked out for Levittown on the descent. And they start calling you gringo. WICKER PARK — In the 20-odd years that Scott Crist lived and worked abroad — … [LAUGHS], I only use it when someone asked me What are you up to, how are you doing? Governor Muñoz embraced Levittown and attended the ribbon cutting for it in September of 1963. And of course, the cultural and linguistic differences. When I think of Levittown, I think of the Cold War utopias, and the Cold War promises. So, if you say a wrong word in Spanish or something like that, they start saying, you know you can't speak, you speak Spanish. The Puerto Rican government would create levers and wedges and pulleys to make modernity work for those who stayed, but only by encouraging others to leave. It looked as if the asphalt had opened a gaping mouth and was trying to swallow the truck. [END CLIP]. This came up with Cheo Santiago from Adopta Un Hoyo, Adopt A Pothole too. He posted the photos online and Adopto Un Hoyo was born in 2011. PAOLA RODRIGUEZ Abuelo, bendito abuelo, sabía mucho de eso. Since then, he estimates he's painted over a thousand potholes this way. So, if you say a wrong word in Spanish or something like that, they start saying, you know you can't speak, you speak Spanish. But it wasn't an easy fit for everyone returning from New York. We have to deal with that, and you have to avoid a pothole any day when you go to work, when you go to the supermarket. Hilda, the resident we heard from earlier, says her family had a hard time making ends meet after returning from the states. And airports and the Cold War promises he comes here, despite the detritus and the Cold War utopias and! They saw as the human voice itself hoya situation in Puerto Rico one... De Eiffel Descartes last year, it 's basically an area built by one firm to live in dark... Mirar las cosas que el tiempo ha bajado and meet the needs that were n't being in... Porvenir, a different plot, a government REPORT estimated that around a million to! 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