Negotiating Latinidad: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in West Michigan, 1950–72

This presentation examines the negotiations necessary for community formation in Grand Rapids, Michigan among Mexicans and Puerto Ricans who arrived in the city in the 1920s and late 1940s, respectively and how and why they embraced a panethnic Latino identity. Utilizing both text documents and oral histories, this work highlights how a conservative, second tier city in the Midwest served as a prime location for forming Latino identity in the mid 1950s and early 1960s. Shared racialization and subsequent discrimination in housing, work, leisure, and education encouraged them to see one another as social equals. Moreover, their shared recreational and religious practices led them to create kinship networks across ethnic lines. Though there was occasional tension among these groups, locations such as a local Catholic church, baseball fields, and dance halls provided them a space to cultivate both interethnic friendships and eventually interethnic marriages.

In the late 1960s, this community created the Latin American Council, a grassroots, interethnic community center, and participated in the federal Model Cities Program, a War on Poverty initiative, to demand that local government recognize their plight. This moment of unity was also marked by simultaneous tension over federal funds. These issues were rooted in the complexity of Latino identity that rested on the varying intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and generation. The conflict led the community to renegotiate their interethnic relationships.

This presentation offers a historical analysis of Latino panethnic identity formation that helps explain contemporary dynamics among Latinos. Also in using a site outside of the Southwest or East coast, this study on the Midwest provides a model for understanding how distinct Latino ethnic groups develop interethnic solidarities and overcome obstacles to work toward shared collective goals, especially in locations where they have small populations.