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The Democratization of Puerto Rican Identity 

Ruth Masuka
University of Toronto
FAS Double Major in Diaspora & Transnational Studies and Peace, Conflict & Justice, 
Minor in Music History & Culture]

Evident within many diasporic communities is a 
group consciousness and organization that operates in 
non-institutional spaces outside the realms of govern-
ment agencies. The case of Puerto Ricans is no 
different and beyond collective organization, island-
ers in the diaspora went further in redefining the very 
criteria of Puerto Rican identity. This paper focuses 
on the migrant communities located in New York and 
the ways in which informal activities and non-institu-
tional venues served as community centres. Food 
traditions, sporting competitions, and poetic practices 
all acted as cultural bases. Such activities fostered a 
democratic and participatory formation of Puerto 
Rican identity and played a critical role in the socio-
economic development of migrants. These spaces 
also provided room for the complex nuances of 
Puertoricanness that were overlooked or purposely 
excluded from dominant ideologies by both the 
American and Puerto Rican government. Looking at 
bodegas, athletic clubs, and the Nuyorican Poets 
Cafe, we can observe the vital role of spaces outside 
the state’s control in facilitating an egalitarian and 
communal process of identity-making. 

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: New York City, 
Puerto Rico, Nuyorican, 

bodega, baseball, Boricuan, 
diaspora

B I O

Ruth Masuka is a 3rd year student studying the intersections of peace and justice practic-
es and art. Her research focuses on the use of non-institutional domains and informal 
spaces as catalysts for bottom-up group consciousness, capacity-building and communi-
ty organizing. 

© 2021 Ruth Masuka
Caribbean Studies Students’ Union, Canada - https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/

                       This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 
                       To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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     Sanabria, Carlos. The Bodega: a Cornerstone of Puerto Rican Barrios (the Justo Martí Collection). Centro Press, 
Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, CUNY, 2016.
     Hernandez, Sigfredo, and Carol Kaufman. “The Role of the Bodega in a U.S. Puerto Rican Community.” Journal of 
Retailing, vol. 67, no. 4, 1991, pp. 375–396.
    Otero, Solimar. “Barrio, Bodega, And Botanica Aesthetics.” Atlantic Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2007, pp. 173–194., 
doi:10.1080/14788810701510894.
       

 

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Long before institutions and governmental 
agencies intervened, Puerto Rican 
migrants arriving in New York took it 
upon themselves to organize their commu-
nities. In fact, their own frameworks of 
identity were often in stark contrast to 
official characterizations of them, reflect-
ing their nuanced and complex interests 
and relationships to the homeland and 
their new home. This group consciousness 
took place through informal activities and 
non-institutional community spaces. 
Through these parts of life, Puerto Ricans 
not only reaffirmed the cultures of their 
home island, but developed unique 
traditions of the new island they found 
themselves. In this manner, it is critical to 
explore the arenas in which this develop-
ment took place. These localities of 
cultural change served as critical bases for 
securing the rights for diasporic communi-
ties, transforming hegemonic ideologies of 
Puerto Rican identity, and exploring the 
tensions at the heart of the livelihoods of 
migrants. Looking specifically at the 
community institutions of bodegas, sport 
clubs, and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, we 
can observe the importance of spaces that 
exist outside the control of the government 
which allow for a true democratic forma-
tion of identity. 

Bodegas, far from being only commercial 
enterprises, have served as catalysts for 
economic and social development within 
the Puerto Rican communities since the 
first waves of migration to New York. 
Bodega owners, viewed with great respect 

due to their financial autonomy, continued 
to support their neighborhoods by stocking 
Puerto Rican goods, providing opportuni-
ties for newcomers, and simply being a 
familiar face. Shoppers would bond over 
similar grocery lists and shared home-
towns.  Yet with the forces of globalization 
and capitalism continually expanding, the 
enduring legacy of the bodega cannot be 
explained purely from an economic 
perspective; in fact, many economists 
anticipated the decline of the small 
grocery stores as Puerto Rican immigra-
tion fell and large food companies sold 
goods at cheaper prices.  Their longevity 
can be explained by their multidimension-
ality, a fundamental condition of Puerto 
Rican character. Besides the physical 
needs of food purchases being met, the 
very intrinsic human emotion of belonging 
is fulfilled in every trip.  The bodega’s 
capacities of both convenience and 
community have made it not only a Puerto 
Rican institution, but a cherished New 
York cultural establishment that goes 
beyond ethnic or social status. Fulfilling 
these dual functions provided Puerto 
Ricans with a simple way to maintain 
identity but also transform it based on 
their new shared experiences of New York 
in those tight aisles. 

Beyond the bodegas, another often over-
looked mechanism of fostering group 
consciousness, especially within academic 
research, are sports leagues which were 
one of the original spaces of identity 
construction and community development 

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120

     Gems, Gerald. “Puerto Rico: Sport and the Restoration of National Pride.” The International Journal of Regional and 
Local Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2005, pp. 107–120., doi:10.1179/jrl.2005.1.1.107.
     Ibid
     Duany, Jorge. The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island in the United States. University of North 
Carolina Press, 2002.
     
       

 

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within the diaspora. The baseball games 
and boxing matches organized by athletic 
clubs became popular pastimes. The 
physical prowess of Puerto Ricans was on 
full display and beyond just trophies and 
medals, these sporting activities united 
what was otherwise a society at odds. Far 
from a static monolith, Puerto Rican 
consciousness and culture is multi-faceted 
and contradictory as shown by a 1998 
referendum. Presented with the choices of 
statehood, independence, or common-
wealth status, more than half of Puerto 
Rican voters chose none of the above.

Regardless of these contradictions howev-
er, dating back to the 1950s, Puerto Rican 
reports analyzed the embrace of baseball 
games on the Puerto Rican psyche and 
argued that 'destiny disunites us but sport 
unites us.’  At a very primal level, sporting 
restored a sense of pride to impoverished 
communities through winning which 
brought them together in a way no institu-
tional agencies had achieved. Physicality 
was of great importance, especially within 
earlier generations of Puerto Rican 
migrants, and was perhaps the only time 
Puerto Ricans felt they had equal footing 
with their supposed superiors. To a com-
munity that faced social, economic and 
political constraints, sporting competitions 
provided the islanders with the self-deter-
mination America promised yet failed to 
give them. It offered hope for some and an 
opiate for others. Despite being granted 
American citizenship, sporting, especially 
baseball, still seems to be the strongest 

link between Puerto Rican identity and the 
United States.  Sporting was the pinnacle 
of meritocracy; whoever was best would 
win. The confidence any victories caused 
transferred to how the islanders would 
navigate other areas of their lives and like 
bodegas, was not controlled by an external 
body that enforced government policies 
but remained out of touch with their 
experiences. These sporting leagues often 
expanded to become social clubs whereby 
several activities were planned outside of 
boxing rings and baseball diamonds to 
remain accessible to a growing Puerto 
Rican diaspora. As their function as 
community centres grew, so followed their 
function as a catalyst for group conscious-
ness. 

Bodegas and sporting leagues, while both 
serving the latent functions of community 
spaces, did not have an explicit purpose of 
active resistance against hegemonic 
definitions of Puerto Rican. While art 
forms of resistance within New York’s 
Puerto Rican community are pervasive 
everyday performances, the Nuyorican 
Poets Cafe is an especially potent site for 
collaborative negotiation-based formations 
of identity. More than any other instrument 
of informal community building, the 
Nuyorican Poets Cafe embraced the 
fringes of Puertoricanness and examined 
the racial, linguistic, and transnational 
nuances of the barrio, both conceptualized 
as the fixed geographical neighborhood of 
East Harlem and a dynamic psychology 
the Puerto Ricans shared. Founded in 1973 

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121

     Dowdy, Michael. “They Must Be Re(Pre)Sented: Archiving Nuyorican Poetry’s ‘Diasporous’ Bodies.” Journal of 
Modern Literature, vol. 39, no. 3, 2016, p. 141., doi:10.2979/jmodelite.39.3.11.
     Duany, Jorge. “The Rough Edges of Puerto Rican Identities: Race, Gender, and Transnationalism.” Latin American 
Research Review, vol. 40, no. 3, 2005, pp. 177–190., doi:10.1353/lar.2005.0043.
     Noel, Urayoán. “On Out of Focus Nuyoricans, Noricuas, and Performance Identities.” Liminalities: A Journal of 
Performance Studies, vol. 10, no. 3-4, 2014, pp. 1–14., doi:1661910139.
     Goergen, Juana Iris. “In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam.” Latino Studies, vol. 13, no. 4, 
2015, pp. 573–574., doi:10.1057/lst.2015.37.

       

 

7

in the living room of poet Miguel Algarín, 
its modest roots demonstrated a rejection 
of imperial, class-based categorizations of 
individuals.  Markets and money held no 
power over the artists who would occupy 
the space that eventually moved to a larger 
space to accommodate for expanding 
audiences. 

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe challenged the 
easy equation of being born in Puerto Rico 
and speaking Spanish as the sole criteria 
for establishing one's Puertoricanness.  
The Nuyorican artistic tradition disfigured 
dominant notions of time, space, and 
language and based their idea of national-
ism on artistic autonomy. The framing of 
identity was based on shared experiences 
rather than a specific outcome.  With the 
likes of Pedro Pietri, the infamous critique 
of capitalism and in turn, America, and 
Jorge Brandon, the ‘godfather’ of Nuyori-
can literature, pushing this movement, the 
Nuyorican Poets Cafe soon became one of 
the most respected arts organizations in 
the city. As Algarín described it, the cafe 
was the home of the ‘democratization of 
the verse’.  The themes of longing for 
return, economic exploitation, queer and 
racialized Puerto Ricans, and other incon-
venient truths became the topics of an 
ongoing conversation between the 
performer and the audience. 

Puerto Rican identity, constantly in 
motion, always finds itself at a crossroads. 
Often facets of this identity find them-
selves in contradiction with one another. 

This is evidenced by persistent disputes 
regarding the direction of the post-colony. 
Rather than masking these disputes with 
simple categorizations of Puertoricanness, 
the communal activities and spaces of 
bodegas, athletic clubs and the Nuyorican 
Poets Cafe embraced and acknowledged 
the complexity of these characterizations.  
In some sense, these spaces offered a 
‘cultural citizenship’, much more valuable 
than their American passport to its behold-
ers as it was truly democratic. These 
institutions do not concern themselves so 
much with what defines Puerto Rican 
identity as they do with who gets to define 
it. In this framework, Puerto Ricans are all 
proud of their culture but for varying and 
distinct reasons. The freedom and agency 
Puerto Ricans had migrated to the United 
States had not been found within an 
American passport, but rather the truest 
forms of democracy were in the everyday 
activities where the power to define 
themselves was placed directly in the 
hands of the people.

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