Evolution and Resolution of Conflict
Félix Padilla

Excerpts from Puerto Rican Chicago by Félix M. Padilla
University of Notre Dame Press. Notre Dame: Indiana, 1987.

RIOTS ON DIVISION STREET
During the summer of 1966 the city of Chicago became the site of the first major urban Puerto Rican riot in the history of the United States. The outburst was one in a series of urban protest riots which raged in American society, primarily among blacks, from the end of World War II until the last years of the 1960s. Puerto Rican behavior in Chicago during the summer of 1966 mirrored the dilemma of exploited, non-white people in the United States: whether to withstand the rejection of the majority in the hope that ameliorative action would bring rewards within the system or to lash out and destroy the "hated environment," thus abruptly focusing the attention of the majority and bringing release for oneself.

The Puerto Rican riot occurred almost at the same time that various national and local governmental agencies were taking precautionary measures to head off rioting in major American cities. The two preceding years had witnessed some of the largest and most intense black disturbances ever-- Harlem, Watts, Detroit, Philadelphia, etc. In order to prevent future outbursts, the Justice Department instructed its Assistant United States Attorneys to report on conditions in a score of communities considered particularly "inflammable". The Vice President's Task Force on Youth Opportunity authorized its field representatives to investigate potential trouble spots and offer short-term recommendations. These findings were to be made available to federal agencies involved in the black ghettos. Government officials throughout the country devised emergency programs to employ and entertain black youths and otherwise keep them off the streets, while local and state police departments aided by the F.B.I. prepared coordinated riot-control plans. (These measures were not designed to alleviate conditions in the ghettos but merely to prevent their manifestation ever-- Harlem). Hence, it was with mounting apprehension that local and federal officials awaited the summer.

They did not have to wait long. The Puerto Rican riot erupted in June, and was followed by disturbances among blacks in battered cities previously stricken and cities hitherto spared, Omaha, Dayton, San Francisco, and Atlanta. The summer of 1966 was the most violent yet. The Puerto Rican riot began June 12, 1966 when a white policeman shot and wounded a young Puerto Rican man, Arcelis Cruz, twenty years old, near the intersection of Division Street and Damen Avenue in the Westtown community. After the shooting, the situation at the Division-Damen intersection intensified when the police brought dogs into the fray and a Puerto Rican was bitten. For three days and nights, a Puerto Rican crowd demonstrated against police brutality. And each time the police tried to disperse the crowd, it only succeeded in arousing them.

From June 12 to June 14, Puerto Ricans not only defied the police, but also looted and burned neighborhood businesses, particularly those identified as white-owned. The city's Puerto Rican leaders pleaded with the rioters to return to their homes, but to little avail. The Chicago Sun-Times (June 14, 1966:1) reports that at one rally, organized during the second day of the riot and held at the intersection of Division Street and California Avenue, community organization leaders and clergymen urged the crowd of 3,000 to halt the violence. Immediately after the rally, however, rocks and bricks were thrown at policemen. Meanwhile the police department ordered all available personnel into the Division Street area to quell the rioting, and on June 15, order was finally restored. By this time, it was officially acknowledged that 16 persons were injured, 49 were arrested, over 50 buildings were destroyed, and millions of dollars accrued in damages.

Smelser's (1962, chap. 8) analysis on the causes of collective behavior and the forms which it takes is helpful in this context of shared cleavages, grievances, and hostilities. Smelser's analytic framework emphasizes a number of determinants of social action which must all be present at the same time for a riot to occur. In addition to socioeconomic factors, such as high unemployment, low income, well defined racial cleavages, and inaccessible and unsympathetic authorities, this perspective emphasizes the importance of a generalized belief in the population as a necessary determinant of collective action. It refers to a state of mind, formed over a period of time, which provides a shared explanation for the undesirable state of affairs and pinpoints blame upon specific agents or groups who become the target of hostility. Given the requisite conditions, individuals whose basic desires are thwarted and who consequently experience a profound, chronic sense of dissatisfaction and anger are likely to react to their condition by directing aggressive behavior at what is perceived as responsible for thwarting those desires, or at a substitute.

For Puerto Ricans in the Division Street Area the police represented that "substitute." The state of police-Puerto Rican relations before the riot was a major source of Puerto Rican frustration and accounts for the presence of a generalized belief which, following Smelser's approach, became the necessary ingredient in producing this collective action. For many years Puerto Ricans attempted, without any success, to bring to light the ample evidence of discriminatory beatings and humiliations, as in the case of González-Burgos described in the preceding chapter. The numerous hostile and abrasive encounters between the police and barrio residents, particularly those incidents perceived by the Puerto Rican community as inflammatory and as acts of injustice or insults to the Puerto Rican community, were the triggering events of the 1966 riot. As psychologist Leonard Berkowitz points out in his discussion of civil violence among blacks: "[The police] are the 'head thumpers', the alltoo-often hostile enforcers of laws arbitrarily imposed upon [blacks] by an alien world" (1968:48).

The society's bases of legitimacy and authority had been attacked. Law and order had long been viewed by Puerto Ricans as the white man's law and order, but now this characteristic perspective of a colonized people was out in the open. Puerto Rican residents of the Division Street Area shared a pervasive belief that policemen were physically brutal, harsh, and discourteous to them because they were Puerto Ricans; that policemen did not respond to calls, enforce the law, or protect people who lived in this community because they were Puerto Ricans. Their grievances about police brutality and inadequacy of protection yielded the deep sense of hostility and resentment prevalent among other ethnic minority groups in urban America.

Accounts given by Puerto Ricans to correspondents from the larger metropolitan press demonstrate the widespread and volatile reservoir of antipathy felt toward the police during this period:

On June 13, 1966, Janet Nolan— then director of a research project sponsored by the University of Notre Dame which aimed to examine and reveal the "coping mechanisms" used by Puerto Ricans from the Division Street Area in overcoming poverty— conducted a "polling of opinions" as well as interviews with local residents. The following are examples of the views of some Puerto Ricans as revealed by Mrs. Nolan's field notes:

The testimonies of fifty-four witnesses at a public hearing held a month following the Division Street riot (Friday and Saturday, July 15 and 16, 1966) provide further evidence of the negative appraisals of police behavior by barrio residents. According to the summary report of the hearings entitled "The Puerto Rican Residents of Chicago, a Report on an Open Hearing," of six major problem areas identified by the witnesses, relations between Puerto Rican residents and the police was the most pressing and in most need of corrective action. In fact, one witness expressed the point that since the state of Puerto Rican-police relations was so incredibly poor, "a comprehensive community action program against social injustice" needed to be established in the community.

Yet the police became a main focal point for attack not only because of their attitude and behavior toward Puerto Ricans, but because they symbolized the despised invisible white power structure. Of the institutional contacts with which barrio residents had intimate contact— schools, social welfare and employment agencies, medical facilities, and business owners— the police embodied the most crushing authority. For many Puerto Ricans, the police had come to represent more than enforcement of law; they were viewed as members of an "occupying army" and as an oppressive force acting on behalf of those who ruled their environment.

Some city officials and other critics of the riots used what social scientists have called the "criminal riffraff" theory of rioting in explaining the outburst (e.g., Fogelson and Hill, 1968). According to this view, every large urban ghetto contains a disproportionate number of criminals, delinquents, unemployed, school dropouts, and other social misfits who on the slightest pretext are ready to riot, loot, and exploit an explosive social situation for their private gain and for satisfying their aggressive anti-social instincts. After meeting in City Hall with residents from the Division Street Area, Mayor Daley made a statement to the press appealing especially to the neighborhood parents to keep their children off the streets. "Such action should be taken," stressed the Mayor, "in areas where unthinking and irresponsible individuals and gangs are seeking a climate of violence and uncertainty that threatens lives and property" (Chicago Sun-Times, June 15, 1966). In a similar way, the Executive Director of a local settlement house said of the riot: "It wasn't planned, it wasn't organized. It was spontaneous. Most of the rebels were young fathers, and there were many small dusters active. But they weren't even in contact with each other" (Chicago Daily News, June 18, 1966:3).

Thus, according to city officials and others, the basic source of the trouble was not to be found among long-standing and well established residents of the Puerto Rican community, an otherwise tranquil and satisfied populace. Such a view contained important advantages for city officials who widely espoused it. This point is explicitly made by Feagin and Hahn (1973:9) in their discussion of the riffraff explanation of rioting:

Civic leaders argued that this troublesome faction of the populace was quite small and did not detract from the "exemplary race relations" and harmony of the general community. Thus civic authorities could easily dismiss the sentiments of these groups. Moreover, from this point of view, the outbreak of rioting did not necessitate a radical change in existing city leadership.

The official climate of opinion regarding the Division Street riot is far from an adequate explanation of the outburst. In contrast, the evidence indicates that the rioters did not form an amorphous mass of riffraff: a collection of criminals acting out private or individual frustrations and hostility. Rioting on Division Street was a group activity in the course of which strangers were bound together by common sentiments, activities, and goals, and supported each other in the manner typical of primary groups. Let us not romanticize the barrio violence. I don't claim that everyone involved and everything done had rational motives. However, when city officials, the metropolitan press, and others viewed the violence as an uprising of the criminal element against law and order, these individuals chose to block their sensitivity to the sociological meaning of the riot. They failed to look seriously at the human meaning of the turmoil or understand what messages may have been communicated by the rocks and gunfire. Thus, looting as well as other riot activities were essentially group activities during which participants and onlookers experienced a sense of solidarity, pride, and exhilaration. They were bound together by shared emotions, symbols, and experiences which Puerto Ricans inevitably acquire in white America and which makes them address one another as "hermano" (brother). In other words, the Division Street Riot seems to have served the same psychic function for Puerto Ricans as violence did for the colonized of North Africa described by Fanon (1963) and Memmi (1967)— the assertion of dignity and peoplehood.

Viewed from a different point, the Division Street Riot was the action of a people, poor and dispossessed and crushed in large numbers in el barrio, who rose up in wrath against a society committed to democratic ideals. Their outburst was an expression of powerlessness resentment against racial prejudice, anger at the unreachable affluence around them, and frustration at their sociopolitical powerlessness. Puerto Ricans had gradually developed an urban consciousness— a consciousness of an entrapped ethnic minority. The sense of entrapment stemmed from the inability of the Puerto Ricans to break out of the urban ghetto and become part of the burgeoning middle class. There were the conditions of deprivation in the Puerto Rican community that since the 1966 riot have come to be widely recognized as very real grievances. Frustration and alienation accentuated by feelings of relative deprivation must be regarded as psychological factors that create a readiness for individuals to give vent to what Smelser calls collective behavior.

It was during this time that some Puerto Ricans sensed the possibility of improvement; in fact, they had become quite dissatisfied with their situation and rebelled against it. And "with rebellion," as Albert Camus (1967:247) puts it, "awareness is born," and with awareness, an impatience "which can extend to everything that [people] had previously accepted, and which is almost always retroactive." Puerto Ricans began to realize, perhaps for the first time in their lives, that the signs advertising "American egalitarianism" did not include them. Puerto Ricans found themselves on the outside looking in. Since coming to Chicago they had remained on the metaphoric margin, apart from, not a part of, the important positions of America's institutional life— they represented a population whose participation in the political and economic systems occurred at the lowest reaches of these structures. Thus, a population of Spanish-speaking people that used to see the proverbial glass as half full now saw it as half empty.

Puerto Ricans began vowing to fight to change their conditions and their way to power. There was a difference in both the tone and the tempo of their protest: the tone was bitter and the tempo frenetic. There had been times when expression of anger, hatred, and hostility had burst out in the Division Street Area in the form of small acts of aggression against representatives of the dominant group or against other minority group members. But it was the collective support given this expressed hostility, permitting the spread and intensification of it in reckless defiance of police power, that made the outburst an instance of collective behavior that was more than just another race riot.

From a sociological perspective, Robert Blauner (1966:9) describes this collective action as "the crystallization of community identity through a nationalistic outburst against the society felt as dominating and oppressive." In a similar way, sociologists Bowen and Masotti state: "It is not necessarily the perception of an unequal distribution of values that moves men to civil violence, but rather the perception that the inequality in question is also unjust" (1968:22).

In the Puerto Rican community a sense of betrayal of expectations brought about a focus on the grievances of the past and present. The visibility of an affluent, comfortable, middle-class life made possible by a powerful mass communications system was in itself enough to induce dual feelings of resentment and emulation. The failure of society to effectively raise the status of those trapped in el barrio contributed to the smoldering resentments. The urge to retaliate, to return the hurts and the injustices, played an integral part of the Division Street Riot. In short, the 1966 riot erupted as a new generation of Puerto Ricans sensed that persuasion was not going to bring an end to subordination and oppression. They saw that the Puerto Rican community was far more powerless than the earlier successes of Los Caballeros might suggest. The Puerto Rican community took to the streets in defiance of both the obdurate white community and the older Puerto Rican leadership who had tried to win the battle for equality without bloodshed. Tired of promises of things to come, bitterly frustrated by ghetto-living, and seething with a hatred born of denial, they sought action.

RISE OF A POLITICIZED ETHNIC CONSCIOUSNESS
The 1966 riot represents a major watershed in the history of Puerto Ricans in Chicago. For one thing, it demonstrated the depth of Puerto Rican discontent, the extent of Puerto Rican anger and hate, and the ease with which Puerto Rican anger and hate could flare into violence. More important, the riot raised the anger to a new pitch. When the police dogs were unleashed on the corner of Damen and Division Street, every Puerto Rican in the city felt their teeth in the marrow of his or her bones. The explosion of anger and hatred that resulted for a moment, at least, broke through the traditionally alleged apathy of the poor and created an almost universal desire to act. The Puerto Rican poor were able to overcome the shame bred by a society which blamed them for their plight; they were able to break the bonds of conformity enforced by their jobs and by every strand of institutional life; they were able to overcome the fears induced by the city's police force.

Of course not all Puerto Ricans took up the banner of militancy. Indeed, many, perhaps even the majority, were frightened at the turn of events. Yet there is little doubt that sympathy for the sentiment underlying the "new militancy" touched all Puerto Ricans in the city. One of the more valuable group assets to emerge from the 1966 riot was an "awakening" among the masses of the Puerto Rican poor. This awakening led to an increased ethnic consciousness among Puerto Ricans: the partisan behavior and sense of group obligation that more and more Puerto Ricans began to exhibit in trying to overcome their conditions. Advocacy for Puerto Rican ethnic consciousness began to show up in various forms.

In addition to several peace rallies held at Humbolt Park, community leaders organized several major meetings during and after the riot to inform and interpret issues with residents of the community. The Latin American Boys Club, located on 1218 N. Washtenaw Street in the heart of the Division Street Area, became the leading site for these gatherings. At times, Puerto Rican leaders met there with police officials and human relations staff workers to devise ways to prevent future disturbances (Chicago Daily News, June 13, 1966). Several marches and demonstrations were also organized. On June 28, over 200 Puerto Rican residents of the Division Street Area marched five miles to City Hall to protest what they had come to interpret as police brutality and the failure of the city administration to recognize "Puerto Rican problems." The Puerto Rican community also rallied to show support for those arrested during the riot. The Coordinating Commission of Puerto Rican Affairs was formed to help bail out those who had been imprisoned. Hundreds of barrio residents jammed into the courtroom where Puerto Ricans arrested during the riot were being tried. A Chicago Daily News' story, "Judge's Warning: Respect the Police," indicated that, conversing in Spanish, the spectators provided constant moral encouragement to the defendants (June 13, 1966).

While the 1966 riot worked a readjustment of the social relations between the Puerto Rican community and the larger society, it dramatically affected the leadership, goals, and agenda of the post-riot Puerto Rican community. The Division Street Riot put the "old leadership," or "old guard"— members of Los Caballeros or of other community organizations of the 195Os and early 1960s— on notice that, while more Puerto Ricans might be inclining toward some form of assimilation, they were not in the least interested in idle dreams or obscure mysticism. If the old guard had nothing more substantial to offer, the people would devise ways and strategies to declare their hatred for the colonial situation imposed upon them. The Division Street Riot forced the old leadership to come to grips with the "real" problem or to write themselves off as irrelevant ethnic advocates. By their actions the "Puerto Rican rioters" were calling for a new leadership willing to confront head-on the problems arising from oppression and powerlessness, and who could speak to the needs of the Puerto Rican masses.

The post-riot period did witness a steady decline in the relative social status of some of the earlier Puerto Rican elite. Social standing and the legitimacy to speak on issues pertaining to the Puerto Rican community began to shift to a leadership not directly connected to Los Caballeros or community organizations of the early adjustment period.

The old establishment was also challenged by the increasing effectiveness of an emerging leadership comprised of few members of the old guard who had broken ranks and a large number of young, articulate, and brash new leaders. The leadership of the Puerto Rican community, no longer in the exclusive hands of first-generation Puerto Ricans, began to question the traditional goals of the programs led by the old guard. After 1966 the new leadership of Puerto Ricans increasingly gave voice to an ideology that challenged the assimilationist perspective of Los Caballeros and other early organizations. Like the old guard's approach, the new leaders assumed that the growing white hostility could be dealt with if Puerto Ricans developed and organized their own economic and civic institutions. On the other hand, this philosophy also called for counterattack; the new leadership emphasized protest against injustices. It began to mount broad and all-embracing attacks upon the forces of oppression of the larger American society. The lines between the two ideological camps were not always clearly drawn. At times, the issues were spelled out; at other times, they were only implicit. But regardless of the many variations and complexities, Chicago's emerging Puerto Rican leaders were engaged in a new and different approach directly related to the course of Puerto Rican development in the city.

The Young Lords represent one of the various activist, direct action, organizational efforts among Puerto Ricans in Chicago from the mid-1960s onward. Despite the Young Lords' political activism and a general increase of civic activities among barrio residents, in the main, the people of the Division Street Area were not in a position to establish action-oriented community institutions and organizations that would adequately meet the needs of the growing Puerto Rican community. Most Puerto Rican businesses were undercapitalized and the existing cultural and social service organizations and agencies lacked the financial resources to develop satisfactory facilities and to hire adequate professional staffs to deal with the many problems operative in el barrio. It was the indirect result of the expansion into the Division Street Area of "Community Action Programs" (CAP), established throughout the country during the early 1960s as part of the federal government's War Against Poverty, which contributed to the development of some of these structures as well as toward the growth of a new leadership.

The outburst of racial violence on Division Street during the summer of 1966 produced a political response from city officials in the form of community action programs to address the complex social problems of el barrio. In turn, these programs were used to produce a politicized and activist agenda by some Puerto Ricans. Federally funded Community Action Programs, channeled through the city's political system, then, became the leading mechanism for the institutionalization of barrio-based politics or activist social action. Several of the Community Action Programs established in the Division Street Area during this period were transformed from community service agencies into local political structures; they were used to politicize inactive barrio residents, i.e., welfare mothers, gangs, unemployed, school dropouts, and the like.

The most important CAP established by the city public officials and used by some Puerto Ricans to politicize area residents was an urban progress center. The Division Street Urban Progress Center, put into place immediately following the riot on Division Street, represented the first program of this kind to service any of the city's Spanish-speaking populations. It began as an outpost of the Garfield Park Community Center, but shortly thereafter became a service agency of its own. The initial location, 2120 W. Division Street, was near the spot where the civil disturbances had occurred a month earlier. Like other urban progress centers in the city, the neighborhood center was a multi-service program established to coordinate the activities of governmental and, at times, private agencies servicing the Division Street Area. Further, a series of Title II Community Action Program agencies, as well as others funded outside this title, were housed in the Center.

Many other programs from the arsenal of weapons used in the poverty war were also established throughout the Division Street community and housed in the Center. To close the gap between barrio residents and the nonpoor, manpower training— both institutional and on-the-job— was required. Hence, the Job Corps, the Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC), the Manpower Development and Training ACT (MDTA), JOBS, and Work Incentive Programs (WIN) were either established or scheduled for rapid expansion into this community during and after the summer of 1966. Head Start, Teacher Corps, and Title I of the Aid to Education Act were also launched to assist the children of that generation in preparing for school and in receiving better and more schooling. Further, a Neighborhood Health Center was set into place to subsidize the medical expenses of welfare recipients and the medically indigent.

In short, the Division Street Urban Progress Center was a catchall for projects to aid the poor— practically any effort aimed at reducing poverty could be found as part of the structural arrangement of the Center. Given this range, it was clear that the Center was not a program, but a strategy for combating poverty. When one examines the literature on the War on Poverty, it becomes very obvious that one of the prime goals was to give the lower classes, and particularly the ethnic minorities, a middle-class mentality rather than middle-class resources. Daniel P. Moynihan makes it clear in his report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965), that, in his view, the deterioration of the black family is at the root of their problems. In the 1960s, thousands of pages were devoted to the "culture of poverty" and how to break the "cycle of poverty." The argument ran: people can make their way out of poverty through changes in attitude, motivation, and willingness to make sacrifices. The policy, aimed more at changing the attitudes of mind than at offering material help, was a psychological assault to give the poor the motivation to work their own way out of poverty. As Charles Valentine (1968) has so ably shown, this was only a subtle way of blaming poverty on the poor.

The approach followed by social service agencies and social workers concentrated far too much on symptoms rather than on causes—and on symptoms seen and treated individually rather than in connection with other symptoms. This concern with symptoms has been a reflection of the preoccupation of the social work profession with case work and the study and treatment of individual maladjustment. The goal of the Division Street Urban Progress Center was to teach "maladjusted individuals" how to adapt themselves to society as it was, rather than to change those aspects of society that made the individuals what they were. In some instances, the services offered at the Center would simply substitute a new set of symptoms for the old.

It's little wonder that a larger number of social scientists as well as local residents of poor communities throughout the country acquired a growing sense of disenchantment with the War on Poverty programs. An abundance of evidence is found that speaks to the limited impact these programs had on poor people. After reviewing governmental actions in post-1967 in such important areas as poverty, education, and housing, an Urban America and Urban Coalition report entitled, "One Year Later," concluded that "most actions and programs to meet ghetto problems and grievances had been, depending on the area, too limited, underfunded, or nonexistent" (1969:114-118). The Division Street Urban Progress Center represents a sample case of a policy which offered individualistic solutions to members of this aggrieved Spanish-speaking population, as opposed to structural solutions. Although Community Action Programs in general reinforced the status quo by coopting people into pseudo-conflicts rather than engaging their members in effective struggles, it was primarily the establishment of the Division Street Urban Progress Center which provided the impetus for political activism among barrio residents. Two separate dimensions of the Center facilitated this: (1) the employment of community residents as part of its staff and (2) participation in its advisory council by local community residents. More specifically, several staff and advisory council members of the Division Street Urban Progress Center used their position and status to politicize community residents on behalf of their interests.

Staff Activism
The general conviction behind the establishment of the Division Street Urban Progress Center was that it would provide area residents with assistance in resolving individual problems or by referring them to other facilities. For example, Puerto Rican families were encouraged to apply for public assistance and health care, while many others were helped to find jobs. For this, the Center hired several community residents as social workers and community aides. Since the large majority of the newly hired community workers lacked formal training in this field, they were compelled to learn welfare regulations, the working of social institutions, and how to obtain benefits for their new clients while on the job.

Recognizing that the claims behind the Center were not implemented by practical designs to solve poverty, several of the Center's service personnel turned militant as a way to "turn things around" in el barrio. Some staff members were quickly disillusioned with the Center, concluding that its services were spread too thinly to have a discernible impact on poverty. They agreed that by responding to the needs and problems of barrio residents through an anti-poverty policy, city officials in fact were offering these residents an ameliorative and co-optive strategy. These workers decided to organize the poor to protest the policies and practices of local agencies; in many instances, they led them. They were determined not to negotiate with their counterparts in local agencies (the school system, the welfare department)— they demanded responses favorable to their clients. It was felt that to have done anything else would have been to make themselves irrelevant to those who were presumably their constituents. These staff members developed a political consciousness and a truly conflictual strategy which offered, they thought, a stronger possibility for meaningful social change.

The most notable case of militancy and activism among the Center's staff was that of Hector Franco. A second-generation Puerto Rican and resident of the Division Street Area, Hector became a staff member of the Center in 1968, and resigned his position two years later. In an interview, Hector talked about how he became part of this service organization:

Immediately after the Division Street Riot I interviewed and was hired for a job as community representative. I remember that I took a salary cut from my previous job to venture into something that I knew very little about. I did not know anything about community work; I did not know anything about social problems and what-have-you. They just needed Puerto Ricans to solve the problems of el barrio and that's how I got hired.

It wasn't long before Hector began to recognize the tragic circumstances of residents of el barrio. Working with cases pertaining to families receiving public aid, he discovered how some of the families he visited were often capriciously denied access to benefits, failed to receive their welfare checks, received less than they were entitled to, were arbitrarily terminated, or were abused and demeaned by other welfare workers. He also learned very quickly that the promise that such problems or grievances could be solved through the Center was false. Hector concluded that these grievances could only be solved through organizing, and the grievances could be used as the basis from which to organize these various families. In responding to the question, What was your job all about at the Center?, Hector provided insight into how he transformed his position at the Center into that of an organizer:

At that time we were talking about the complex problems of the poor— their welfare rights, their right to a job, their right to public assistance if they could not work, their right to health services. We would go into the community and talk about all of these things to the people. However, it was just a matter of weeks after being out in the field that I came to the conclusion that the Center was not capable of correcting any of these problems; that the Center was established to quiet down the noise that we were making that summer. So we began to organize the people. Since the Center would not do what was needed, I and a friend took the initiative.

We got together and organized a group of Puerto Rican and black families from Bell Street. We called the group Allies for a Better Community (A.B.C.), emphasizing the two allies and the need to preserve that area for the two groups. We were still working for the city at this time, however, we went ahead and began to fight St. Mary's [a hospital located in the Division Street Area near Bell Street]. St. Mary's wanted to move people out of the community to build a new building and a huge parking lot. When we learned of the hospital's plans, we sought help from two white community organizations—-- the Wicker Park Council and the Northwest Community Organization (N.C.O.). Each organization refused to attend to our cause because we were not a club. So we decided that instead of forming a club to join these racist people, we might as well establish our own organization.

It was also during the time that he was employed by the Center that Hector learned formal community organizing. He enrolled and studied in the Saul Alinsky's Urban Institute for Community Organization. This experience, according to Hector, was the turning point in his career as a community worker. The skills and techniques learned during this two-year period provided Hector with the groundwork for a career in community work which still continues today. His organization Allies for a Better Community (A.B.C.) has been at the forefront of some of the leading events in the Puerto Rican community. A.B.C. was one of the few organizations to keep direct action as part of the social agenda of the Puerto Rican community.

Advisory Council Activism
One of the major organizations to emerge on the crest of the Puerto Rican riot of 1966 was the Spanish Action Committee of Chicago (SACC). Several Puerto Rican leaders tried to seize the opportunity presented by the rise of unrest in the Division Street Area to build a "formal organization" in the sure conviction that this was the order of the day. The disruptive protests which had characterized the Puerto Rican struggle during the summer of 1966 were quickly superseded by an emphasis on the need for "community organization," and SACC was one expression of that change. Its leaders and organizers, while animated by the spirit of protest, were nevertheless more deeply committed to the goal of building a mass-based permanent organization among barrio residents. Several similar efforts were followed in the 1970s but none gained the city-wide scope of SACC.

The Spanish Action Committee of Chicago was formed in June, 1966, "to enable local residents to identify in an organized manner the physical and social problems of the community, to interpret these needs to city agencies, and work toward implementing some community-based programs" (A Proposal to Develop an Urban Service Training Center, submitted by the Spanish Action Committee of Chicago, not dated). During its early period, only a cadre of volunteers constituted the membership of SACC. Mr. Juan Díaz, a former member of Los Caballeros, was its Executive Director, and there was a board of directors composed of local residents. But because of the temper of the times, this non-salaried hard core managed to bring out ever-increasing numbers of supporters for organizational activities. During this early stage, leaders of SACC concentrated on direct action, and the actions they led in the streets were generally more militant and disruptive than those of Los Caballeros and of earlier groups. They seized upon every grievance as an opportunity for inciting mass actions, and channeled their energy into extensive pamphleteering and agitation, which helped bring community residents together and raise the pitch of anger to defiance. SACC organized boycotts, picket lines, and demonstrations to attack discrimination in access to a wide range of services. A summary report, prepared by SACC, indicates the more notable involvement of the organization during the period of 1967-1969:

1. Relocation of Division Street Urban Progress Center to its present location from a store front.
SACC received complaints from local residents pertaining to the limitations and service problems of the then storefront Urban Progress Center unit. SACC took action by informing Dr. Dayton Brooks, Director of Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunities, that unless something was done about these problems, direct action would be taken on the part of the community. Dr. Brooks came and personally inspected the facilities and ordered that the present location, 1940 W. Division St., was more suitable for the Center.

2. Creation of the Humboldt Park Recreation Committee.
In collaboration with more than twenty Puerto Rican community organizations and local residents, a series of meetings and pickets were organized against the Chicago Park District. Our demands called for the building of a large size swimming pool and improvement of Humboldt Park facilities and programs. Some improvements were made, however, the park district did not meet our demands of a new and large swimming pool.

3. Removal of Policemen from 13th District.
SACC received various complaints about certain police officers who were using unlawful tactics and discriminatory actions against the Puerto Rican community. SACC's legal committee circulated a petition, gathering over 2,000 signatures. The petition was taken to the Internal Investigation Division of the Chicago Police Department, and after much examination several of these officers were removed from this district.

4. Board of Education's Program is Defeated by Community Parents.
After learning of a proposed boundary change and the potentially subsequent transfer of 300 students from Von Humboldt School, SACC arranged that the board's agency in charge of these changes meet with the Puerto Rican community. A public meeting was arranged and held at the school, the parents opposed all proposed changes. New boundaries for Von Humboldt School were never drawn.

SACC gained a wide and approving audience by articulating feelings which most Puerto Ricans shared but feared to voice in public. The success of SACC in mobilizing the barrio poor and receiving support from other emerging community groups and organizations resulted, principally, from its close affiliation with the Division Street Urban Progress Center—several members of SACC were also members of the Center's Advisory Council. This Council, comprised of members from local businesses and community service agencies, had a formal advisory role in program planning within the Division Street Area. From the beginning, members of SACC were represented in the Advisory Council's membership. There were times when one SACC representative was a member of the council; at other times, two SACC members served as part of the council's membership base.

Participation in the Center's Advisory Council provided these members with an excellent opportunity to learn a variety of political skills. They learned about the internal workings of this particular social service agency, the interrelationship between this agency and different levels of government, where to go to get things done, and the problems of funding and program support. Just as important, participation in the Center's Advisory Council kept members of SACC always informed of particular policies, programs, issues, and decisions concerning the Puerto Rican community. Members of SACC and other community representatives, serving on the Advisory Council, operated consistently as a voting block on contested issues and were able to win on key issues against the opposition of other board members. A coalition was also organized by SACC members to support common demands on internal issues within the Center involving budget cut-backs, program choices, and personnel appointments.

When an issue of great significance to the Puerto Rican community could not be resolved or treated by the Advisory Council, the SACC members would turn to their own organization for a solution. The coalition established by the leaders of SACC and community representatives did become engaged directly in controversies involving other community service agencies.

The essence of the new militancy among Puerto Ricans was the basis for the formation of institutions and structures that could implement organized actions and concerted and coordinated programs to aid in the ascent up the ladder. Those who supported the new structures believed that the ethnicity that already existed among Puerto Ricans only needed to be strengthened to become a factor to be reckoned with.

THE REPRESSION OF PROTEST
While dramatizing both the complex problems confronting Puerto Rican residents of the city and the urgent need for solutions to the problems, the 1966 riot also marked the beginning of a new wave of Puerto Rican protest, one which is still underway today. The Division Street Riot put direct action on the agenda of social change in the Puerto Rican community. It made Puerto Ricans realize that protest could be used as an effective power tool, stretching its influence into the political process. However, as quickly as protest was introduced into the Puerto Rican agenda, city officials moved in to repress it.

The grudging support that had been forthcoming to the Puerto Rican community in the post-riot years in the form of Community Action Programs was now joined by an increasingly repressive local response to activism in the Division Street Area. The emergence of a militant leadership represented a direct threat to the established order, and therefore, had to be suppressed by any means the authorities thought necessary. There were countless instances of intimidation, harassment, and surveillance directed at the Puerto Rican groups and individuals who were viewed as presenting a fundamental challenge to existing power relationships.

Typical of the wide ranging treatment accorded black and other activist groups in the late sixties and early seventies by the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Department, and local police departments throughout the country, the "policing of politics" expanded considerably into the Division Street Area following the aftermath of the 1966 riot as police intelligence units moved to gather information on activists and potential activists. Personal files were maintained on a large number of barrio residents. Equally revealing is the range of individuals who were surveilled either as primary targets or because of their alleged political activism. Any individual who attended a meeting in the community was listed as an activist or sympathizer. Even individuals who were considered only remotely subversive or whose personal and political activities were irrelevant to any legitimate governmental interests became targets of surveillance. A vivid illustration of the reasons for surveilling persons involved in community activities in the Puerto Rican barrio comes from the files of Obed López. Although Obed López is Mexican, he was initially classified as a Puerto Rican; and his personal life was the subject of a ten-day intensive surveillance by two intelligence agents. Their report for a sample day, records his going and comings, car and license number, when he parked his car and where, etc.:

SUBJECT (Obed López) drives a dark green Volkswagen, 11. /Lic. # HK 5026 which he usually parks on the 1200-1300 blocks of California, the 2800 block of Division, or the 1200 block of Washtenaw while in the Division Street area.

SUBJECT (Obed López) is very difficult to keep under surveillance as he is very evasive. He will drive in circles, stop on occasion for periods ranging from 3-4 minutes, leave his auto and walk up a block on one side, and return on the other side to a point near his auto where he watches for anyone who might be following him, and just about any other tactic that might throw off a surveillance, moving or stationary. (Police Report, August 23, 1966).

The politics of Obed López were analyzed by secret service agents in this way:

Obed López is presently heading up a Communist front organization known as the Latin American Defense Committee.. (Police Report, September 19, 1966). SUBJECT (Latin American Defense Organization), under the direction of Obed López, is currently conducting a boycott of the National Food Stores at 2650 & 2311 W. Division Street, and has picketed both stores on three occasions in groups of three. The purpose of the boycott and picketing is to protest what they consider discriminatory hiring and personnel practices by the National TEA Co. in relation to people of Latin American extraction. In general, SUBJECT is using the National TEA Company as a scapegoat for a "Pilot Program" they believe will give them considerable influence in the community, especially among the small businessmen who they feel will support them as they are supposedly encouraging Latins to buy from Latin owned businessmen or businesses. (Police Report, September 28, 1966).

Subversive files were also maintained on Puerto Rican community organizations and groups composed of individuals exercising their rights of association and political protest. Groups like the Young Lords, Aspira, Inc. of Illinois, Organization for Latin Americans in Chicago, Latin American Defense Organization, Northwest Spanish Community Committee, Latin Boy's Club, and others were investigated. The files of the Organization for Latin Americans (OLA) are illustrative. The organization was involved in working with issues pertaining to housing, employment, and civil rights. Although its methods were entirely peaceful, it was accused in the intelligence reports of being communist and aiming to become the official voice of Spanish-speaking people in Chicago (Police Report, July 11, 1966).

Perhaps the most celebrated surveilled group was SACC. SACC was subjected to a wide range of official control efforts by a unit of the Chicago Police Department's Intelligence Division also referred to as the Subversive Unit, the Security Section, or the Red Squad. The Subversive Unit used police officers as infiltrators to spy on the activities of SACC and at times to try to provoke organization members into foolish actions. There was an Intelligence Unit's police officer by the name of Thomas Braham who posed as a Spanish-speaking policeman; James Zorno was another surveillance agent who passed as a public relations person with expertise in the preparation of press releases. There were also four Spanish-speaking police officers: Victor Vega, Andrew Rodríguez, Alfredo Perales, and Edwin Olivieri. SACC was deemed worthy of infiltration primarily because, in the views of the Chicago Police Department's Intelligence Unit, its ranks were filled with communists and leftists. The role of the police agents was to encourage paranoia and internal dissension and to damage the public image of SACC.

The agents' entry into SACC was facilitated by the structure of the organization; it lacked resources and people willing to undertake the routine and time-consuming tasks required of activists. The agents brought badly needed skills and resources. It was assumed by SACC members that the agents' ties to institutions they claimed to represent would give the organization added strength of support. The entry of these informants into SACC was further facilitated by the fact that the organization was not comprised of a highly centralized, formally organized, tightly knit group of experienced activists, but was instead decentralized, with fluid task assignments and an emphasis on participation. Members were generally not carefully screened, and requirements for membership were minimal. This was all the more true in cases of social action— demonstrations, meetings, and marches— in which anyone could participate. The emergent non-institutionalized, social movement character of the struggle, as advanced by SACC, meant constantly changing plans, shifting alliances, and spontaneous actions. SACC's ideology stressed peaceful nonviolent means, reform, democracy, openness, an anti bureaucratic orientation, optimistic faith in people, tolerance, community, and naivete about government surveillance. SACC had nothing to hide; the group saw little reason to be suspicious.

Several "investigator's reports,' prepared for the Intelligence Division of the Chicago Police Department by undercover police officers and filed during the summer of 1966, reveal the direct and active part played by these officers in the ultimate dissolution of SACC. In one of the earliest reports the investigating officer indicates very explicitly that the objective of his undertaking "was to destroy the SUBJECT [Spanish Action Committee of Chicago], its leaders and community influence" (June, 1966). In another report dated August 19, 1966, the reporting officer noted: "I launched an all out anti-Ted Vélez, anti-Juan Díaz campaign amongst the original committee members of subject organization, with emphasis on the subversive intonations."

If the repressive actions directed at SACC were to be successful, the involvement of some of the organization's members were required in the plot. The undercover Red Squad officers used intimidation tactics to gain the support of a few organization members. The police officers convinced these members that the organization's involvement in communist-related activities would ultimately cause them a great deal of harm and pain. In particular, Ted and Myrta Ramírez were two SACC members identified by the infiltrators as prospective collaborators since, according to the police officers, both members were very dissatisfied with the way the organization was being run. One investigator's report, which details the content of a meeting between one police officer and Mr. and Mrs. Ramírez, demonstrates the scare of intimidating tactics used by the officers and, at the same time, the resistance expressed by these two SACC members to the idea of aiding the police with the expulsion from the organization of its alleged communists and leftists:

[Police officer] then advised [Mrs. Ramírez] of the fact that communists are undisputed masters of deceit, and will seize on any popular or controversial issue for their own cause. [Mr. and Mrs. Ramírez] both seemed in agreement with this, but were slightly reluctant when the [police officer] said he would like their help in removing any communist influence from SACC. They feel that SACC has a lot of potential, and would never allow communists to take over, but would inform the [police officer] of the presence of any new or suspicious persons who might try to get into SACC. (August 19, 1966).

In an interview, Mr. Richard Gutman, the Attorney representing SACC, stated very clearly that those who defected from the organization were truly victims of the tactics used by Red Squad. He pointed out, for instance, that the undercover police officer who passed as a Spanish-speaking policeman convinced these members that SACC was a communist organization and that its leaders had been convicted of possession of narcotics. In the words of Mr. Gutman: "Ted and Myrta were victims too. They were used. The various police reports make it clear that Ted and Myrta did not necessarily want to quit SACC; this wasn't their idea. They were totally opposed to putting out the stuff about communism."

In any event, after several meetings, the police officers manipulated Mr. and Mrs. Ramírez into resigning from SACC and forming a competing organization. Shortly after the resignation of these persons, the American Spanish Speaking Peoples Association (ASSPA) was born. In another investigator's report, the role played by the surveillance officers in the formation of ASSPA is dearly stated:

The SUBJECT was secretly organized by members of the Intelligence Division and composed of former members of the Spanish Action Committee of Chicago. Although the members know nothing of the part played by the Intelligence Division, they have been directed to a point where they will publicly denounce SACC and its leader, Juan Díaz and his followers and associates for acts not to the best interest of the Spanish-speaking community, and for the Communist influence they believe exists there. (August 31, 1966).

The undercover officers then proceeded, successfully, to convince members of the newly created organization to prepare a press release announcing the establishment of ASSPA. After examining the text of the original press release prepared by members of ASSPA, the police officer assigned to this investigation concluded that it was insufficient for the desired goals of the police department: "They did prepare a press release that said very little as to what their reasons were for resigning from SUBJECT organization, at which time I felt it necessary to ask for the assistance of a 'friend of the family' by the name of 'Dr. Baron,' an expert in the preparation of Press releases,... [but] who is in actuality Officer James Zarnow" (Investigator's Report, August 19, 1966). The entire text of this release is printed below to provide insights into the course of direction former members of SACC were driven to follow:

We, the members of ASSPA are for the most part, former members of the Spanish Action Committee of Chicago, who have arrived at the realization that SACC does not represent the Puerto Rican community or any of the Spanish Speaking as a whole. It has done nothing more than keep the Spanish community apart from the society it should be becoming a part of.

SACC is being led by a man who is directed by individuals in New York who know nothing about Chicago, and only want to maintain discontent and anger among the Puerto Ricans who live in Chicago. It is influenced by some people who have Communist philosophies and who have been before the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Fair Play for Cuban Investigations. When organized, our group was dedicated to helping the Latin American peoples in Chicago; we were staff members, but every time we suggested methods to help make citizens of the people of our community, we found ourselves powerless. This was possible because the Director of SACC, Juan Díaz assumed dictatorial power over the organization. We have never been told where our financial aid came from; we were given no information regarding the amount of money the organization had; Díaz refused to keep records and made all decisions. To us, it appears that the only interests served by SACC were to the benefit of Juan Díaz and others who do not serve the interest of our country. We have since learned that this man Díaz is a convicted narcotic offender and of all things, he is presently the director of the Latin American Boys Club; and to our knowledge has no qualification as such director.

True, we are Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Cubans and South Americans, but here, we are all Americans first. We should not be trying to set ourselves apart, but becoming part of the society we live in. Your descendants were strangers to the ways of their new land and many of them were not at first accepted, but they and their children eventually overcame this. They were assimilated into the society around them, as we and our children are and will be. SACC does not want this to happen; they want the Latin to feel apart, keep them angry, keep reminding that they are apart and make them believe they are not treated the same as other citizens. This is not true. Despite those people who preach hate, tell lies to incite us, we are progressing and are accepted more and more each day. We are learning these things and those of us who have learned are helping those who need help. We are not a minority group, we are a majority group, we are Americans.

The resignation of SACC members and the subsequent establishment of ASSPA was carefully and strategically staged by the undercover agents. The agents persuaded Bob Weidrich of the Chicago Tribune to use the press release and responses gathered from an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Ramírez "to expose SACC, Díaz and etc." (Investigator's Report, August 31, 1966). (It turned out that the undercover agents supplied the Tribune correspondent with the questions to ask during this interview. Also, one of the agents was present during the interview to provide the "correct answers" to the questions in cases when the two respondents' replies were not in line with the expected response.) In a two-part series, Weidrich reported almost exclusively on allegations regarding the involvement of communist individuals in SACC. He made the claim that "one reputed Communist" provided SACC with both financial and advisory support. This particular individual was said to have been a former "Fair Play for Cuba" committee official. Further, the reports charged that SACC was being taken over by outsiders: Puerto Ricans from New York who were also alleged as communist affiliated and a Californian alleged to have been a "former head of the Young Communist League of California" (Chicago Tribune, September 3-4, 1966).

The police officers also arranged for AlfredoTorres de Jesús, a writer for El Puertorriqueño, to use the Chicago Tribune information for a local publication. A week later, El Puertorriqueño's front-page, lead story was almost a complete translation of Weidrich's articles. However, Mr. Torrres de Jesús sensationalized the story by calling it: "SACC ES NIDO DE COMUNISTAS"— SACC is a nest of Communists— (El Puertorriqueño, Week of September 9-15, 1966), contributing more severely to the damage and discredit of the organization.

The press played an indispensable role in the planned disruption of SACC. The combined articles attracted a great deal of attention. The publicized charges that SACC was communist-affiliated not only served to drive out some members (except for two, all other officers of the organization resigned their post), but also to scare off potential recruits and supporters. The charges made against SACC raised the cost and danger of being active in the organization, and supporters feared their careers would be ruined if they continued their affiliation. The testimonies of several of these supporters at a trial filed by SACC against the city of Chicago gives weight to this point:

Those articles had a very great negative effect on SACC's reputation in the Puerto Rican community. Because of those articles, SACC gained a reputation for being controlled or influenced by communists. This reputation greatly decreased the Puerto Rican community’s willingness to work with SACC. I quit SACC when I read in the newspaper that the organization was taken over by communists...

There was a lot of conversation about [the newspaper] articles. People were very negative. They thought the information was real, and then nobody wanted to be associated with the Communist Party. I did not want to be associated with the organization, I stopped going to meetings. I did not want to be known as a communist.

There is little doubt that political repression, as manifested in surveillance and disruption activities, significantly disrupted and discredited SACC and thereby made the organization less attractive to members and sympathizers. A present-day member of SACC informed me in an interview: "We were set back an entire generation. The Chicago Police Department hampered our growth. We had a very good reputation in the community before the smears in the Tribune and El Puertoriqueño." Similarly, Richard Gutman said: "The evidence clearly shows that SACC was the major group in the Puerto Rican community during the summer of 1966. But after the press publication, it never recovered its former position. It continued to function, it remained active, but it never regained its early form."

In addition, increased police repression significantly deterred some people form speaking out, demonstrating, or joining protest groups, and thereby weakened the capacity for political activism in the Division Street Area. Government and police officials demonstrated that open defiance by Puerto Ricans was extremely dangerous and often suicidal. Despite this, there is much evidence to suggest that political repression did not significantly deter protest activities in el barrio. Protest increased even as political repression increased, at least until 1975. Regardless of the various official repressive actions taken against members of barrio-based political activist organizations and groups, the organizer and mass-agitator types of leaders continued to represent a very important part of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community.

Chapter 4 Endnotes
1. In their Ghetto Revolt: The Politics of Violence in American Cities, Feagin and Hahn, after reviewing several examinations of major rioting in the 1960s, conclude that with only a few exceptions, every major incident of urban violence was triggered by the police. Using a study which focused solely on 14 major ghetto riots for the 1964-1967 period, Feagin and Hahn (1973:145) indicate the resulting distribution of final precipitating events being as follows:

Killings or interference with blacks by policemen 50%

Civil liberties, police facilities, demonstrations 22%

Miscellaneous altercations 14%

Interracial fights 7%

Feagin and Hahn also cite the findings of the often used Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to illustrate further the impact caused by police-resident encounters as the precipitating incident for numerous riots in 1967 (1973-146):

CHART HERE

2. This argument derives support from other analyses of urban riots among blacks. Feagin and Hahn (1973:157), as one example, write:

Perhaps most important, police officers represent accessible agents of government that directly link the black public to the highest levels of governmental decision-making. Policemen are the extended arm of the government., and blacks probably have more contact with law enforcement officers than with any other political representatives. For many, therefore, abstract concepts of governance are personified more by the cop in the police car or on the street than by elected leaders.

3. This approach is in line with t hat of some scholars of civil violence. Arguing that the riots cannot be adequately explained simply as pathology or as a symptom of social change, sociologists Kurt and Glady’s Lang examined the development stages in the dynamics of civil disorders from face-to-face confrontations through epidemic spread of disruptive behavior and the acceptance of violence as a "technique of protest." The Langs focused on riots as a form of collective political protest, the evidence of which they found in the pattern of riots throughout the nation: "However spontaneous the elements that underlie any incident and its particular pattern of expansion, the riots reflect at he same time the stirrings of a major social political movement" (1968:126). The resort to violence, they feel, is indicative of social, and not individual, pathology.

4. IN 1974, SACC filed a class action lawsuit against Chicago’s Police Department for violation of the organization’s constitutional rights. the case was finally brought to trial June 18,1984, with SACC emerging victorious. Most of the material in this section is from the various police reports dating back to the summer of 1966 presented in the trial as well as from the testimonies of witnesses