In Search of Puerto Rican Identity in Small-Town America

Code Switch : In Search of Puerto Rican Identity in Small-Town America Image
Code Switch : In Search of Puerto Rican Identity in Small-Town America Image

In Search of Puerto Rican Identity in Small-Town America

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Puerto Ricans are migrants not immigrants, Spanish and English, domestic yet foreign — as we like to say on Code Switch, it’s complicated. A hundred years ago this week, Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens by law with the passing of the Jones Act. Since then, they’ve had a complicated and fraught relationship with what it means to be American. Shereen traveled to Holyoke, Massachusetts to explore what the Jones Act has meant to Puerto Rican identity on stateside in the last century. Holyoke has the highest ration of Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. - nearly 50% of residents there have Puerto Rican heritage.