Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ephemeral Puerto Rican Placemaking in the Rural Midwest

2023; American studies; Volume: 62; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ams.2023.a927986

2153-6856

Lisa Ortiz-Guzmán,

Latin American and Latino Studies

Ephemeral Puerto Rican Placemaking in the Rural Midwest Lisa Ortiz-Guzmán (bio) On September 21, 2017, a day after life-changing Hurricane María made landfall in the Caribbean archipelago of Puerto Rico, the local paper in the U.S. Midwest town of Rantoul, Illinois, informed its readers of the uncertainty that Puerto Ricans in Rantoul were facing due to the lack of communication from loved ones. "Many in Rantoul," it headlined, "wait for word from family impacted by Hurricane María."1 Following Hurricane Irma's impact on September 6, María whipped through at a high-end category 4, causing unimaginable devastation with which many are still grappling today.2 The newspaper article quoted Narciso Candelaria,3 one of the Puerto Rican ministers in town, regarding people's turn toward prayer at the moment described as tragedy. Narciso is the person the local press usually turns to regarding Latinxs in Rantoul and surrounding areas. Considered an influential leader, additional coverage focused on him waiting to hear about his wife, who was in Puerto Rico when the hurricane hit. Narciso and his congregation at an evangelical church (and other Puerto Ricans who led churches in town) were not only praying for and with Puerto Ricans because of the hurricanes. They were also praying with and for another group: Mexicans whose home country had witnessed two recent earthquakes, one of which occurred in Mexico City, Mexico, just one day before the hurricane on September 19, 2017. These (un)natural disasters would not be the first to unite Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in and around town. As I observed—informally since 2012 as a Puerto Rican [End Page 97] migrant myself who moved nearby for graduate study and officially since 2016 as part of my scholarly research exploring neoliberal indications of value and devaluations within rural-to-rural migration between Jayuya, Puerto Rico and Rantoul—both groups, many of whom had (im)migrated, had previously interacted with each other in the years leading up to 2017 and have since continued. They socialized at church, work, educational settings, and public spaces for leisure. However, I also learned from listening in research interviews that Puerto Ricans and Mexicans encountered each other before in ways that provoked strife. Ten years prior to the hurricanes and earthquakes, both groups worked for a now-closed meat processing plant. According to Puerto Ricans with whom I spoke, human resources personnel traveled to Jayuya on three different occasions between July and November 2007 to recruit three waves of workers for Rantoul when immigration raids were happening across Illinois.4 Puerto Ricans described their working experiences upon arrival and thereafter as ones that included tensions with remaining Latinx workers, primarily Mexicans, who saw them as rivals competing for work opportunities. Their stay would be short. Despite tense intraethnic encounters and the demanding nature of working in a pork plant,5 it was a fight at a party that very year that prompted the departure of most recruited workers. Thinking erroneously that someone died during the fight and fearing retaliation, as I later describe, Puerto Ricans asked family and friends in Puerto Rico to help them leave. Many Puerto Ricans fled back home and stayed, others fled and returned, and some never left. Those who stayed or returned after 2012 would set into motion the social network or chain migration process in which relatives and acquaintances also moved to Rantoul. How might one group of Puerto Ricans working in 2007 and another group mobilizing solidarity in 2017 help shed light on Puerto Rican migration experiences in rural locations? With U.S. labor exploitation dependent on Puerto Rico and Mexico and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans claiming recognition and relief in central Illinois for communities back home, in what ways does Rantoul figure into the Midwest as a global region? What might place signify in the lives of Puerto Ricans who move between seemingly similar areas, and does place make a difference? Several theoretical approaches could address these questions. Yet, given my interest in exploring how people negotiate place, how they attach meanings and value to it, and how they make place, I find it helpful to rely on the rich...