<em>No Se vende</em> (Not for sale). An anti-gentrification grassroots campaign of Puerto Ricans in Chicago
10.13125/americacritica/3886
No Se Vende (Not for Sale) is a grassroots campaign that claims that Puerto Ricans, even those who are renters, are the legitimate owners of Humboldt Park, Chicago. In this assertion, legitimacy and ownership are one and the same, regardless of the legal status of “homeowner”. No Se Vende then contradicts the original meaning that inspired the legal code, property that can be bought and sold which is not based on “use” values. Legality, to some extent, has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of these activists and, therefore, they have decided to claim their rights thought the symbology of language. In this sense, the idea of Puerto Ricans renting in Humboldt Park or simply deciding to stay has become an instrumental right of resistance to the perceived oppression. The campaign has played a key role in the construction of a new sense of legitimacy in the recent housing struggles after the financial housing crisis. This paper employs a single case study through participant observation, ethnography, and Participatory Action Research (PAR).
Keywords: renters; owners; gentrification; Puerto Ricans; Chicago; activism; No Se Vende campaign
application/pdf
2532-6724
3886
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-25771
Ivis García
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
América Crítica
<em>No Se vende</em> (Not for sale). An anti-gentrification grassroots campaign of Puerto Ricans in Chicago
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap
3
Articoli
2020-01-28
2019-12-22
2020-01-28
2020-01-28
35-61
1
Ivis García
2019
10.13125/americacritica/3886
35
University of Utah, United States
2532-6724
2
en
61
urn:nbn:it:unica-25771
<em>No Se vende</em> (Not for sale). An anti-gentrification grassroots campaign of Puerto Ricans in Chicago
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap/article/download/3886/pdf
3
Ivis García. 2019. “No Se Vende (Not for sale). An anti-gentrification grassroots campaign of
Puerto Ricans in Chicago”. América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, ISSN: 2532-6724, DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.13125/americacritica/3886.

Abstract
No Se Vende (Not for Sale) is a grassroots campaign that claims that Puerto Ricans, even those
who are renters, are the legitimate owners of Humboldt Park, Chicago. In this assertion, legitimacy
and ownership are one and the same, regardless of the legal status of “homeowner”. No Se Vende
then contradicts the original meaning that inspired the legal code, property that can be bought and
sold which is not based on “use” values. Legality, to some extent, has lost its legitimacy in the eyes
of these activists and, therefore, they have decided to claim their rights thought the symbology of
language. In this sense, the idea of Puerto Ricans renting in Humboldt Park or simply deciding to
stay has become an instrumental right of resistance to the perceived oppression. The campaign has
played a key role in the construction of a new sense of legitimacy in the recent housing struggles
after the financial housing crisis. This paper employs a single case study through participant obser-
vation, ethnography, and Participatory Action Research (PAR).
Keywords: renters; owners; gentrification; Puerto Ricans; Chicago; activism; No Se Vende campaign

Resumen
No Se Vende es una campaña popular que afirma que los puertorriqueños, incluso aquellos que son
arrendatarios, son los legítimos propietarios de Humboldt Park, Chicago. Con esta afirmación, la
legitimidad y la propiedad son lo mismo, independientemente del estado legal de ser “propietario
de una casa”. No Se Vende contradice el significado original que inspiró el código legal, propiedad
que se puede comprar y vender que no se basa en valores de “uso”. La legalidad, hasta cierto punto,
ha perdido su legitimidad a los ojos de estos activistas que, por lo tanto, han decidido reclamar sus
derechos a través de la simbología del lenguaje. En este sentido, la idea de que los puertorriqueños
alquilen en Humboldt Park o simplemente decidan quedarse se ha convertido en un derecho
instrumental de resistencia a la opresión percibida. La campaña ha jugado un papel clave en la
construcción de un nuevo sentido de legitimidad en las recientes luchas por la vivienda después de
la crisis financiera de la casa. Este documento emplea un estudio de caso único a través de la
observación participante, la etnografía y la Investigación-Acción Participativa (IAP).
Palabras clave: arrendatarios; propietarios; gentrificación; Puertorriqueños; Chicago; activismo;
campaña popular No Se Vende campaign
                  No Se Vende (Not for sale).
          An anti-gentrification grassroots campaign
                 of Puerto Ricans in Chicago
                              Ivis García
                         The University of Utah

   Introduction

   I write this introduction sitting on an airplane on my way to Chicago
from Salt Lake City, where I am employed as an Assistant Professor. I
am going “home” to participate in a panel discussion titled, “Community
Building: Hope and Home in Humboldt Park”. Along with hundreds of
people in the Puerto Rican community, I will be celebrating the life-
work of my mentor, José López. It is his 70th birthday and what a better
way to celebrate than with a two-day symposium and dinner gala to raise
funds for the Puerto Rican Cultural Center – the organization that
created the No Se Vende (Not for Sale) campaign.
   As I sit on the air, conquering distance, I reflect on the meaning of
home. People say that home is where the heart is. And, my heart, still in
my ways in Chicago. This is not because it is a great city, which it is, but
because this is where I found a sense of belonging and a family far away
from home (Puerto Rico). The people in the Puerto Rican Agenda – a
collective of organizations which I co-chaired while pursuing my
doctorate in urban planning – are not my blood family, but they have
adopted me for almost a decade now. While completing my dissertation,
where this work largely derives, they taught me to be an activist, to build
community and to instill hope through action (Garcia 2015).
   It was in the context of Participatory Action Research (PAR) that I
learned about the life and housing histories of my new family. My
mentor José López and many other community leaders that I can come
to admire regurgitated to the same beat the story of how Puerto Ricans
started to move to Chicago in mass in the 1950s and they first settle in
                                           América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019      36




Old Town, Lakeview, and Lincoln Park (Flores-González 2001; Alicea
2001; Rúa 2012; Betancur 2002). The story continue to evolved when in
the 1960s they started to be displaced to Humboldt Park – along
Division Street and between Western and California Avenues – as a
result of urban renewal projects (Flores-Gonzalez 2001; Betancur 2002).




Figure 1. Map of the Humboldt Park community area (right) and map showing where
Chicago is located in relationship to the state of Illinois (left).
37    Ivis García, No se vende




        But members of the Puerto Rican Agenda, including José López, the
     executive director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, came up with a
     plan to deter gentrification and in 1995 they erected two giant flags of
     steel (see figure 5) marking the entrance and exit of Paseo Boricua, a
     commercial corridor housing restaurants and non-profit establishments
     that represent the Puerto Rican identity (Flores-Gonzalez 2001; García
     2015; 2017). It has been more than two decades of community building
     between two flags. Finally, in 2018 this space was officially recognized
     by the City of Chicago as Puerto Rican Town, a special zoning district
     with future funds attach to cultural production, giving it a historical and
     protected space in the city (García 2019a). Although, 23 years apart,
     both the creation of Paseo Boricua in 1995 and the legal designation of
     Puerto Rico Town in 2018 are examples of community efforts to stop the
     gentrification coming westward and to declare ownership over space
     (García 2017). Most specifically, I concentrate in the No Se Vende
     Campaign because it is a clear example of what Mumm called a public
     struggle over gentrification (Mumm 2014; Mumm 2016).
        This article focuses on Chicago’s Puerto Rican community in
     Humboldt Park and seeks to illuminate the disparities between market-
     types and the opposing views of economy, private property, and
     ownership. In the case of Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park, Chicago and
     the No Se Vende (Not for Sale) Campaign, this work seeks to develop
     on behalf of the community a framework from which to further leverage
     identity politics into creating symbolic forms of ownership that
     transcend the state’s enforcement of private property rights.
        This article is divided into six distinct sections. In the first section
     (theoretical framework), I frame the conversation in political economy
     and thinkers like Jean-Michel Servet, Caroline Humphrey, David
     Harvey, Karl Polanyi, Fernand Braudel, and David Graeber. While a full
     exploration of any of the topics of commodification, market-economy,
     economism, use values and exchange values are impossible within the
     confines of this work, this article seeks to start a dialogue from which we
     may begin to seek out alternatives to the dominant thought of
     private/individual property. The following sections, two and three, will
                                          América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019      38




discuss the No Se Vende Campaign before (older mobilizations/struggles) and
after the 2008 crisis (newer mobilizations/struggles). Sections four and five,
focus in two changes seen in the market after the crisis: market
formalization and de-localization (section four) and, the inability of
Puerto Ricans to afford homes after the financial crisis because they still
are not affordable to them and because they must compete with others
for the same housing stock (section five). Finally, in section six, I offer
some concluding remarks.

   Methods

   In order to understand how Puerto Ricans have come to relate to and
build on their community’s specific economic traditions I took part as an
activist, ethnographer, and participant observer in meetings and every
day conversations in the case study area. As an ethnographer I studied
the Puerto Rican nation, culture, and identity formation in Humboldt
Park (Rua 2011). Through the Participatory Action Research (PAR)
methodology, I was part of conversations and anti-gentrification actions
that sought to benefit my community (Chevalier and Buckles 2019).
   I conducted interviews with more than two dozen community
members. However, this article focuses in community stories as told by
Julia – a community organizer for the Puerto Rican Cultural Center
(PRCC). The PRCC was founded in 1972 and it is a non-profit,
community-based organization that seeks to serve the social and cultural
needs of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community in the Humboldt Park area.
The No Se Vende Campaign is one of PRCC’s initiatives. All of PRCC
programs are based on the principles of self-determination, self-
actualization, critical thought, and an ethic of self-reliance best
expressed in the motto “To live and help to live” (Molina 2019).
   I met Julia at a Puerto Rican Agenda meeting. The Puerto Rican
Agenda is a collective of more than a 150 organizations and Puerto
Rican leaders that organize in Humboldt Park around several community
issues, the most important on being gentrification (The Puerto Rican
Agenda of Chicago 2019). At the time, I was the co-chair of the
39    Ivis García, No se vende




     organization. She came to promote some of the work she was doing
     related to gentrification and renter stabilization via Bohío Housing in
     where the PRCC would pay people rent during times of emergency (e.g.
     someone got sick, lost their job etc.). After a few times of seeing her in
     the community, I thought her perspective was very unique, so I decided
     to interview her. We also talked informally half dozen times about the
     community, life and so on. Through these conversations I noticed that
     people share stories with her; stories of being evicted, foreclosed, and
     displaced. I saw her doing her work, taking to people and organizing
     community. She walks the neighborhood and knows every door, gets to
     know the people and understand her struggles not as individuals
     (psychologically), but as a community (sociologically). I center this
     article on her not only as a way of giving continuity to the story, but also
     to shine light on community organizers around the world and the work
     they do.
        Julia stories show how Puerto Ricans interact with and contest the
     impositions – real or perceived – of other groups’ economic ideals into
     the spaces to which they are attached as homeowners, tenants, and
     community members. I maintain that the narratives used by community
     stakeholders like Julia are the primary way in which they attempt to
     reconcile themselves in the spaces and times they inhabit. Ultimately, I
     seek to understand how these narratives are transformed into political
     objectives and institutions such as No Se Vende and Bohío Housing
     Services from the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, which are capable of
     expressing a way of maintaining Puerto Ricans in the space they
     currently occupy.
        In line with traditional PAR methodologies (Chevalier and Buckles
     2019), the intention of this article is to contribute to the construction of a
     philosophy of praxis which might be useful to the Humboldt Park
     community and other communities struggling with similar issues.
     Trapped in ethnic/racial enclaves, with little chance of achieving the
     economic status of whites and after suffering the detrimental effects of
     the subprime mortgage and housing crisis, minorities throughout the
     country are under the increasing pressures of gentrification and
                                          América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019     40




displacement. Humboldt Park specifically was ranked by Redfin as
among the “Top Ten 2014 U.S. Hottest Neighborhoods”(Unger 2014). It
is becoming increasingly important for minorities to develop innovative
ways of maintaining the urban spaces they inhabit. This case study aims
to shed light on social experimentation undertaken by community
activists while theorizing potential pathways to strengthen their
endeavors.

   Theoretical Framework

   No Se Vende (Not for Sale) embodies a narrative that questions
traditional notions of individual ownership. While those who subscribe
to classical economics (e.g. Smith, Turgot, Beccaria etc.) argue that
since cave men times people truck, barter, and trade, thinkers like
Servet, Humphrey, Harvey, Polanyi, Braudel, and Graeber have
questioned this presumption. These critical theorists have sought to
debunk the idea that barter and its progression towards the creation of
money is a natural phenomenon that has existed since humans have.
   Instead, they have argued, alongside with Marcel Mauss, that
historically people practice gift-giving (Mauss 2000). The
conceptualization of gift-giving challenges individual ownership as an
establishment and instead opens the door for discussions of collective
ownership which are bounded by identity, community, and sense of
belonging. No Se Vende is a way of saying that neighborhood (place)
and community (people) are one and that as long as there are Puerto
Ricans in Humboldt Park who consider this place home, the space is
owned by them, even if they are renters. The following theoretical
framework seeks to aid the understanding that private property is not
natural but a historical phenomenon that it is constantly questioned in
Humboldt Park as part of the Puerto Rican everyday experience (García
2017; García 2018a).
   The basic question of critical theorists, a perspective I subscribe to, is
how did we get here? (García 2018b; García 2019b). We have to go back
for centuries and find the texts in where historians and anthropologists
41    Ivis García, No se vende




     have debated over the existence of barter in primitive societies and the
     properties of human methods for exchange as an element of human
     nature in order to answer this question. Contemporary articulations of
     this argument are most often based on Adam Smith’s assumption that
     the “propensity to truck, barter and exchange” represented a basic and
     fundamental element of human interaction (Smith 2003). Jean-Michel
     Servet (1981) satirized the reductive position of the early political
     economists:

       In the eighteenth century, Smith, Turgot, Beccaria and so on, invented
       ‘barter’, an essential theoretical construct for the description of the
       functioning of a society in the absence of money, that instrument of
       princely control. A savage met by chance another savage; both carried
       goods capable of satisfying the needs of the other: one was hungry and
       held an animal skin he didn’t know what to do with, the other was cold
       and held what was left over from an abundant fishing expedition. From
       this first contact, this first ‘transaction’, stemmed not only ‘commerce’
       but, another form and another sense for the word: language. (Servet
       1981: 423).

     The logic of the political economists is quite simple: given that the
     resources available in nature are scarce and given that the amount of
     demand for those resources is always certain to overwhelm those
     resources, communities and societies have to, by some mechanism,
     allocate the products of their work among their members. Early political
     economists assumed that market exchange is the natural method from
     which systems of distribution arise. In ‘primitive’ societies and
     communities, we are told, exchange was mediated by participants’ want
     for each other’s wares but, prior to the invention of money, exchange
     could only occur if each party had something the other wanted. If one
     party sought to exchange with another but had nothing they wanted in
     return, bartering became difficult if not impossible. We can thusly see
     the impetus for the invention of money and, in turn, we can properly see
     that all social development is tantamount to the development of markets.
                                         América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019    42




   While the logic of this story is both elegant and intuitively appealing,
anthropologists and historians studying economies have long refuted this
belief in a natural state of market exchange – represented in its most
‘primitive’ form, we are told, as a barter economy. As Caroline
Humphrey (1985) has written, “No example of a barter economy, pure
and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of
money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such
a thing” (Humphrey 1985: 48). While the question of naturally existing
exchange is an interesting one, arguments surrounding the origins of
trade often degrade into little more than semantic debates. Meanwhile,
orthodox economists have not seemed to be interested in defending their
position on the existence of markets and exchange – they simply ignore
the counter-arguments altogether. The idea of the naturalness of
exchange appears to be so deeply embedded in the modern imaginary
that no amount of refutation will dislodge it. Indeed, the entire field of
orthodox economics leans on unproven assumptions (Harvey 1978).
While acknowledging the existence of these debates, I do not see the
need not engage in them any further. Whether exchange was constituted
by reciprocity or gift-giving and therefore whether or not the idea of
naturally existing barter ever existed, buries the lead. The important
question is not the existence of exchange as a natural human function,
the question is: When did markets become central to the reproduction of
whole societies? The important difference between older systems of
economy and modern ones does not lie in the existence or depth of
exchange; rather, it lies in the degree of reliance by members of a society
on the marketplace for securing the goods needed for their everyday
reproduction.
   Contrary to popular depictions, this analysis operates on the basic
assumption that, although populations subsisted in the forms of
households and communities up to a short time ago, members of
societies have, of late, become increasingly dependent on market
interactions for even the most basic acts of reproduction. Though
families and communities likely exchanged the products of their labor –
perhaps even in great numbers and across great distances – their
43    Ivis García, No se vende




     exchange was always constituted by the surpluses of their product and
     not by the goods necessitated for their daily reproduction. It is the degree
     of reliance on market economy for reproduction that has piqued my
     interest here as well as the origin of such reliance. To elaborate on this
     distinction, as Karl Polanyi wrote:

        No society could, naturally, live for any length of time unless it
        possessed an economy of some sort; but previously to our time no
        economy has ever existed that, even in principle, was controlled by
        markets. In spite of the chorus of academic incantations so persistent in
        the nineteenth century, gain and profit made on exchange never before
        played an important part in human economy. Though the institution of
        the market was fairly common since the later Stone Age, its role was no
        more than incidental to economic life […]. While history and
        ethnography know of various kinds of economies, most of them
        comprising the institution of markets, they know of no economy prior to
        our own, even approximately controlled and regulated by markets
        (Polanyi 2001: 43).

        Adam Smith and his cohorts falsely concluded that since exchange in
     some form appears to be natural and since the need to economize one’s
     time is tautologically true, that the reliance on the market for subsistence
     was similarly natural. But market economies were never the result of
     spontaneous outcroppings of human nature. The works of 19th century
     historians like Karl Polanyi and Fernand Braudel, and 21st century
     anthropologists like David Graeber have, to my mind, effectively
     documented a concise and systemic refutation to the economist’s claims
     of naturally existing market economy (Polanyi 2001; Graeber 2014;
     Braudel 1985). This article operates on the basic premise that this issue
     has been effectively addressed, even if economists remain ignorant of or
     adamant about such a resolution. I will not be seeking here to rehash the
     problems of economic analysis built around these flawed premises, but
     to reconstruct the experience of Puerto Ricans living in Chicago while
     dislodging the economism which plague modern developmental
     strategies.
                                        América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019   44




   The idea of markets being natural manifest itself clearly in housing.
We have come to believe that homes can only be commodities, but this
is only a historic phenomenon (Harvey 1978; García 2019b; Marcuse
and Madden 2016). Presently exchange values have become more
important that use values (Harvey 1978). In cities today, from New
York, to London to Chicago, we can see clearly the manifestations of
homes being treated as commodities. Take for example, segregation and
how homes values are dependent on the skin color of who lives in the
area (García 2019c). We might also point to gentrification and how
prices go up as lower income (often people of color) are force to move
out of the neighborhood because they cannot longer pay the rising prices
in housing but also new amenities, including restaurants, supermarkets
and so on (Betancur 2002; Allison 2005; Anguelovski 2015; García
2015). Older adults and long term residents are often among the most
affected as the neighborhood changes (García and Rúa 2018). The next
section will discuss the emergence of the No Se Vende Campaign as a
method to combat gentrification and displacement. The information
below comes from informal conversations as a participant observer as
well as formal interviews.

  No Se Vende before the 2008 housing crisis

   I learned at different points in time and through various community
members in formal and informal conversations that since 2004 many
young Puerto Ricans have been resisting gentrification through the
“Humboldt Park No Se Vende” (Don’t Sell Humboldt Park) Campaign.
Alejandro Molina, who worked for PRCC and participated from the No
Se Vende Campaign expressed,

  Since 2004, our efforts are geared at challenging gentrification and
  preventing displacement of Chicago’s oldest Puerto Rican community.
  We hope to engaged residents in a serious dialogue meant to insert
  longtime residents into the process of building the future of Humboldt
  Park.
45    Ivis García, No se vende




        The youth at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC) came up with
     the idea for this campaign which was part of an overall plan to radically
     change the community. The plan went from electoral politics (going
     door to door to register voters and electing a Puerto Rican Alderman), to
     grassroots community organizing (going door to door to discussing the
     issue of gentrification). A primary understanding of this manifesto was
     the concept of democracy, that community members should take part in
     the political process and elect politicians like Billy Ocasio, former
     Alderman of the 26th Ward. Billy was an ally of the Puerto Rican
     community he became famous for on the one hand, negotiating with
     developers to build affordable housing units or on the other hand,
     downzone whole areas so dense and expensive condos could not be
     build (García 2015). With that idea, young people started going out and
     knocking on doors.
        At the time, Billy Ocasio, a democrat, was the alderman of the 26th
     Ward where Humboldt Park is located. These young organizers would
     make the voices of the community heard at the Alderman’s office.
     Organizers would use a survey request forms to write down the concerns
     of residents in the area. For example, if someone needed a tree to be cut
     down or some trash to be picked up, PRCC’s organizers would fill out a
     form and then drop it by the Alderman’s office. In this way, the
     campaign was able to secure all community members city services
     through the Alderman’s office. PRCC’s youth also engaged in other
     initiatives; for example, they would help people find an apartment, fill
     out the appropriate forms, and so on. Organizers would also gather other
     information and leave reading material for residents to learn about
     various programs and opportunities sponsored by the city, non-profit and
     religious organizations.
        Although the campaign started with a fairly simple system, going
     door to door, organizers evolved their strategy over time. For example,
     they appointed captains divided by precincts. Activists were out in the
     streets seven days a week and covered a lot of ground. Neighbors and
     residents were accustomed to seeing the same organizer over and over
                                              América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019         46




Figure 2. Youth community organizer holding a sign at a manifestation after a housing
submit that took place on Humboldt Park on April 2006. Source: Puerto Rican Cultural
Center.
47    Ivis García, No se vende




     Figure 3. No Se Vende Campaign image showing the flags of steel erected in 1995
     acting as a fortress protecting the neighborhood from being sold to outsiders. Source:
     Puerto Rican Cultural Center.

     again and this strategy helped increase the level of trust between
     organizers and residents. Activists also sought to influence electoral
     politics but they were funded by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center not by
     politicians like Ocasio.
                                             América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019        48




Figure 4. No Se Vende Campaign sign being held by youth at the 2006 housing submit.
Source: Puerto Rican Cultural Center.

Figure 5. No Se Vende march going thought the flags of steel in Humboldt Park
erected under the leadership of Alderman Billy Ocasio.
49    Ivis García, No se vende




         It is important here to provide some context of how Billy Ocasio
     became the Alderman after Luis Gutiérrez left this position to become
     Illinois 4th district Congressman. Ocasio, a friend of Gutierrez, was
     prompted to run for Alderman by a small group of Puerto Rican
     community leaders, including José López, the executive director of
     PRCC. Ocasio, a member of the Puerto Rican Agenda, became key in
     implementing a number of anti-gentrification policies – Including
     erecting the flag of steel in 1995 which demarcated Humboldt Park as
     the Puerto Rican neighborhood shown in figure 5 (Flores-González
     2001; García 2015; 2017).
         Community organizers, who were part of a bottom-up association and
     not a top-down political movement of the Chicago political machine,
     registered people to vote and told them where to go to vote if they did
     not know where voting polls were located. In addition, organizers
     sometimes gave advice regarding the candidates that were better for the
     community from a grassroots perspective. Oftentimes, this meant voting
     for the candidates more in alliance with the identity politics project:
     Puerto Rican and Latino candidates, as opposed to those of white
     European descendent. This is a historical phenomenon in Chicago as the
     district change from Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian Jews to mostly
     Puerto Rican and Latino.
         No Se Vende became part of the general organizing tool box of this
     participatory democracy and social justice project. The campaign
     declared an emergency against speculation and property sales in the
     Puerto Rican community. Using the door to door canvassing method,
     young activists told residents about the consequences of selling. The
     campaign started because speculators were targeting elderly people,
     asking them to sell and cash in their properties. They were, of course,
     buying low and selling high. Often elderly homeowners did not realize
     the rising value of their properties and fell prey to unscrupulous realtors.
     This is a phenomenon that has taken place since the 90s in Humboldt
     Park, with the exception of the financial crisis of 2008. Activists noticed
     that the elderly tended to be more trusting and therefore, this group was
     particularly vulnerable to the offers of speculators.
                                          América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019     50




   The No Se Vende campaign, with the name in Spanish, was then a
slogan for insiders and especially for the elderly. It was about reaching
out to Puerto Ricans, telling them not to sell; it was not meant to be
antagonistic to the realtors or to give newcomers the message that they
were not welcome in the neighborhood. At first, it was more about
increasing awareness about the consequences of selling. The campaign
also urged homeowners to not think individualistically, but to think
communally. Some homeowners do not realize that when they sell their
individual home or property, they are selling more than that, they are
selling the community’s ability to stay within that neighborhood all
together. Many community members agreed with what the activists were
saying, while many others perceived them as agitators.

   No Se Vende after the 2008 financial crisis

   After Billy Ocasio left office in 2009, shortly after the financial crisis
of 2008, the door to door campaign of No Se Vende sponsored by the
PRCC died out. Activists started to concentrate on: 1) placing signs
throughout all of Paseo Boricua, wearing T-shirts, posting ads in
newspapers, having a presence at festivals and other community events,
in addition to maintaining a Facebook page where people could voice
their support, stories, and news; 2) advertising apartments and homes for
rent or sale among Puerto Ricans. The most recent slogans employed by
the campaign through the reproduction of flyers, postcards, newsletters
etc. have been: “Boricua, return to our beautiful neighborhood” and
“Oye Boricua, rent an apartment, buy a building, open a business, get
involved!” (Cintrón et al. 2012). A slogan used in various mediums in
2011 used the Occupy movement to encourage Puerto Ricans
everywhere and anywhere to “Occupy Humboldt Park and return to the
barrio” (García 2015). In order to achieve the goal of keeping Puerto
Ricans in the barrio, or attract new Puerto Ricans to it, the campaign
organizers dedicate their time and energy to put together a list of
apartments and homes available for rent or sale.
51    Ivis García, No se vende




         All of these slogans are presented in English and Spanish by the
     campaign through the reproduction of flyers, postcards, newsletters,
     community newspapers, posters, t-shirts, stickers, buttons, booths at
     community festivals, Facebook posting, and petitions to support
     Bickerdike affordable housing projects. Therefore, the message is
     directed to both insiders and outsiders, as well as to second and third
     generation Puerto Ricans. One of the past organizers (Michael)
     commented that although at first the message was only for Puerto Ricans
     in time it also became about telling non-Hispanic whites to stay away. In
     a casual conversation, Jack, a non-Hispanic white young male that used
     to live in Humboldt Park, told me that he did not like to go to Paseo
     Boricua precisely because he saw the signs displaying, No Se Vende and
     they made him feel unwelcomed. Yet, in the same breath Jack said that
     he was just a graduate student and a renter and that he thought that the
     sign was not meant for him. What Jack meant is that the sign was trying
     to dissuade non-Hispanic whites from becoming homeowners in a
     community visibly declared as Puerto Rican, but it did not say anything
     about non-Puerto Rican renters.
         I think this is an interesting question for both non-Hispanic whites
     and Puerto Ricans. What about renters? Is No Se Vende also directed at
     them? I asked this question to Julia the main community organizer of No
     Se Vende but phrased it in a different way. I shared with her that ACS
     data from 2006-2010 reported that only about 36 percent of Puerto
     Ricans in the Puerto Rican Influence Area (PRIA) are homeowners
     (Cintrón et al. 2012). I compared this number to the No Se Vende
     campaign that I previously observed in Vieques, Puerto Rico where 98
     percent of the people on the island were homeowners. That being said,
     what does this mean for the campaign in Humboldt Park where the
     majority of Puerto Ricans are renters and not homeowners?
         Without any hesitation, Julia told me that the campaign was for all
     Puerto Ricans, homeowners and renters. Gentrification affects Puerto
     Rican owners and renters, even when homeowner might be of a higher
     class they are of a lower class when compared to the new comers
     because of the rents are going up. Often times class is equated to
                                           América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019   52




whiteness, as white people have more purchasing power (Mumm 2014;
Mumm 2016; García 2018). Those who support the No Se Vende
Campaign are often times in opposition to the negative effects of
capitalism while simultaneously understand gentrification as having a
colonizing effect. It is important to note here that Puerto Rico is a colony
of the United States (Denis 2015; Monge 1999). No Se Vende organizers
take a very defensive stand for Puerto Rican cultural nationalism in
Chicago.
   The idea is to encourage people to stay in the community and tell
others they “just can’t come in here, destroy and rebuild” as an
interviewee expressed. Even if Puerto Rican renters move from
apartment to apartment within the community, what matters the most to
organizers of No Se Vende, is to maintain the Puerto Rican presence.
Julia argue that the rental market is changing substantially due to
gentrification. It is becoming more formalized; for example, landlords
are requesting their tenants sign leases, provide references and conduct a
background and a credit check. They are also requesting a deposit,
moving and pet fees. Julia shared with me the story of a couple that
decided not to rent due to the many barriers that they encountered:

   I know that there was an apartment that we [No Se Vende] listed. And
   someone called us back and they were really upset because they were
   very much cheated by the company. Potential tenants went to the place,
   there was no mention of any fees for their dogs. The woman’s husband
   was handicapped. He walked with a cane. The Puerto Rican couple went
   over there and the manager gave him the look and they told him that
   there was a moving fee even though it wasn’t advertised. The manager
   told them that they would have to pay an extra fee for their dog they
   were trying to get the deposit and then they yelled “when can you get
   this done?” She just told me that the manager just gave him the look. The
   manager required so many things from them to be able to move in that
   they decided not to move in. This is just working-class people. Then
   there’s a white professional couple that I know that they’ve seen the
   beautiful apartment. This one lady was an artist and it was a duplex. She
   said, “I want this. I can have my studio here. I want it, I want it!”
53    Ivis García, No se vende




        Another hidden story in this quote is that landlords and management
     companies are becoming more selective about who they rent to. The
     previous quote suggests that having a disability seemed risky to the
     owner for whatever reason, being in terms of assuming a fixed income,
     or a future liability due to injury. Julia also shared with me a story of
     how Marta, a Puerto Rican woman, who was turned down due to family
     size. Julia said about Marta:

       When Marta called for information regarding an apartment for rent, the
       landlord/manager asked her how many people would be housed in an
       apartment. Marta responded “three.” Th landlord replied, “Three? Oh
       yeah, it’s too small” Marta replied, “hold on can I go and see it? Let me
       judge, let me go see and let me determine if it’s too small or not”.

        All the tactics that landlords are using now, they did not use years
     ago, which speaks of the formalization and homogenization of the
     market. More often than not renters who have been discriminated do not
     report these incidences to the Commission of Human Relations or to the
     Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity because they simply do
     not know about it or do not wish to engage in a process that requires
     time and effort from their part. As informants indicated they simply
     could go to another landlord.

       Towards market formalization and de-localization

        The other element is that housing opportunities were advertised
     locally by placing signs outside the apartment, or the home for rent. The
     only way to learn about these housing opportunities was to already live
     in the neighborhood. For example, you will see the sign just by walking
     by, were referred by friends or family, or purposely deciding that this
     was a community that you wanted to live in and found the property by
     touring the neighborhood. Landlords are becoming savvier and now
     advertise using Craigslist (an U.S. wide add platform), or other rental
                                            América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019    54




websites which allows them to reach a much broader audience. This
audience might come from anywhere in Chicago, or even out of state.
Local residents without using Craigslist, might not even learn that the
property next to them is for rent. Julia also pointed out that landlords are
increasingly using realty companies such as Realty Professionals Group
LLC, DMG Realty Group, SGJ Property Management, Inc. and many
others, to advertise and find a reliable renter for landlords. These
companies tend to have open houses, or several appointments at the
same time. Julia tells the story of how Puerto Ricans are filtered out
from these new practices:

   A Puerto Rican prospective renter that Julia was helping named Malu
   said to the landlord/ manager, “I’ve got a check here I can give you for
   the first month’s rent right now. I have a background check and
   everything.” But then there was someone else who also wanted the
   apartment and they said to the landlord/manager “I’ll give you more for
   it.” Julia told Malu that she almost feel like there were people there just
   to say, ‘I’ll give you more’, just to discourage other people from renting.
   But Malu was really upset, she said, ‘I did everything. I went over there
   and I even went to talk to the manager myself when there was nobody
   else, made a separate appointment”.

    What Julia is trying to communicate is that there is a lot of
competition to get into an apartment in comparison to previous years.
She pointed out that only the people who are willing to go through the
hurdles, are able to find a desirable apartment. No Se Vende helps
renters with the process of renting an apartment, by calling landlords,
filling out an application on their behalf and any other related activities.
    Bohío Housing Services is a new initiative of the Puerto Rican
Cultural Center (PRCC) that started in Fall of 2012 to assist renters and
homeowners at risk of not being able to make their monthly payments,
or who did not have enough savings towards a rental deposit. PRCC was
granted about $25,000 for the year, to be able to assist residents
experiencing a housing emergency, such as a foreclosure, or a personal
situation like illness or death of family members. Only those 60 percent
55    Ivis García, No se vende




     or below the area median income (AMI) were able to qualify. Although,
     initially Bohío Housing Services intended to assist homeowners at risk
     of missing a mortgage payment, the majority of the people receiving
     assistance were renters. Among renters, the program wanted to help
     renters (especially of Puerto Rican descent) living outside of Humboldt
     Park with their deposit, to encourage them to move into the
     neighborhood. Nonetheless, the vast majority of people who are
     receiving the assistance are renters who already live in Humboldt Park.

       When foreclosed homes are not affordable to us

        There is a link between homeowners and renters. No Se Vende makes
     contacts with Puerto Rican owners who have properties for rent. They
     help them to find renters by advertising in La Voz (The Voice)
     newspaper (from PRCC) free of change, as well as the contact email list
     serve. The campaign also finds properties, many of which have been
     foreclosed, that are for sale around the neighborhood and tries to
     advertise them to Puerto Ricans before others find out about them. Julia
     went on to talk to me about a recent practice that is keeping Puerto
     Ricans in the community and able to bid on properties that are on the
     market. Julia states: “Due to the foreclosures many of the properties
     owned by banks have gone on the short sale list and many outside
     realtors are trying to sell these homes, right? What they do is they join
     forces with realtors to try and sell homes. Homes have been going for
     $80k and $90k”. Many Puerto Ricans have been trying to get these
     deals. They are watching homes being rehabbed on their block and they
     have been patiently waiting to see when they put the for-sale sign
     outside if they will be called immediately. Julia explains:

       I was talking to the guy that works in Yalcom (a construction company)
       and he told me there was a house they were rehabbing. His girlfriend
       said: “We’ll see how much it’s going to be?” He said the sign went up.
       He gave me the number for me to find out about the price. In 15 minutes,
       they said I am sorry it’s on contract. Fifteen minutes! The sign had just
                                            América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019    56




  gone up when they called. And it was already sold, on contract. And he
  said it’s a white person. The realtors are not Puerto Ricans or Latinos
  because even realtors are coming to complain to Maldonado (the current
  Puerto Rican Alderman of the 26th ward). They’re like “listen, I have
  experience on how to work with your people to be able to sell. I have
  customers and potential buyers that I can sell this to. But I’m not getting
  access to this information. When I share this information, they would be
  able to send it out to their networks, that people are trying to live here
  that are Latinos”. So, what was happening is that here you have the
  banks collaborating with the real estate companies and there’s an
  outreach to their networks of people, which are mostly white because
  that’s what we’re seeing. Mostly white people find these properties. So,
  it’s affordable properties for them. Not for us. And if we don’t have
  access to them, we don’t have any control, or right over who buys. I
  mean how is it that in 15 minutes the apartment is already under
  contract. How is that possible? So that’s almost like you have already
  sent this information to your networks of people, before you put them on
  the multiple listing service which is by law when, let’s say if the house is
  ready to be sold, you have three days to put it on the market. Up to three
  days you put it on the market and officially advertise it. So, in those
  three days, or maybe days before then, this information is being sent out
  to people, to the bank’s networks, and to the realtor’s networks. Their
  networks of mostly white people. That’s who’s buying the properties.
  And so that’s another part of gentrification. I mean that’s where it’s
  getting to. They have access to these homes that are cheap and we do
  not.

   After the foreclosure, homes became affordable to some extent,
selling for $80,000 or 90,000 in auctions. This meant that working class
families who were below the 60 percent of the Area Median Income, had
saving and stable jobs finally were able to afford homes. However, these
renters, who wanted to become homeowners could not because they
were still unable to compete with others. Something that is interesting
here is that they were not even able to enter the bid competition because
they did not have the information that other networks shared about how
to buy these cheap homes. Working class Puerto Ricans were kept out of
57    Ivis García, No se vende




     the real state community proposedly as the neighborhood change to be
     more affluent and whiter.

       Concluding remarks

        In a free market everyone should be able to rent, buy and sell
     property. No Se Vende is a direct rejection to property rights exercised
     in these ways. Although in a legal way Puerto Ricans do not own the
     neighborhood, they own it in the sense that they have lived in the
     neighborhood for a long period of time and have created memories in the
     space. The No Se Vende campaign is not about individually owned
     property within the community, it is about the community itself and
     owning everything in that community including homes, businesses,
     schools, and so on. Puerto Rican activists recognize that this is perhaps
     one of the most difficult tasks they have encountered, keeping their
     territory. In claiming Humboldt Park as Puerto Rican working class,
     community organizers recognize that space is not neutral but political
     and they are committed to reproducing the space as Puerto Rican.
        As I read my email while traveling to Chicago I find a newsletter
     from the Humboldt Park Portal. One of the news articles is titled,
     “Bickerdike: No Se Vende, Here to Stay.” In this article they talked
     about the importance of preserving housing for low to moderate
     income families. In many occasions the No Se Vende Campaign
     organized community residents and activists to collect petitions in
     support Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation which were contested
     by the new and more affluent residents. Bickerdike’s – who is also a
     member of the Puerto Rican Agenda along with the Puerto Rican
     Cultural Center – eco’s the words of No Se Vende and declares that
     Puerto Ricans are “Here to Stay,” more than 20 years after the flags of
     steel were built in 1995.
        No Se Vende embodies a narrative that questions traditional notions
     of individual ownership posed by Smith, Turgot, Beccaria, and other
     classical economist. Instead, the ideas of No Se Vende community
     organizers are more aligned with thinkers like Servet, Humphrey,
                                         América Crítica 3(2): 35-61, 2019     58




Harvey, Polanyi, Braudel, and Graeber who have questioned private
property. Community organizer Julia embodies this commitment to use
values and not exchange values communally. She does this by
emphasizing the importance of place to the collective memory of the
Puerto Rican working people. Julia operationalizes her philosophical
understanding by helping long-term residents to rent, to keep renting
when they are short on rent via their Bohío Housing Services and by
keeping track of home that are for sale in the Puerto Rican neighborhood
that working-class families can afford.
   As this case study has demonstrated, the Puerto Rican Cultural
Center, Bickerdike, and others in the Puerto Rican Agenda have
transformed the No Se Vende Campaign into political objectives capable
of building affordable housing in order to maintain the Puerto Rican
presence in the area. One of the goals of this article was to discuss how
Puerto Ricans see gentrification and how they combat it in their
everyday life. The groups involved in Humboldt Park have developed a
philosophy of praxis where they are able to denounce and halt with some
degree of success the pressures of gentrification and displacement. I
hope that this case study can be useful to other minority communities
being displaced innovative they are encouraged to develop similar
strategies to the No Se Vende Campaign and develop creative ways of
staying put.

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