Bastion-Making in Santurce: LaGoyco Takes on Grief and Recolonization

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Published in:Centro Journal vol. 37, no. 2 (Summer 2025), p. 83-112
Main Author: Cardona, Rebio Diaz
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Hunter College, Center for Puerto Rican Studies
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100 1 |a Cardona, Rebio Diaz  |u LaGuardia Community College 
245 1 |a Bastion-Making in Santurce: LaGoyco Takes on Grief and Recolonization 
260 |b Hunter College, Center for Puerto Rican Studies  |c Summer 2025 
513 |a Journal Article 
520 3 |a Taller Comunidad LaGoyco is a community organization operating in the Machuchal sector of Santurce, a district of San Juan experiencing gentrification. In the years since Hurricane María the group has transformed a vacant school in the area into a vibrant community center, helping the neighborhood respond to a host of needs and challenges. In this essay I offer an account of the story of LaGoyco with a focus on the organization's spatial practices, showcasing their work as a case study in grassroots placemaking in a post-disaster context. I argue that the LaGoyco working group engages in a kind of placemaking I call bastion-making, in which a community facing threats on multiple flanks responds by forging sociospatial structures that afford protection on multiple fronts. Building on interviews and participant observation, I present a series of vignettes highlighting key "spatial" turning points in the story of the organization. I draw from environmental psychology and actor-network theory to conceptualize bastion-making as a spatial justice-oriented form of placemaking, using the story of LaGoyco as an example of space-conscious autogestión intent on defending the right to the city in the context of intersecting crises that characterized the period in which the project took shape. In the last section, I focus on the contribution of one of LaGoyco's main shapers, the late musician and activist Héctor "Tito" Matos, to offer a more personal reflection on the role of individual agency in placemaking, in a context where the threat of displacement is experienced as a form of recolonization. [Keywords: placemaking, bastion-making, autogestión, spatial justice, environmental psychology, recolonization] 
651 4 |a Puerto Rico 
651 4 |a United States--US 
653 |a Grass roots movement 
653 |a Gentrification 
653 |a Threats 
653 |a Case studies 
653 |a Community centers 
653 |a Neighborhoods 
653 |a Community organizations 
653 |a Community structure 
653 |a Actor-network theory 
653 |a Natural disasters 
653 |a Working groups 
653 |a Turning points 
653 |a Environmental psychology 
653 |a Hurricanes 
653 |a Participant observation 
653 |a Grief 
653 |a Pandemics 
653 |a Justice 
653 |a Human agency 
653 |a Vignettes 
653 |a Psychology 
653 |a Context 
653 |a Community work 
653 |a Disaster relief 
653 |a Activism 
653 |a Psychological theories 
773 0 |t Centro Journal  |g vol. 37, no. 2 (Summer 2025), p. 83-112 
786 0 |d ProQuest  |t Research Library 
856 4 1 |3 Citation/Abstract  |u https://www.proquest.com/docview/3260089055/abstract/embedded/6A8EOT78XXH2IG52?source=fedsrch 
856 4 0 |3 Full Text  |u https://www.proquest.com/docview/3260089055/fulltext/embedded/6A8EOT78XXH2IG52?source=fedsrch 
856 4 0 |3 Full Text - PDF  |u https://www.proquest.com/docview/3260089055/fulltextPDF/embedded/6A8EOT78XXH2IG52?source=fedsrch