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

Guardat en:

Dades bibliogràfiques
Publicat a:	Centro Journal vol. 37, no. 2 (Summer 2025), p. 83-112
Autor principal:	Cardona, Rebio Diaz
Publicat:	Hunter College, Center for Puerto Rican Studies
Matèries:	Puerto Rico United States > US Grass roots movement Gentrification Threats Case studies Community centers Neighborhoods Community organizations Community structure Actor-network theory Natural disasters Working groups Turning points Environmental psychology Hurricanes Participant observation Grief Pandemics Justice Human agency Vignettes Psychology Context Community work Disaster relief Activism Psychological theories
Accés en línia:	Citation/Abstract Full Text Full Text - PDF
Etiquetes:	Afegir etiqueta Sense etiquetes, Sigues el primer a etiquetar aquest registre!

Descripció
Resum:	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]
ISSN:	1538-6279 2163-2960
Font:	Research Library