Puerto Rico 1950's

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PUERTO RICOIN THE 1950's

Let's learn about Puerto Rico in the 1950's

EMIGRATION FROM PUERTO RICO

Why did emigration increase from 1900-1950's?

MOVING TO THE U.S.

WHAT

What did they do when they emigrated?

WHERE?

Where did they go?

PUERTO RICO OVER THE YEARS

A LOOK INTO PUERTO RICO IN THE 1950's

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PUERTO RICOIN THE 1950's

POPULAR MUSIC IN THE 1950's

More workers were needed after World War II, while farms across the Northeast and Midwest labor. Puerto Rico, meanwhile, couldn't fully support its population and many were left without a job. So, one third of the population went North. The majority of Puerto Ricans went to New York city to work in factories mostly. While the others went to the Northeast to work in farms.

JOBS

WHERE DID THEY GO?

While some agricultural workers ultimately gravitated to cities near their farm assignments, about 85 percent of the island’s postwar émigrés—U.S. citizens, from a U.S. territory—settled in New York City, according to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at the City University of New York. Between the 1940s and mid-1960s, this influx grew the city’s Puerto Rican population almost 13-fold, from 70,000 to nearly 900,000. It was all part of a coordinated plan by the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments, which hoped to ease postwar labor shortages on the mainland while working to alleviate the territory’s crushing poverty.

Rafael Cortijo was a popular artist during the '50's in Puerto Rico.

In Puerto Rico this song was popular in the 1950's

In the two decades after World War II, thousands of Puerto Ricans boarded planes for America, in what has come to be known as the island’s “great migration.” Many farm workers, hastily flown north to help with harvests on the mainland, were transported in repurposed military cargo planes fitted with wooden benches or lawn chairs bolted to the floor.

In Puerto Rico this song was popular in the 1950's