Archival Materials for the Study of the Puerto Rican Migration
 

The Centro Library and Archives house important collections of documents concerning the Puerto Rican Migration. The "Historical Records of the Puerto Rican Migration to the U.S." contain documents created by various agencies of the Puerto Rican government operating in the United States. They are an extraordinary resource for the study of the Puerto Rican migration.

 
The first Puerto Rican government agency in the United States, the Identification and Employment Bureau, opened in East Harlem in 1930.

Its main function was to provide migrants with identification cards in English as proof of US citizenship. Although the official creation of the collection began in 1930, there are records dating from the late 19th century.

 

 

In order to obtain an ID card, the migrants had to fill out an application form, which is the main document in the collection, as it contains detailed information about the applicant which allows researchers to reconstruct the profiles of the migrant population.

There are photographs attached to the application forms, making the collection a significant source of visual documentation.

The records are incredibly diverse. Applicants had to present evidence of their Puerto Rican heritage by providing birth or baptismal records and other types of supporting documents. The agency began its program in the 1930s, but supporting documents go back as far as the mid-nineteenth century. In many instances, the documents are attached to the applications and they are the only existing copies because the original records were lost or damaged in Puerto Rico

The agency kept intake records showing the reasons for the ID requests, which were various: to get jobs, to obtain licenses of different types, for travel, to obtain government services.

 

 

 

A sizable number of the applicants were women, making the records a significant source for research about women in the migration.
Memoirs of Bernardo Vega

The Memoirs of Bernardo Vega : A Contribution to the History of the Puerto Rican Community in New York (New York: Monthly Review press, 1979), are an important document about the history of the early Puerto Rican community in New York City. A cigar-maker by trade, Vega migrated to New York in 1916 and his memoirs are an account of life in the first half of the twentieth century in New York City. Bernardo Vega's application for an identification card, dated 1936, is in the Archives of the Centro.

 

Top of Page