Puerto Rican newspaper to publish essay on Lorain's Latino community

LORAIN — A newspaper in Puerto Rico will highlight Lorain's Latino community for Mother's Day. An essay by Oberlin College Professor Gina Perez will be published in Sunday's El Nuevo Dia, sharing with the island's readers the experience of Puerto Rican mothers in the International City. Perez's essay focuses on Elba Rosario Armstrong, born in Ciales, Puerto Rico. Her father worked at U.S. Steel, and her mother moved her and her two sisters to Lorain as part of a growing migration of families from the territory to the Midwest. Perez touches on Vine Avenue, the heart of South Lorain during Armstrong's childhood, and the focal point of the Latino Lorain History Project's current exhibit. El Neuvo Dia wanted to learn more about Puerto Rican communities in the United States, and reached out to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, part of City University of New York at Hunter College, she said. From there, they were connected to Perez, who specializes in Puerto Rican and Latino communities in the Midwest and asked her to write a piece on Puerto Rican mothers in her area. "Originally I kind of hesitated because I have a lot of other things that I'm working on right now, but then I thought it was a perfect opportunity to let them know about the Latino Lorain history project, about the Vine Avenue exhibit. … And they loved the idea. It's not something that they (knew) about and they believe that their readership is very interested in," she said. While many are aware of the large Puerto Rican communities in New York City, Miami or Chicago, fewer know about Lorain, she said, despite the community being as old as those in Chicago. Her writing on Armstrong's story is based an interview she gave as part of the Latino Lorain oral history project hosted by Oberlin College. From there, Perez ties in information from the 2020 census, and other sources to illustrate the size and culture of Lorain's Puerto Rican community. While there's long been debates on whether someone is really Puerto Rican if they're not born on the island, she said culturally, and politically, Lorain's community see themselves as deeply Puerto Rican — something she wanted to highlight in the essay, alongside Armstrong and other mothers' stories. "It's easy to forget that even in this world where we're all connected through Facebook and through social media and all these sorts of things that we don't always know enough about each other and we don't know enough about our histories and our struggles and that's part of what is the beauty about this Latino Lorain history project," she said. "You can live in Lorain all your life, but you might not know Maria Carrion's story, or Maria Barrios or Pepe Rivera's story and to have these archives that have these photographs and newspaper articles and that have interviews where you can hear their voices and hear them tell about their experiences is really valuable because one day these people won't be with us and we'll want to be able to document what they've been able to do." To read Perez's essay in Spanish in El Neuvo Dia, visit www.elnuevodia.com. To listen to Armstrong, or other oral histories, visit latinolorain.oberlincollegelibrary.org. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.