How many Puerto Ricans live in Holyoke?
Puerto Ricans in Holyoke
As of the 2010 census, Holyoke, Massachusetts had the largest Puerto Rican population, per capita, of any city in the United States outside Puerto Rico proper, with 44.7% or 17,826 residents being of Puerto Rican heritage, comprising 92.4% of all Latinos in the community.[1] From a combination of farming programs instituted by the US Department of Labor after World War II, and the housing and mills that characterized Holyoke prior to deindustrialization, Puerto Ricans began settling in the city in the mid-1950s, with many arriving during the wave of Puerto Rican immigration to the Northeastern United States in the 1980s.[1][2] A combination of white flight as former generations of mill workers left the city, and a sustained influx of migrants in subsequent generations transformed the demographic from a minority of about 13% of the population in 1980,[3] to the largest single demographic by ancestry in a span of three decades.
Afro-Puerto Ricans
As of the 2010 Census, 75.8% of Puerto Ricans identify as white, 12.4% identify as black, 0.5% as Amerindian, 0.2% as Asian, and 11.1% as "mixed or other." Although estimates vary, most sources estimate that about 60% of Puerto Ricans have significant African ancestry. The vast majority of blacks in Puerto Rico are Afro-Puerto Rican, meaning they have been in Puerto Rico for generations, usually since the slave trade, forming an important part of Puerto Rican culture and society. Recent black immigrants have come to Puerto Rico, mainly from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and other Latin American and Caribbean countries, and to a lesser extant directly from Africa as well. Many black migrants from the United States and the Virgin Islands have moved and settled in Puerto Rico. Also, many Afro-Puerto Ricans have migrated out of Puerto Rico, namely to the United States. There and in the US Virgin Islands, they make up the bulk of the U.S. Afro-Latino population.