Molino sees no chance of the Centro replacing SNAP, either. He points out that next week the first Area Council will be popularly elected in the South End. The Council is a committee of 15 neighborhood men and women, formed to represent the community in SNAP.
"Puerto Ricans will probably win a majority on the Council," says Molino, "and SNAP serves the Spanish-speaking people in many other ways, too. We operate a family service clinic, a credit union, and we founded SEMCO."
Molino, one of the five "Puerto Rican representatives" working for SNAP, has become a staunch organization man. And with his mention of SEMCO, he identifies still another competing faction in the power struggle in the South End.
SEMCO is the South End Manpower Corporation, an independent off-spring of SNAP that functions as an employment agency, but wants to play politics. Black-power advocates control SEMCO. Charles Evans, a leader of the group, has changed his "slave name" to Chukuma Edozima. He is conducting a campaign to persuade Puerto Ricans that they are of African descent. Edozima obviously wants to unite all the South End's poor, as Mel King does. But he has outraged many people and has fanned the glowing embers of "Puerto Rican consciousness."
The one issue which might bring the Negroes and Puerto Ricans together is urban renewal.
"No more Puerto Ricans are going to be moved from their apartments unless they are re-located in the South end," vows Tony Molino. "The people will refuse to move. What is the BRA going to do, tear the buildings down around their necks?"
CAUSE is coordinating protests of the BRA's relocation tactics, which are threatening to dissolve ethnic power by scattering Negroes and Puerto Ricans throughout Boston. To keep political influence, leaders such as Molino don't want the ghettoes to break up. They're working to upgrade the neighborhoods instead.
Fighting Urban Renewal
As far as internal Puerto Rican affairs are concerned, both the Centro and SNAP have squared off, though not in unison, against another power in the South End on the matter of urban renewal.
The old-line, paternalistic settlement houses, organized into USES (United South End Settlements), want the ghettoes broken up. USES "has contracted with the Boston Re-development Authority to handle the relocation of displaced families for it," says Janet Murray, a USES family counsellor. "The complicity is there. USES is encouraging the middle class to move back into the South End and renovate old town houses. The poor are being pressured to leave."
Janet Murray refuses to follow the USES line. Three weeks ago, she presided over the founding of an exclusively-Spanish-speaking Mothers for Adequate Welfare (MAWS) chapter, which was formed because of the language difficulties encountered in the regular South End group. MAWS, whose Roxbury division helped spark the riots there last summer with a sit-in at Grove Hall, Roxbury's welfare office, is dedicated to keeping at least one segment of the poor strong and united. MAWS pressures welfare agencies to deal fairly with women whose husbands have deserted them.
A Startling Contrast
Spanish-speaking MAWS meets in the Centro de Accion. A typical weekday scene in the Centro features DeJesus' assistants gesticulating on the phones about APCROSS at the front on the dark, bare room, and two rows of mothers seated facing each other, waiting to see the MAWS agent, in the back. The picture presents a startling contrast to the early, empty days at the Centro under Igleias.
The Puerto Ricans are not yet a great force in Boston's elective politics; a few thousand votes talk, but not too loudly, to the politicians. Kevin White, whose South End headquarters was across Tremont Street from the Centro, received unofficial endorsement from DeJesus, Molino, and other Puerto Rican leaders. But, in the main, these leaders have felt too weak to be partisan in city politics.
Rather, until their numbers grow, the Puerto Ricans will concentrate on being a noisy, complaining pressure group when they want the attention of the politicians. As the Centro, the Puerto Rican element in SNAP, and MAWS are demonstrating, pressure group politics can carry people a long way.
If--but only if--their leaders can submerge their conflicts and competitions, the Puerto Ricans of the South End can become an effective political force in Boston.