The Centro gave the word early last January. In five tenements along West Newton Street in Boston's South End, the rent strike began. A handful of Puerto Ricans, nine families in all, refused to pay their rent until the slumlord brought the buildings up to Housing Code standards. He responded by turning off the heat one night in the apartment of one of the strikers and her four children. But they held on.

The strike on West Newton Street was a catalyst. It was a political awakening for Boston's six to seven thousand Puerto Ricans. Most of them had come straight from the island a year or two before; others had spent a few months in New York; they couldn't speak English; they had no idea of their rights or duties under American law; and, politically, they were helpless.

A year ago last May, a board of South End clergymen had acted to meet the problem. They hired Carmelo Iglesias, a Puerto Rican co-worker of Saul Alinsky in New Jersey, to organize the Spanish-speaking people of the South End, most of them Puerto Rican, into a force that could resist exploitation by slumlords and businessmen, attract federal help, and catch the wayward eye of City Hall.

After the rent strike, the reputation of the Centro de Accion (Action Center), Iglesias' organization, burgeoned. The people were angry now, and they began to notice the Centro's activities. The rat holes and broken sewer pipes in the five tenements had shocked Health Department officials so that they condemned the buildings, and the displaced families found homes which were at least a little better.

Iglesias and a new assistant, Alfredo DeJesus, picked education as the next mobilizing issue. Last spring they marched 40 children and their mothers down to the headquarters of SNAP (South End Neighborhood Action Program), the local branch of the War on Poverty. The group demanded that SNAP give them funds to start their own version of Head-start, a tutoring program for pre-school children. Reginald Eaves, director of SNAP, gave his consent, and appropriated $700 to pay for textbooks and supplies. Several mothers volunteered as teachers, and the "Action School" opened in a local church.

Off and Running

The Centro was off and running.

Meanwhile, the temper of another minority group in the South End and neighboring Roxbury--the Negroes--had infected the Puerto Ricans and the agencies that worked with them. Iglesias raised the cries of "Puerto Rican Power!" and "Self-government." While this might have seemed an excess of bravado for a man trying to mobilize 6,000 people, the agencies began to react.

First, SNAP got another visit. Seventy-five people, led by DeJesus, who has lived in the South End longer than almost any other Puerto Rican--18 years--stood in the street oustide SNAP's cramped offices and demanded that SNAP hire five Puerto Ricans. In September, three months later, the five began work.

SNAP's acquiescence has had unexpected and dismaying results for the Centro. Today Puerto Rican leaders still claim that they represent a united front aimed at organizing the people, but, in fact, competing centers of power are emerging and threatening that solidarity of purposes.

DeJesus has replaced Iglesias as head of the Centro. The old chief is now working for the Community Assembly for a United South End (CAUSE), a group formed last spring by Mel King, a Negro. CAUSE's goal is to bring Negroes and Puerto Ricans together for more grass-roots power.

DeJesus is a worthy successor. He knows the South End well, and since August, when he took over, the Centro has rapidly expanded its activities. Two weeks ago he and two of the five Puerto Ricans hired by SNAP, Ivan Gonzalez and Tony Molino, unveiled another acronym--APCROSS (Association Promoting Constitutional Rights of the Spanish-Speaking APCROSS is a corporation, which means that it can solicit federal and state funds for employment, housing, and health programs directly, without depending on SNAP. A power struggle over the control and scope of APCROSS seems to be shaping up.

"I learned that $37,000 was available from the Poverty Program for job development in the South End," says DeJesus. "I incorporated APCROSS to get this money and money in the future. APCROSS, which is really just the Centro with a different name, will take over all activities for the Puerto Ricans. SNAP will just take care of the Negroes."

Apartment Dreaming

Tony Molino, a short, slim, young man, has different ideas. "Ivan and I dreamed up APCROSS in my apartment. We invited Alfredo to join us later on. We want APCROSS to be completely independent of the Centro. The minister's board still pays Alfredo his salary, and we want to be free of any possible church influence. In fact, I can envision APCROSS ultimately taking control of the Centro."

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.