Date of Award

Spring 2015

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Major

LACS: Hispanic Studies

First Advisor

Ingrid Robyn

Second Advisor

Anne Lambright

Abstract

Park Street, a street in the neighborhood of Frog Hollow in Hartford, Connecticut, is often referred to as “The Hispanic Commercial Corridor of the Northeast” because of its concentration of small Latino-owned shops. It formed as a Latino community because of discrimination from other places in the metropolitan area, such as the suburbs. Largely due to restrictive covenants and redlining, Latinos had few choices on where to live. The low rent and vacancies in Frog Hollow lead them to the Park Street area, and by the end of the 1970s the area was majority Puerto Rican and immigrants from Latin America.

This thesis uses interviews of business owners and other inhabitants of the street, and newspaper articles as means of understanding the evolution of the street in Hartford. It also uses other scholarly texts pertaining to the subject matter in order to analyze their theories of ethnic enclaves and business corridors. These sources create a critical lense to comprehend the segregation from whites on Park Street and how it created a community of Latinos that had a sense of moral property, meaning they felt a sense of belonging among a greater discriminatory society. This segregation created a unique habitus, or a sense of self that was similar to the inhabitants near by. The community of a concentrated Puerto Rican and Latino population lead to further power, in terms of publicity of the area, scope of their moral property, and Latinos in positions of power and economic growth, in terms of the businesses that formed and the employment options that opened up for Latinos in the area.

Comments

Senior Thesis completed at Trinity College for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Hispanic Studies.

Download

Share

COinS