“I’m getting tested; times are tough on this bodega/ Two months ago somebody bought Ortega’s/ Our neighbors started packin’ up and pickin’ up and ever since the rents went up/ It’s gotten mad expensive, but we live with just enough,” raps Anthony Ramos as Usnavi in in the opening scene of In the Heights, a Tony-winning Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda the centers around issues of Latinidad, immigration, dreams, and gentrification in Washington Heights.
As the musical recently debuted as a big budget movie directed by Jon M. Chu, the movie has sparked an ongoing conversation about the complexity of Latinx representation, especially in mainstream media. While many praise the artistry of the Latinx-inspired music and dance of the movie, critics argue that the movie has colorist underdtones and invizibilizes Afrolatinidad.
Much of the movie centers around Usnavi’s bodega, a local beauty parlor, and a cab company. These three small Latinx-owned businesses are central to the plot as they are the foci of the community and neighborhood. In this way, In The Heights makes the point that business ownership is closely related to cultural ownership, mediated via narrative and the communal spaces of of the neighborhood.
“Commercial gentrification also causes social and cultural displacement of existing residents as new businesses attract new uses and users to the neighborhood,” writes Richard Ocejo in “The Early Gentrifier: Weaving a Nostalgia Narrative on the Lower East Side,” an academic article published in the September 2011 issue of City & Community.
“A nostalgia narrative,” Ocejo writes, “is an imagined story of the past that deliberately selects certain emlements from personal history while excluding others to construct a version that is more favorable than the reality.”
Throughout the paper, Ocejo points out how the nostalgic narratives told about the neighborhood by the early wave of gentrifiers from the 70’s and 80’s (think: the cast of RENT) is leveraged against the new businesses of the ‘00s and ‘10s (think: stereotypical privileged NYU students).
According to Ocejo, the early wave of gentrifiers claimed ownership over the neighborhood via cafés, community gardens, bohemian art galleries, and dive bars. However, Ocejo also points out that the nostalgia narrative obscures how the Avant-Garde itself displaced the Puerto Rican and Dominican businesses of the 50’s and 60’s. Today, even those businesses compete with heritage Jewish and Eastern European immigrant businesses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
To think through this fictionalization of ownership in the Lower East Side, I am currently trying write “Where Are They Now,” an update to an written by Jesse Bernhart in the 2018 reissue of the zine that looks at how the neighborhood has changed via tracking a couple iconic businesses. However, the 2021 issue is also curious about the aftereffects of the pandemic on business ownership to track the more elusive ideas of belonging and ownership.
Please wish me luck, I’m going to need it.
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