Bastion-Making in Santurce: LaGoyco Takes on Grief and Recolonization.
Taller Comunidad LaGoyco is a community organization operating in the Machuchal sector of Santurce, a district of San Juan experiencing gentrification. In the years since Hurricane María the group has transformed a vacant school in the area into a vibrant community center, helping the neighborhood r...
| Publicado en: | Centro Journal Vol. 37; no. 2; pp. 83 - 112 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos (Center for Puerto Rican Studies)
Summer2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=188822288&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 188822288 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 15386279 GWW jtl: Centro Journal issn: 15386279 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Summer2025 vid: 37 iid: 2 pid: 11026 pub: Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos (Center for Puerto Rican Studies) artinfo: ui: 188822288 ppf: 83 ppct: 29 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 2.6MB tig: atl: Bastion-Making in Santurce: LaGoyco Takes on Grief and Recolonization. aug: au: DIAZ CARDONA, REBIO affil: Associate professor of psychology at LaGuardia Community College su: Community organization Social justice Land settlement Psychological resilience Grief Urbanization Neighborhoods San Juan (P.R.) sug: subj: San Juan (P.R.) Community organization Social justice Land settlement Psychological resilience Grief Urbanization Neighborhoods keyword: autogestión bastion-making environmental psychology placemaking recolonization spatial justice ab: Taller Comunidad LaGoyco is a community organization operating in the Machuchal sector of Santurce, a district of San Juan experiencing gentrification. In the years since Hurricane María the group has transformed a vacant school in the area into a vibrant community center, helping the neighborhood respond to a host of needs and challenges. In this essay I offer an account of the story of LaGoyco with a focus on the organization's spatial practices, showcasing their work as a case study in grassroots placemaking in a post-disaster context. I argue that the LaGoyco working group engages in a kind of placemaking I call bastion-making, in which a community facing threats on multiple flanks responds by forging sociospatial structures that afford protection on multiple fronts. Building on interviews and participant observation, I present a series of vignettes highlighting key "spatial" turning points in the story of the organization. I draw from environmental psychology and actor-network theory to conceptualize bastion-making as a spatial justice-oriented form of placemaking, using the story of LaGoyco as an example of space-conscious autogestión intent on defending the right to the city in the context of intersecting crises that characterized the period in which the project took shape. In the last section, I focus on the contribution of one of LaGoyco's main shapers, the late musician and activist Héctor "Tito" Matos, to offer a more personal reflection on the role of individual agency in placemaking, in a context where the threat of displacement is experienced as a form of recolonization. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Centro Journal is the property of Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos (Center for Puerto Rican Studies) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Centro Journal holder: Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos (Center for Puerto Rican Studies) dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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