From Borinquen to Borinquen Street
I was born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico where I grew up in poverty. I quit school after the ninth grade to help my mother earn money for our family. In 1955, I left my home and came to Seekonk, Massachusetts. Three other Puerto Ricans came with me, and the four of us shared an apartment in Seekonk.
The reason I came is to work as a dishwasher at the Old Grist Mill. My hope was to earn enough money to send some back home. In those days, my boss, who was Argentinian, paid for employees to come to the United States and let us pay him back after we started working.
When I first came, I worked the evening-late-night shift (from 1pm to 12am), six days a week, for $42.94. It was hard work, but it was better than what I would have earned at home.
It was very wooded and secluded there. You never saw people. I came from the city and I was used to seeing people and having them around me. What made it worse was not being able to speak English.
A year after I arrived, I moved to East Providence with friends.
I remember a Dominican couple who came looking for me. Well, not me by name, but they told me they had heard there were people in East Providence who spoke Spanish. I was glad to see them and they seemed happy to find me.
And later, I learned that the first groups of Hispanics to arrive in Rhode Island were Puerto Ricans who came in the 1950s to work as migrant farm hands in South County, Barrington, and Newport. Unlike other Latin Americans, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and are not bound by immigration laws. The early group of Puerto Ricans never stayed, but did their work and returned home after the harvest. We were the first to stay and make Rhode Island home.
Three years after getting my restaurant job, I found work as a color mixer for jelly beans at the School House Candy Co. in Pawtucket. I worked there for 33 years.
The reason I came is to work as a dishwasher at the Old Grist Mill. My hope was to earn enough money to send some back home. In those days, my boss, who was Argentinian, paid for employees to come to the United States and let us pay him back after we started working.
When I first came, I worked the evening-late-night shift (from 1pm to 12am), six days a week, for $42.94. It was hard work, but it was better than what I would have earned at home.
It was very wooded and secluded there. You never saw people. I came from the city and I was used to seeing people and having them around me. What made it worse was not being able to speak English.
A year after I arrived, I moved to East Providence with friends.
I remember a Dominican couple who came looking for me. Well, not me by name, but they told me they had heard there were people in East Providence who spoke Spanish. I was glad to see them and they seemed happy to find me.
And later, I learned that the first groups of Hispanics to arrive in Rhode Island were Puerto Ricans who came in the 1950s to work as migrant farm hands in South County, Barrington, and Newport. Unlike other Latin Americans, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and are not bound by immigration laws. The early group of Puerto Ricans never stayed, but did their work and returned home after the harvest. We were the first to stay and make Rhode Island home.
Three years after getting my restaurant job, I found work as a color mixer for jelly beans at the School House Candy Co. in Pawtucket. I worked there for 33 years.
Jobs were so abundant back then that you could try one place and, if you didn’t like it, go somewhere else. You could visit five places in a day. It’s funny—back then they needed workers so badly they gladly took in Latinos. Today there is a different attitude toward the Latino.
The most difficult thing about life in the United States was trying to speak English. Back home you learn proper English, but here people shorten their words. They talk fast and it is hard to keep up.
In 1960, I met my future wife, Albertina. She was of Irish and French descent, orphaned as a child, and raised by a Portuguese couple. We met when I came to the building on Eddy Street in Providence where she lived, looking for an apartment.
At first, Albertina tried to get rid of me, but I eventually rented a place in the building. In time we became friends and, later, married.
We have always played down the problems we encountered as a mixed-race couple. I don’t know why people make a big fuss. We all bleed red. We have two daughters, Ana Maria who is 26 and Angela, 29 and both grew up speaking Spanish and English.
In 1968, we moved to a three-decker apartment on Borinquen Street—the Indigenous name for Puerto Rico—in the shadow of Rhode Island Hospital, and we have lived there ever since.
Albertina, who works for Colibri on Niantic Avenue, makes cigarette lighters and speaks Spanish well. She also became skilled at cooking my favorite Puerto Rican food. She can make pig’s feet with garbanzo beans, bacalado with okra, gandules, and arroz con pollo. Every Sunday she makes codfish fritters, and the family loves them.
The most difficult thing about life in the United States was trying to speak English. Back home you learn proper English, but here people shorten their words. They talk fast and it is hard to keep up.
In 1960, I met my future wife, Albertina. She was of Irish and French descent, orphaned as a child, and raised by a Portuguese couple. We met when I came to the building on Eddy Street in Providence where she lived, looking for an apartment.
At first, Albertina tried to get rid of me, but I eventually rented a place in the building. In time we became friends and, later, married.
We have always played down the problems we encountered as a mixed-race couple. I don’t know why people make a big fuss. We all bleed red. We have two daughters, Ana Maria who is 26 and Angela, 29 and both grew up speaking Spanish and English.
In 1968, we moved to a three-decker apartment on Borinquen Street—the Indigenous name for Puerto Rico—in the shadow of Rhode Island Hospital, and we have lived there ever since.
Albertina, who works for Colibri on Niantic Avenue, makes cigarette lighters and speaks Spanish well. She also became skilled at cooking my favorite Puerto Rican food. She can make pig’s feet with garbanzo beans, bacalado with okra, gandules, and arroz con pollo. Every Sunday she makes codfish fritters, and the family loves them.
Interview on November 17, 1996
NOTE: Tato Cosme passed away at the age of 78 on August 29, 2009.
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