99% Invisible #440 (20 Apr 2021): La Brega in Levittown
La Brega is another podcast, focused on Puerto Rico. It’s produced with both Spanish and English versions. The name is an expression meaning something like “shit sucks but whatever”. Roman interviews the author then runs episode 2.
Levittowns were deliberately built to be places where I think returning veterans from WWII could buy a place and become homeowners. In the American version of the concept they’d only sell to white people.
For a while America was happy to let PR be poor, but then there was the cold war and Cuba became communist, and America wanted to hold up PR as an example of the success of capitalism, so they decided to raise a middle class there. Part of this was building a Levittown. But also there were too many people.
Host mentions forced sterilization and birth control experiments, but the approach taken here seems to be… encouraging PRans to move to the mainland states where there were more opportunities for them? Host seems to think this is obviously bad. Anyway, that worked for a bit and then PRans migrated back to PR.
We follow a family, possibly Host’s family? I think the story was they moved to America, back to PR, then almost had to move to America again after the dad finished building houses in Levittown because he couldn’t afford them, but then he won the lottery.
At first Levittown seems to have been a success, there were a few different models of house there, they were cement so people could paint them, and people would also extend them according to personal taste. Later, and especially in the wake of the hurricane, it seems not so much?
99% Invisible #440 (20 Apr 2021): La Brega in Levittown
La Brega is another podcast, focused on Puerto Rico. It’s produced with both Spanish and English versions. The name is an expression meaning something like “shit sucks but whatever”. Roman interviews the author then runs episode 2.
Levittowns were deliberately built to be places where I think returning veterans from WWII could buy a place and become homeowners. In the American version of the concept they’d only sell to white people.
For a while America was happy to let PR be poor, but then there was the cold war and Cuba became communist, and America wanted to hold up PR as an example of the success of capitalism, so they decided to raise a middle class there. Part of this was building a Levittown. But also there were too many people.
Host mentions forced sterilization and birth control experiments, but the approach taken here seems to be… encouraging PRans to move to the mainland states where there were more opportunities for them? Host seems to think this is obviously bad. Anyway, that worked for a bit and then PRans migrated back to PR.
We follow a family, possibly Host’s family? I think the story was they moved to America, back to PR, then almost had to move to America again after the dad finished building houses in Levittown because he couldn’t afford them, but then he won the lottery.
At first Levittown seems to have been a success, there were a few different models of house there, they were cement so people could paint them, and people would also extend them according to personal taste. Later, and especially in the wake of the hurricane, it seems not so much?