By 2014, the American Community Survey found that fully three-quarters of the city’s 4851 Colombian immigrants lived in Eastie, suggesting a growing concentration. The 2000 Census found a majority (58 percent) of the city’s foreign-born Colombians living in East Boston. Courtesy of Boston Planning and Development Agency.Įxactly why Don Matíans and other Colombians decided to settle in East Boston is hard to determine, but their growing concentration in the neighborhood is undeniable. Settlementįoreign-born Colombians as a percentage of total population, 2013.
With the economy failing and few job opportunities, poorer residents of Don Matías made the journey to Massachusetts to find work, with many coming to East Boston. Eventually there was violence, a wealthy man was killed, and many of the elite families moved away. A small agricultural town, Don Matías witnessed a bitter struggle between rich and poor within the local Catholic Church in the mid-1960s. The recent history of the town helps explain why so many of its residents relocated. Neighborhood residents in fact joke that there are now more Don Matíans in East Boston than in Don Matías itself. About an hour’s drive north of Medellín, the small town of Don Matías has been a particularly popular sending area. Many of those settling in East Boston came from areas in and around the capital city of Bogotá, as well as from Medellín, where the drug wars took their highest toll. The American Community Survey suggests that Colombian migration to East Boston has slowed somewhat since the 2008 recession, with population estimates of Colombians in the neighborhood falling from 4176 in 2007 to 3638 in 2014. Over the years, the percentage of undocumented immigrants also rose, as violence and extortion forced some to flee for their lives.
Since then, economic dislocations led growing numbers of middle-class and professional workers to emigrate as well. Prior to the 1980s, many Colombians coming to the US were from the working class. The town of Don Matías in northwestern Colombia is the hometown of thousands of Colombian immigrants in East Boston. The widespread violence, together with economic restructuring programs that devastated the economy in the 1990s, spurred many Colombians to emigrate. The unrest deepened in the 1980s, as guerrilla groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) battled government forces, and violent drug cartels took hold in the region around Medillín. Political violence had ravaged Colombia since the onset of La Violencía in 1948, a prolonged conflict between the two main political parties that killed or displaced tens of thousands of people over the next two decades. While a small number of Colombians came to Massachusetts in the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of East Boston’s Colombian community began in the 1980s. Whether through the many businesses that line the streets, the homes of immigrant families, or the cultural institutions they have created, Colombians have helped to revitalize the neighborhood and have worked to make it a vital Latino community.
Called “Little Colombia,” by some, the neighborhood has become the heartland of Colombian settlement in Boston, with roughly three-quarters of the city’s Colombian population. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.Arriving in growing numbers since the 1980s, Colombian immigrants represent the second largest immigrant group in East Boston. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here. Parental tools that are compatible with the RTA label will block access to this site.
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