Puerto Ricans of Milwaukee: A Conversation with Don Rafael Reyes

Don Rafael Reyes, 89, came to Milwaukee from Utuado, Puerto Rico in 1957.

The community refers to him as “Don” to show respect, a custom in Latinx cultures, according to his close family friend, Maria Gonzalez-Edwards, 60, who helped translate. 

On Sundays, Reyes attends Spanish mass at St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church. He comes with his wife, Doña Ines Reyes.

When asked why he decided to move to Wisconsin, Reyes responded, “Like everybody else; looking for a better place to live.” 

Reyes has family in Puerto Rico, a brother and a few sisters. These family members live in various areas throughout the island, ranging from inland mountainous regions to bigger, coastal cities. 

Reyes recounts the difficulty that he had with moving from his mountain town of Utuado to a bigger city like Milwaukee in the continental United States. 

“It is very difficult to explain because where I came from, Utuado, there were not many times that we would get out of the area where we used to live,” Reyes said. “When we came here, everything was new.”

While most of his experience was filled with shocking differences, Reyes found some similarities with his new change to living in mainland America. 

“When I came here, I came to work in the field, which is the same thing that I would do over there,” Reyes said. “I worked on the field for 2 or 3 years.”

Reyes explained that the field he worked on in the ’50s was in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, where the abandoned Northridge Mall is now.

“It used to be a farm where they planted flowers and trees,” Reyes said. “In the summertime, we worked on the field and in the wintertime, we were inside planting flowers and stuff like that.”

According to Reyes, the work that he was doing in Milwaukee at this time was more or less the same as the fieldwork that he would do in Puerto Rico. After he moved from the field job, he worked making clay pots in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He later went back to a different field job in Jackson, Wisconsin. 

“At the time there was no work in the factories,” Reyes said. “I had to take whatever I could find.” 

From there, Reyes went to find work at Grady Foundry. According to Gonzalez-Edwards, a foundry is a factory where workers melt down steel and create various items.

“It was hard work,” Reyes said. “Hot.”  

Reyes laughed at how warm it would become and reminisced on memories of him going outside during the cold winter months to get cool, fresh air. Foundry work is referred to by Gonzalez-Edwards as very dangerous. 

“My father lost a thumb,” Gonzalez-Edwards said in relation to her father who worked at a different foundry at the time. 

Reyes felt that his work in the field and the foundry were both difficult in different ways. 

“Both of them were hard,” Reyes said. “But I was looking for a better place to live.”