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San Antonio market looted
A reporter for La Prensa visited damaged businesses in the Puerto Rican areas of West 116th and Lenox Avenue the day after the disorder. Most of those identified in the story are west of the market, on Lenox Avenue and West 116th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenues, and most had broken windows without reported looting. The Mediaville Liquor store was the only damaged business located east of the market, at the other end of the block of West 116th Street. As with most of the attacks in the Spanish-speaking section of Harlem, La Prensa provided the only evidence of the looting of the market.
Given the limited damage and lost merchandise, the San Antonio market likely continued to operate after the disorder, but there was no clear evidence. A Hispanic-owned grocery store located at 71 West 116th Street was included in the MCCH business survey, but the owner was listed as Gregorio Troche, not Delfino Rosete. The investigators did sometimes record the name of the store manager rather than the owner. In this case, it was possible the men were related: the 1930 census recorded a household living at 122 West 115th Street headed by Defino Rosete, a twenty-four-year-old Mexican immigrant that included his father-in-law, a forty-nine-year-old Puerto Rican immigrant named Gregorio Troche. (At that time Rosete worked as a handyman in a metal factory, and his father-in-law as a dishwasher, so there was no direct link between those men and the San Antonio market.) The nature of the business at that location when the Tax Department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941 was not visible in the image.
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This page references:
- "Numerosos Establecimientos Hispanos Apedreados y Saqueados por la Turba," La Prensa, March 21, 1935, 1.
- US Census, 1930, Enumeration District 31-789, Sheet 7B, Manhattan, New York, New York (Ancestry.com).
- "Harlem: Survey - Census Tract #190 (2)," 1935, Roll 79, Subject Files, Office of the Mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia records (New York City Municipal Archives).