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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

San Antonio market looted

Sometime after midnight, a group of Black people ["un grupo de personas de color"] took the trash cans in front of the San Antonio Market at 71 West 116th Street and threw them at the window on the right side of the store front, according to accounts circulating at the store reported by a La Prensa reporter. Staff discovered the damage when they arrived to open the store, owned by Delfino Rosete. There had been no attacks on the market when they had closed the previous evening. They estimated that food values at $10-$12 had been taken. No one arrested for looting is identified as having stolen goods from the store.

A reporter for the paper 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 is the only damaged business located east of the market, at the other end of the block of West 116th Street. As with most of those attacks, La Prensa provides the only evidence of the looting of the market.

The San Antonio market likely continued to operate after the disorder, as a Hispanic-owned grocery store located at 71 West 116th Street is included in the MCCH Business survey. The nature of the business at that location when the Tax Department photograph was taken between 1939 and 1941 is not visible.

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