The New American Ghetto

Camilo Jos Vergara

Camilo Vergara's The New American Ghetto is a photo and literary journal into American Ghettos from the Cabrini Greens Projects in Chicago's West Side to the Marcy House Projects of the Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. Within this journal Vergara exposes the silent conceptualizations of space, social interactions, and psychological experiences within these spaces. Camilo examines the definition of community as it relates to marginal communities versus the implied sense of community provided by public housing. Within The New American Ghetto, Vergara exposes the decay of neglected projects and communities as a result of political collapse, suburbanization, and politically charged zoning. In engaging this visually captivating journal of physical decay, something appears to be quite obvious as it is silent; the lack of life that is inherent within any community. Vergara challenges the idea that no community exists where absentia of bodies interacting with each other, nature, and positively in physical space is evident. This ghettoization is the result of not only the fleet to the promises that suburban life accommodates, but also the infrastructure that supports this movements[ expressways, rail lines, etc.] These communities displaced from services, decent education, and professional opportunities are known as Ghettos. Vergara organizes these ghettos into three classifications: green ghettos, immigrant ghettos, and institutional ghettos. Green ghettos are the regions in which nature seemingly digests the built form it devours forming an inner city jungle inhabited by rabbits and pheasants. Immigrant ghetto consists of ghettos that are integrated into the urban fabric characterized by Latino and West Indian residents. While it is unique in that it is a transient community of upward mobile residents, this ghetto is plagued by at and below poverty level and blue collar level workers. Verga does an exceptional job in classifying regions and boundaries of marginal practices defining the transitional areas in which a succession of poor and blue collar communities exist between marginal and affluent communities. Institutional ghettos are classified as areas plagued with poor public housing facilities and projects often lacking public and social services. Through interviews with longtime residents of various housing projects and ghettos across the United States, Vergara reveals the social, psychological, and physical experiences lived on these grounds of destitution. The ghettos become a physical manifestation of social mishaps, unhealthy social interactions and perceptions that exist within these communities. Fond memories of a place long ago coupled with the need to expose systems of power cause further frustration amongst the residents of these neighborhoods. Resentment, anger, blame on the white man,ambiguity, and contradictions only scratch the surface at the perceptions of the world around them [inhabitants]. Inadvertent, he does reveal the source of resilience he experiences as some residents seek to expose misguided reflections of the ambitions and goals of the people that inhabit the spaces. The very idea of community is challenged throughout this journal. Vergara offers a view into areas of poverty and marginalia mislabeled as communities one resident explains. Residents are found surprised that community now defines an area [lacking characteristics of

employment, involvement, and progression] versus a real lived place. Vergara even reveals to us that employment is present in communities where the demand is significantly less and the distance between the inner city and the suburb is greater. He goes further to explain the emotional affects of living in a place that police do not police, Social services are nonexistent, and the trash man does not collect trash. Words like genocide, concentration camp, and apartheid are common sentiments amongst the residents of these neighborhoods. As a product of the environment, social and physical interactions among each these bodies reflect disposition and lack of self worth as a result of living in such conditions. The residents are begging for a sense of belonging, not animplied community. Critique: One segment I find valuable about this publication is Vergara's classifications of ghettos and their innate thread of marginalia and displacement of some kind. Here I also began to understand the common characteristic of isolation that exists both physically and socially within each classification of ghetto. Not only are we presented with information on physical conditions due to deteriorating space but the social and psychological deterioration of those that inhabit these neighborhoods. As poverty tourism becomes a contemporary method of exploitation through mediums of journalism, a people are silenced by the stillness of their face in an image. Vergara connects the reader with the residents of these neighborhoods through voices and words stemming from actual interviews. Through this technique, Vergara is able to capture raw emotion in connection with these lived conditions. After engaging the text, I wonder what juxtaposing images of transitional communities and even affluent communities against those of the ghettos would evoke in readers. Perhaps even interviewing residents of transitional and affluent communities and their behaviors of experiencing space to capture opposite and perhaps parallel emotions/ In concert with my interests in physical boundaries, he defines other unique boundaries such as moments beyond hospitals, schools, and institutions separated by physical boundaries, dead ends, and opposite visual cues. I became particularly interested in this topic as I primarily engaged this boundary as the division between different residential zones, neglecting other forms of program. Not only do opposite conceptualizations of space and function exist at this margin but a strata of varied program exists simultaneously. Vergara not only captures the images and the voices of residence but he also presents a solution that low-income housing projects should be constructed in zones of middle class and upperclass zones to ensure equal socio-economic opportunities and result in an integrated community. I do find value in that he offers a strategy in which some form of resistance makes itself present for the first time in this publication. However these attempts at integration seem to be a bit radical as nuances like socio-economic and political interface operate at a higher capacity in affluent communities. I believe that much conflict would arise out of the development of a low-income housing in Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. I argue that his gathered data may suggest other means of intervention, but what I cannot deny is Vergara's strong visual narrative. He brings to the forefront a community silenced by distance, time, neglect, and destruction.