When the Blessed Sacrament Church was on the verge of being converted into luxury condos in the early 2000s and in 2020, Betsaida Gutiérrez was Jamaica Plain’s leading voice in preserving the building’s cultural and social identity. She led protests, community meetings, and strategized relentlessly to keep it central to the neighborhood. “She was this great organizer who kept things easy to understand,” said Harry Smith, an activist who has lived in Jamaica Plain since 1992 and who worked with Ms.
Gutiérrez on Blessed Sacrament, affordable housing, and local elections. Smith said she was tenacious in helping lift up her community. Ms.
Gutiérrez advised the most disadvantaged how to obtain loans. “Either you’re lending to our people or not, ” Smith said. Ms.
Gutiérrez died June 24 of a chronic illness, said her daughter, Nancy Rodriguez. She was 72. Advertisement Smith worked closely with Ms.
Gutiérrez and City Life / La Vida Urbana, a local grassroots organization, training community leaders and fighting against homeowner displacement. In the early 2000s, as several other churches faced the same plight as Blessed Sacrament, Ms. Gutiérrez united parishioners, activists, and neighbors to keep the church standing.
In 2010, the apartment complex developed by JPNDC on the Blessed Sacrament campus was named the Doña Betsaida Gutiérrez Cooperative to commemorate her efforts. The church represents only a fraction of her legacy. Born in Puerto Rico in 1952, Ms.
Gutiérrez moved to Mission Hill with her aunt at age 19. She wrote in the memoir, “Imagine Such a Life,” that she felt like a prisoner because she lived there alone the majority of the time and only went out for church. She hadn’t learned English yet and her only chores were to soak and boil the beans for dinner.
Ms. Gutiérrez worked in various blue-collar jobs throughout Massachusetts, fought gentrification, and supported Latino advocacy for decades. In 1975, her work at City Life / La Vida Urbana inspired her to get more active in the community, leaving her strongest impact on Jamaica Plain.
“During this time, I participated in the Wake Up the Earth Festival, which made me realize I wanted to become more active outside of my home,” she wrote in the memoir. Advertisement She volunteered at Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corp. and Action for Boston Community Development/JP Head Start, two community groups that have had a presence in Jamaica Plain for decades.
She also served community health and housing organizations focused on senior well-being and later completed undergraduate studies at Cambridge College. Smith said Ms. Gutiérrez would stand on chairs in meetings during the fight for Blessed Sacrament to be sure she was heard.
She was only 4 feet 11 inches tall, but wanted to be sure her voice filled the room. “From the start she had this drive to be a part of the community and make it better,” Smith said. “The resilience and the grit were there when she got here.
” Ms. Gutiérrez came to the United States looking for brighter opportunities and education. Her first work in Boston was cutting fabric at a curtain factory in Chinatown and secretarial work in the area.
Nancy Rodriguez said her mother had to walk from Chinatown to Jamaica Plain. The hour and half commute indicated her transition to the States was not as smooth as she’d hoped. She was raised by her grandparents in San Juan — an African American grandmother who was enslaved and a Puerto Rican grandfather who was a sugar cane farmer.
Ms. Gutiérrez was one of 14 siblings. Rodriguez said her mother was forced to establish tough skin being raised by a dark-skin woman in the 1950s in San Juan.
“She was different and frowned upon because everybody around was light-skinned,” Rodriguez said. Her grandfather was a white man of Spanish descent, as Ms. Gutiérrez describes in her memoir.
“He had white hair and crystal-blue eyes,” she recalls in the book. He lived to be 102. Advertisement Rodriguez explained her mother’s roots in San Juan motivated her to serve Latino families, marginalized communities, and women.
She said seeing Ms. Gutiérrez work across Jamaica Plain as a single mother was a strong influence on her. Away from her time spent fighting for housing and local advocacy, Ms.
Gutiérrez was a mother for all of Jamaica Plain, always looking for ways to bring people together and establish a sense of family to the people around her. “When she was out and dancing she wouldn’t let you talk about work while she partied — she was that kind of person,” said Pat Feeley, one of Ms. Gutiérrez colleagues at City Life and close friend for most of her time in Jamaica Plain.
Ms. Gutiérrez was a poet in her spare time and held neighborhood-wide poetry readings, friends said. She was always eager to welcome people into the community.
“If Betsaida herself was in a bed and the person in the next bed was not being treated right, Betsaida would get out of her bed because she had to respond to anything that seemed like an injustice to her,” Feeley said. Feeley said Ms. Gutiérrez would always open her home to anyone who needed help.
She would have her daughter help shovel snow out of driveways for elderly neighbors who couldn’t do it themselves. “She was here so long that dozens and dozens of people have a similar story with her,” Smith said. “People knew her as a firebrand and so many others knew her as Betsaida.
” In addition to her daughter, she leaves eight brothers, four sisters, and many nieces and nephews. Services have been held. Advertisement Rodriguez hopes Jamaica Plain can continue to keep the people who built Jamaica Plain in their homes and businesses.
She said her mother’s contributions should continue to inspire her neighborhood. “Keep fighting and never give up,” she said. Auzzy Byrdsell can be reached at austin.
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