Hispanas de Queens: Latino Panethnicity in a New York City Neighborhood 9781501724657

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface: Fieldwork in Queens, New York City
Introduction: The Emergence of Latino Panethnicity
PART I. Neighborhood Life and Experiential Latino Panethnicity
1. Introducing Corona
2. Women and Convivencia Diaria
3. Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space
4. Roman Catholic Parishes
5. Protestant Churches
PART II. Female Leadership and Institutional Latino Panethnicity
6. Introducing Latino Organizations in Queens
7. Social Service Organizations
8. Cultural Politics
9. Formal Politics
Conclusion: Women and the Creation of Latino Panethnicity
References
Index

Citation preview

Hispanas de Queens

The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues

A series edited by Roger Sanjek

A full list of titles in the series appears at the end of this book.

Hispanas de Queens

•••••••••••••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••• Latino Panethnicity in a New York City Neighborhood Milagros Ricourt Be Ruby Danta

Cornell University Press : Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2003 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 1485o. First published 2003 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2003 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ricourt, Milagros, 196oHispanas de Queens : Latino panethnicity in a New York City neighborhood I Milagros Ricourt and Ruby Danta. p. em.- (The anthropology of contemporary issues) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8o14-4045-9 (cloth: alk. paper)- ISBN o-8o14-8795-1 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Hispanic Americans--New York (State)-New York-Social life and customs. 2. Corona (New York, N.Y.)-Sociallife and customs. 3· Queens (New York, N.Y.)-Sociallife and customs. 4- New York (N.Y.)-Sociallife and customs. I. Danta, Ruby. II. Title. Ill. Series. F128.9.S75 R53 2003 305.868'o747-dc21 2002007458 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents Preface: Fieldwork in Queens, New York City Introduction: The Emergence of Latino Panethnicity

vii 1

Part I. Neighborhood Life and Experiential Latino Panethnicity

Introducing Corona 2. Women and Convivencia Diaria 3· Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space 4· Roman Catholic Parishes 5· Protestant Churches 1.

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24 39 57 71

Part II. Female Leadership and Institutional Latino Panethnicity

6. 7· 8. g.

Introducing Latino Organizations in Queens Social Service Organizations Cultural Politics Formal Politics

134

Conclusion: Women and the Creation of Latino Panethnicity References Index

148 153 163

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Preface: Fieldwork in Queens, New York City

W

hen we began our research in Corona, Queens, during the mid-198os, we discovered a New York City neighborhood in which Latina women of diverse nationalities-Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Ecuadoran, Peruvian, Puerto Rican, Uruguayan, and others-were creating, organizing, and leading a pan-Latin American community. This book tells the stories of these women and their efforts, and in so doing identifies social processes that may be uniting diverse Latin Americans elsewhere in the United States. Initially our fieldwork was part of the New Immigrants and Old Americans Project, focused on the multiethnic and multiracial neighborhoods of Corona and Elmhurst in Queens and directed by Roger Sanjek, an anthropologist at Queens College. The goal of the project was to understand the social, cultural, and political life of an urban area that was experiencing the impact of substantial and diverse immigration. Our team addressed these concerns through intensive ethnographic fieldwork and through interviews, using a jointly developed household interview form covering social and demographic characteristics, migration and work histories, and community involvement. Rather than studying each group separately, the project involved concurrent and overlapping fieldwork among immigrant Asian and Latin American populations as well as established white and black Americans (see Chen 1992; Danta 1989a, 1989b; Gregory 1992, 1993, 1998; Khandelwal 1991, 2002; Park 1997; Ricourt 1989, 1994; Sanjek 1989, 1992, 1998). Milagros Ricourt joined the New Immigrants and Old Americans Project in the summer of 1986. Her first objective was to gain an overview of Latin American women in Corona through participant observation in a Spanish-language church, volunteer work at a Latino advocacy organization, and interviews with Latin American proprietors for a project survey oflocal businesses. Each of these areas of activity revealed significant leadership roles for women: at the Spanish-language First United Methodist Church of Corona, the pastor was a Puerto Rican

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Preface woman, and most lay leaders-of several Latin American nationalitieswere female, as was a majority of the diverse congregation. Informal conversations with church members, many of them residents of Corona, helped establish contacts for interviews and further introductions. Volunteer work at Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens/Concerned Citizens of Queens, or CCQ, a social service agency, brought Ricourt into contact with still more diverse Latina leaders and local residents. The project's business survey collected information about the 1,428 commercial enterprises located on Corona and Elmhurst shopping strips. First, ten project staff members (including Ricourt), speaking variously Spanish, Korean, Taiwanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, distributed to each firm a sheet explaining the survey and its sponsorship by the Corona Community Development Corporation and the Elmhurst Economic Development Corporation. Then, using a one-page survey form, they conducted interviews with more than two-thirds of these businesses' owners or managers. This work provided contact with scores of immigrant entrepreneurs and their customers. The women who operated several of Corona's Latin American businesses became both sources and references for more extensive interviews. The first summer of fieldwork thus brought many encounters with Latina leaders and entrepreneurs. Much of the academic literature on Latin American immigrants has portrayed women as passive, either focusing on exploited garment workers or presenting them as little more than numbers in dry demographic analyses of global economic patterns. Few studies have explored the specific circumstances of female actors in migratory and settlement processes. Yet in Corona women were visibly involved in organizing and even leading an emerging and diverse pan-Latin American community. In 1987 Ricourt moved to Corona for two years of intensive fieldwork and encountered an acute housing shortage in the neighborhood where she planned to live. Overcoming this obstacle offered additional opportunities to meet ordinary Corona residents. The fact that Ricourt lived in Corona, spoke Spanish, and had a cultural background (Dominican) similar to many did not lead people to accept her as an ordinary neighbor with concerns like theirs. Many informants were at first reluctant to share their migration, work, family, or everyday life experiences with her. Acceptance took hold only when her pregnancy became obvious. Then women in the coin laundry started approaching her to tell her what sex her baby would be, others from her apartment building and from the Methodist church prescribed remedies for morning sickness, and many invited her to visit their homes so they could share their own experiences as new mothers. During several emergency stays at Elmhurst Hospital

Preface she met other pregnant Latin American women, several of whom lived in Corona and became friends and, later, informants. Women from the church, the hospital, and the neighborhood visited her frequently at home. Some also accompanied her to doctor appointments or on outings to buy baby clothing. By the end of 1987 Ricourt no longer felt like an intruder. She had entered into the everyday existance of women seeking to build better lives for themselves, their children, and their neighbors. When she went to the Dominican Republic for a short visit in November 1987, women from the neighborhood babysat and helped her look for boxes and pack. When Ricourt returned to Corona in January 1988-leaving her son in the Dominican Republic with her parents-she shared an apartment with two Dominican women in a two-family house not far from the apartment building she had occupied the previous year. Her new landlady, also Dominican, was a leader in her block association. That summer she and Ricourt often sat out on the sidewalk and talked about the changes in the neighborhood since the landlady had arrived in Corona in the early 1970s. In less than fifteen years she had seen her block diversify to include people from all over the world. Ricourt's apartmentmates, who worked in local sweatshops, introduced Ricourt to the world and social lives of garment workers. She learned that Dominican owners run their factories differently from Chinese and Korean owners. On picnics in nearby Linden and Flushing Meadows-Corona parks and on strolls in the neighborhood, she discovered that garment-worker networks are permeated by subtle social reciprocities. Her visits to the shop where one of her apartmentmates worked became so frequent that some women there mistook Ricourt for a garment worker herself. Although people knew she was gathering information for academic research, they no longer treated her as an outsider, but as a friend, and sometimes, during informal talk, even as a source of information. Her friendships with the two garment workers lasted beyond the time she lived with them. On later trips to the Dominican Republic Ricourt carried mail and money from them to their relatives. Ricourt's ties at the First United Methodist Church of Corona also deepened over time. Volunteer work in two of the church's social programs converted mere study into two-way exchange. Since 1989 Ricourt has stayed in touch with Corona through friendships with the pastor and several Methodist church members. Other ties to Latinas in Queens have also continued. Moreover, in 1995 Ricourt and Danta returned to conduct additional research on Corona grocery stores and in 2000 to collect more information on cultural and political activities.

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Preface Ruby Danta joined the New Immigrants and Old Americans Project in 1983 while she was an undergraduate at Queens College. She continued part-time fieldwork through the completion of her master's degree in 1989, also at Queens College. As a project team member surveying Corona and Elmhurst, she quickly became familiar with neighborhood activities, ethnic restaurants, and stores. Her fieldnotes from 1983 record her discovery of Corona as "a picturesque place, a place as can only exist in New York ... Each one of [the] commercial streets shows a potpourri of ethnic products and foods, businesses, and faces from a variety of countries." Later Danta spent six months visiting regularly at a senior citizens' center at the First United Methodist Church of Corona, where she conducted formal and informal interviews. Next she volunteered at the Latino panethnic Ollantay Center for the Arts in Jackson Heights and, with Ricourt, at Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens, where they became acquainted with still other Spanish-speaking political and community leaders in Queens, most of whom also were female. With other project members, Danta attended many annual public festivals and rituals. As a participant observer she joined parishioners of St. Leo's and Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Churches in masses and processions through the streets of Corona. For her master's thesis, Danta focused on conversion to Protestantism among Latin Americans in Corona and Elmhurst. Using participant observation in services and church activities and interviews with clergy and congregation members, she found that it was women's faith, activism, and leadership that sustained these churches. During the 1990s Danta became actively involved in the wider pan-Latin American community of Queens. In 1991 she testified with others in favor of new Latino-majority redistricting in Corona. Beginning in 1993 she worked at the Latin American Cultural Center of Queens and served as its executive director during 1995-1997. Through these and other activities she followed cultural and political developments in the wider Latino community. Our fieldwork included contact with most of the civic, cultural, advocacy, political, and religious institutions and organizations formed or led by Latin Americans and serving Corona. We sustained contact with many individual leaders from the mid-198os through the 1990s. Several of the Latina women operated at levels that reached beyond Corona-in local Community Boards 3 and 4, in the larger Queens Latin American community, and in the seat of county government at Queens Borough Hall. Our fieldwork also extended to metropolitan-area-wide arenas of cultural participation for Spanish-speaking groups, including festivals in

Preface Flushing Meadows-Corona Park that attracted enormous audiences from outside Queens. In addition to participant observation, Ricourt's research included intensive interviews with thirty-three working-class women on their everyday life and informal networks, and with seventeen middle-class women who held positions on Queens community boards and in advocacy and civic associations, churches, and government agencies. All these interviews began with the New Immigrants and Old Americans Project household interview and then expanded into particular topics on two or more later visits. Danta also conducted fifty-five formal interviews with clergy and congregants of several Catholic and Protestant churches. Our interviews and extensive fieldnotes on households, workplaces, houses of worship, organization offices, social service programs, meetings, streets, stores, festivals, and public events document Latino panethnicity-commonalities, collaboration, interaction, a sense of local belonging, and unity of purpose among people of diverse Latin American nationalities. Part I of this book examines the construction of this Latino panethnicity as it begins in what we call convivencia diaria, or "daily-life interaction," in apartments and houses, on the streets, in stores, in workplaces, and in churches. The Spanish term has deeper connotations of interaction and mutual involvement than its English rendering. The emergence of a Latino panethnic community rooted in convivencia diaria has not only occurred experientially at the grassroots, but has also been enacted organizationally during the 1g8os and 1ggos by a group of mainly middle-class leaders, most of whom were female. In Part II we document these leaders' concrete steps toward building both Latino panethnic organizations and a Latino political voice in Corona and Queens-within social service organizations, in cultural activities, and in formal politics. Although distinct Latin American national identities, as expressed in family, cultural, and home-country political ties, also remain important in Queens (see Janes-Correa 1998), this book tells another part of the story, that of people of different Latin American backgrounds creating a unique Latino panethnic community-both experientially, from the bottom up, in convivencia diaria; and institutionally, from the top down, in the activities of organizations and their leaders. We are grateful to the many people who helped us write this book. First, we thank Roger Sanjek who supported our fieldwork, shared with us his ethnographic skills, and provided especially thorough and constructive criticism as the manuscript was being written. Moreover, we profited from Sanjek's suggestions for improving the manuscript once it was completed. We are also grateful to William Korblum and Roslyn

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Preface

Bologh for their support while Milagros Ricourt was writing early versions of the book. The manuscript has also been strengthened by critical readings of the community leaders Aida Gonzalez and Ivonne Garcia. We especially thank all the team members of the New Americans and Old Immigrants project, Hsiang-Shui Chen, Kyeyoung Park, Madhulika Shankar, Elena Acosta, Steven Gregory. Finally, Ruby Danta is indebted to Jose and Elena, her parents; Pablo, her husband; and Maribel and Ruben, her children. Milagros Ricourt thanks Miguel, Andres, and Fernando, her children. We could not have done this work without their encouragement, support, and patience.

Hispanas de Queens

Introduction: The Emergence of Latino Panethnicity

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hat happens when persons of several Latin American national groups reside in the same neighborhood? Our research in Corona, and more widely in the borough of Queens in New York City, suggests that a new overarching identity may emerge--one termed hispano or latinoamericano in Spanish, and Hispanic or Latino in English. This new identity does not simply replace one's identification as an immigrant from a particular country. Instead, repeated interactions between individuals of various Latino ethnic groups may foster cultural exchange and create an additional identity, one that can be mobilized by Latino panethnic leaders and organizations. This book analyzes the social forces that structure this process in both the everyday interactions and the organizational and institutional life of immigrants of diverse Latin American nationalities residing in Corona and elsewhere in Queens. Four factors are critical, and we devote attention to each: language, geographic concentration, class, and gender. Unlike past European or contemporary Asian immigrants to the United States, Latinos from different countries all share a language, and thus the potential for shared experience and self-perceptions. Our research supports Ana Celia Zentella's assertion that among the diverse Latinos living in contemporary New York City, "the Spanish language ... is their most powerful unifier" (1997, 168). This use of Spanish involves more than ease of communication, for, as Geoffrey Fox explains, "Spanish speakers and their descendants from places as widely separated as Chile and Mexico often feel a simpatia, a recognition of themselves in the other, that they do not have with non-Hispanics" (1996, 6). Latin Americans of all national backgrounds living in English-dominant North America also discover that "language-based discrimination is a part of the Latino experience in the United States," even for "native-born, nonSpanish-dominant Latinos" (DeSipio 1996, 179). Geographic concentration can enhance the unifying effect of language (DeSipio 1996, 186-187). In earlier European immigrant neigh-

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Hispanas de Queens

borhoods, such concentration not only contributed to the formation of ethnic identity among different groups (Cans 1962; Whyte 1955; Yancey, Erickson, and Juliani 1976) but also helped forge solidarity across ethnic lines among their English-speaking second- and third-generation descendants (Kornblum 1974; Sanjek 1998). Corona is a neighborhood where a diverse Hispanic population is concentrated: by 1990 more than 38,ooo Latino residents accounted for 6o percent of Corona's population-whites, blacks, and Asians accounted for the rest-with a score of Latin American nationalities represented. As people of color in the United States, Latinos also face housing discrimination, which limits residential choices and reinforces geographic concentration (Denton and Massey 1988; Massey 1981; Massey and Denton 1993). This circumstance distinguishes them from earlier European immigrants, whose children were able to escape residential segregation, and resembles the plight of the Africans Americans and other people of color who settled in the same urban settings contemporaneously (Lieberson 1980; Suttles 1968). The fact that Corona's Latinos are mainly working-class inhabitants of a working-class neighborhood further reinforces Latino panethnic interaction and identification. Living in small, often overcrowded apartment buildings and private homes, Corona's Spanish-speaking residents meet at the street level in stores, coin-operated laundries, hospital waiting rooms, buses and subways, parks, churches, and schoolyards, where they share information about housing, store prices and sales, babysitters, jobs, and one another's cultures. They also meet in workplaces-for many, typically the "low-wage service and manufacturing industries [that] depend almost completely on immigrant labor working at minimum wage," and which nationwide employ concentrations of Latino immigrants (Moore and Pinderhughes 1993, xxvi). Here working conditions differ from those encountered by European working-class immigrants and their offspring in the 1940s, 1950s, and 196os (Cans 1962; Kornblum 1974), reflecting the economic transformations affecting New York and other cities in the decades since the 1970s (Sassen 1992; Sassen-Koob 1981, 1983, 1985; Tabb 1982; Waldinger 1985). As Roger Sanjek (1998, ug-139) conceptualizes it, there are three economies in contemporary New York: the "speculative-electronic" financial sector, the "real economy," and the informal "underground economy." Most Latinos in Corona are employed in the real economy in low-wage, dead-end jobs and also use informal, off-the-books labor opportunities to survive. And their children attend working-class Corona's severely overcrowded and underfunded neighborhood schools. Gender also shapes Latino panethnic experience. Through the daily-

Introduction: The Emergence of Latino Panethnicity life experiences we term convivencia diaria, women more than men interact in neighborhood residential, health- and child-care, commercial, religious, and other settings, as well as in immigrant workplaces, such as the sewing shops in which most Corona Latinas find their initial employment. This experiential Latino panethnicity, together with the categorical panethnicity manifested in referring to one another as hispanos and latinoamericanos, is the base upon which institutional Latino panethnicity is created in Roman Catholic and Protestant Hispanic congregations and in Latino panethnic social service programs, cultural events and organizations, and political activism. Although some working-class Corona women are involved in organizing these activities, so are middle-class and professionally employed Queens Latinas. Indeed, women play a larger role than men in terms of initial organizing efforts and leadership tasks. Both female and male organization founders and leaders display a more purposeful, or ideological, panethnic consciousness. Changing Latino Residence PaHerns

In 1980 more than half the nation's Hispanic population lived in two states-California and Texas-and an additional17 percent in New York and Florida (Bean and Tienda 1987, 78). More recent data (del Pinal and Singer 1997, 10) show that although Latinos live in every state, their population remains concentrated in just nine, with some 85 percent residing in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, Florida, New Jersey, and New York. However, as Louis DeSipio points out, "Traditionally, Latino populations had very little contact with each other. Mexican Americans resided primarily in the Southwest; Cuban Americans in Florida; and Puerto Ricans in New York and the Northeast" (1996, 186). All these groups grew dramatically in the two decades after World War II. Under the 1942-1964 Bracero Program, more than 4.6 million Mexicans entered the United States; between 1940 and 1960, the number of Puerto Ricans residing in the continental United States increased from roughly 70,000 to 893,000; and after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, more than half a million Cubans entered the United States by 1970 (Bean and Tienda 1987, 24, 28; DeSipio 1997, 317). In 1965 changes in the U.S. immigration statutes opened doors to Latinos from other nations in South and Central America and the Caribbean (Kraly 1987; Sanjek 1998, 62-64). In New York, Dominicans joined the longer-established Puerto Rican and smaller Cuban populations, soon becoming the second-largest Latino group. Significant numbers of Colombians, Ecuadorans, and other South Americans, as well as Central Americans of diverse nationalities, arrived in the 196os, 1970s,

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Hispanas de Queens and later decades. In the 1g8os the flow of Mexicans to New York also accelerated. According to estimates by New York's Department of City Planning, in 2000 the city's 85o,ooo Puerto Ricans accounted for 38 percent of the total Hispanic population, 615,000 Dominicans for 27 percent, 2oo,ooo Mexicans for g percent, 125,000 Colombians and 125,000 Ecuadorans for 6 percent each, and other Latin Americans for about 14 percent (Gonzalez 2ooo). Joining the newer Hispanic immigrants after 1965 were substantial numbers of Asians of many nationalities, English-speaking West Indians, Haitians, diverse Europeans, and Africans. As a consequence of this "new immigration," by 1990 many parts of New York City had become multiminority neighborhoods (Alba et al. 1995; Denton and Massey 1991). New York City's immigrants settled everywhere, but central Brooklyn (the destination of many West Indians and Haitians), Chinatown, northern Manhattan (a target for Dominicans), and northwest Queens (a highly diverse area that contains Corona) absorbed the largest numbers (Salvo, Ortiz, and Vardy 1992, 8g-g1). The historically Puerto Rican areas in Manhattan, the south Bronx, and Brooklyn remained heavily Puerto Rican, but Washington Heights in Manhattan became a strongly Dominican neighborhood (Ricourt 1gg8). In Queens, however, there was no majority group among the borough's diverse Latin American residents. By 1990 the 381,120 Latinos living in Queens (see Map 1) included 100,410 Puerto Ricans (26 percent of Queens Latinos), 63,224 Colombians (17 percent), 52,309 Dominicans (14 percent), 35,412 Ecuadorans (g percent), 18,771 Cubans (5 percent), 14,875 Peruvians (4 percent), 13,342 Mexicans (4 percent), 10,893 Salvadorans (3 percent), 4,050 Panamanians (1 percent), and 3,607 Hondurans (1 percent) (Department of City Planning 1992, 32; 1993, 24). Neighborhoods in Queens, and Corona in particular, were in fact as much multi-Latina as they were multiminority. But by 1990 diverse Latino populations were becoming more common in other New York City boroughs as well. In Williamsburg-Greenpoint, a strongly Puerto Rican Brooklyn neighborhood, the Puerto Rican share of the Hispanic population fell from 76 percent to 63 percent between 1g8o and 1990, with other Latinos (Dominicans, Ecuadorans, Mexicans, and Colombians in largest numbers) increasing from 24 percent to 37 percent (Department of City Planning 1992, go; 1993, 126). In Washington Heights-Inwood, Dominicans accounted for 65 percent of Latino residents in 1990, with Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Ecuadorans, Colombians, Mexicans, and others constituting 35 percent (Department of City Planning 1992, 210; 1993, 304). Even in longtime Puerto Rican East Harlem,

Forest Park

Gateway National Recreation Area Astoria/Long Island City Sunnyside/Woodside 3· Jackson Heights/E. Elmhurst 4· Elmhurst/Corona 5· Ridgewood/Glendale 6. Rego Park/Forest Hill 7· Flushing 8. Kew Gardens Hills/Fresh Meadows 1.

2.

g. Woodhaven/Richmond Hill Howard Beach/Ozone Park 11. Bayside/Douglaston

10.

Jamaica/St. Albans 13. Queens Village/Cambria Heights 14. Rockaway/Broad Channel 12.

Queens Latino population by community district

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Hispanas de Queens "Mexicans and other persons from Central America were beginning to displace Puerto Ricans and other Latinos from their traditional enclaves in 'El Barrio' at the end of the 198os" (Haslip-Viera 1996, zo). Latino Studies in New York City

Research on Latin American New Yorkers to date has concentrated on particular national groups-primarily Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians, and Mexicans-or on comparative studies of two or more groups. Although a few studies have focused on the social interaction of different Latino groups in residential, religious, or workplace settings (see Jones-Correa 1998, on Latino political attitudes in Queens; Mahler 1995, on diverse Latino service workers on Long Island; and Zentella 1997, on the Spanish language in New York City), none has addressed panethnic activity along several dimensions. A rich literature on Puerto Ricans in New York City dates from the 1930s. (For overviews, see Haslip-Viera 1996; Rodriguez 1989; Rodriguez, Sanchez-Korrol, and Alers 1980.) Several studies have examined labor-force participation, politics, community formation, religion, race, and cultural expression (Diaz-Stevens 1993, Falcon 1985; Flores 1987, 1994, 1996; Garrison 1974; Rodriguez 1996; Sanchez-Korrol1983; Stevens-Arroyo 1980; Torres 1995). Dominicans are now the second most-studied Latino group. (See Hernandez and Torres-Saillant 1996; Pessar 1995; Ricourt 1998; and Torres-Saillant and Hernandez 1998 for overviews.) Research has concentrated on migration, labor-force participation, small-business ownership, households, poverty, and ethnic persistence (Bray 1984; Duany 1994; Georges 1990; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Hernandez, RiveraBatiz, and Agodini 1995; Pessar 1987; Portes and Guarnizo 1991). Two early neighborhood studies by anthropologists also concerned community politics in Washington Heights (Georges 1984) and immigrants from the Dominican Cibao region in Corona (Hendricks 1974). The few published studies of Colombians in New York City have focused on Queens, where most Colombian immigrants reside, and offer a rounded overview of the Jackson Heights community in the 1970s (Chaney 1976, 1980, 1983) and a portrait of women workers (Castro 1982, 1986). In addition, several quantitative analyses compare the employment patterns and household structures of Colombian and Dominican immigrants (Gilbertson 1995; Gilbertson and Gurak 1993; Gurak and Kritz 1982). For the rapidly growing Mexican population, Robert C. Smith's ethnographic research (1996, 1998) on immigrants from a

Introduction: The Emergence of Latino Panethnicity Puebla town covers settlement and employment patterns in New York City. Smith's work also carefully documents the transnational linkages to their home community of this particular Mexican population; as Peggy Levitt phrases it, on the basis of similar fieldwork on transnational connections between Dominicans living in Boston, Massachusetts, and their relatives in the village of Miraflores, "Both migrants and nonmigrants expressed a sense of consciously belonging to a group that spanned two settings" (1998, 929). Jorge Duany, however, sees transnationalism among Dominicans in Washington Heights as producing "ambivalent attitudes toward the host society," with immigrants "torn between the desire for material progress in the United States and persistent emotional attachment to the Dominican Republic" (1994, 43). Advocating a multifaceted and comparative approach to transnationalism, Michael Peter Smith and Luis Guarnizo (1998, n) insist: "Transnational practices, while connecting collectivities located in more than one national territory, are embodied in specific social relations established between specific people, situated in unequivocal localities, at historically determined times. The 'locality' thus needs to be further conceptualized." One "unequivocal" reality in Corona certainly is the existence of transnational ties that individual Latino immigrants maintain with kin and communities in their homelands. Several examples of these relationships, both for newly arrived immigrants and for those contemplating an eventual return to the home country (compare Jones-Correa 1998, 98-wo), are described in later chapters. However, in conceptualizing Corona as a locality, we cannot portray the "specific social relations established between specific people" among its Latino residents as limited to transnational considerations. Rather, we agree with Arjun Appadurai (1996, 185) that "as local subjects carry on the continuing task of reproducing their neighborhood, the contingencies of history, environment, and imagination contain the potential for new contexts," and in particular new Latino panethnic ones. Moreover, transnational behaviors do not form an obstacle to the emergence of Latino panethnic experience, categories, organization, or ideology. Both processes can, and do, occur simultaneously. Nonetheless, we argue that a continuing research focus on individual Latino national groups, one by one, in neighborhoods now containing mixes of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombians, Mexicans, and other Latinos, is more likely to uncover transnationalism than panethnicity. If we wish to heed the "contingencies of history, environment, and imagination" in neighborhoods where diverse Latinos are geographically concentrated, we must ask: Is it still possible to study each group separately, without looking at their interaction?

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Hispanas de Queens Conceptualizing Latino Panethnicity

As "residents of the United States who can trace their ancestry to the Spanish-speaking regions of Latin American and the Caribbean" (DeSipio 1996, 178), Latinos in Corona and Queens vary individually and situationally in how they identify themselves. Most attach the strongest cultural meanings and values to their own national identities as Dominicans, Colombians, Nicaraguans, and so forth, and prefer that others acknowledge these national-or, in the United States, "ethnic"-identities (compare Hardy-Fanta 1993; Oboler 1995). However, people also use hispano and latinoamericano in Spanish, and Hispanic and Latino in English, to refer to the larger Spanish-speaking, multinationality group. Martha, for example, is a working-class Guatemalan who immigrated to the United States in 1980. During an interview Martha stated, "I am from Guatemala," and then invited Ricourt to taste the taquitos she was preparing, remarking that her Guatemalan national food had many similarities to Mexican and other Central American cuisines. When asked about her Corona neighborhood, she said that her street was "Hispana. Hay gentes de todas partes-dominicanos, colombianos, ecuatorianos. Mi vecina de arriba es ecuatoriana y la del piso de mas arriba es colombiana." (Her street was "Hispana. There are people from everywhereDominicans, Colombians, Ecuadorans. My neighbor upstairs is from Ecuador, and the other is Colombian.") When she recalled an incident at the factory where she worked in Long Island City, Queens, she referred to her coworkers as "nosotros hispanos," or "we Hispanos." In another interview, Aida Gonzalez, a middle-class Ecuadoran who arrived in the United States in the early 1960s and worked as director of cultural affairs at Queens Borough Hall, responded she was "Ecuadoran American" to a question about her ethnic identity. As she then pointed to an Ecuadoran clay pot with an Amerian flag in it, she added, "I am working and serving a Latin American community. I am also latinoamericana. Here in Queens we are of many nationalities, and numbers are almost equal. In order to gain political recognition we need to have a united voice." A massive scholarly literature discusses the uses, meanings, and nuances of Latino, Hispanic, and other terms referring to this diverse population (Anzaldua 1987; Anzaldua and Moraga 1983; Bean and Tienda 1987; Calderon 1992; de la Garza et al. 1992; Moore and Pachon 1985; Murguia and Martinelli 1991; Nelson and Tienda 1985; Oboler 1995; Portes and Truelove 1987; Sullivan 1985; Totti 1987; Zinn 1981). These authors all acknowledge the complex and diverse nature of the Latino population in the United States. Alejandro Portes and Cynthia Truelove

Introduction: The Emergence of Latino Panethnicity (1987, 360) point to socioeconomic, racial, historical, cultural, and immigration-status differences, as well as to varying patterns of entry and settlement. Frank Bean and Marta Tienda (1987, 56) conclude that Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans have different socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, and Rodolfo de la Garza and colleagues (1992) contrast the political behavior of these three groups, asserting that few individuals consider themselves part of a Latino or Hispanic collectivity. Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga (1983), Suzanne Oboler (1995, 1), and Maxine Baca Zinn (1981, 18-24) stress internal differentiation by gender and sexual orientation, as well as by race, class, and language use. Some authors, however, conclude that diverse Latinos may be able to find unity through common political action. Fortes and Truelove (1987) mention shared problems around job discrimination or affirmative action, but they admit that this circumstance does not automatically produce a strong collective self-identity. Michael Jones-Correa argues that "state-offered incentives" to "Hispanics" can lead to "self-interested mobilization of various Latin American origin groups," and that "Latino identity" is thus "partly a construction of the state" (1998, 111). DeSipio usefully summarizes five interconnected factors facilitating the development of Latino panethnicity: "common cultural characteristics," "increasing contact between Latino populations with various ancestries," "common public policy needs and concerns," "statutory recognition of Latino rather than national-origin based ethnicity," and "the role of ... elites in shaping a common identity" (1996, 177). These factors are consistent with the data and argument of our book. The first fieldwork-based examination of Latino panethnicity was Felix Padilla's 1985 study of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Although the Spanish language provided the medium for the formation of "Latinism," as Padilla termed the political ties formed between these two groups, each group resided separately in different Chicago neighborhoods. Concerns over inequalities in education and employment united them, but a shared base of convivencia diaria in neighborhood, churches, and public space was absent. Padilla stressed situational and collective political action in producing a Latino panethnicity, but not cultural or interpersonal factors. Carol Hardy-Fanta's 1993 study, Latina Politics, Latino Politics: Gender, Culture, and Political Participation in Boston, like Padilla's work, focused on political action and leaders, and usefully pointed to women as significant shapers of Latino panethnic activism. Again, however, the textures of daily life and neighborhood realities in the lives of these leaders' constituents remained out of the picture. Still other researchers have studied situations in which

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Hispanas de Queens Latino panethnic interaction has become fragmented in daily life. Greta Gilbertson and Douglas Gurak (1993), for example, see "ethnic enclave" employment among Dominican and Colombian men as limiting contact with other Latinos; and Sarah Mahler ( 1995) documents how competition and jealously among casually employed Latino male laborers on Long Island hampers ethnic as well as any panethnic unity. For the Queens case, we need to extend this insight along four dimensions to account for Latino panethnicity at both the organizational level and the level of convivencia diaria. First, we document experiential panethnicity in the daily-life settings of residence, neighborhood, and workplace; here diverse Latinos in Corona interact with each other using the medium of Spanish and establish a variety of new cross-nationality ties. Categorical panethnicity emerges in these settings as people view and speak of one another as hispanos or latinoamericanos. Martha, the Guatemalan factory worker, exemplifies these two dimensions. Third, institutional panethnicity emerges when religious congregations, senior citizen centers, social service programs, cultural organizations, and political groups are created by leaders to attract and serve all Latinos in Corona or Queens. Fourth, ideological panethnicity is voiced by these leaders of what they usually identify as Latino or Hispanic social service, cultural, and political organizations. Aida Gonzalez, the Ecuadoran director of cultural affairs at Queens Borough Hall, expressed this ideological version of Latino panethnicity, and her various activities in Queens Latino panethnic organizations, as we shall see, exemplified her involvement along the third, or institutional, dimension. Latino panethnicity is something created in the United States. It combines old customs and relationships brought from countries of origin with new forms of interaction generated in the receiving country. Latino panethnicity arises at the grassroots community level through daily-life activities, most particularly those of working-class women. Some of them are joined by middle-class Latinas to develop a variety of organizations that serve their diverse Spanish-speaking community. All these women interact together through their common identification as Hispanas or Latinas.

PART I

Neighborhood Life and Experiential Latino Panethnicity

Introducing Corona

T

he setting in which we begin our analysis of Latino panethnicity is the Queens neighborhood of Corona. Like other urban neighborhoods, Corona "is intricately organized according to its own standards .... The vast majority of the residents are quite conventional people .... Some ethnic customs have been preserved, and numerous localisms have developed .... residents are bent on ordering local relations where the beliefs and evaluations of the wider society do not provide adequate guidelines" (Suttles 1968, 3-4). In so doing, Latinos of different nationalities engage in daily-life interactions with one another and with their non-Latino neighbors. Here is one ethnographic view of these interactions: It is 7:00A.M., Monday, winter. At Junction Boulevard dozens of men and women rush to the IRT train station. Colombians, Dominicans, Indians, African Americans, Ecuadorans, Chinese, Salvadorans, Sikhs, Koreans, Argentinians, Greeks, and Cubans are waiting for the Number 7 train to arrive on the westbound track to Manhattan. A train stops on the other, eastbound side of the platform. Nobody exits, and the train continues toward Flushing, empty. Now the Manhattan-bound train arrives and stops. The platform empties as everyone gets aboard to travel to Manhattan to work. In seconds, the platform is full again of this great ethnic mixture that is Corona as people gather for the next train. It is S:oo A.M. Two Indian women are walking along Roosevelt Avenue going east, taking their children to Public School 19, at ggth Street and 41st Avenue. At g8th Street they meet three South American-looking women who are also taking their children to the same school. The two groups do not greet each other. Four Spanish-speaking women leave the apartment building at 41st Avenue and 97th Street. They have to rush to be on time at the sweatshop. On their way they meet fellow workers from Colombia, Cuba, and Korea. They stop at Rafael's grocery store to buy hot coffee. Rafael, a Dominican, opened up his business more than two hours ago. It is 1o:oo A.M. There are fewer people around the train station. The Dominican woman who owns a beauty parlor at Roosevelt Avenue near

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the 103rd Street IRT station meets the Colombian woman who owns the clothing store next to her. They greet each other and comment on how the snowfall spoiled the weekend. The Colombian woman tells the Dominican woman that she has sold her business to another Dominican woman. It is noon, and the neighborhood looks quiet. Only a few women pull their shopping carts out of the Key Food supermarket on National Street facing Corona Plaza. Across the street the Concerned Citizens of Queens (CCQ) community organization office, which helps immigrants with their Immigration and Naturalization Service papers, is crowded with people from all over the world. Most of the people who work there speak Spanish, and may also speak English, but not Greek, or Chinese, or Hindi. It is another hard day for the women who staff this organization. At the post office around the comer there are more people speaking Spanish while they wait in line. Store owners complain that there are few customers; nobody shops on Mondays, and even fewer are likely to come out in this cold weather. It is 3:00 P.M. Latin American, Indian, and a few Chinese women wait for their children in separate groups outside and inside the P.S. 19 schoolyard. The Latin American women talk, gesture, laugh, and shout. They look as though they are having a good time. At the comer of 45th Avenue and ggth Street there are two grocery stores, both owned by Dominicans. Across the street is a coin laundry, and next to it is a tire repair shop. Several groups of schoolchildren run in different directions. One runs to one of the grocery stores. Others run to their mothers. A Salvadoran woman waves to her child from the laundry. One group of Dominican women walks in front of another group of women from India, each group taking their children home and planning what to cook for supper. It is 6:oo P.M. The same crowd of people who rushed to take the train to work this morning now walk slowly home. It is J:OO P.M., and the streets look deserted. On a summer day in Corona the heat covers the neighborhood. It is 1:oo P.M., Saturday. Few people took the Number 7 train this morning. Rafael's grocery store opened two hours later than usual. On Saturdays, Corona residents start the day late. By z:oo P.M. it seems that half of Corona has arrived at Junction Boulevard. The stores are full. People must wait in line to get a table in a restaurant. A dozen people wait in a doctor's office. Two Spanish-speaking women argue with an African man selling leather belts on the sidewalk. At 41st Avenue near ggth Street a brand-new car was abandoned two days ago. Today just the car's skeleton remains. At 3:00 P.M. a woman

Introducing Corona walking along Roosevelt Avenue is hurt by a piece of glass that falls from the train tracks overhead. At 4:30 she is still lying on the sidewalk waiting for an ambulance to arrive. It is 5:00 P.M., and drug dealers congregate to do business at 104th Street and Roosevelt Avenue. The weekend passes with shopping at the stores along Roosevelt Avenue, and barbecuing and playing soccer in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Corona Past and Present

Corona lies in the northwest quadrant of the borough of Queens in New York City, just west of Shea Stadium and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and south of La Guardia Airport. Today it is a working-class neighborhood of predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Caribbean and South and Central America, with smaller numbers from Asia, Africa, and Europe. There are also long-established populations of white Americans, mainly of Italian origin, and African Americans. Throughout its long history Corona has been an arrival point for immigrants, and a site of multiethnic contact and interaction. The area's first colonial residents were British farmers and enslaved Africans who arrived in the mid-seventeenth century. Vincent Seyfried (1987, 1) describes how it looked to these newcomers: Corona presented to the eye a scene of thick forest land on the upland along Junction Boulevard yielding to gently rolling open meadow as one moved east, until ... the land subsided into a vast swampland long Flushing Creek, covered with waving grass and teeming bird life. The creek itself ... was in colonial days a broad body of water and was fed by several tributary streams ... that meandered through a wide area and drained the uplands to the west and south. Flushing Creek received enough water from its tributaries and the springs in the meadows to keep its waters fresh and sweet and this, along with the abundant pasturage on its banks, was a powerful attraction to the first Europeans. The earliest farmer, Robert Coe, arrived in 1634 from Suffolk, England, settling first in Hempstead on Long Island. In 1652 he moved to Newtown, the township that included present-day Corona. In 1684 a Dutch farmer, Abraham Joris Brinkerhoff, bought four hundred acres of Corona meadowland. Other Europeans and Africans came to the area during the eighteenth century, and a rural way of life continued long into

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the 18oos. The U.S. census of 1875listed only 801 persons in Corona. At that point the population was still of mainly English and Dutch descent, the black population had shrunk, and the more recent arrivals were German and Irish. By the tum of the twentieth century other immigrant groups had appeared, in particular Italians and Jews. The first half of the twentieth century was a period of Italian numerical and political dominance in Corona. By 1960, however, Latin Americans of diverse national origins began to settle in this still mainly white neighborhood. (For more details on Corona's history, see Sanjek 1998, 19-27; Seyfried 1987.) Demographic change in Corona has been dramatic over the last forty years. In 1950 the population consisted of 42,507 whites and 5,159 blacks, most of whom lived in the northern part of the neighborhood. No Puerto Ricans or other Latin Americans were counted that year. By 1960 the white population had dropped to 31,739, and African Americans, the cause of white flight from the neighborhood, had increased to 9,815. By 1970 the white population had declined to 15,101, and by 1990 to 9,425. Meanwhile, Corona's black population peaked at 11,247 in 1970 and by 1990 had fallen to 9,210. The first Latin American Corona residents, some 1,007 Puerto Ricans, were enumerated in 1960. In each succeeding census the Hispanic population grew-to 13,911 in 1970, 25,888 in 1980, and 38,562 in 1990. By that year Corona was 6o percent Hispanic, 15 percent white, and 14 percent black. Asians of diverse nationalities accounted for the remaining 12 percent of Corona's 1990 population. 1 Since 1961 Corona has been split between Queens Community District 3, to the north of Roosevelt Avenue, and Community District 4, to the south of Roosevelt. 2 Community Districts 3 and 4, which include Jackson Heights and Elmhurst as well as Corona, together contain the largest concentration of Latinos in Queens County's fourteen community districts (see Map 1). In 1990 113,615 Latin Americans, some 30 percent of the borough's Hispanic population, lived in these two districts. No single group predominates among the diverse Corona/Elmhurst/ Jackson Heights Latinos in CD3 and CD4. In 1990 they numbered 27,018 Dominicans (24 percent of CD3-CD4 Latinos), 25,430 Colombians (22 percent), 12,980 Puerto Ricans (11 percent), 12,808 Ecuadorans (11 percent), 5,951 Cubans (5 percent), 5,263 Mexicans (5 percent), 1. Corona includes census tracts 377, 379, 381 (North Corona); 375, 399, 401, 403, 405, 407, 409 (Corona Plaza); and 411, 413, 415, 427, 437, 439, 443 (Corona Heights). We exclude tract 455 (Lefrak City). 2. New York City's fifty-nine community districts serve as administrative and planning units for municipal services and are overseen by appointed Community Boards consisting of up to fifty citizens active in neighborhood affairs; see Sanjek 1998.

Introducing Corona 5,165 Peruvians (5 percent), 1,428 Salvadorans (1 percent), 1,143 Hondurans (1 percent), and 301 Panamanians (Department of City Planning 1993). The remaining 16,128 Latinos (not listed by nationality by the Department of City Planning) included Argentinians, Paraguayans, Uruguayans, Bolivians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, and Spaniards. In our fieldwork in Corona and Queens we encountered persons of all these nationalities. In Corona itself, Dominicans accounted for 16,635, or 44 percent, of Latino residents. The rest of Corona's Latin Americans numbered 5,384 Colombians (14 percent), 3,783 Ecuadorans (10 percent), 3,450 Puerto Ricans (9 percent), 2,240 Mexicans (6 percent), 1,372 Peruvians (4 percent), 698 Cubans (2 percent), 468 Hondurans (1 percent), 266 Guatemalans, 223 Salvadorans, 134 Nicaraguans, 61 Panamanians, 2,333 "other Hispanics," 918 other "South Americans," and 53 other "Central Americans." 3

The Three Coronas

Within Corona are three subareas, each of which has taken on a distinct ethnic and racial composition since the 1950s. From north to south they are North Corona, Corona Plaza, and Corona Heights. All are bordered to the west by Junction Boulevard, an important commercial shopping strip, and to the east by Flushing Meadows-Corona Park (see Map 2). North Corona, between Northern Boulevard and 37th Avenue, is a southward extension of the larger Corona-East Elmhurst African American community studied by Steven Gregory (1992, 1998), and it lies wholly in Community District 3· This area was 75 percent black in 1980, but since then African American numbers have fallen and Latino numbers have risen. In 1990 it was so percent black and 45 percent Hispanic. The 4,181 Latin Americans residing in North Corona in 1990 should be seen as a northward extension of the much larger Hispanic population in Corona Plaza. Aside from some individual interviews, we did no fieldwork in North Corona, and the important topic of relations there between Latinos and African Americans remains to be studied. Corona Plaza, located between 37th Avenue and the Long Island Rail Road tracks eight blocks to the south, was the center of our research. Most of our observations and interviews were conducted here, and this was the area where Ricourt resided in 1987. The CCQ was located in Corona Plaza, as were the Methodist and Assembly of God churches we studied. The parish boundaries of Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic 3· 1990 U.S. Census data supplied by Rita Manning, Office of Community Studies, Queens College.

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Street map of Corona

~

Long Island Railroad

@)

0

Long Island Expressway

Roosevelt Avenue

Northern Boulevard

@

Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens/ Concerned Citizens of Queens (CCQ) 2 . Ollantay Center for the Arts 3· Asociaci6n Benefica Padre Billini + Prim era Iglesia Metodista Unida de Corona/First United Methodist Church of Corona 5· Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Juan 3:16 6. Hermanos Unidos de Queens 7· Dominican American Society of Queens 8. Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church g. St. Leo's Catholic Church 10. Elmhurst Hospital 11. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park 12. Public School 19 13. Rafael's Grocery 14. William Moore Park 15. Vito's Deli 16. Aghata Realty 17. Linden Park 18. Pura Variedades 19. Bienvenida Bridal and Florist Shop zo. Acci6n Latina 21. Raices-Corona Senior Center 1.

Introducing Corona Church, which we also studied, encompass both Northern Corona and Corona Plaza. Whereas North Corona's white population fell from 4,607 to 1,362 between 1950 and 1960, the number of whites in Corona Plaza dropped only from 19,653 to 15,852 in the same decade. During the next decade, however, white flight occurred here as well, and by 1970 the 7,863 whites remaining in Corona Plaza were outnumbered by the 8,392 Latin Americans, whose presence had exploded from only 562 in 1960. Since then the Hispanic total has continued to rise, reaching 19,549 by 1990. In that year Latinos amounted to 74 percent of Corona Plaza residents. Asians, who had arrived mainly in the 198os, accounted for 10 percent of the population, and whites and blacks for 8 percent each. Although Corona Plaza is divided between Community Districts 3 and 4 by Roosevelt Avenue, this busy shopping street, which runs beneath the elevated Number 7 subway line, "has become the main thoroughfare for newer immigrants in the area .... Much of recent immigrant settlement is on either side of [it]" (Janes-Correa 1998, 25-29). Roosevelt Avenue is also the site of celebrations of Latin American national soccer victories and of annual marches in honor of Manuel de Dios Unanue, a Cuban American journalist slain by cocaine dealers in 1992 (Sanjek 1998, 225, 288-289). Our fieldwork extended into Corona Heights, and Ricourt resided there in 1988. Corona Heights, the heart of old Italian Corona, lies to the south of Corona Plaza between the Long Island Rail Road tracks and the Long Island Expressway, and is wholly contained within Community District 4- The white population of Corona Heights actually grew during the 196os, mainly as a result of new apartment construction, and peaked at 17,238 in 1970, when whites were 77 percent of the population, and the 4,202 Latinos were only 19 percent. In 1980 whites still outnumbered Hispanics, but by 1990 the 14,832 Latinos accounted for 51 percent of Corona Heights residents, and whites for only 24 percent. That year Asians amounted to 16 percent, and blacks, mainly in apartments near the majority-black Lefrak City housing complex, were 8 percent. (On Lefrak City, not included in these numbers, see Gregory 1993; Sanjek 1998.)

Latin Americans and Italians in Corona Heights

In spite of demographic change, Corona has many locations that preserve an Italian flavor. Even during the 1990s a few Italian bakeries and a pizzeria continued to operate in Corona Plaza. In Corona Heights, St.

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Leo's still has an Italian mass along with English and Spanish ones, and William Moore Park, also known as "Spaghetti Park," is surrounded by Italian specialty businesses, including two restaurants, the Lemon Ice King, a pork store selling handmade sausages and mozzarella cheese, two salurnerias (delicatessens), Baldi's pastry shop, and a pizzeria. But behind these Italian stores, the Latin American residential presence predominates and continues to grow as Italian numbers decline. The owner of Vito's Deli in Corona Heights, an Italian woman in her fifties, commented that "somebody who speaks Spanish" bought the former pizzeria across the street. Vito's Deli itself now includes rice and beans on the menu. Early one Wednesday afternoon several Spanishspeaking women who worked in a sweatshop around the comer came in for lunch. The Puerto Rican waitress at Vito's recommended the rice and beans she had cooked that morning. Julia Banas, Milagros Ricourt's landlady during 1988, was one of the first Latin Americans to move into her section of Corona Heights. She came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1966 with a permanent resident "green card" that she obtained after marrying an American marine in her homeland. The couple separated soon after her arrival in the United States. Julia then moved to Corona, found an employment agency that referred her to a job in a local garment factory, and began saving money to bring her son and other relatives from the Dominican Republic. She later bought a house in Corona Heights. When she moved into her new home, she learned she was the only Dominican, and only the second Latina, in her immediate vicinity. Her only Hispanic neighbors were Puerto Rican, and the rest of the neighborhood was white, mainly Italian. During the 1970s and 1g8os Julia witnessed the transformation of her street. By the late 1g8os her block and the three others in her block association housed Italian, Irish, Polish, Chinese, Korean, Indian, and diverse Latin American residents, among them Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, and Bolivians. Julia Banas serves as vice-president of her block association. The president, Carmela George, is an Italian woman (see Sanjek 1998, 281-286), and several Latin Americans are active members. In 1976 Carmela organized the first block cleanup day, which is still an annual event. On one Saturday each May, residents clean out their closets and basements and sweep their driveways and streets. They park their cars elsewhere so that a Sanitation Department sweeper can clean the streets and gutters. A Sanitation Department collection truck makes a morning-long stop,

Introducing Corona picking up old refrigerators, furniture, tree branches, trash barrels, wooden planks, and other discarded items. Block association members also repaint the Long Island Rail Road embankment wall that faces their residential streets; the railroad does not clean this location where people paint graffiti and dump trash. Carmela George is also a member of Community Board 4, and through its district manager has repeatedly called this problem to the L.I.R.R.'s attention. Julia Banas is in charge of contacting the Spanish-speaking residents of the four blocks. Carmela and Julia distribute flyers about the cleanup several days in advance and speak to their neighbors in person to urge them to participate. The two women also contact the Sanitation Department for its assistance and notify Community Board 4 in order to obtain a permit for the event. These activities have familiarized Julia with the local political system, but although she is a U.S. citizen and a registered Democrat, her activism does not extend beyond her block association work. Julia learned English on her own. Since then, through reading both Spanish and English newspapers, she has become a source of information on housing and jobs for her Spanish-speaking neighbors. As one of the longest-term Latino residents, Julia considers herself a neighborhood protector (or what Sanjek 1998 terms a "warden"). In the early 1g8os she organized residents to get drug sellers off her block. She and other neighbors distributed pamphlets describing the dangers of drugs and calling for all residents' support. They also went to the local 110th Precinct and requested police action. Julia was threatened several times by drug dealers, but they finally moved elsewhere. White residents' responses to their Latino neighbors have ranged from the welcoming attitude of Carmela George, to the resignation to change of the owner of Vito's Deli, to the chilly reception accorded the first Puerto Rican arrivals in 1967, when whites on the block put up "For Sale" signs (Sanjek 1gg8, 66). The most open expressions of antagonism have come from young white males. In 1985 Ruby Danta and her family attended a celebration of Corona Height's woth birthday in William Moore Park. That night a festive mood prevailed as people crowded into the park and the surrounding streets. Most were Italians and Latinos; only a handful of Indians and East Asians were present. On a stage a band with an Italian singer was playing Italian songs. People were standing close to the stage, enjoying the music. Round tables with umbrellas placed on the sidewalks and street created an impromptu outdoor cafe. Some local residents had brought folding chairs and sat in them on the sidewalks. The Corona

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Heights merchants association had paid for the festivities and provided free hotdogs, soda, and beer at a stand in front of the Park Side Italian restaurant's parking lot. Several groups of Italians sat in the parking lot at reserved tables with name cards. On the street corner by the stage, American and Italian flags marked the site of the festivities, and the park was decorated in the flags' colors: red, white, and blue and green, red, and white. Baldi's, a local Italian bakery, provided a birthday cake weighing 400 pounds; the cake was decorated with an American flag. As the music played, couples started to dance. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. The singer was speaking Italian, and most people, Italian and Latino, seemed to follow him. After the Italian songs, the group played American-style music. When the fireworks started at 9:ooP.M., the master of ceremonies introduced Corona's New York State Assembly member Helen Marshall, an African American, who greeted the crowd on behalf of Governor Mario Cuomo and read a proclamation recounting the history of Corona. By then the crowd in the street and park numbered perhaps three thousand. As fireworks continued to rise into the night sky, the Italian singer returned to the stage to perform again. Later that night, Danta's teenage daughter and her friend, a Filipina who lived in Corona, were approached by a group of Italian boys. They started to talk about the festivities and, not realizing that Danta's daughter was Hispanic, told them there had been a problem earlier with a group of young male "spies" in the food line. The young Italians bragged that they had beaten up the Latinos because "they should not be where they did not belong." Danta's daughter, upset by the boys' comments, told them, "''m aspic too!" and left with her friend. In 1991 a more serious incident began in this park. Manuel Mayi, a nineteen-year-old Dominican college student who lived in Corona Plaza, was chased by a group of young white "Corona boys" after writing his graffiti "tag" on the wall of the Park Side restaurant. They pursued him for sixteen blocks along 108th Street to North Corona, sprayed him with a fire extinguisher, and beat him with baseball bats. He died of head injuries. Three white youths were arrested, but only one was indicted, and he was acquitted by a jury in 1993. Local and citywide Latino organizations protested the verdict and demanded unsuccessfully that the case be reopened as a bias crime by the federal Department of Justice. "In Corona the Mayi murder and trial produced prayer vigils and involvement in pickets and marches by Dominican residents. 'We have never participated in the political process. Manuel Mayi was the spark that initiated our motivation,' said Julio Ferreras, president of Hermanos Unidos de Queens, a Corona-based association of Dominican social

Introducing Corona clubs founded in 1982 and sponsor of sports activities in Linden Park" (Sanjek 1998, 357). Structural forces since 1g6o have had a dramatic impact on Corona's ethnic and racial composition. The fact that no single national group predominates in the Latino population provides the foundation on which Latino panethnicity is constructed. As we shall see in the following chapters, ethnic mingling of diverse Latin Americans in Corona emerged at the grassroots of the neighborhood. Daily-life interactions (convivencia diaria) in streets, train stations, schoolyards, social service agencies, supermarkets, churches, parks, and sweatshops brought together into the same physical space people of many Latin American nationalities. The Spanish language promoted a common Hispanic identity, one separating them from Italians, African Americans, Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, and others. And on this basis of common language, Corona's hispanos established a variety of interpersonal and organizational cross-nationality ties.

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Women and Convivencia Diaria

W

hat we discovered when we began our fieldwork in Corona was not that Dominicans, or Cubans, or Colombians, or other Latino ethnic groups interacted solely, or primarily, with people of the same national background. To extract Dominicans, or Cubans, or Colombians, or others, from the intermixing we observed in apartment buildings, subways, sewing factories, coin laundries, bodegas, supermarkets, schoolyards, post offices, parks, hospital waiting rooms, and churches would have violated our commitment to participant observation of everyday activities. Eventually we decided to call what we discovered experiential Latino panethnicity. We found that people's use of Spanish to communicate in this diverse Latino neighborhood became the basis for the social relationships across nationality lines. In her study of Puerto Rican migrants in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s, Virginia Sanchez-Korrol identified an "informal informational network" among women: "Over factory sewing machines or on apartment house stoops, in the bodegas or in the privacy of their own homes, women exchanged information on housing, jobs, folk remedies, the best places to shop, their churches, and their children's schools. What has usually been classified as 'idle female chatter' provided in essence the tools for handling the unfamiliar situation" ( 1983, 85). In our ethnographic research among Latinas in Corona we found the same process at work, but among Spanish-speakers of diverse nationalities. In this chapter we show how working-class Latin American women in Corona solved the everyday problems of finding housing, getting jobs, supplementing their incomes, and locating child care. Kinship and home-country ties were important when women first arrived from their homelands, but as they settled in Corona and turned to these practical concerns, their "informal informational networks" begin to broaden and cross Latino nationality lines. This convivencia diaria became the source of an emergent Latino panethnicity.

Women and Convivencia Diaria Corona Hispanas at the Grassroots

The analysis that follows is based on participant observation and extensive interviews with thirty-three working-class Latinas. Ricourt met these women in many settings: in the buildings she lived in during 1987 and 1988, in the First United Methodist Church of Corona, in a local coin laundry and supermarket, in the Elmhurst Hospital prenatal clinic, through a Colombian Queens College student working with the New Immigrants and Old Americans research team (and whose mother she interviewed worked in sweatshops), and through a woman whose daughter she tutored. Not a random sample of Corona Latinas, the women were selected to illustrate contours of diversity in terms of nationality, age, length of residence in Corona, work experience, and other variables. Ten of the women were Dominican, seven Colombian, seven Puerto Rican, six Ecuadoran, and one each Cuban, Peruvian, and Uruguayan. One Dominican had been born in the United States; all the rest had migrated to New York from their homelands. The Puerto Ricans, of course, were U.S. citizens, as were three others through birth or naturalization. With the exception of one undocumented woman, all were legal permanent residents ("green card" holders). A majority were over forty years old, including some already retired; the rest were in their twenties and thirties. Most of the older women were among the fourteen who had arrived in New York City from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s (one older woman had come in 1931), but eighteen had arrived during the late 1970s and 198os. In terms of housing and living conditions, the longerestablished women were better off, and several retired women owned their own homes. Most of the recent immigrants lived in rented basement apartments, where they endured cold winters, hot summers, and dark days. The majority lived in Corona Plaza or Corona Heights; two resided in other neighborhoods in northwest Queens and worked or attended church in Corona. Seven women explained that they had migrated from their home country because of political considerations, but the rest had come for a variety of other reasons. Eight said simply that they were "looking for a better life." Five more had come to join husbands who had migrated earlier, and four women had accompanied their parents while still children. Four others mentioned "personal" reasons, including two who revealed that they had been divorced and wanted to restart their lives. Finally, one woman came because of a job transfer to the United States, and another for educational opportunities. Three of the women had found white-collar jobs as their first employ-

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Hispanas de Queens ment in New York City (this included the Dominican woman born in the United States), and these still held white-collar positions during 1g86-1g88. The other twenty-nine had worked first in factories, most of them in garment factories as sewing-machine operators. By 1g86-1g88 only fourteen still worked in sewing factories, most of them now in better-paying Manhattan garment firms, and only one in a Corona sweatshop. Six more former garment workers were now retired; most of these were long-established Corona homeowners who had arrived during the 1g6os and 1970s. Only one woman had initially found work in the unrecorded informal sector, providing child care, cleaning homes in Manhattan, the Bronx, or Queens, making food at home to sell, or buying and selling various items. By 1g86-1g88, however, six women supported themselves through such activities, and three more factory workers and three retired women earned additional cash income "off the books." All the full-time informalsector workers were more recent arrivals, women who had lived in New York for ten years or less. One of the part-time informal-sector earners was Mercedes, a Dominican, who made empanadas (meat- or cheese-filled dumplings or patties) at home to sell to restaurants and to neighbors during the weekends. This type of activity was not unusual in Corona. During the summer, and on Sundays and holidays, it was common to see women selling food or beer in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. It was also quite common throughout the year to find women of many Latin American nationalities selling a variety of merchandise in homes and along Roosevelt Avenue and Junction Boulevard. One of the "retired" women also earned unreported income through seasonal work: Alejandra, a Dominican who immigrated to the United States in 1960, owned a house in Woodside and attended the Corona Methodist church. During the summers she worked in an elegant restaurant in downtown Manhattan as a powderroom attendant and enjoyed sizable tips. Only one woman was receiving public assistance during 1g86-1g88: Maria, a Puerto Rican now in her early sixties, who had lived continuously on welfare for two decades. Three other women were unemployed and defined themselves as housewives. Each of them desired, and needed, to find a paid job. One, however, said that having to care for her young children did not permit her to work outside the household, and at the time she was interviewed she was not actively looking for work. Another women had been searching for a job for more than four months, and the third, the one undocumented women, was eager to work but found it difficult without a permanent resident visa. Many of the women had attended high school before leaving their

Women and Convivencia Diaria home countries, and several had pursued further education and training in New York City. Three had completed high school while living in Corona, and three had completed college. Eight women had taken classes in English as a second language, and seven had enrolled in various career-training courses. Education and training had become increasingly important to achieving better-paying jobs. Ten women who had arrived before 1970 owned homes, and five of them had been garment workers without high school education. With the inflation in housing prices in Corona during the 198os (Sanjek 1998, 283-284), however, home ownership was now unlikely for more recent immigrants without higher levels of education or training. All the women who worked in white-collar jobs had finished high school and completed English-language classes, career training, or college. The cases of Patricia and Angela, two of the white-collar employees, illustrate the link between education and better-paying employment. Patricia arrived with her parents from the Dominican Republic in 1963 when she was fifteen years old. Her parents came looking for a better life and hoped to make more money to offer their children a brighter future. Patricia finished high school in Queens and then took a secretarial course in Spanish. She married when she was seventeen and had four children but divorced while still in her twenties. While raising her children she went to La Guardia Community College, part of the City University of New York, and later earned a bachelor's degree. Following graduation she began doing clerical work in an office at night. After her children were all in school, a man who owned a Spanish-language newspaper convinced her to take a job selling advertisements. She worked there until 1980, when she heard about plans to begin a new Spanishlanguage newspaper. A friend's wife advised her to apply for a job, and by the time of our interview with her she was an advertising executive and senior accountant at this new company, earning more than $35,000 a year. Patricia and her children still lived in Corona in a house her parents and sister had bought. The sister lived in the basement apartment, her parents on the main floor, and Patricia upstairs. An aunt lived next door. Angela came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1967 at the age of six; her parents had arrived four years earlier, when her father was transferred by his American employer. Eventually her father bought a house in Corona, where the family has lived ever since. Angela attended neighborhood public schools and earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. At the time of our interview she worked in a civil service position paying more than $25,000 and was enrolled at the New York City Police Academy, studying to become a police officer. The story of Juana illustrates the more typical employment career of

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immigrant women who arrive as adults with little or no knowledge of English. Ten years after her husband had left her she came to New York from Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 1973looking for a better life for herself and her son. She had completed two years of high school in Ecuador and had worked as a rural schoolteacher before getting married. Upon her arrival in the United States she lived with a cousin, but she became very depressed because she did not have even a bedroom to herself. She realized that life was very different in the United States. She cried a lot and thought of going back to Ecuador, but after a year she and her son moved to a studio apartment in Corona. Juana worked for a short time in two sweatshops in Corona where she was not paid but was able to learn to operate and practice on the machines. At that point a friend suggested she go to Manhattan to find work. A group of Latina women she met walked together to different factories looking for "Help Wanted" signs. Several got jobs at one location, and the rest in other places. Juana worked in a Dominican-owned shop for a while, but when work grew slow they advised her to look elsewhere. She circulated between one garment factory and another until 1980, when she returned to Ecuador because her son was getting into trouble. When she later returned to New York with her son, she had no job and was ineligible for unemployment insurance because she had not been fired from her last position. She eventually found another garment-factory job through the unemployment office and worked for a year doing piecework. Then she returned to the same Manhattan factory she had worked in before she left for Ecuador. She was still working there at the time of her interview. Juana lived on the first floor in a two-family attached house in Corona. She occupied a bedroom, small living room, eat-in kitchen, bathroom, and backyard with her twenty-three-year-old son and his wife, a shy and pretty nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican from Brooklyn who spoke mainly English with a strong Spanish accent. The young couple had two babies, two years old and nine months. They all hoped to move to a bigger apartment when they found one they could afford. Juana, like Patricia, thus lived in a three-generation family group-in one household in her case, and in two households within the same building in Patricia's. This was a common situation. Many younger adults like Patricia lived with or near one or both parents. Rosa, seventy-seven at the time of our interview, was an example of an elderly female immigrant who had joined adult children already living in Corona. She was born in 1910 in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and came to the United States at the age of sixty-nine in 1979. Her four sons and one daughter all lived in the United States and were doing well. Rosa did not have to work, because her chil-

Women and Convivencia Diaria dren supported her. She lived with a daughter and son-in-law in a house they owned; her daughter also did not have to work, and stayed at home raising her own two children. Rosa spent weekdays at the Methodist church senior center or at home watching Spanish-language soap operas, and visited her adult children on weekends. Several of her grandchildren were married to non-Ecuadorans, including a Dominican, a Peruvian, a Spaniard, and a white American. Unlike Rosa, eighty-six-year-old Marta had aged in place in Corona, having arrived in New York City from Puerto Rico in 1931. She and her husband lived alone in a rented house in Corona. Their son was a lawyer and their daughter a trained therapist working with disabled persons; one lived in eastern Queens, the other in upstate New York. Most of the other elderly couples who lived by themselves were also long-established Corona residents like Marta and her husband. Finally, a few women lived alone. Ana arrived in New York from Ponce, Puerto Rico, when the bank she worked for transferred her in 1968. At first she lived with a cousin, but eventually she moved to Corona and lived by herself, a situation she preferred. Maria came to New York from Puerto Rico in 1956 at age thirty. Now a widow, she lived alone in a subsidized apartment in Corona. Both adult children lived in Puerto Rico. Finding Housing

Ricourt's experiences in seeking an apartment in Corona over several weeks in 1986 were illustrative of the housing situation for those arriving without kin or friends already there. During that time she sought help from several individuals and real estate offices. Her first contact was a Colombian man who advertised an apartment in El Diario, a Spanishlanguage New York City newspaper. It was a small basement apartment with one bedroom, a living-dining room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. He was renting it for $700 a month. Thinking she could do better upon seeing it, she did not call him back. Soon afterward Ricourt took a walk along 38th Avenue in Corona Plaza. She asked several people she met on the street about apartments. Everybody had the same answer: "Apartments are impossible to find around here." One woman, who lived in a basement apartment and wanted a more comfortable place to live, said that she had been looking for an apartment for three months. Feeling frustrated, Ricourt stopped in a restaurant to get something to eat. There she asked the woman behind the counter if she knew about apartments for rent in the area. In an accent from the Dominican Cibao region, the woman responded,

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"Apartments are very difficult to find here." Then, while Ricourt was eating, a waitress asked Ricourt if she knew of any available apartments. Ricourt told the waitress that she was looking for an apartment herself. The waitress then explained that she lived in a very small basement unit in Corona Heights; she wanted to move but did not have time to look because she worked seven days a week. Ricourt asked if she was a relative of the restaurant owner. She replied that he was her husband, and the woman behind the counter was her sister. Next Ricourt inquired at a realty office on Roosevelt Avenue and 97th Street. There she talked to Nubia, a Colombian woman, who showed her three apartments. First they saw one at 43rd Avenue near 108th Street in Corona Plaza. The owner, a Colombian man, lived downstairs and was renting the upstairs of his two-story house. When Ricourt and Nubia arrived he was playing Colombian music very loudly; he also appeared to be drinking. The apartment was huge and beautiful. It had two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a big kitchen, and a bathroom. The price was $700. Nubia said the apartment could be rented for more. Ricourt liked the apartment but not the landlord. They then went to 46th Avenue in Corona Heights. Two Koreans were renting the attic in a twostory house. They were asking $850 for a one-bedroom unit, a combined kitchen-living-dining room with a small bathroom, and cockroaches coming out of the paper-thin walls. At the third apartment, on Corona Avenue near 102nd Street, no one answered the doorbell. On returning to the realty office, Nubia asked Ricourt to leave a rental deposit. Ricourt said she would come back the next day. Nubia then took her to a back room, where she attempted to detain her. She called in Osorio, the realty firm's owner. A Colombian, Osorio employed a staff of more than ten, including Chinese, Korean, and Indian agents as well as Latin Americans. Osorio told Ricourt the first apartment was a bargain. She agreed, but told him she did not like the landlord and was not ready to pay the realty firm the equivalent of two months' rent. They finally allowed her to leave when she promised to return the next day. She did not return, but kept in touch with Nubia by telephone. At first Nubia was upset because Ricourt had not rented an apartment. She continued to call Ricourt, however, asking questions about immigration because she knew Ricourt was volunteering at Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens. She said she had come to the United States on a tourist visa and was looking for someone to marry in order to obtain permanent resident status. She also wanted to know if she could register at Queens College without having all her immigration papers in order. Ricourt told her to contact the college directly, and after that Nubia stopped calling. Ricourt continued to walk around Corona in search of an apartment.

Women and Convivencia Diaria On one visit she spotted a "For Rent" sign on a door. She immediately called the number written on the sign. Someone from Aghata Realty, a Corona firm, answered. She was not in a mood to deal with another realty company, but the office was less than two blocks from the apartment. Ricourt told the woman from Aghata that she would be there momentarily. When she arrived, she spoke with the owner, a Colombian. He told her he had two for rent, one downstairs and one upstairs. The only difference was that the downstairs unit had front- and backyard privileges. Ricourt went to see the building and liked the downstairs unit, at a monthly price of $8oo. The Aghata owner said he could reduce the price to $750; Ricourt left a deposit and said she would come back tomorrow. When she returned to Aghata Realty the next day at 3:00 P.M., the office was closed. She then walked to "her" new apartment, where she saw someone inside, unpacking furniture. She rang the bell, and a Colombian woman opened the door. Ricourt asked her if she was moving in, and she said she was. She returned to Aghata Realty and asked the owner why he had rented the apartment to someone else. He said it was not his fault, but that of the apartment's landlord. When Ricourt asked him to return the deposit money, he told her he had given the deposit to the landlord. Ricourt did not believe him. She sat down and said she was going to remain there until he returned her money. He began to make telephone calls, trying to ignore her. She then stood up and said she was going to call the police. He told her he would give back half the deposit money. She refused and was about to dialgu when he gave her the full amount. Ricourt's experiences looking for an apartment were similar to those of some Corona residents. Others had managed to tap into informal networks to find housing, and in fact this was how Ricourt found her own first apartment. Weeks after her realty misadventures, a research team member introduced her to a Greek woman who rented her an apartment, and with no broker fee. Two days later she moved into Corona Plaza. Renting a room in the house or apartment of a relative or friend, or locating one through their assistance, was the commonest way of finding housing. "My cousin is coming from Ecuador next week, and I'm saving that room for her and her son," Minerva told a Dominican friend who asked if Minerva had a room for rent in her apartment. When Liliana arrived from Ecuador in 1978, it was a cousin who found her a room in the apartment of the cousin's Colombian friend. Liliana lived in that room for three months while she became acquainted with the neighborhood and then found an apartment to rent on her own. When Amparo's husband arrived in New York from Uruguay by himself he first lived in Queens, where several Uruguayan friends were liv-

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Hispanas de Queens ing, and they helped find him housing. Later, as his wife and daughters prepared to come to the United States, he spent two months searching for an apartment to house them all. After paying $1,000 to a building superintendent he got a one-bedroom apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens. The family lived there, very uncomfortably, for two months. At that point a Uruguayan family they met through the Escuela U ruguaya, a cultural institution in Jackson Heights, told them that a third Uruguayan family had a two-bedroom apartment for rent in Corona. They moved in and have lived there since. Francisca came to New York from the Dominican Republic knowing no one. She obtained her permanent resident visa through her mother, who was living in Puerto Rico and had become a U.S. citizen. A Dominican woman she encountered on a bus gave her the telephone number of a woman who rented rooms in Corona. She lived in this woman's house for several weeks but did not like the place; there were too many people living there, and she did not feel secure. One day while again riding the bus, she met Julia Banas (Ricourt's Dominican landlady), and they started talking. Julia had a room available to rent, and Francisca moved in. Francisca's husband came a year later, and they lived at Julia's for the next two years. Once their five children had been granted permanent resident status and arrived, they moved to a basement unit not far from Julia's house. Francisca had secured this apartment through the help of Soledad, another woman living at Julia's. Soledad, also Dominican, told her coworkers in a Corona garment shop that a friend was looking for an apartment. A Colombian coworker told Soledad about a basement unit that cost just $400 and would soon be available. Francisca then contacted the landlord and rented it for her children. Overall, kinship and home-country ties were most often used to locate housing for newly arrived Latinos in Corona. Among thirty of the women interviewed, twenty-five had found their first housing through a relative or, in a few cases, an acquaintance of their own nationality. Two more had received help from someone of their own nationality who had obtained a lead from someone of a different Latin American nationality. Finally, three women had secured their accommodations with the direct help of someone of a different Latino nationality. Finding a Job

Finding work was the next hurdle Corona Latinas faced. Here the informal informational network most often transcended kinship and homecountry ties. Minu came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in

Women and Convivencia Diaria 1973 and first lived with an aunt in Queens. Her aunt's daughter took her to her first job, a sewing factory in Manhattan. Not knowing how to operate a sewing machine, she worked at cleaning finished merchandise. One day she met a Dominican woman on the subway. Minu told her about the shop where she was working and how much she was paid. The woman then took Minu to the Manhattan factory where she herself worked, and at the time of our interview Minu had worked there for five years at higher pay than in her first job. Similar stories were told in other interviews, but more often than not information about jobs came from women of a different Latino nationality. After Liliana's arrival from Ecuador in 1978, her cousin (who had found her a room in the apartment of a Colombian friend) took her to a Corona sweatshop owned by a Dominican woman. Here Liliana practiced and became a skilled operadora. Then she was taken by another friend of her cousin, a Dominican, to a Manhattan factory where the pay was better. When Amparo arrived from Uruguay in 1983 she wanted to work, but she had never worked for pay and had no experience. The wife of a friend of her husband, an Argentinian woman, took Amparo to the factory where she worked; Amparo was hired and continued to work there. Ines, a Colombian, worked in a Jewish-owned factory in Corona alongside Italian and immigrant Latin American women. She left when a friend, a Cuban woman, told her that the pay was better in her workplace. The owners of this sewing factory were also Jewish, and the workers were Latin Americans, Greeks, and Jews. Ines worked there for seven months until they all were laid-off. Then pregnant, Ines found another job in a Manhattan sewing factory through a second Cuban friend and worked there for a few more months. When her daughter was born, Ines bought a sewing machine and began to work at home. Several of her friends, including women from Colombia, Cuba, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic, together received lots of unassembled garments and divided up the work. The supplier, a Cuban, owned a factory in Corona but also distributed material to women who worked at home. Ines continued this until her daughter was three and then completed a cosmetology training course. She worked in beauty parlors for the next ten years, but after developing a work-related allergy she returned to employment in Corona sewing shops. Soledad (who lived at Julia Banas's house with Ricourt) arrived in New York from the Dominican Republic in 1975. A Colombian woman introduced her to her first sewing factory job, and thereafter she continued to work in the garment industry. In 1987 she was working at a Ko-

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rean-owned shop in a large loft building in Corona Plaza. The ground floor contained three separate sweatshops as well as a metal factory and other businesses. The second floor housed still other sewing shops, including the one where Soledad worked. The entrance to Soledad's shop was blocked with boxes, but inside there were twenty sewing machines buzzing away; finished dresses and other garments hung on racks. Soledad sewed sleeve pads into dresses. Soledad had worked for her Korean employer for more than seven years; she began as a garment presser, and now was a senior worker who enjoyed the confidence of her boss. Soledad was well known not only to those in her shop but to a wider community of male and female Latin American garment workers in Corona. When Ricourt lived in Corona Heights, she took frequent walks to Linden Park with Soledad. Women and men of many Latino nationalities would approach Soledad to ask for information about garment industry jobs. She responded without hesitation, often referring them to another acquaintance. Once when Soledad and Ricourt attended a summer park concert, a Dominican man asked Soledad if they were looking for a presser at her factory. Soledad told him one had been hired the week before. Next a group of Colombian women who all knew Soledad arrived. As they sat and chatted, they shared information not only about jobs but also about housing and child care. Some thirty-one women had found their current job with the help of another person. In seven cases that person was of the same Latino nationality, but in five of these instances the acquaintance had learned about the job from another person of a different Latino ethnicity. For twenty-four women, job information had come directly from someone of a different Latin American nationality. Supplementing Income

All thirty-three Corona Latinas had at some time supplemented wages through various informal activities, including making food to sell and renting out rooms. In addition, nearly all had participated in sociedades or sanes, the rotating credit associations organized by Latin American immigrants. Each member of these informal savings institutions contributed a fixed amount of money, usually weekly or monthy, and each member in tum received the pooled contributions. Immigrants found this a convenient way to accumulate larger sums than individuals could save on their own. Saskia Sassen-Koob noted that in the 1970s Dominicans in New York City used these associations "to finance various kinds of activities, a fact which may explain in part the rising number of small

Women and Convivencia Diaria shop owners in the community." This system also appeared to be used "to finance the documents, travel, and initial settlement costs involved in coming to New York" (1983, 282). Andrea, a Dominican woman who migrated to New York in the early 196os, explained that many Dominicans, like her, had bought their homes in those years with capital from a sociedad. "Wages were low in the 196os, but home prices in Corona were then very cheap," she said. "When people told me to put myself in a sociedad I was scared. I had to pay $so every week, and we had three children to feed." But she did, and within a year she had saved enough money for a down payment on a house. Dulce, also Dominican, came to New York in the mid-1970s. She maintained that rotating credit groups were begun so that people could help one another. "One of my coworkers, a Guatemalan woman, organizes it at work. We contribute $so every week for ten weeks, and we get $soo when our own turn comes." Dulce was using the money from her san to build a house in the Dominican Republic. All thirty-three Corona women had been involved with other women in various informal means to add to their incomes, including, for most, a rotating credit association. For twenty-eight women these links crossed Latino nationality lines; for only three did they consist solely of women of the same home-country origin. For two more, women of their own Latino ethnicity had connected them to informal income opportunities involving women of different nationalities. Locating Child Care

Because Latin American immigrant women in Corona needed to work for cash income, child care was a central concern. Ines, the Colombian garment worker/cosmetician, immigrated to New York in 1963. She had three children at the time, and in order to look for work she first had to find someone to take care of them. An Argentinian friend introduced her to a Cuban woman who provided babysitting in her house in Corona. Ines felt comfortable with this woman because she knew her children would eat familiar food in her home and would be speaking their own language. Soledad, the Dominican garment worker (and Ricourt's housemate), was a single mother who had worried about child care ever since her daughter was born in 1980. At first she found a Colombian woman in the neighborhood who took care of her baby while Soledad worked. When the woman moved, Soledad paid a Cuban woman to take care of Miguelina. When Miguelina was three, Soledad enrolled her at the Corona Methodist church nursery school, a short walk from both her

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apartment and her workplace. Soledad's work schedule, however, did not permit her to pick up her daughter at the nursery school's closing time, so she hired a Puerto Rican woman to babysit until Soledad finished work. During the summers Miguelina went to the garment shop with her mother. There Miguelina learned to eat with chopsticks from the Korean owner and supervisors. Other women, now past the point in their life cycles where they required child care themselves, became child-care providers to working women. Flora came to New York from the Dominican Republic during the 1960s. She worked in a sweatshop, bought a house in Corona, and raised three children who became professionals. Flora eventually retired but was bored at home; her husband was always out, and she was tired of watching television alone. She spoke with several mothers at her church and began to take care of their children as a paid babysitter. The children were Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Colombian. Teresa, an immigrant from Peru, separated from her husband and became a single parent of two teenage daughters. She decided not to work outside her home, but rather to provide home-based child care for two- to five-year-olds. When interviewed, she was taking care of four children: two Dominican, one Colombian, and one Ecuadoran. In all, twenty-eight of the thirty-three women had either used childcare providers or offered home-based child care themselves. In all twenty-eight cases these activities involved ties between mothers and providers that crossed Latin American nationality lines. Speaking a Common Language

The residential concentration of 38,500 Latinos of diverse nationalities in Corona, and even more in adjacent Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, created the potential for experiential panethnicity, and the Spanish language provided the medium through which it occurred. Most Latino New Yorkers do speak English (Zentella 1997), but for recent immigrants, and also for long-established bilingual or English-dominant residents, "in ordinary discourse ... Spanish continues to preserve a special notion of self. ... Uttering a few words of Spanish signifies a separation from the dominant culture and a symbolic unity. The force of Spanish among Latinos, in intraethnic and interethnic encounters, lies in its ability to compress many contradictory symbols in the search for power, reflecting exclusivity, nostalgia, and/or respect among speakers" (Totti 1987, 539-540). Using Spanish, women in Corona created informal informational networks that became increasingly pan-Latino as they went about meeting

Women and Convivencia Diaria basic needs-from finding initial housing, in which kin and home-country ties predominated, to getting jobs, supplementing incomes, and locating child care, where cross-nationality contacts were the norm. This experiential Latino panethnicity arose from everyday activities. Both our interviews with women and our participant observation suggested that similar processes occurred among men, particularly in workplaces where immigrant men were concentrated. Women, however, entered more fully than men into Corona's neighborhood convivencia diaria as they interacted in schoolyards, coin laundries, supermarkets, and hospital prenatal clinics and exchanged information about garment factory jobs and child care. Finding housing and joining rotating credit associations, on the other hand, involved men as well as women in crossing Latin American nationality lines. This experiential Latino panethnicity added to, rather than replaced, identities, ties, and sentiments based on home-country origin. When Latinos in Corona spoke Spanish to one another, they inescapably revealed their diverse national origins. As Ana Celia Zentella points out, "The variety of Spanish that each group speaks is the most distinctive marker of its individuality" (1997, 168). Dialect differences distinguish "five geographic zones of Latin American Spanish": the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, the Andes, Rio Plata (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay), and Chile. Within each zone, finer differences may be noted; Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican varieties of Caribbean Spanish, for example, have distinctive intonations, lexicons, and other features (Zentella 1997, 172-179). Without having to ask, Corona Latinos were immediately aware of the regional origin and frequently the national identity of other Spanish-speakers. Beyond their Spanish dialect, people revealed and maintained their national identities through food, music, and other cultural practices. They also kept in touch with kin, both in New York and at home, and with friends from their country of origin. Moreover, most of the thirtythree women interviewed dreamed of returning to their home country. Many were saving money to invest there or were already building houses. One factory worker was constructing a two-story home in the Dominican Republic. A Uruguayan woman maintained a life-insurance policy and savings account in Montevideo. An Ecuadoran woman had built a house in the coastal town of Manta and expected to move there when her husband retired. At the same time, she, like others, hoped to buy a house in Corona to circumvent high rents. Most women expressed nostalgia about their home countries. Liria, the Uruguayan, grew poetic at the end of her interview: "From here I still can sense the smell of the storm reaching Montevideo." Vilma, an Ecuadoran, spoke of her fear of growing old in a strange country where

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the elderly were "confined in golden jails." Whether these immigrants would actually relocate permanently in their homelands, however, was uncertain. Belisa, one of the oldest women, traveled every winter with her husband to La Vega, in the Dominican Cibao region, and then returned to Corona with her children and grandchildren, who were likely to remain in the United States; thus the pull of New York and Corona remained strong. Interethnic marriages exerted a similar force. Two of the thirty-three women had husbands of a different Latin American nationality, and several more had sons- and daughters-in-law of different ethnicities, Latino and otherwise. Whether long-established or more recent arrivals, these women had all in one way or another taken steps to preserve their cultural values. Vilma had forbidden her children to speak English at home, even though she recognized that they would remain in the United States in the event that she and her husband returned to Ecuador. Liria attended the Escuela U ruguaya in Jackson Heights every Saturday. She explained that she supported the school "one hundred percent, because there children and adults from La Cuenca de la Plata learn their history and customs." Zoraida was proud to have raised her two daughters to be "authentic Dominicans," as she stated when she introduced Cuquita, the younger one, to Ricourt at the Corona Methodist church. Cuquita was an executive in an advertising firm in lower Manhattan and, like her sister, did not plan to return to the Dominican Republic. Still, as we have seen, these Corona Latinas were all also involved in daily-life activities that immersed them in experiential Latino panethnicity.

Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space

I

n this chapter we turn to the settings in Corona that supported and expanded the Latino panethnic component of everyday life. Corona has a reputation as a dangerous place to some New Yorkers, as do other of the city's "outer borough" working-class districts inhabited by large numbers of immigrants. We discovered, however, a vibrant and economically active neighborhood full of busy street life centered around stores, workplaces, parks, and other public spaces. Corona is more than the images that outsiders and media reports project, and more than the numerical facts of its changing demography. Corona is also the cultural sights, sounds, and aromas produced by the work and creativity of its diverse inhabitants. Corona's Shopping Strips

In 1986 the New Immigrants and Old Americans business survey collected information on 438 businesses located along commercial streets in Corona Heights and in the southern half of Corona Plaza (the portion of Corona within Community District 4). The ownership of these businesses reflected forty-four ethnic identities reported. 1 Corona's past was still strongly represented by 95 Italian-owned businesses, the largest single nationality group, and by another 55 businesses whose white owners were reported simply as "American," or of other long-established European ethnic identities, including Danish, German, Irish, Jewish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Russian, and Yugoslavian. More than half of these 150 white-owned businesses had been in operation at least ten years and owned, rather than rented, their premises. The oldest Italian 1. These figures include the eastern side of Junction Boulevard and southern side of Roosevelt Avenue, and exclude businesses surrounding Lefrak City; data on ethnicity of the owner were not obtained at forty-nine firms. We thank Roger Sanjek for information from project files; see also Yuan (1986). On economic activities developed by immigrants in the United States, and the reciprocal effects between them and social forces in immigrant neighborhoods, see Fortes (1994, 1995); Fortes and Sensenbrenner (1993).

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Hispanas de Queens business dated to 1910, and the oldest Corona business of all, a Jewishowned lumberyard, had been started in 1890. The majority of these firms were located in Corona Heights. Italian ethnicity was immediately evident in firms that used Italian surnames-Antonna & Boccia Farmacia, Guida's Funeral Home, Maselli's Deli-and these amounted to one-third of the Italian-owned businesses. In contrast, nearly half the Italian firms had ethnically neutral business names-3G Auto Repair, Pick Em and Drop Em Dry Cleaners, Video Zoo-as did the great majority of the "American" firms. Among the Italian-owned businesses were about forty whose products or customers were also mainly Italian; this group of Corona Heights firms comprised restaurants, specialty-food stores (bakeries; latticini, or Italian groceries; and salurnerias, or delicatessens), funeral homes, accountants, tailors, newsstand-candy stores, a barber, and a shipping company. The rest of the Italian-owned stores served a clientele that included Latin Americans, and more than a third of the Italian businesses in Corona had employees who spoke Spanish, as did more than a third of the "American" businesses. The 150 white-owned businesses were slightly outnumbered by 159 Latin American-owned firms. Their proprietors included sixty-four Dominicans, twenty-eight Colombians, fifteen Ecuadorans, ten Cubans, nine Argentinians, seven Puerto Ricans, six Peruvians, four Uruguayans, two Salvadorans, a Chilean, a Venezuelan, ten Latinos whose nationality was not determined, and two Argentinian-Dominican and CubanEcuadoran partnerships. 2 These were predominantly newer businesses, in operation for ten years or less, and rented rather than owned their premises. Although the oldest Dominican firm dated to 1946, more typically the oldest Cuban one had opened in 1958, the oldest Colombian business in 1961, and the oldest Ecuadoran one in 1975. Aside from two African American companies, the rest of the Corona firms were also owned by recent immigrants. These included forty-eight Asian-owned businesses, most of which had been established only within the last five years; twenty of these firms' owners were Korean, sixteen Chinese (including two Latin American Chinese), five Pakistani, four Indian, and three Indo-Guyanese. The remaining Corona businesses run by recent immigrants were owned by fourteen Greeks, five Israelis, two Arabs, a Jordanian, an Iranian, two Brazilians, and a West Indian. Most of the Latin American-owned businesses were located in 2. There were also three Colombian-Italian, German-Mexican. and "Hispanic"-Italian partnerships. It is likely that considerably more Latin American than white businesses could have been counted in the Community District 3 portion of Corona.

A grocery store in Corona

r

Businesses in the Corona neighborhood

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Corona Plaza and served a diverse Latino clientele. (Most Chinese, Korean, and Indian businesses also served this same Latino customer base, and a third of them also had Spanish-speaking employees.) Only a small handful of the 159 Latin American businesses-2 Colombian food wholesalers, 2 Dominican travel agencies and a restaurant, and 2 Ecuadoran restaurants-reported that the majority of their customers were of the same Latino nationality as the owner. In contrast, many more of the Hispanic businesses reported diverse clienteles that included white Americans as well as Latinos, among them 10 Dominican-owned women's clothing stores and beauty salons and 18 automobile-service firms (Argentinian, Colombian, Dominican, Ecuadoran, Peruvian, Salvadoran, Uruguayan, and a German-Mexican partnership) that competed with 26 similar white (and one Korean) auto-repair, auto parts, and tire stores and gas stations. Only eight Latino firms had names that identified their owner's country of origin. Here Argentinians were the most nationalistic, with four of their ten store names including "Argentina" or an Argentine identifierfor example, Rio de La Plata Bakery and Las Malvinas Collision Service (named for the contested islands that the British call the Falklands). The four other ethnically marked names were Antojitos Colombianos, a restaurant; Los Cubanitos, a hair stylist; Dominican-owned La Quisqueya Supermarket; and Ecua Mundi Travel, an Ecuadoran business. Inside several other businesses, however, flags, national soccerteam paraphernalia, religious articles, and photographs of home-country scenes or sports figures clearly pointed to the owner's national identity. In all, nearly half of Corona's Latin American--Dwned firms had Spanish or partly-Spanish business names. Two had what might be called Latino panethnic names-Las Americas Pizzeria (Argentinian-owned) and Young Hispanic Talent (nationality undetermined)-while twentyfour had other Spanish-language business names-for example, El Primo Tire Shop (Dominican), Centro Financiero Universal (a Dominican money transfer business), La Sorpresa No. 1 Grocery (Ecuadoran), and Las Delicias Restaurant (Peruvian). Spanish surnames identified twenty-two more businesses-for example, Cardona's Jewelry and Repair (Colombian), Alvarez Grocery (Dominican), Calderon Car Stereo & Alarm (Salvadoran)-and Spanish first names occurred in seventeenfor example, Juanita's House of Beauty (Cuban), Josefina's Bridal Shop (Dominican), and Luis Refrigeration (Ecuadoran). Still, slightly more than half of the Corona Latina-owned firms had ethnically neutral English-language business names similar to those used by white Americans. Typical of these businesses were J and M Business Law Office (Chilean

Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space accountants), Jackpot Cleaners (Colombian), Alpha Car Service (CubanEcuadoran), J. C. Realty (Dominican), Enterprise Driving School (Ecuadoran), Hollywood Stars Unisex Hair Salon (Peruvian), HG Auto Body (Uruguayan), Judy Fashion (Dominican), and Robert's Grocery & Deli (Puerto Rican). Corona's Hispanic residents had available a wide range of goods and services purveyed by firms where Spanish was spoken. These included businesses one might expect in a heavily Latin American immigrant area: ethnic restaurants (Argentinian, Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Ecuadoran, Peruvian, Latin American Chinese), bakeries (Argentinian, Cuban), a botanica selling religious articles (Puerto Rican), and an English-language school (Colombian). They also included firms one might find in any New York City neighborhood: accountants (Chilean, Dominican); realtors (Argentinian, Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Venezuelan); beauty salons (Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Peruvian, Puerto Rican); women's, men's, and children's clothing stores (Colombian, Dominican, Ecuadoran); jewelry shops (Colombian, Cuban); an optician (Colombian-Italian); a discount goods store (Dominican); dry cleaners (Colombian, Uruguayan); coin laundries (Colombian, Peruvian); camera shops (Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican); refrigerator repair businesses (Dominican, Ecuadoran); furniture stores (Dominican, Ecuadoran); a copy center (Dominican); car services (Colombian, Peruvian, CubanEcuadoran); driving schools (Ecuadoran, Latino nationality undetermined); a bicycle shop (Colombian); a florist (Dominican); video rentals (Colombian, Ecuadoran); bars (Uruguayan, Latino nationality undetermined); and a billiards parlor (Dominican). Nothing stayed the same for long, however, and stores frequently opened and closed, often in response to the rising commercial rents that plagued New York's outer boroughs during the 198os and 1990s (Sanjek 1998, 344-345; Serant 1992). Rising commercial rents were particularly evident among businesses owned by women, which accounted for sixtyone of the Corona businesses surveyed, or 14 percent. Among the Latino firms, an even greater share, thirty-six, or 23 percent, were femaleowned-among Domincans, 30 percent of businesses were owned by women-and they were perhaps the most vulnerable to economic downturns. Pura Variedades, for example, a clothing store in Corona Plaza, was owned by a Dominican widow in her fifties, the mother of two teenage daughters. In 1987 Pura's store closed suddenly and remained closed for several weeks. Ricourt met Pura by coincidence on the subway, and Pura explained that she had problems both with her daughters and with the store but planned to reopen soon, though not on Monday or Tuesday,

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Hispanas de Queens when there were no customers. A week later at the store Pura said, "The problem is people do not shop anymore. People's salaries go to the landlord's pocket. Rent in business locations is raised every year." Pura had not bought new merchandise for several months because she had no capital to invest. Moreover, several times a week she had to close her store to attend to take her daughters to the doctor, go to meetings at their school, cook meals, or do laundry. Bienvenida's Bridal and Florist shop was owned by a married Dominican woman in her forties who had three children. By the spring of 1987 the new owner of this business was a Colombian man. The firm was successful, but, he explained, Bienvenida was tired and was now sewing bridal gowns at home. Nearby, a Puerto Rican woman's clothing store had been replaced by a sportswear store owned by a Dominican man. Luz, a thirty-five-year-old Colombian woman, married and with two children, owned yet another Corona Plaza clothing store. She sold her business to a Dominican woman, but two months later a plastics company occupied the premises. At this site, three businesses had come and gone in less than one year. Some of the women undoubtedly faced situations like Pura, having to balance the rent squeeze with family demands. Although most Latino-owned firms hoped to attract non-Spanishspeakers as well, several businesses catered primarily to Latinos and depended upon a Latino panethnic immigrant clientele for businessnewsstand-candy stores, travel agencies, long-distance telephone calling businesses, music stores, nightclubs, and bodegas. Latino Panethnic Businesses

Newsstand-candy stores are found everywhere in New York City neighborhoods. As our colleague Hsiang-shui Chen described one on Junction Boulevard, on the Corona-Elmhurst border, "the goods for sale include candy, chocolates, bubble gum, ice cream, soft drinks, newspapers in several languages (Chinese, English, Spanish, Italian, and others), detergents, toilet paper, batteries, stamps, drugs, film, cigarettes, coffee, cakes, magazines, gloves, notebooks, toys, lottery tickets, and video games" (1992, 107). The 1986 business survey found two newsstand-candy stores in Corona Heights, both owned by Italians, and three in Corona Plaza, with Arab, Chinese, and Cuban proprietors. At these last three, customers were mainly Latin Americans who stopped on the way to or from the subway, many of them purchasing Spanish-language newspapers. The array of Spanish-language periodicals visible at these and other

Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space New York City newsstands reflected the diverse Latino population of Corona. By the mid-1990s this included seventeen daily newspapers: El Diario/La Prensa and Noticias del Mundo, both published in New York City, which "try to reach out to a variety of nationalities"; a New York edition of El Nacional, one of the Dominican Republic's leading papers; five more Dominican papers flown to New York (El Listin Diario, Hoy, El Siglo, Ultima Hora, all published in Santo Domingo, and El Jaya, published in the Cibao); four Colombian papers (El Espectador and El Tiempo from Bogota, El Colombiano from Medellin, and El Pais from Cali); El Mercurio from Ecuador; Gnifico and Prensa Libre from Guatemala; El Vocero from Puerto Rico; and La Naci6n from Costa Rica (Zentella 1997, 182-184, 196). There were also seven weeklies, some free, aimed specifically at Cubans, Dominicans, Colombians, Mexicans, or South Americans, and two aimed at Latinos in general. The Latino panethnic market also affected Queens' own Spanish press. "As neighborhoods become home to a greater diversity of Latinos, the newspapers adapt their contents to appeal to the newest residents. For example, El Sol, a free weekly published in Queens, was originally El Sol de Colombia. As its readership changed, the reference to Colombia was dropped" (Zentella 1997, 183). Like newsstands, travel agencies succeeded by catering to the Latino population in general. In fact these companies offered much more than airplane reservations. "Latin American travel agencies in [Elmhurst and Corona] provided an array of services including airline tickets, translation, notary public, income tax preparation, driving instruction, real estate and rental information, foreign periodicals, money orders, preparation of immigration forms, loans, arrangments of job offers for would-be immigrants ... sale of foreign lottery tickets" (Sanjek 1998, 401), and automobile insurance. The New Immigrants and Old Americans business survey counted six travel agencies in Corona-four Dominican-owned, one Colombian, and one Ecuadoran. Two of the long-established Dominican firms served primarily fellow nationals, but the others, as well as the thirty-eight Latino travel agencies surveyed by the project in Elmhurst, dealt with a variety of Hispanic customers. These travel agencies were clearly identifiable on Roosevelt Avenue and other commercial streets because of their large posters listing current fares to various destinations. At Tulcingo Travel in 1997, for example, a signboard read: "Guatemala [$]489, El Salvador 599, Costa Rica 545, Colombia 470, Ecuador 299, Mexico 250, Peru 450, Miami 108." Long-distance telephone parlors, a type of business that did not exist in 1986, dotted Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights commercial strips by the 1990s.

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Hispanas de Queens They also featured window posters listing various Latin American countries and cities, with current call rates. During the 1990s an explosion of new Latin music stores selling compact disks all but replaced the four Colombian- and Ecuadoran-owned record stores on Roosevelt Avenue in Elmhurst counted in the business survey in 1986. In addition, street vendors sold Latin music cassettes and, by the 1990s, CDs near subway stops. In 1999 there were forty music stores along just ten blocks of Roosevelt Avenue, and the owners now included Colombians, Mexicans, Cubans, and a Jordanian. Here it made good business sense to keep a Latino panethnic stock, and all stores featured much the same selection of Top 100 CDs, as well as sections for various Latin American styles. "We have Spanish rock, [Cuban-Puerto Rican] salsa, [Dominican] merengue, and Mexican music; cumbia-Colombian music-all that," noted a Peruvian sales clerk at one store. She had immigrated to New York in 1987 and explained, "I used to hear it [all] in my country."3 Also along Roosevelt Avenue, a handful of nightclubs, some in operation since the 1970s, presented an increasingly panethnic variety of Latin American singers and bands. A 1999 New York Times account (Sengupta 1999) captured the flavor of this late-night scene. At Colombian-owned Chibcha, most patrons are no longer Colombian as they were ... zo years ago. Today the lineup ... reflects the panoply of Latin Americans who have settled into Jackson Heights and Corona: a strapping Mexican ranchera starlet one night, a Venezuelan folk ensemble another, followed the next night by vallenato music from Colombia's northern coast.... A more intimate, younger venue, Plaza Garibaldi, cater[s] mostly to Mexican immigrants .... The club owner said he was well aware of how much Latinos love one another's music: Mexicans are drawn to the lilting Colombian cumbia ... just as [Chibcha's] South American patrons ... are crazy about salsa, rooted in the Afro-Cuban tradition. So on the tiny Garibaldi stage, a five piece band ... played an irrepressible mix of merengue, ranchera and cumbia. Inside Bodegas

A more mundane site of Latino panethnic interaction and cultural interflow was the bodega, or comer grocery store, found on nearly every 3· "The World of Music in Elmhurst,"" producer Marco Werman, The World evening news, National Public Radio, 16 February 1999.

Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space block along Corona's commercial strips and scattered amidst its more residential sections. By the mid-198os, "More than 8,ooo bodegas operate[ d) in the New York area ... with sales amounting to $2.5 billion annually. Hispanic families spend an estimated 55 percent of their food dollar in these neighborhood markets" (Howe 1986). Identifiable by large yellow and black or yellow and red plastic awnings over the entrance and windows, and bearing names like Torres Grocery or Ferreira Supermarket, bodegas were open long hours-twenty-four in some cases-and sold milk, detegerent, cigarettes, beer, toilet paper, and a large stock of canned, packaged, and fresh foods. Several had posters reading (in Spanish): "We have products from Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Central America," even though most were owned by Dominicans.4 Inside were Cuban cream cheese and guava paste; Puerto Rican canned guandul (pigeon peas), habichuelas (beans), and seasonings; Ecuadoran, Mexican, Peruvian, Argentinian, Colombian, Dominican, and Bolivian food products; and national brands of soda, fruit juice, and beer from all over Latin America. In Spain, the word bodega is used for a room in which wine is aged and stored. In Cuba and Puerto Rico, however, bodega means grocery store, and this usage has become established in New York City. (In the Dominican Republic such stores are referred to as colmado, or pulperia, a term also used in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, and Guatemala; in Mexico and other South American countries, the word tienda is more common [Morinigo 1966].) While the Latino panethnic array of products in Corona's bodegas was unlike anything in their customers' homelands, these stores nonetheless reproduced the social atmosphere and ownercustomer relationships that Latin Americans were familiar with, whatever their country of origin. In 1986 the Corona business survey counted thirty Latino-owned bodegas. Dominicans owned twenty-two, and bodegas then accounted for one-third of all Dominican-owned enterprises in Corona. The other owners included three Puerto Ricans, two Ecuadorans, and a Cuban. In 1995 we observed activities and interviewed proprietors in greater depth at twenty-two Corona bodegas. Dominicans still predominated, accounting for sixteen owners. The others now included two Mexicans, a Cuban, and three Arab Yemenis who had acquired bodegas from former Latino owners. Focusing on the Dominican bodegas, we learned that most had previously been grocery stores owned by Italians, Jews, or Greeks. One man from the Cibao region rented his bodega from another Dominican, who 4- By the early 1990s Dominicans were estimated to own 8o percent of the 9,ooo bodegas and independent groceries run by Latinos in New York City (Martinez Alequin 1991; Silverman 1991).

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Hispanas de Queens had bought it from an Italian in 1963; another had purchased his business from a Greek in 1976. In several cases there had been further sales from one Latino owner to another-yet another Dominican bodeguero had purchased his store from a Puerto Rican in 1985, and a Dominicanto-Dominican transfer had occurred in 1989, one of eight such intra-nationality-group sales. Like the woman-owned clothing stores, ownership turnover in this business was frequent; more than a third of the bodegas had been sold and bought by new proprietors within the last five years. Although others were reluctant to give figures, five owners stated that they had invested between $zoo,ooo and $soo,ooo in acquisition and start-up costs. Personal and family savings and loans from other family members were the sources of these funds. One owner explained that he had pooled savings with his brothers, and the three took turns operating the store. Family labor was also evident in other bodegas. Three stores were run by husband-wife couples; in others, relatives such as a cousin were called upon when labor was needed. In still others, relatives were a source of recommendations for temporary workers, usually also Dominican, hired to unload merchandise or fill refrigerators. Several bodegueros and their family members held a second job to supplement the store's profit. One owner's wife, for example, had formerly worked at their store but now was employed as a home attendant in order to earn additional family income. In another store, high rent had forced the owner to reduce his staff from three to one, making it difficult to watch for shoplifting while also keeping the refrigerator and shelves stocked and receiving deliveries. For many customers, the corner bodega was the heart of their immediate neighborhood, a place where people listened to their favorite music (merengue, cumbia, or texmex), played the Dominican, Puerto Rican, or New York lottery, or commented on the current political situation in the United States or their countries of origin. As in Latin America, men often gathered inside and outside bodegas to listen to baseball and soccer games or a boxing match, or to play dominoes while enjoying a drink. 5 At one Dominican bodega at eleven on a weekday morning, four Mexican and Ecuadoran men were talking together in front. At another at noon, several Dominicans were watching a television soap opera while three South Americans entered to buy food items. On another day at this bodega, four Dominican and Central American men played dominoes at 5· In the Dominican Republic during the economic crisis in the late 1g8os, colmados became colmadones, or places where people gathered to drink beer instead of going to more expensive bars and restaurants.

Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space a small table placed on the sidewalk out front, surrounded by a group of Dominicans and Central and South Americans. One man told us, "Bebo aguardiente y else hebe una fria" (I'm drinking aguardiente [a Colombian alcoholic beverage], and the man next to me is drinking a beer rJria is the Dominican term for a cold beer].) On weekends, especially on Friday and Saturday nights, larger numbers gathered at bodegas. We often observed evening groups of men buying beer and drinking in front of a bodega while playing dominoes, listening to sports broadcasts, or arguing about home-country politics. Music, usually Dominican merengue and bachata, but also cumbia and Mexican music, was played very loudly. Some Corona bodegas even had speakers in front, and the music could be heard one or two blocks away. Bodegas were also locations for obtaining information about convivencia diaria. One bodeguera said that she both received and passed on information about jobs, child care, and available rooms and apartments. Nearly all owners told us they allowed people to post advertisements on their store's windows. At one bodega we saw a large poster advertising home-based cosmetic and nail services; at another was a sign for homebased child care. In two bodegas, large plastic bottles had signs requesting money for young girls who required liver and kidney transplants, with the girls' pictures attached to the bottles. There were also signs for musical events and dances; one read: "Gran Fiest6n [Big Party] in Brooklyn with merengue, salsa y cumbia." At every bodega a sign is posted by the owner reading: "Hoy no Fio, Manana Si," meaning "Today I do not give credit; come back tomorrow." Nonetheless, bodegas do offer credit to regular patrons. Many customers made purchases on a daily basis and paid weekly or bimonthly. Some customers were also recipients of public assistance, and, as one bodeguero put it, "Food stamps arrive monthly, and for those trusted customers I give credit until the next welfare check comes." Credit was not awarded merely on the basis of common ethnicity. "Nationality does not matter; what matters is trust," explained this same bodega owner. "I know from seeing somebody's face. You can see in the person's face if you can trust him or not. Well, sometimes they fool you. So, after I've seen a person around for a while, and I know his whereabouts, I give credit for a small amount, and then if he pays on time, I extend the credit. But to tell you the truth, I don't trust many people."6 Finally, bodegas were a site in which what sociolinguists call "dialect leveling" occurred among Corona's diverse Spanish-speakers. Domini6. Compare Granovetter (1985) on the importance of concrete personal relations and networks in generating trust, establishing expectations, and creating and enforcing norms.

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Hispanas de Queens cans called money cuarto, Puerto Ricans referred to it as chavos, and some Central and South Americans used the word plata; people heard and learned each other's national idiomatic expressions in bodegas, as well as in the interactions of convivencia diaria and elsewhere in Corona's commercial sector, and Latino panethnic linguistic exchange proceeded. As Zentella observes of New York City's evolving Spanishlanguage domain, "Each group maintains its ways of speaking, especially for in-group conversations, but almost everyone picks up features of another dialect, primarily the lexicon. I have talked with Mexican newcomers who abandoned their traditional chile in favor of the Caribbean word for hot sauce (pique), Ecuadorian taxi-drivers whoreferred to chavos 'money' like Puerto Ricans, and speakers from many countries who have adopted guagua, the Caribbean term for 'bus.' Close contact in neighborhoods, schools, and the work place ... makes some dialect leveling inevitable" (1997, 173). In conversations Spanishspeakers also learned to use such words and phrases from other countries or regions as a matter of courtesy or to ensure that intended meanings were understood. Workplaces

Like clothing stores and bodegas, most Latino businesses in Corona were small-scale enterprises with few or no employees, and their labor force frequently consisted solely of family members. Overall, more than 6o percent of all businesses in Corona had five or fewer employees. Beyond the several hundred Latin Americans who worked in these local retail firms, however, the majority of Corona residents traveled by subway or in carpools to workplaces in Manhattan, other parts of Queens, or other boroughs. Some were white-collar employees, clerical and sales workers, or worked in health or educational institutions. Others were blue-collar factory workers, many finding jobs "in the jewelry, machine parts, office supply, toy, and other light industries of Long Island City, the south Bronx, and Brooklyn," jobs whose low wages, and poor working conditions and benefits, led Latinos to call them trabajos chiquitos, or "little jobs" (Sanjek 1998, 78, 131). In Corona there was also a male blue-collar employment sector consisting of forty-seven machine shops, construction-related firms, and factories, including one aircraft gears factory with fifty employees. Most of these were long-established businesses owned by Italians and "Americans," but, as with Corona's automobile-service firms, some were Latinaowned, and these included a kitchen cabinetmaker (Dominican), areplacement window company (Argentinian), a metal shop (Puerto Rican),

Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space a plumbing and heating firm (Latino nationality undetermined), and a store-fixtures manufacturer (Colombian). Hispanic men were also employed in many white as well as Latino-owned businesses in this sector, and like other workplaces with concentrations of Spanish-speakers, the processes of exchanging job and housing information, sharing opinions on sports or politics or music, and "dialect leveling" occurred here as well. For women, the comparable source of local employment was sewing shops. Factories and sewing shops first opened in Corona after the Long Island Rail Road line running through it opened in 1854. The earliest company was the china and porcelain works of William Boch, who opened their own firm in Corona Plaza in 1867. In 1876 the Long Island Straw Works began manufacturing 8oo to 1,ooo women's straw hats per day and employed seventy-five men and women. During the 188os blue-collar jobs multiplied when William Brock opened a cotton wadding manufacturing firm, a Boch son started a porcelain doorknob factory, and the Corona Tile Manufacturing Company began producing floor and wall tiles (Seyfried 1987, 33-35). The first Corona garment shop opened in 1881 when Mrs. Thomas Maguire added a dressmaking department to her hatworks. Then in 1891 the Cloakmakers' Union of New York went on strike for higher wages, and conflict ensued between the large apparel manufacturers in Manhattan and the small Lower East Side contractors who employed European immigrant pieceworkers to sew garments. A sweatshop operator named A. Epstein opposed the union and moved to Corona Heights with eight of his Italian and Jewish employees to evade the strike. By the early 1900s there were a dozen or more shirtwaist factories along Corona Avenue in the Heights employing immigrant Italian and Jewish women as young as age fourteen. New hands earned from $6 to $9 a week; experienced women took home $10 to $13 a week ([in] 1913) .... The output of a group of seven shops was estimated at 3000 shirts per day.... [In] 1916 the 6oo or so women and girls employed in Corona factories began to organize to force an increase in pay. When [the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union] struck in 1919, the Corona girls also went out. ... The women expressed themselves as satisfied with the wages they were [now] earning-$25 to $30 per week for a 44-hour week. (Seyfried 1987, 35, 38-39, 53-54) In the decades since, Corona has continued to be a center of garmentshop operation and employment. In 1981 sociologist Roger Waldinger

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Hispanas de Queens counted eighty-nine sewing shops in North Corona, Corona Plaza, and part of Corona Heights (Sanjek 1998, xi, 76); in 1986 there were thirtynine garment factories visible on commercial streets in Corona south of Roosevelt Avenue, and more sewing shops existed hidden in commercial and residential basements, in homes and apartment buildings, and other locations. The New York Times presented a portrait of a typical Corona sewing shop in 198]: From outside, the building in Corona, Queens, looked as if it had been abandoned years ago. A layer of grime coated the windows and a rusting metal gate stretched across the storefront .... Inside a small factory buzzed with activity. Along cluttered aisles, dozens of women hovered over sewing machines, chatting in Spanish as they furiously assembled dresses that would be later sold for $8o apiece. Near the entrance, a punch clock read 9 A.M. even though it was only 8:10. (Freitag 1987; see Sanjek 1998, 76-77, 191-92) As in A. Epstein's day, contemporary apparel manufacturers have their offices in Manhattan. The work is still done through contractors, now primarily Chinese, Korean, and Dominican, who open shops in working-class neighborhoods with lower rents and an immigrant population (Waldinger 1986); the contractors sew and press garments for the manufacturer, who owns, cuts, and ships the material. Corona shops "usually assemble women's and children's apparel-blouses, skirts, and dresses that must be produced quickly but skillfully to keep up with changing fashions" (Freitag 1987). As the federal General Accounting Office revealed in 1989, more than 65 percent of New York City's 7,ooo contractors operate "sweatshops" that do not comply with minimum wage, safety, or child labor laws (Kovaleski 1989). The thirty-nine garment shops surveyed in Corona in 1986 were among the least willing of all firms to supply information. The owners included four Dominicans, an Ecuadoran, a Salvadoran, and a Uruguayan, with these Latinos accounting for one-third of the owners whose ethnicity we were able to determine. Others included three Chinese, three Koreans, two Guyanese Indians, and individual Greek, Irish, Italian, Spaniard, and Yugoslavian owners. For the Latin American immigrant women who worked in them, these workplaces were sites of cross-nationality interaction and exchange. In this setting they gossiped, shared information about housing, work, child care, and shopping, formed rotating credit associations, and created one more Corona base for experiential Latino panethnicity.

Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space Public Space

In addition to residential, commercial, and workplace settings, Corona Latinos met and interacted in a variety of public locations: subways and buses, coin laundries, hospital waiting rooms, schoolyards (while dropping off or picking up children), and parks. As in the settings we have examined already, the use of the Spanish language immediately defined an in-group of hispanos. This use of Spanish was reinforced at its outer linguistic perimeter by contacts with non-Spanish-speakers-the Asians, whites, and African Americans also encountered in public spaces-and by signage in English and Spanish, and occasionally in Asian languages as well. When traveling in or beyond Corona, it was not uncommon for Latinas to strike up conversations with other Spanish-speaking female passengers on subways or buses. Such encounters served as a source of information about jobs and housing for several women we interviewed. Advertising in Spanish was also found over seats on subways or on the sides of buses. And when in the mid-1g8os reconstruction work went on for months on the IRT Number 7 line above Roosevelt Avenue, brochures explaining the reason for service interruptions and delays were plentifully available in Spanish, English, Chinese, and Korean. Another pervasive reminder of the larger surrounding Spanish-language community in Corona was the plethora of male and female handbill distributors who stationed themselves near Roosevelt Avenue subway entrances. Here flyers in Spanish were handed out for English-language schools, car services, moving and shipping companies, botanicas, Protestant churches, ticket locations for soccer match broadcasts at movie theaters, and nightclub and dance appearances by musical performers. At the many coin laundries throughout Corona, working-class Latinas conversed with each other as they performed their chores. In one small comer laundry on a residential street in Corona Plaza, a long narrow bench and folding table were wedged between rows of three regularsized and two jumbo washing machines and three dryers. On the walls were signs in English and Spanish explaining the laundry's regulations, machine operating instructions, and refund policy. The laundry's attendant, a Dominican woman, not only sold detergent, provided coins for the machines, and offered advice on sorting clothes and how to use powdered and liquid detergents, but struck up a conversation with every person entering the store. She was also an expert on home remedies for illnesses such as asthma, diarrhea, and colds, and told people where they could buy herbs, roots, oils, and other medicinal ingredients. For Ri-

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Hispanas de Queens court's morning sickness, she recommended eating crackers before getting up and drinkingjicotea (freshwater turtle) soup. Colombian, Dominican, Ecuadoran, and Salvadoran women, among others, frequented this laundry; here they gossiped about daily events and organized shopping trips to Corona Heights' North Pole discount store, where designer dresses, coats, shoes, and perfume, as well as kitchen items and household appliances, were available at reasonable prices. In the high-risk pregnancy clinic room at Elmhurst Hospital, five rows of chairs faced the doctors' cubicles. Ricourt regularly met the same group of fellow pregnant diabetic women every Tuesday afternoon, including Vilma from Ecuador, Maritza from Colombia, and Ana from Mexico. All signs were in English, the doctor was Jewish and the nurse Filipino, and translation was a problem not only for Spanish-speakers but also for women of other nationalities. When Maritza was informed that her amniocentesis results indicated her twin girls had Down's syndrome, the doctor called one of the hospital's volunteer translators for assistance. The Latinas in Ricourt's group, however, helped each other with translation between English and Spanish, as well as discussing the course of their pregnancies. Groups of Latinas also met regularly as they waited for their children after school. At Public School1g in Corona Plaza, Ricourt noted women gathering each school day by 2:45 P.M. Indian women talked with other Indian women, Chinese with Chinese, Korean with Korean, and Filipinas with Filipinas, but Latinas of diverse nationalities clustered in groups defined merely by their common use of Spanish. Lively exchanges typically followed. Linden Park in Corona Plaza was much used by Latino residents, both for sitting, relaxing, and sports such as basketball and baseball and for occasional summer concerts. On one of many visits Ricourt made there with her housemate Soledad, they listened to a perico ripiao, a Dominican folkloric group, play merengue for an audience of diverse Latino nationalities dancing to typically Dominican rhythms. Later a band performed cumbia, and the same audience danced and sang to Colombian music. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, bordering Corona, is one of New York City's largest parks. Queens residents of all races and ethnicities used its grounds heavily for picnics, walking, running, biking, and team sports. In addition, it was the site of large annual Colombian and Ecuadoran festivals, and also a Latino panethnic Pueblo Hispano organized as part of the annual Queens Festival (see Chapter 8). The most important use of this park by Latinos in Queens, however, was for soccer. Each weekend between 9=45 A.M. and 6:oo P.M. several matches oc-

Stores, Workplaces, and Public Space curred simultaneously on a half-dozen soccer fields, and large crowds attended to watch. Passions over home-country soccer teams, especially when one Latin American national team played another in American or World Cup matches, often flared in the bars and clubs that showed them on large-screen televisions via cable or satellite in Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. Nationalistic feelings sometimes spilled onto the streets with shouting and noisemakers (Hernandez, Rivera-Batiz, and Agondini 1995; Sanjek 1998, 225-26). But in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, soccer united as much as it divided. Male soccer teams of diverse nationalities played against each other, but increasingly with players recruited across nationality lines. Soccer players readily announced, "You can't say you play soccer in New York until you play at Flushing Meadows Park." Many of the teams belonged to the Soccer Confederation, which included seven leagues for different age groups and players of various Central and South American nationalities. The two youngest leagues were for boys aged seven to nine and nine to twelve. On one day while we watched, the adult Ambatos team (named for a town in Ecuador) was getting ready to play a Brazilian team for the confederation title. Before that match there had been a contest between two youth teams. Players for the next youth game were also starting to arrive with parents, grandparents, and siblings who had come to cheer them. Some family groups were seated under trees around the playing field, many with food and refreshments, preparing to spend several hours watching the games. There were people of all ages, from elders to babies, but most were young men. As one spectator remarked, "Soccer is the national sport of Central and South America, and is one thing that unites all Hispanics with the same interest." Teams belonging to the Pan American Soccer League also competed in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. The twenty-team league included Peruvian, Colombian, Argentinian, Chilean, Bolivian, and Ecuadoran teams (Gelman 1994). These Queens Latino teams might represent various countries, but the players on them were not necessarily from the country for which they played. We learned, for instance, that there were Salvadorans, Colombians, Argentinians, Chileans, and Peruvians playing for an Ecuadoran team, and that a similar situation existed on other teams. Hundreds of spectators might watch a particular game. If they became hungry and had not brought food, they could buy from a Latino panethnic collection of food vendors (Young 1989). Ecuadorans operated licensed carts and sold roast pork, beef, and pork barbecue sticks, empanadas, ayacas, fried ripe plantain, com, chorizo (sausages), salad, rice and beans, yucca, and individual cart specialties. Unlicensed vendors

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Hispanas de Queens of different nationalities circulated among the crowds selling beer, soda, mangoes, and snacks. Under trees, Peruvians presided over grills offering chunks of marinated meat. The ultimate symbol of Latino panethnicity was a T-shirt stand in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. The shirts read: "I Love [the name of a country]" or "Made in [a particular country]," or listed a country's name with a national flag or soccer logo. T-shirts were displayed for Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Spain, the United States, Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Haiti. And leaving no doubt that one was in Queens, New York City, there were also Mets shirts for sale. 7 Conclusion

Convivencia diaria extends from homes to the interactions established in stores, workplaces, and a variety of public spaces. Products sold in stores and interconnections and collaboration in workplaces and public spaces all lead to cultural exchange among Corona's Latinos as people of many diverse nationalities exchange vocabulary, foods, music, folk remedies, information, and so on. These intra-Latino cultural exchanges form the content of an ongoing experiential panethnicity. As people view and speak of one another as Hispanos or Latinoamericanos, we can discern the emergence of a categorical Latino panethnicity as well.

7· We thank Roger Sanjek, who copied this information into his fieldnotes.

Roman Catholic Parishes

I

n Corona many organizations are present to cater to the spiritual, social, and cultural needs of the neighborhood's residents. In this and the following chapters, we focus on organizations and their leaders that seek to attract and serve all Latinos living in Corona, regardless of nationality. In this chapter we describe the contrasting histories of Latinos in two Roman Catholic parishes, the mixed Italian-Latina congregation of St. Leo's in Corona Heights, and the majority Latino congregation of Our Ladies of Sorrows in Corona Plaza. Spanish-language Roman Catholic masses have existed at Our Lady of Sorrows in Corona Plaza since 1967 and at St. Leo's Church in Corona Heights since 1977. By the mid-198os Spanish masses were also celebrated at all the Roman Catholic churches in Elmhurst and Jackson Heights. Diverse Latin American parishioners worshiped at these churches, where their common identity as Latinos was reinforced experientially and institutionally by worship in Spanish, and by the view of them as a unified Hispanic group held by church clergy and white American coparishioners. In addition, Latin American parishioners interacted and socialized with one another not only at masses but in a variety of other church activities. Regular Spanish-language masses began in New York City in 1939 when Francis Cardinal Spellman authorized the Redemptorist Congregation of Puerto Rico to begin worship in that language at St. Cecilia's parish in East Harlem; in addition to welcoming new Puerto Rican parishioners, this church continued to serve English-speaking German and Irish congregants (Diaz-Stevens 1993). At the national level, in 1945 a Bishops' Committee for the Spanish-Speaking was established to address the religious and social needs of Mexican American migrants. Then, with growing numbers of Puerto Ricans arriving in New York after World War II, in 1953 Cardinal Spellman instituted an Office of SpanishAmerican Catholic Action to coordinate pastoral and social church activities. According to Ana Maria Diaz-Stevens, "the most important of the changes ... was the installation of an integrated territorial parish to

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Hispanas de Queens serve both English-speakers and Spanish-speakers" (1993, 108). In these "integrated parishes" new Latino church members now "share[ d) facilities with [existing] Euro-American" congregations. (The "integrated parish" pattern also marked the experience of Mexican Americans in such cities as Detroit and Chicago [Badillo 1994, 289-296].) In most such parishes the Latinos worshiped in the basement and the established white American group in the main church, with the "integrated parish" frequently operating, in effect, as two autonomous parishes. "With selfgenerated creativity," however, "the basement churches often functioned for Puerto Ricans much as [their own] national parish" (Diaz-Stevens and Stevens-Arroyo 1998, u8-u9), the earlier organizational response of the Roman Catholic church to tum-of-the-century Italian, Polish, and other European immigrant groups (Tomasi 1975). Overall, the "basement church," frequently reflecting some degree of prejudice from established whites toward the newcomers, may be viewed as a "Latino [Roman Catholic] experience nationwide" (Diaz-Stevens and StevensArroyo 1998, u9). Another important step by the New York Office of Spanish-American Catholic Action was its sponsoring of the Fiesta de San Juan in celebration of Puerto Rico's patron saint (Diaz-Stevens 1993). This move opened the door for Puerto Ricans to continue their own forms of popular religiosity in New York City, and later for Dominicans to celebrate the Virgen de Altagracia's feast day with masses and processions, and for Mexicans to conduct night masses to honor the Virgen de Guadalupe, patroness saint of their home country. All this was reinforced by liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. With masses now celebrated in vernacular languages, "the Spanish and English Masses began to differ not only in language, but also in the general flavor of the whole event.... It reinforced [for Latinos] the sense of being a community with its own identity ... celebrated in the community's own language and expressed in terms of its culture" (Vidal1994, 140). St. Leo's in the mid-198os was an "integrated parish" in which the new Latin American majority shared the church with established Italian American members. Although it was still marked by vestiges of the "basement church" model, there were also steps being taken to build closer ties between the two major population groups within the parish. At Our Lady of Sorrows, located in Corona Plaza, where white flight had occurred during the 196os, a Latino parishioner majority existed from the early 1970s. Here the basement church had, in effect, moved upstairs, and by the mid-198os few white members remained. The experience at St. Leo's allows us to focus on external factors that mold shared pan-Latina Roman Catholic church experience, and the experience at

Roman Catholic Parishes Our Lady of Sorrows to examine the development of "self-generated creativity" in a predominantly Hispanic parish. St. Leo's Church

St. Leo's was organized in 1903 as a mission church serving the growing Italian community in Corona, and over the next six decades its Italian American congregation flourished (Seyfried 1987, 97). During the 1g6os the Latin American membership began to grow, and white numbers were in decline. In 1984 the pastor of St. Leo's was Monseignor Anthony Barretta, an Italian American, and he was assisted by three parish priests, including one Venezuelan on a visitor's visa who was attempting to establish residency in the United States. In addition, one nun cared for elderly and sick parishioners, another nun was principal of St. Leo's parish school, and lay staff included a Puerto Rican deacon and several eucharistic ministers, four of them women but none Latino. West to east, the parish extended from Junction Boulevard to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and north to south, from the Long Island Rail Road tracks to 57th Avenue. Parish membership, Msgr. Barretta estimated, was some 1o,ooo. About 2,200 attended mass each Sunday, but numbers increased during the Easter Holy Week, when 6,ooo to 7,ooo visited the church. The majority of members were now Hispanic, including Dominicans, the most numerous single nationality, Colombians, Ecuadorans, Peruvians, Argentinians, Cubans, and Mexicans, the most rapidly growing group. The second-largest parish segment consisted of Italians, including some-especially among the elderly-first-generation immigrants. In addition, there were small numbers of Germans, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, West Indians, Chinese, and Filipinos. Masses were conducted in English, Italian, and Spanish. The large red-brick church building had recently been renovated, but inside it retained its traditional Roman Catholic look. The main altar stood at the far end of the central aisle. Rows of fixed pews seating 450 people were located on each side of this aisle and were flanked by plain round columns. Behind the altar appeared a large white crucifix with white angels on each side. On both sides of this main sanctuary were lateral chapels with large images of saints. Over the church entryway was a balcony where the organ was located and where the choir sat during services. The basement provided an additional site for worship, with folding chairs accommodating 300 people. Outside the church and surrounding the large parking lot/playground were the parish school building, where 580 children attended grades one through eight, a rectory with priests' offices and living quarters, and a convent, then vacant but scheduled to

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Hispanas de Queens be renovated and reopened as a residential facility for mentally retarded adults (Sanjek 1998, 306, 342). Barretta had arrived at St. Leo's in 1978 and saw his Corona Heights parish as "a community in transition." The Italians, still prominent in a church that offered five English, two Italian, and one Spanish mass each weekend, were mostly older persons; when they moved or died, he said, their houses were purchased by Hispanics. He noted the change in faces, but added, "People are always people, and one does not make distinctions." He did worry about the physical appearance of the neighborhood, and encouraged people to "keep the place clean." He urged parishioners to practice good manners and tried to "teach the children [to] greet one another" and show respect for adults, "particularly if they happen to be priests." The pastor commented that he found Hispanic men more "church-oriented" than Italian men, because "Italian men leave religion to women." Nonetheless, he voiced what seemed to Danta some negative impressions of his Latino parishioners. During her interview with him he mentioned that Latinos were "disorganized," that their children were "out of control," and that mothers fed their children in church, leaving candy wrappers and tissues on the floor to be cleaned up after the service. He assumed that because some Latinos did not register as members in the parish, they must be "illegal" and therefore afraid to be identified. (On exaggerated estimates of the number of "illegal aliens" by ElmhurstCorona's white residents, see Sanjek 1998, 70-75.) He also noted more poverty in the parish than in the past, mentioning the low level of parishioner contributions received during Spanish-language masses (compare Hendricks 1974, uS). However, he also said that "the Spanish are slowly adapting themselves to the American system of church collections," which involved weekly giving in prepared envelopes. This method of weekly collections is not used in most Spanish-speaking countries. Barretta expressed antagonism to the use of Spanish in his church. He criticized the Latino altar boys who spoke in Spanish to the Venezuelan priest, asserting that "the priest should be trying to learn English from the children." He added that he wished he could eliminate the Spanishlanguage religious instruction classes taught by this priest. Barretta criticized the Latino parents at St. Leo's school who did not learn English, as well as those who spoke it but used Spanish with their children at home. If these children "are not helped at home," he insisted, "they do not do well in school." Services Although many New Yorkers were out of town on Memorial Day weekend in 1984, the Spanish mass in the main church at St. Leo's was

Roman Catholic Parishes

packed. There were no empty seats, and people were standing in the side aisles and in the rear of the church. There was a friendly and cooperative attitude as people who were seated shifted if they could to make space for those still standing. Two men got up to offer a seat to an elderly man. As is typical, most older Latinas did not cover their heads during mass, and there were only two women in their fifties wearing short mantillas. There were more women than men in the church, and most of the men were with their wives and children. There were also many teenagers, more girls than boys, some seated with their parents and others with groups of friends. Obviously, it was difficult to estimate the numbers of each Latin American nationality on the basis of physical appearance alone. The service was led by the Venezuelan priest, who was assisted by two deacons, a female lector, and several altar boys. The only instance of disorder occurred when nearly everyone in the church arose at the same time to receive communion. At the altar, the ushers appointed the congregants who would offer the gifts of wine, bread, and water to the priest; one of those selected was a girl about twelve years old who was receiving her first communion that day. The large choir, composed of both men and women, accompanied themselves with guitars, tambourines, and the scraperlike rhythms of the Caribbean gourd giiiro. Their religious selections had a distinctively Latino flavor, and the entire congregation sang and clapped with them. These Hispanic parishioners were celebrating Mother's Day a second time because this Sunday was Mother's Day in the Dominican Republic. The Movimiento Familiar Cristiano/Christian Family Movement of St. Leo's, an association of young families, gave a "Mother of the Year" award to a woman seated in the congregation. 1 After she came forward to accept the award, the entire congregation applauded, and the priest asked the choir to play "Cumpleaiios Feliz"-the Spanish version of "Happy Birthday"-in honor of all mothers. The "Moment of Peace" ritual near the end of the mass was enthusiastically performed with song and gesture. Usually Roman Catholic congregants turn to each other to shake hands, and some friends or family members may embrace, but here people hugged and kissed everyone around them as the choir sang along. When the mass was over, the priest and deacons stood outside the church entrance to greet and talk with the exiting worshipers. A Spanish mass celebrated in the clean and well-kept church base1. The Movimento Familiar Cristiano/Christian Family Movement began in Chicago in the 1940s and spread nationwide in Roman Catholic churches in the 1g6os. It brings couples together to discuss their lives as parents, spouses, and citizens.

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ment on Palm Sunday that year, and led by Msgr. Barretta, was less spirited and cohesive. Although people filled the main sanctuary upstairs, with their numbers even flowing out onto the sidewalk in front of the church, nearly three hundred people gathered on folding chairs downstairs. Here also no seat was left empty; young people gave their places to older parishioners, and men offered seats to women. People were friendly and polite, and the service was simple and very informal. The Puerto Rican deacon, one altar boy, a female lector, and a woman leading the congregation in singing assisted Msgr. Barretta. No ushers had been designated; a few were quickly appointed, but contradictory signals from them and the deacon momentarily confused the proceedings. The Holy Thursday service a few days later was a trilingual event, with readings in English, Italian, and Spanish, and celebrated by all four parish priests and the deacon. Latinos and Italians predominated over the few other parishioners present. Characteristically, the Italians were mainly elderly and female, but a few young Italian familes were also present. The Latinos, in contrast, were primarily young families and middle-aged persons, but included older people and also teenagers, some of them sitting in groups. A regular Sunday English-language mass that year was attended by a diverse audience, including many Latinos. The church was crowded and somewhat uncomfortable, considering the hot day, the long service, and the large number of vocal babies and small children. A beautiful-sounding choir of nuns in old-fashioned habits sang a selection of traditional music during the mass. Nearly forty older Italian women had their heads covered with dark scarves, unlike all but a few of the older Hispanic women. Both Italian and Latina mothers fed their babies with bottles of milk during the service. Older persons answered freely in Italian or Spanish during recited prayers, while most younger ones responded in English. In orderly fashion, appointed ushers conducted a majority of the congregation forward to receive communion. The "Moment of Peace" ritual was far more restrained and mechanical than in the Spanish mass. Parish Programs Like other Roman Catholic churches (and many Protestant churches), St. Leo's offered a variety of religious and secular programs for the infirm, the poor, the elderly, and children, as well as social activities that sought to serve, or even integrate, its various ethnic segments. Priests and lay eucharistic ministers visited the elderly and the sick in their homes and in two nursing homes in Corona Heights. The church sponsored a November food collection to provide poor parish families with Thanksgiving dinners and referred particularly needy cases to the St.

Roman Catholic Parishes

Vincent de Paul Society, a Roman Catholic charity. A group of elderly male World War II veterans met at St. Leo's, as did several hundred mainly female elderly at its Golden Age Club, which featured lunch, bingo, and occasional speakers. Both of these groups were predominantly Italian (Sanjek 1998, 30, 244, 278). When the facility for mentally retarded adults opened in the former convent in 1987, however, the residents, half of them from Corona, included Italians and Latin Americans, and so did the staff, several of whom were St. Leo's parishioners (Sanjek 1998, 342). St. Leo's school, as Barretta pointed out, was a barometer of the changes occurring in the parish. Italian children still outnumbered Latinos in its seventh and eighth grades, but in the lower grades Latinos formed a majority. During the 1984-1985 school year, 95 percent of the seventy-seven new first-grade students had Spanish surnames. Supplementary funds for the school were raised by card-game parties, cake sales, and other activities organized by its Mothers' Club. Until 1983, Barretta noted, few Hispanic mothers had participated in the club, something he attributed to the fact that most of them worked outside the home. More became active that year, and in 1984 the president was a Latina. There was some dissension over this, but he thought it was a personality clash rather than a "racial" problem between whites and Hispanics. He added that there were "good relationships between parishioners" in both school and church activities, but "every group has their own circle." The church also offered religious instruction to 350 parish children who attended public schools. These catechism classes were taught in Spanish on Saturdays by the Venezuelan priest, who also offered guitar lessons to children who were interested. Most students, including most Latinos, however, attended the English-language classes taught by a parish priest and four Italian American parishioners. These classes:

are conducted in a formal manner, and student behavior is confined to learning the lessons; interaction between instructor and student in minimal. The curriculum is designed to teach these youngsters the meaning and significance of Catholicism, the Bible, and reception of the three most important sacramentsBaptism ... Holy Communion, and Confirmation .... Discipline and conformity to church rules and community behavioral norms are also apparent objectives of the classes .... The church's stand on ... abortion, homosexual behavior, sodomy, and communism are presented to the youth. (Acosta 1989, 83-84)

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Hispanas de Queens Here also the Spanish language was officially devalued. "In [one] preConfirmation class, the instructor asked how many students own a Bible at home. One Latin American girl indicated her family Bible was in Spanish. The instructor's reaction was that this was unsatisfactory-the Bible for classes should be in English" (Acosta 1989, 84). Our research colleague Elena Acosta concluded that for the white American religious instructors, "Cultural differences, and Spanish language loyalities, are seen as obstacles to full participation and assimilation into the community" (1989, 84-85). A similar lack of rapport between Italian adult parishioners and Latino youth was observed by Acosta and Roger Sanjek at the church's Teen Center, which opened in 1986 and closed in 1989. Athough many Latinos participated during its first season, the teens, who all knew each other, socialized separately in "Spanish" and "Italian" groups, and some of the Italians referred openly to the other group as "hies," from "Hispanics." The Italian teens associated much more closely with the adult chaperones, all of whom were Italian. By 1987 most of the Latino teens had dropped out (Acosta 1989, 85-90; Sanjek 1998, 261-263). For adults, St. Leo's sponsored an Italian, an "American," and a Spanish "social" each year. Beyond that, Barretta admitted that "a shortage of priests" and subsequent "lack ofleadership" limited the number of activities they could initiate in addition to parish religious duties. "The average age of priests [in the Brooklyn-Queens Diocese] is fifty-two," he said. "Older priests were trained to be managers, directors, and doers, but things are changing now." Barretta had begun a "parish renewal program" in 1981 to involve more lay parishioners in planning activities. He also added a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, "patroness of the Americas," to the saints placed in the renovated sanctuary, and in 1985 a Colombian priest joined the pastorate, as did a second Latino deacon (Gillcrist 1985). These efforts resulted in several new Spanish-language activities at St. Leo's. These included participation in the diocese-sponsored Cursillo de Cristiandad movement of Spanish-language three-day weekend retreats;2 in a chapter of the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano, which sponsored family-oriented events and ceremonies; and in a Charismatic 2. The Cursillo movement began in Spain in 1949 and reached the United States in 1957. The first weekend Cursillo retreat in New York was held for Puerto Rican Catholics in 1958 and expanded throughout the New York archdiocese beginning in 1960. Organized by laity, and involving testimonies and singing in Spanish, it "functioned as a sect within Catholicism," according to Diaz-Stevens (1993, 110; see also Stevens-Arroyo 1980). According to Vidal (1994), the Cursillos "served as a vehicle by which the people preserved their own priorities and religious attitudes at a time when these were not appreciated by the American clergy" (quoted in Diaz-Stevens and Stevens-Arroyo 1998, 86).

Roman Catholic Parishes

group whose informal masses and prayer groups emphasized spontaneous petition mixed with singing. 3 Another result of the renewal program was the revival in 1986 of the pre-Easter Stations of the Cross procession through the streets of Corona Heights to commemorate Christ's judgment and crucifixion. The readings and hymns during the procession were alternately given in Italian, Spanish, and English, with the Spanish portions loudest because Latinos supplied the majority of marchers. At the conclusion of this event in 1987, Barretta told the crowd: "The important thing is that all the people of the parish got together today. It didn't make any difference if you were Italian, English-speaking, German, or Spanish" (Sanjek 1gg8, 336). Our Lady of Sorrows Church

Our Lady of Sorrows parish was organized in 1870 as a mission church for Irish immigrants in the Corona area, and Irish priests ran it through the 1g6os. By 1930 membership stood at 3,ooo, and by the 1950s at 1o,ooo (Our Lady of Sorrows 1972; Seyfried 1987, 95-96). Lying just north of St. Leo's parish, west to east its territory ran from 94th Street to Shea Stadium and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and, north to south, from Northern Boulevard to the Long Island Rail Road tracks, encompassing both North Corona and Corona Plaza. As at St. Leo's, the main church was surrounded by a rectory, convent, and parochial elementary school building. At the front of the church the pedestal bearing the image of Our Lady of Sorrows read: "Come to me all that labor and I will refresh you." In the early 1g6os the number of Puerto Rican and Dominican parishioners at Our Lady began to increase, and a priest from Spain was recruited in 1967. That year the first Spanish mass was celebrated, the Cursillo movement began weekly Friday night meetings at the church, and a parish council was created (Our Lady of Sorrows 1972). A new pastor arrived in 1969, and by this point the parish was half Hispanic, now also counting South American immigrants. The new pastor appointed the first female lectors to assist during masses, formed a Golden Age Club, and began classes in English as a second language. His attitude 3· Following a Charismatic retreat by a group of American priests in Puerto Rico in 1971, the movement spread to Latino Roman Catholics in New York. Charismatic Catholicism has many similarities with Pentecostalism, including baptism of the spirit, healing through the laying on of hands, spontaneous prayers and singing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, and personal testimony. Vidal claims that "it has also introduced a strong element of fundamentalism and moral rigidity into the Spanish-speaking Catholic community" ( 1994, 141).

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toward the use of Spanish in the church, however, was hostile. According to one observer, "Even though the Spanish-language mass is filled to overflowing each Sunday, Father O'Hara declines to allow an additional mass, reasoning, 'They will have to come to the English mass then'" (Hendricks 1974, 118-119). He discouraged the Cursillo group, opposed any new church activities in Spanish, and refused to admit to the parish school any Latino students requiring bilingual instruction. Despite this "lack of enthusiasm ... toward the participation of large numbers of Spanish-speakers" (Hendricks 1974, 144), their numbers grew rapidly in the late 196os and early 1970s. Our Lady also attracted Latino worshipers from other nearby neighborhoods, and from Manhattan and Brooklyn, many of them relatives of parishioners living in Corona Plaza. By 1985 things at Our Lady of Sorrows had changed greatly. There were now four weekend and two daily Spanish masses. The pastor was Italian American, the other two priests were the Spaniard and a recently arrived Colombian, and there was a Hispanic deacon. The Colombian priest estimated that church membership was 70 percent Dominican, 25 percent Colombian, Ecuadoran, Puerto Rican, and other Latino, and less than 5 percent "American," mainly Italian and Irish. The white Americans made up most of the Golden Age Club's membership, but even the four English weekend masses were attended mainly by Latin Americans. Altogether, Sunday attendance at masses stood at about three thousand. According to the Colombian priest, Our Lady of Sorrows was the most active Hispanic church community in Queens. He explained that Dominicans had "a deep religious spirit," and were very involved and cooperative in church affairs. For example, when a campaign was begun to raise $uo,ooo to restore the church facade and make other repairs, the parishioners responded "with such enthusiasm" that the money was collected in only a few months, even though economic levels varied from "people who do well" to a substantial number who were poor. He stated that ever since the 196os, "in reality, Dominicans rule the church because they are the majority, and they really get involved in parish life. Those who do not agree with the way things are done should feel free to go to another church." He noted that "some people" were not happy with the Dominican way of handling things, but he did not specify any other Latino group. The Americans, he said, "are so few that they cannot complain; they just have to accept things as they are." Festivals and Processions Masses at Our Lady of Sorrows were similar to those at St. Leo's. Spanish masses featured a choir with guitar accompaniment, Latin American rhythms, and a cheerful, spirited participation by congregants. There

Roman Catholic Parishes

were many young families at both churches, but more single men at Our Lady, where people in general also dressed more modestly, reflecting a somewhat poorer population. While Latino energies at St. Leo's were focused inwardly on relations with the still strong Italian segment of the church, at Our Lady the dominant Latino majority not only celebrated itself in church festivals but also reached outward to surrounding parishes with processions through the streets of Queens. January marked two Dominican celebrations, the festival of the Virgin of Altagracia, the patron saint of the Dominican Republic (January 21), and the birthday of Juan Pablo Duarte (January 26), revered as "father" of the Dominican Republic's independence from Haiti in 1844. In 1985 the Saturday evening mass preceding the Virgin of Altagracia celebration was less well attended than usual, despite the overflowing numbers that would come to worship on the festival day itself. Three guitars accompanied the choir, and the music was dedicated to the Virgin. As the mass began, a man bearing a cross led the celebrants to the altar, followed by a female lector carrying the church Bible, and the priest. It was announced that the following day's procession through the streets of Corona from Our Lady to St. Leo's would begin at 2:00P.M. When the procession from Our Lady of Sorrows arrived at St. Leo's on Sunday afternoon, it was led by the Dominican Republic flag and a banner of the Hermandad 21 de Enero (Brotherhood of January 21) carried by women dressed in white, with red, white, and blue ribbons bearing medals around their necks. The Colombian priest led the marchers in praying the rosary, and several men carried a flower-laden platform bearing a large image of Our Lady of Altagracia. A baptism service was under way at St. Leo's when the procession stopped at the stairs in front of the church, and one man from the Our Lady marchers went inside. The marchers then recited the fourth mystery of the rosary and offered prayers for the people of St. Leo's parish. Two priests from St. Leo's came out and were greeted warmly by a nun from Our Lady of Sorrows. The marchers then returned by the same route to their home church, with a police car following to protect them. Although no arrangements had been made on this occasion to enter St. Leo's or for its parishioners to greet those from Our Lady, a larger and more elaborate procession four months later included these ceremonial exchanges between the two parishes. Our Lady of Sorrows also staged processions westward to the adjoining parish of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Jackson Heights. In the 1985 Stations of the Cross procession the marchers were led by men carrying a large wooden cross and a smaller one behind it. Our Lady's lectors and choir came next; they used a portable sound system to

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make it easier to follow the recitations and hymns that accompanied each of the fourteen stations, spoken and sung in Spanish and English alternately. The mostly Latino marchers were mainly middle-aged and female, but there were also teenagers, children with their mothers, men, and a number of older persons. People joined the procession all along the route. Police had blocked off traffic and guided the march. Many onlookers stopped to watch from the streets or from their windows. At some businesses, including a beauty parlor, both employees and customers came out to observe the procession pass by. During the amplified messages at each station, the role of women in Christ's life was emphasized. The lectors mentioned that Christ was surrounded by men when things were going well, but that as he approached death, only one man was at his side, while women remained there suffering with him. They also affirmed that women were more sensitive and caring than men. Finally the marchers approached the beautiful Art Deco-style Church of the Blessed Sacrament. By this point their numbers had swelled considerably, and they filled the church, with more marchers remaining outside. A priest from Blessed Sacrament told the audience that more people seemed to participate each year. By the 1ggos the Latin American membership at Our Lady of Sorrows parish had become more diverse, although Dominicans remained strong and the festival of the Virgin of Altagracia continued to be celebrated. A mass for the feast of La Virgen de las Nubes (Our Lady of the Clouds), an Ecuadoran celebration, had been added to the church calendar, and so had a vigil for Our Lady of Guadalupe, in recognition of the rapidly growing Mexican population in Corona Plaza. Parish Programs By the mid-1g8os the Latino congregants of Our Lady of Sorrows were participating in a wide variety of church organizations. These included the Cursillo movement, begun in the 1g6os, and others added since: two guitar choirs, a Charismatic worship group, the Rosary Society, the Movimiento Familar Cristiano for young families, the Marriage Encounter weekend program, 4 the Joumalistas for teenagers, and the Sicadetes recreational group for young boys. An association composed of Dominican parishioners visited the sick at hospitals, collected toys for 4· As with the Cursillo and Christian Family movements, the growth of the Marriage Encounter movement was an outcome of the Second Vatican Council's expansion of lay involvement and leadership. It involved weekend sessions where trained couples and a priest provided participating couples with communication techniques to improve their relationships. For Latinos, it addressed culturally reinforced gender behavior as well community leadership roles.

Roman Catholic Parishes

needy children at Christmas, and sponsored a yearly health fair. Parish volunteers also distributed government surplus cheese and other food items to poor parishioners and maintained a food pantry at the church for emergency use. A committee led by the pastor, and including both Latinos and white Americans, monitored neighborhood street lights, vandalism, drug selling, and other criminal activities and coordinated their efforts with the local 115th Police Precinct. The parish had established contact with Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens, the organization based in Corona Plaza that offered immigrant and social services to Spanish-speakers, and it referred persons in need to it. It also sponsored a free program in English as a second language and bilingual literacy in cooperation with the City University of New York's Community Language Services. Participants had to be at least seventeen years old, and were interviewed in Spanish and placed in classes according to their Spanish and English skill levels. Classes met three nights a week at the parish school building from September through June, and also during a shorter summer program. Instructors were supplied by the linguistics departments offirst Queens College and later La Guardia Community College. Most students were Corona residents and included Dominicans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, and others, many, but not all, also parishioners of Our Lady of Sorrows. This well-subscribed program could not serve everyone who applied and maintained a waiting list. Educational programs for children at Our Lady were extensive. The parish school offered both a preschool nursery class in its basement and kindergarten through eighth grade classes for 550 children. The principal was a nun, but, as at St. Leo's, other teachers were laypersons. Most children were Latino, and their parents accounted for the majority of active members of the Home School Association, which organized various fundraising activities as well as dances and social gatherings for adults. Our Lady of Sorrows, like Saint Leo's, also provided religious instruction for Roman Catholic students attending public schools. An afterschool cultural enrichment program at Our Lady, the Asociaci6n Benefica Cultural Padre Billini/Father Billini Association, was started by parishioner Ana Lopez, a Dominican, in 1978. The initial goal was to teach and propagate Dominican culture in the United States and to help children from divorced or separated parental households with homework. Classes in Dominican literature and folkloric dancing were expanded to include Puerto Rican, Colombian, and Mexican dances. By the mid-198os, 140 children participated in cultural and tutorial classes offered by the association; by 1999, nearly 1,ooo children were served in its expanded array of programs (see Chapter 8).

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Churches can provide a link with immigrants' home cultures, as they did for Dominicans at Our Lady of Sorrows, but they can also facilitate adaptation to new neighborhoods, neighbors, and ways of accomplishing goals and moving ahead in a new society. In Corona the two Roman Catholic parishes were important sites for Latino panethnic interaction at both the experiential and institutional levels. People of different Latin American nationalities met in masses, which included the close physical contact of the "Moment of Peace" ritual, and in choirs, in church societies, in parochial school parents' associations, in planning and participating in processions, in serving the sick, elderly, and poor, and in English classes. At Our Lady, where Dominican numerical primacy was acknowledged by all, a more explicitly Latino panethnic ambiance emerged as Ecuadorans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, and Mexicans were recognized through various church activities. Women played important roles in these processes of Latino panethnic encounter and cooperation. Women were lectors, choir members, procession organizers, parent association officers, and, in one case, the director of a youth program. Women were also a majority of the Latino parishioners at masses. Latin American men, in fewer numbers, also participated in the various sites and scenes of Latino panethnic interaction at these churches, and, unlike women, could also serve as priests and deacons.

Protestant Churches

I

n the Spanish-speaking Protestant churches of Corona there was a similar predominance of women but greater opportunities for their leadership. Here we discerned an explicit institutional Latino panethnicity. Unlike the Roman Catholic parishes, in which diverse Latinos found themselves interacting with white Americans as well as with each other, the Hispanic Protestant congregations were formed on the basis of a common Spanish language to serve all Latin Americans regardless of national identification or birthplace. Although most Latinos are Roman Catholics, since World War II Protestants of various denominations and sects, or Evangelicas as they are called in Spanish, have been increasing rapidly in both Latin America and the United States (Danta 1989a, 5-23). During the first decade of the twentieth century, North American missionaries from established denominations such as Methodists and Presbyterians were joined in several Latin American countries by Pentecostals, part of a new worldwide religious movement that began in Los Angeles, California, in 1906 (Caplan 1987, 214). Later, Seventh-Day Adventists and denominational Protestants such as Baptists and Lutherans, as well as new schismatic and indigenous Protestant churches, entered the conversion effort. The 196os were a boom period, especially among urban migrants and displaced rural populations; by that decade more than 6o percent of Latin American Protestants were Pentecostal (Baselga 1971; Flora 1980; LaRuffa 1980; Read, Monterroso, and Johnson 1969; Willems 1967). Numbers continued to expand, leading one anthropologist to title a book about the phenomenon Is Latin America Turning Protestant? (Stoll 1990). Emilio Willems painted a portrait of a typical Latin American Pentecostal congregation (1974, 452-68):

[It] is a highly cohesive primary group which tends to absorb the newcomer to an extent unmatched by most established churches. No matter how humble, unskilled, or uneducated, the individual convert immediately feels that he is needed and relied upon: he is

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Hispanas de Queens respectfully addressed as "brother," his services are requested by people who speak his own language and share his tastes, worries, and interests, who work with him at the same tasks, and share with him the certainty of belonging to the "People of God" as Pentecostals often call themselves. In the United States a 1986 Gallup poll found that 19 percent of Hispanics, more than four million people, were Protestant, and 70 percent Roman Catholic (Suro 1989). Latino Protestant growth in New York City began with efforts of the multidenominational Mission Society in 1912 and the use of Hispanic clergy by mainline churches, but it occurred mainly after the 1940s with the upsurge of migration from Puerto Rico and the establishment of numerous Spanish-language Pentecostal churches (Diaz-Stevens and Stevens-Arroyo 1998, u8-u9; Protestant Council 1960). As Dan Wakefield characterized New York City in the 1950s, "Catholic efforts to hold the Puerto Ricans had stepped up greatly, [but] so had Protestant efforts to convert them" (1957, 71). Vivian Garrison discovered "no significant differences" between Puerto Rican Catholics and Pentecostals "on any socioeconomic status or mobility variable" ( 1974, 309), and her own and other research suggested that the atmosphere in individual churches or personal factors were key elements in conversion from Catholicism (Garrison 1974; Poblete and O'Dea 1960). A 1991 Gallup poll of Hispanic New Yorkers found that 74 percent identified themselves as Catholics, 7 percent as Pentecostals, and 8 percent as other Protestants; 40 percent attended church at least once a week, and so percent of men and 68 percent of woman considered religion to be "very important" in their lives. By that year there were more than 1,000 Spanish-language Pentecostal churches in the city, 100 Jehovah's Witnesses congregations, and, among major denominations, 24 Baptist, 22 United Methodist, and 17 Presbyterian churches that were predominantly Hispanic (Moses 1991). In Corona by the mid-198os there were at least five Hispanic Protestant congregations. From interviews at two of these and with Latino members of an English-language Presbyterian church and a Spanish congregation at a trilingual Lutheran church, both in Elmhurst, Danta learned that Latino Protestants spanned all socioeconomic levels. Few had been born Protestant, and most had been nonpracticing Catholics at the time they converted; "Catholic 'losses,'" therefore, were "not coming at the expense of Catholic parish membership" (Diaz-Stevens and Stevens-Arroyo 1998, 216). Some Queens Latinos had become Protestants in their home country, but more had converted in the United

Protestant Churches States. Reasons for conversion varied, and included personal religious experiences, a search for a compatible church, marriage to a Protestant, or attendance and later conversion at the urging of children, relatives, or friends. Protestants readily distinguished their Cristiano (Christian) or Evangelica churches from Cat6lica (Catholic) ones, but did not perceive any change of religion if they had moved from one Protestant church to another (Danta 1g8ga). Corona's Pentecostal Converts

Clara was born in Puerto Rico, but when she was an infant her parents moved to New York City where she was raised. As a child she attended a Roman Catholic church with her parents; she continued as a teenager, but less frequently, and eventually she stopped going altogether. Clara graduated from high school and found a job in a supermarket. She married a Puerto Rican man who had also been born a Catholic, and they had two children. Her husband had occasionally attended a Protestant church as a child in Puerto Rico, and in New York he converted to Pentecostalism, even before Clara did. Clara's conversion occurred at a time when she was upset about problems in her household. One day a sister-in-law who was a "Christian" came to visit and asked if Clara wanted her to pray for Clara's family. Clara thought it could not hurt, and agreed. The sister-in-law asked Clara to kneel, and prayed standing above her. Later the sister-in-law came again, accompanied by her Pentecostal minister. Again Clara was asked to kneel, and this time it was the minister who prayed over her, also laying his hands on her. Clara remembered that as he prayed she envisioned her past sins rushing by her, as if in a movie. After each scene, she became more upset as she realized "how bad and ugly my sins were," and she resolved to sin no more. At that point Clara felt cleansed and pure. A few days later she visited other relatives, and as she entered their house, she felt like she was "walking on air." She knew that these relatives were "uncleansed" of sin, but that she was "clean and good next to them." After this experience she became a Pentecostal. Another spiritual episode occurred when Clara went to hear a Pentecostal preacher at Madison Square Garden. The man asked all sick persons to walk forward so he could lay hands on them and heal them. At that time Clara was suffering from a stomach pain and did not know what was causing it. She walked toward the preacher with her hands on her stomach and let him pray for her. That night Clara was awakened by a shaking sensation; she felt as if two hands were pressing her stomach and shaking her body. She thought at first it was her husband, but when she

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opened her eyes he was sound asleep, and there was no one else in the room. She then felt as though she was being covered by a warm blanket, and, comfortable and drowsy, she went back to sleep. The next day her pain had disappeared and has not recurred since. Clara asserted she had been happy and peaceful ever since she converted. Like other church members, she read and followed the Bible because "It says how to act, how to dress, and even how one should walk to please God." She did not indulge in "worldly pleasures, because that only brings temporal joy." Instead, she and her husband were involved in their church. They got joy out of religion, she explained, and it helped them to cope with life's problems. Now, whenever she had a problem, she just prayed and put herself "in God's hands," and "He" solved it for her. For example, when she was required to work one Saturday, Clara was upset because that was the day she dedicated to being at home, doing household projects with her family. When she finally arrived home, she asked her family to pray with her so that she would not have to work on Saturday again. When she next returned to the supermarket, she discovered that her work schedule had been changed, and she was not assigned Saturday work after that. Alba was born and raised in an urban neighborhood in Colombia and was baptized a Roman Catholic. As a child she went to church alone; her parents sent her, but they never attended. Alba did not enjoy church and did not trust the priests, who, she explained, "do not practice what they preach." She stopped going while still a teenager. After completing elementary school, she began working. She soon met her husband, also a nonpracticing Catholic, and they were married in a Catholic ceremony. Not long afterward her new sister-in-law, a Protestant, began talking to her about her Evangelica faith and convinced Alba to visit her church. She liked it, and in 1968 she converted. Her brother had also converted from Catholicism to Pentecostalism. Her mother, however, remained a Catholic. So did Alba's husband, who had left Colombia for the United States in 1967. He came on a tourist visa, immediately embraced the American way of life, and decided to stay. Alba and their three children came a year later, after her Protestant conversion, and for three years she lived in New York with her husband. She then returned to Colombia, where she stayed for two years until her husband came looking for her. She came back to the United States with him and, on her own, eventually joined a Pentecostal church in Corona. Alba and her husband have experienced marital difficulties. Economically, he did not contribute as much to the household as he could have, in her view because he spent too much on alcohol. Since her salary was insufficient to support her family, Alba had encountered much financial

Protestant Churches

hardship in raising their six children. The three older ones had finished high school, found work, and were taking computer courses at a business school. The three younger ones had been born in New York; two were in high school and the youngest in elementary school. Now that the older children were helping with household expenses, Alba managed more easily. A factory worker like her husband, Alba was a permanent resident, but neither she nor he spoke English well. While Alba attributed their difficulties to her husband's drinking, he blamed her Pentecostalism, claiming that he drank because she spent all her free time at the church, and he was left alone. Alba remained adamant that his alcoholism had nothing to do with her churchgoing, and her children took her side. Her eldest son was also a baptized Pentecostal and attended church with her and her three youngest children. Two of the teenagers, however, had not yet been baptized, and her other two adult children did not practice any religion, although they did accompany her to church occasionally. Alba stated that she did not want to push her children to attend; she tried to teach them, but as they grew up they had to decide for themselves. Alba found peace and joy at church, and her problems at home seemed unimportant there. She enjoyed friendship and understanding from fellow church members who prayed for and with her. She said she was content because she left all her problems "in God's hands." Alba was a very active member, attending services every day but Monday, when the church was closed. Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Juan 3:16

Clara and Alba's church, Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Juan 3:16/Christian Church John 3:16, Assemblies of God, as its bilingual signboard read, blended in with the other buildings on its block in Corona Plaza. Not designed as a church, it hardly looked like one from the outside. The church had bought its one-story brick building from a white American Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter and made renovations to fit its needs. The front door, on the sidewalk level, opened into a small hallway. At the end of the hallway a few steps led up to the main floor, which contained a large room used for worship and a smaller room housing the pastor's office. Although the room used for services was spacious, it did not resemble a usual church sanctuary. The altar was strikingly plain, with chairs placed by its sides. Rows of folding chairs faced it. To the left, stairs went down to the basement restrooms, kitchen, and large cafeteria, where meals and refreshments were served. A married couple was in charge of the cafeteria, and on Sundays volunteer female church members cooked

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Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Juan 3:16

a full midday meal sold at three dollars a plate, the proceeds going to the church's mission program. Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Juan 3:16 was a Spanish-language congregation. Its pastor, Herman Taucan, a Chilean, did not speak English. He explained that he had never felt pressed to learn English because he

Protestant Churches had always worked with Spanish-speaking congregations, following in the footsteps of his father, who was also a Pentecostal minister. The church was administered by the pastor, a secretary, and an administrative council elected by the congregation. The lay leadership included deacons and the board members of each of the church's organizations. There was also a committee for planning church trips, and another for organizing its annual parade and parade-queen contest. The congregation comprised 106 registered members, most of them women. They were mainly Colombian, Dominican, and Puerto Rican, but there were also members from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, Cuba, and El Salvador. About 70 percent of the church's members lived in Corona, and the rest in Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Astoria, Flushing, Jamaica, and other Queens neighborhoods. Like Clara and Alba, most members had converted from Catholicism, some in their homelands and others in New York. According to Taucan, Colombians usually converted here, while Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Salvadorans tended to become Pentecostals in their own countries. The reasons for conversion varied. Some testified to personal religious experiences; others stated they they had been introduced to Pentecostalism by a relative or teacher. A male member explained that he had been curious about Evangelicos, and "wanted to know if they preached and followed God's words according to the Bible." He had attended a Pentecostal service that he saw advertised on television, and was convinced to join while listening to the preacher. One woman said she has been raised as a "Christian" because her parents had converted to Pentecostalism when she was three years old, and felt lucky because she knew she was "saved." Reverend Taucan described his congregation as "middle class"; most congregants, he said, had come to the United States looking for economic improvement. There were "no rich people," but his members were upwardly mobile: they bought their own homes and prospered economically because "they do not waste money on vice." The pastor, however, admitted that some members experienced downward mobility after arrival because they did not speak English. Most congregants, in fact, were factory workers; others worked in supermarkets, and a few did office work. Few members' educations extended beyond high school, and many had attained only elementary or junior high school levels. Most did not speak English, and only a handful felt fluent with it. These Latino Pentecostals all wanted their children to "do better" than they did, and urged them to "study to get a good-paying job." Their major concern as parents was the "moral dangers" to which children were exposed in this society,

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and they hoped that their children would be "saved through the church." As one man put it, "[In church] they are kept from being contaminated by the worldly things." He added that his twenty-year-old son "is happy to be Protestant because he keeps himself pure," and stated proudly, "My son does not smoke or drink." The congregants truly saw their church as a shelter from the evils of society. Participation in the church's services and programs kept them removed from the outside world and in touch with those who spoke their language and shared their concerns, hopes, and needs. In this way, they indeed remained safe. Pentecostal Church Activities

Each week, every member of Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Juan 3:16 studied the same lesson explaining a Bible passage, as did members of all Assembly of God churches worldwide. (Although all congregations shared this Bible lesson, each church's liturgy was independently organized by its pastor.) Sunday Bible classes were conducted from 11:30 A.M. to 1:30 P.M., with adult students divided by sex into two women's groups and one men's group. Younger members were separated by age, with groups for children, teenagers, and young adults. After Bible classes most members went downstairs to the cafeteria to purchase their midday meal and eat together. This was a time when people conversed, exchanged information, made plans for future church events, recollected past activities, and enjoyed one another's company. After lunch, members of the missionary ministry preached to people on the streets of Corona. Others remained in the church until Sunday evening worship. The main weekly service was conducted on Sunday evening from six to eight or even later. The service had a flexible structure that allowed for spontaneity. It began with readings from the Old and New Testaments and included a Welcoming Ceremony during which the pastor introduced visitors and members walked around the church hugging, kissing, and warmly greeting one another. Prayers followed. They included recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and prayers led by Reverend Taucan to which people responded with "Alleluia," 'Thanks be to God," or "Amen." Some people prayed in loud voices, and others in tongues (unintelligible utterances considered a gift from God). Congregation members prayed kneeling with their backs to the altar, and clinging with their hands to their chair seats. Guitar and tambourine music was played during the service, and the accompanying singing was loud, rhythmic, and cheerful. People moved their bodies and clapped their hands to the rhythms. The Sunday service also provided ample opportunity for people to come forward to offer

Protestant Churches personal testimonies in the form of ordinary speech, song, poetry, or the playing of musical instruments. At one service several women sang songs, one recited a poem, and a man played the guitar. He had prayed to God for the gift of learning this instrument, promising that if he succeeded he would play only for God. Now he played "to the glory of God" in church, thus fulfilling his promise. The weekly collection came next. Members tithed 10 percent of their incomes to the church. In addition, many also gave regular amounts toward reconstruction of the church building or for mission work or charitable contributions for poor children in Central America. A key part of the Sunday service was the sermon, usually offered by Taucan. One Sunday, however, a guest minister from Venezuela preached in a loud, agitated style, trying to persuade people to approach the altar to acknowledge and repent their sins publicly. One woman came to the altar and began to cry, almost hysterically, as the minister prayed and laid his hands on her. Others followed, but more quietly. A santa cena, or communion ritual, was offered once a month but was closed to guests; only baptized Pentecostals could partake. The church conducted additional services during the week. Each of the church's societies had an assigned evening when it hosted a prayer service: the Gentlemen's Society on Thursday, the Ladies' Society on Friday, and the Youth Society on Saturday. These events were open to all church members, and each society kept a record of people attending. The church sponsored a Tuesday night prayer service, and another prayer service on the first Wednesday of each month. It also conducted a monthly retreat and several all-night vigils during the year. The vigils, lasting from ten to six, consisted of continuous prayer, singing, preaching, and testimonies by members. The church's other activities included an Instituto Biblico, or religious education program, offering courses in Pentecostal theology, Bible interpretation, Spanish grammar, and English. This program was conducted one day a week for students and another for teachers. Reverend Taucan was the institute's principal. He also hosted a radio program on which church members presented oral testimonies of their faith. At the church he counseled people on an individual basis and referred those with immigration problems to lawyers. Announcements were made when a particular member needed housing or employment, and members who knew of an apartment for rent or an available job provided information to those in need. Once a month the pastor and church officials met with the youth group over dinner to talk about their problems and concerns and to offer advice. Among the social activities for members was a yearly picnic to Bear

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Mountain in upstate New York or to a state park in New Jersey. A travel committee decided on the place and travel arrangements, and each church family or member brought food. The annual parade through Corona was organized to bring attention to the church. For this event, the congregation conducted a contest to elect a girl from the church to be crowned as queen, with runners-up designated as princesses. The church also sponsored flea markets to raise additional funds for missionaries and charitable causes. The members celebrated New Year's Eve with a prayer service from six until midnight, at which time all present descended to the cafeteria to eat together, talk, and sing until three in the morning. There was also an annual dinner to celebrate Taucan's birthday. Members participated in the busy round of church activities according to their work schedules. Some worked at nights and on weekends. Many members, like Alba, were so involved in church that they had no time to socialize elsewhere. In the church they found "sisters" and "brothers," security and emotional support, an opportunity to participate in evangelization drives and other activities, and personal recognition and appreciation from others. Corona's Methodist Converts

Amalia was from Puerto Rico. She was baptized a Roman Catholic, but her parents never practiced the faith. As a child she attended church by herself and was an active parishioner, eventually becoming a Sunday school teacher. She completed high school but graduated before the legal age to enter university and could not accept the university scholarship she had won. When she did reach the legal age, her parents could not afford tuition costs, and she began working in a sewing factory. She married in Puerto Rico, and although her husband was Methodist she continued attending Catholic church. During the 1950s he moved to New York to be closer to relatives living there, and Amalia joined him two years later. After arriving she lived with her husband's family and began attending their Methodist church in Corona Plaza. She liked its service and approach to Bible study and realized she felt closer to God in the Methodist faith than in her former church. She converted, and all three of her children were raised as Methodists. Now adults, two were married, and one was a college graduate and another a college student. Amalia worked full-time in a store and was a lay leader in her church. Juana was from a city in Ecuador and had been born into a Roman Catholic family. Her mother died when she was an infant, and her father some years later. She remembered going to church with her father and sister when she was small, and she continued attending masses with her

Protestant Churches godmother after her father died. Later she went to live with an aunt, where she did much of the housework and had little time for any outside activity. She recalled sitting on her bed and looking out the window at a dance club where people went on weekends, and wishing she was there. She went to high school for three years and then dropped out. During the years at her aunt's house she attended early morning mass every Sunday. When Juana left high school, her cousin, a Protestant minister, found her a job as a teacher in a rural area. There she lived with him and his wife, attended his church, and was happy. After returning to her aunt's house, she went to either Catholic or Protestant services according to her work schedule. She said she did not care then which church she attended; she just wanted to be close to God. Her marriage to a Roman Catholic man produced a son but ended in divorce, and Juana and her son moved back to her aunt's house. She could not live comfortably there, however, and decided to immigrate to New York, where an older cousin told Juana she had room for her. Juana arrived in the 1970s to settle in the United States before sending for her son, and found a job in a sewing factory. She attended a Catholic church, but when her son arrived he did not like it. He told her he preferred an Evangelica church like the one he was used to in Ecuador. To satisfy him, they began attending the Corona Union Evangelical Church, an American Protestant church in Corona Plaza that offered a Spanish service. When that church's American pastor died, however, his successor objected to the Latino music, people, and cooking odors, and the Spanish service was canceled. The Colombian minister of the Spanish group then secured a location for worship at a church in Flushing, and for a while he drove to Corona to pick up his members and take them there. Eventually he was reassigned to a church upstate, and the Spanish service was discontinued. At this point Juana heard about a Spanish-language Methodist church in Corona Plaza. She visited, and felt comfortable immediately. She started going regularly, sent her son to its Sunday school, and attended adult Bible classes herself. She decided to convert, was baptized, and became an active member. Her son eventually stopped attending but wanted his children to be raised as Protestants, so Juana took her grandchildren to church with her, and her daughter-in-law, a nonpracticing Catholic, also visited the church occasionally. Juana believed it did not matter what church one belonged to as long as one felt close to Christ. She now preferred her Methodist church because there members "get to know each other" and the church "is like a family." Lucy was a single, professionally employed woman in her early forties.

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Hispanas de Queens Born in urban Puerto Rico, she was raised a Catholic, although for a few years she attended a Protestant elementary school. After sixth grade she transferred to a Catholic school where she remained through high school graduation. She attended university but did not graduate. Confused about her studies and her life, she came to New York in the mid-197os to visit a relative. She worked at several jobs in New York before completing her bachelor's degree, but after some years decided to return to Puerto Rico. There she again tried various jobs, including a business venture that failed. Then she decided to live permanently in New York. She found a job as a counselor and returned to school for a master's degree. At the time of her interviews, she was completing a second master's. Lucy had stopped attending Catholic church when she was a teenager. While she was trying out different jobs, however, she also searched for a spiritual fulfillment that had been missing in the Catholic church. In the late 1970s a friend invited her to visit the Corona Methodist church, but although she liked it she did not return at that time. Still searching, she visited different churches and for short periods became involved with Scientology and Vincent Peale's Positive Thinking. Finally she returned to the Methodist church and eventually became a member. She was still learning about her new religion, but already found in it the energy for work and personal needs she had been seeking. The church brought her peace, she said, and had become her "calling": an interest that everyone developed at some point in life, and that she was experiencing now. La Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida de Corona

The First United Methodist Church of Corona has had three lives. Its first congregation was organized in 188o and, after acquiring a site and raising construction funds, dedicated its church building in 1886. Its white American congregation flourished for several decades but declined as Corona's population changed, disbanding in 1935. Six years later an Italian Methodist minister began rebuilding the church by hand, and his immigrant Italian congregation grew to 150 before it also disbanded when he retired and returned to Italy in 1957 (Seyfried 1987, 40, 96). The building was then used as a sewing factory until1964, when a group of Dominican and Puerto Rican Protestant women began to evangelize in Corona Plaza's subway station and streets, and a few months later participated in the first Spanish-language service at the reopened and renamed La Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida de Corona, now pastared by Reverend Juan Sosa, a Cuban. La Primera Iglesia Metodista retained the appearance of a country

Protestant Churches

La Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida de Corona

church, with its white-brick-faced building and steeple surrounded by a picket fence, well-kept lawn, and parsonage next door. The school building in back was used for nursery and kindergarten classes during the school year and for a youth program during the summer. A signboard in front listed its weekly schedule of services, all of which were conducted in Spanish, as were its other religious and social activities. A second signboard identified the Korean Methodist congregation, which since the late 1g8os has shared space with La Primera Iglesia Metodista, using the main sanctuary for its Sunday afternoon service. The church's fourth and longest-serving Spanish-speaking pastor was Reverend Dilca Lebr6n-Mazariego, who arrived at age thirty-seven in 1985. Born in Puerto Rico, she completed her bachelor's degree and three years of divinity studies there. In 1977 she came as an exchange student to the University of Pennsylvania, where she finished her master's degree in divinity, then enrolled in a master's program in theology in New York City. She received her first call from a Methodist congregation in the Bronx. Her husband was Salvadoran. The congregation of La Primera Iglesia Metodista was overwhelmingly immigrant and 8o percent female. Its 150 members came from nearly every country in Latin America, and most were between thirty and sixty years of age . The majority lived in Corona, Elmhurst, or other Queens neighborhoods. One member lived in Brooklyn, where he could

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Hispanas de Queens not find a Protestant congregation that he liked, and was recruited to La Primera Iglesia Metodista by one of its former ministers. Another member moved to New Jersey to be closer to her brother but continued to attend La Primera Iglesia Metodista. Church members addressed one another as hermano y hermana, brother and sister. Each was encouraged by the pastor to serve on at least one of the church committees, which included stewardship, finance, liturgy, and Christian doctrine. All committees were chaired by a member of the thirty-person administrative council responsible for the church's host of religious, social, and community activities. Twenty-two of the council members were female. Lebr6n-Mazariego described her congregation as "lower-middle class." A majority had at least some secondary education, and occupations ranged from blue-collar workers and retirees, including several Corona homeowners who worked in the garment industry, to self-employed business owners, and to college-educated teachers, technicians, doctors, and social workers. (In the mid-1g8os annual incomes ranged from under $12,000 to more than $so,ooo.) An upwardly-mobile ethos permeated the congregation. Most young adults were in college, and children were encouraged to pursue higher education. At one Sunday service each year, Lebr6n-Mazariego called forward all students who had graduated from any level of study, identified each by name, and presented certificates and congratulations from the pastor and congregation. Most members had converted from Roman Catholicism, but few had been practicing Catholics at the time. Some had converted in their home countries, but most had done so in New York. Many explained that they liked this church more than their former Roman Catholic churches, and preferred the way Methodists worshiped and studied the Bible. Many of these converts had been introduced to La Primera Iglesia Metodista by other members, including friends, as in Lucy's case, or relatives. Some had married Methodists and then converted, like Amalia. Others had become involved through their children, whom they sent to the church with neighbors or relatives or enrolled in one of La Primera Iglesia Metodista's programs; eventually the parents had come to church to please their children or to watch them participate in a ceremony, and joined themselves. One young woman had begun attending La Primera Metodista with a relative when she was seven. Later she brought her parents and brother, all of whom joined the church. Still other members had already been Protestant and selected this church after moving to Queens. Finally, a few congregants had been born and raised Methodist. One of them asserted proudly that his children were the fourth generation of Methodists in his family.

Protestant Churches Sunday at La Primera Iglesia Metodista

The life of the church centered on the Sunday morning religious service, or culto, and the Bible classes and "Fraternal Hour" that followed. Church doors opened at g:3o A.M. for "silent prayer." During this halfhour, soft religious music was played on the organ. People arrived quietly and either sat in the wooden pews, where they conversed, or knelt at the altar in prayer. Promptly at 10:00 A.M. the pastor and the lector of the day walked up the center aisle to the altar to begin the culto. The service started with the "calling," a reading from the Methodist book of service. This was followed by a traditional hymn with solemn organ accompaniment, a reading from the Old Testament, and the "period of meditation," during which the pastor offered a topical prayerfor healing, repentance of sins, moral values, religious freedom, peace and justice in the world, or special commitments to God, the church, the hungry, or the homeless-and asked those who sought God's help for these specific concerns to join her at the altar. Recitation of the Lord's Prayer followed. After this portion of the service a moment of release arrived-the singing of short, cheerful Spanish songs, or coritos, which everyone obviously enjoyed. The church member leading the singing often asked the congregation to suggest their favorite coritos. People sang vigorously, clapping their hands and moving to the rhythms of drums, piano, and an occasional tambourine. Next the pastor announced the events of the day and the coming week and welcomed visitors, who were asked to stand and introduce themselves or be introduced by the person who had brought them. A welcoming song composed by a church member followed. People now greeted those around them, and the pastor and lector walked up and down the aisle to greet everyone present. Many congregants also left their seats and with open spontaneity circulated through the pews hugging, kissing, conducting brief conversations with friends and members, and warmly welcoming visitors. At this point awards might be given, artistic offerings presented by children on Mother's or Father's Day, and new babies introduced to the congregation. A traditional Methodist hymn restored a serious mood, and a New Testament passage was read. This was followed by the pastor's sermon. Lebr6n-Mazariego's sermons always made reference to the morning's Old and New Testament readings and included a social as well as personal message. She openly addressed such topics as feminism, ethnic identity, racism, poverty, crime, and drug use, all from a Christian point of view. After the murder of a black man by a gang of white residents in Howard Beach, Queens (see Sanjek 1998, 147), she read a letter from

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Hispanas de Queens the United Methodist Church New York Conference condemning the incident. She also urged members to be good stewards of nature, of others, and of themselves. She asked congregants to save and give away clothing and furniture in good condition, and to love "our brothers and sisters" with the same intensity as we love ourselves. We love ourselves, she added, by taking care of our bodies, minds, emotions, and souls, and doing so is a fundamental commandment of God. The sermon was followed by collection of the offering, with church members using prepared envelopes. Members of La Primera Iglesia Metodista were expected to tithe 10 percent of annual earnings to the church, and most followed this biblical rule. After a final hymn, the service ended with a pastoral benediction. Once a month a "Holy Supper" communion ritual was conducted. The minister blessed and distributed bread and wine to the entire congregation, including visitors, as a symbol of Christ's body and blood and in commemoration of his last supper with his apostles. When the service was over, the congregants separated into nine smaller Bible classes. Children were grouped according to age, as were the teenage and young adult classes. Adults were separated by sex, with a men's class taught by a woman, and two women's classes taught by a man and a woman. A co-ed class for prospective members conducted by the pastor covered the doctrines of the United Methodist Church and the responsibilities of membership in La Primera Iglesia Metodista. The Bible classes consisted of reading and then discussing a biblical passage assigned for study the week before. The Bible was interpreted literally, and Methodist beliefs and ethics were stressed by instructors. In one Sunday class an instructor talked about the "good wife's" duties to her husband, which came second only to her duties to the church. Members were advised to marry within the Methodist faith because only other "Christians" understood and would share the time and work a spouse must dedicate to the church. Another class condemned "idolatry," including the Roman Catholic practice of praying before images of saints, and the instructor emphasized that keeping such images in the home was a sin. One woman admitted she kept a religious image for sentimental reasons because a close friend had given it to her. She was criticized for this by students and the instructor, and urged to discard it. The woman was upset and withdrew from defending herself. Before finishing Bible classes, another offering was collected. Then summaries of the day's lesson were given by each adult student, and one of them volunteered to make a presentation for his or her class to the whole congregation, which reassembled in the church sanctuary. Here, after more coritos, the youngest children's group presented a simple religious passage, with each child repeating a phrase of it. The two older

Protestant Churches children's groups read aloud the Bible passage they had studied in Spanish and English, with the boys reading in one language and the girls in the other. (This was the only occasion when English was heard in the church.) The teenage and young adult groups seemed never to arrive back in time to present their lesson, and were frequently criticized for this by some adult church members. After all classes had made their presentations, people celebrating birthdays, those with good news to share, or those who wanted to thank God for blessings walked to the altar, where they stood in line facing the congregation and, one by one, gave "thanks to the Lord." While speaking, each person contributed one more offering. The Bible class ended with a song of congratulation to those celebrating birthdays and a song of thanks. Next people went downstairs for the "Fraternal Hour." Here refreshments were offered by a different church member each week, and varied according to that person's taste or customs. There might be Italian bread and butter, bread and cheese, ham and cheese sandwiches, cookies, cakes, or buiiuelos (Spanish fritters), with cafe con leche (coffee and boiled milk), tea, soda, or juice. After receiving their snack, people sat at tables to socialize and exchange information about jobs, babysitters, tutors, apartments, or houses for sale. Some announced their needs, and others might know of job openings or apartments to rent or share. Some members also displayed and sold merchandise, including clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, and handicrafts. During this hour people also shared information about sick church members, those mourning the death of a loved one, or those with personal problems. Some made plans to visit, perhaps bringing that day's altar flowers; others gave hospital or home telephone numbers and addresses to people who planned to call or visit. Invitations and plans for events and outings were also announced, and one could always hear gossip about parties, showers, or weddings. Father's and Mother's Day and the pastor's birthday were also celebrated at the Fraternal Hour. Mostly, however, it was a time to relax and enjoy fellow church members' company and comradeship. Marta, a new member who had emigrated from Guatemala five years earlier, loved the church because there she found "a family" and learned to live at "her best." Liria, an Uruguayan, said she felt that she had rediscovered the warmth of her own country in this strange land through the love of her church friends. Methodist Church Activities

In addition to its Sunday program, La Primera Iglesia Metodista offered religious and social activities for its members. An evening prayer service, including personal testimonies and the singing of coritos, was conducted

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Reverend Dilca Lebr6n-Mazariego addresses the audience at the Raices Senior Citizens Center during a Mother's Day celebration in 1992. Courtesy of Raices Senior Citizens Center Archives.

at the church on the first Monday of each month, and at a different member's home on other Monday nights. After the home services, people remained to socialize and enjoy refreshments prepared by the hostess. On Wednesday evenings an advanced Bible study class led by Reverend Lebr6n-Mazariego met at the church. There were also associations for women, men, youth, single adults, and married couples, each of which sponsored dinners, theater nights, picnics, or fundraising events. During the Christmas season the choir presented a "Cantata" concert of Christmas music. In the summer the whole congregation traveled to upstate New York for a weekend camping retreat of prayer, workshops, and religious instruction, and members usually returned with new ideas to try out in their church. One such activity, "the game of the loyal friend," was designed to develop new friendships among congregation members. Each participant received the name, address, and phone number of another member, assigned randomly. The "loyal friend" then sent notes and small gifts or phoned the assigned friend, but without giving her or his name. After a few weeks all the participants met at the church, where the name of each "loyal friend" was revealed. The church sponsored several social service programs for members and nonmembers alike. Its nursery school and kindergarten were created in the early 1970s by La Primera Iglesia Metodista's first Spanish-

Protestant Churches speaking minister, and its director was a Puerto Rican woman. The purpose was not only to teach Protestant religious values, but also, with no formal day care available in Corona, to help Latina working mothers. As one church member explained, "If we did not offer a day-care center, many parents would be worried about where to leave their small children." A summer program for school-age children was also offered by the church. In 1g88 the fifteen participants were of several Latin American nationalities. The program's theme that year was "peace with justice"; children were taught peace songs, heard lessons on racial and economic equality, and expressed what they learned in plays, painting, and arts and crafts. There was also a weekday senior citizens' center run by the church for both Latino and Italian Corona elders (see Chapter 7). Several times each year the missionary committee collected items for a giveaway on the church lawn, and Corona residents were invited to take whatever they wanted. Early on a Saturday morning in 1987 church members began to move furniture, kitchen and household appliances, and clothing from the church garage to tables and racks in the churchyard. Women from the neighborhood then entered to pick through these articles. Most of the women were Latinas, but several Chinese women selected clothes and children's books, and an Indian woman took plates and a cooking pan. Church members also donated food to a free pantry open to needy local residents. In addition, there was a fund to help church members who lost their jobs, faced large health-care costs, or suffered other financial difficulty. The church's Committee on Social Issues met monthly to identify community needs and plan activities, including public forums on alcoholism, drug addiction, assistance to undocumented immigrants, and domestic violence. It also undertook a campaign to educate church members about SIDA, or AIDS, and formed a subcommittee to visit Spanish-speaking persons with AIDS. At the Corona Branch Library the church's nursery school cosponsored a "Preventing Sexual Abuse of Children" night with the Queens Borough Public Library New Americans Project; this included a forum and private consultations with a Spanishspeaking counselor from the Victims Services Agency, and a concurrent film and storytelling program for children. Reverend Lebr6n-Mazariego herself counseled single and married church members, and also persons with drug or alcohol problems, including non-Methodists. Through various committees, members participated in planning and running their church's activities, and many admitted recovering a sense of belonging, responsibility, and identity they had lost when they moved to a new society. La Primera Iglesia Metodista members were conscious of their immigrant status and were ready to adopt American ways to cope

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Hispanas de Queens and prosper in their "foster country," but they also desired to keep their language and cultural traditions alive. Many maintained close ties with their home countries, where some had purchased land and homes with the intention of returning someday. Meanwhile, they used the church to maintain their traditions and language and pass them on to their children. Each year an "International Dinner" celebrated the church's Latino panethnicity. Members formed groups according to nationality, and each organized a presentation of posters, photographs, arts and crafts, or music and prepared typical foods from their home country. Here, as at other church events, the rice might be cooked Puerto Rican style with guandules, Guatemalan taquitos and enchiladas might be served, and the cake might be Dominican. In addition, the church sponsored concerts of different types of Latin American music; on one evening, for example, a group of Peruvian musicians played music from the Andes. Reverend Lebr6n-Mazariego was conscious of the diversity represented within her congregation. This included not only a score of nationalities but also several mixed marriages-Dominican-Nicaraguan, Dominican-Guatemalan, Cuban-Puerto Rican, and her own Puerto Rican-Salvadoran marriage. When speaking in church gatherings, she explained, one had to be careful because what was a harmless Spanish word in one country might have an offensive meaning in another. Moreover, as a Puerto Rican, she easily joked and laughed "like others from the Caribbean." While fighting raged in Central America during the 1g8os, however, she noted a somber demeanor among some of her congregants. As one Salvadoran told her, "With the war at home-not knowing what is happening to family members who have to live with a gun always ready-we cannot easily joke and laugh." She instructed her members to be proud of their Latin American roots and Spanish language. In one sermon she acknowledged that many Latino children suffered from an identity crisis because they were growing up in a society that did not recognize them as part of it. When they reached the stage of discovering that they were not norteamericanos, they might reject their own ethnic background. One can speak English with no accent, she said, "but our last names always identify us as Latin Americans." If parents did not encourage their children to speak Spanish and be proud of a culture as rich as that of North America, she added, they might become ashamed of their background. She urged all congregants to teach their children both languages, and to talk to them about their home countries. She closed by saying, "We have to thank God for our ancestors, and for making us wise enough to be bilinguals." Members of La Primera Iglesia Metodista also discussed instances of

Protestant Churches prejudice or discrimination they themselves encountered as Latinos. One Puerto Rican woman, a teacher, recounted that "the principal of my [junior high] school is the only bilingual principal in the borough of Queens. She is Dominican and has two Ph.D. degrees, one in linguistics and the other in reading. Look, few people have that [much education]. She also has experience in both administration and curriculum techniques." Following her appointment, however, the principal was "boycotted by the white school staff." She was able to assert her authority as principal only with the support of black and Latino staff and the community. "This woman is part of the condition of discrimation that has existed in the United States. Look, discrimination in her case is double. She is discriminated against because she is Spanish-speaking, but also because she is a woman." And that may not have been all. As the teacher added, "We are mixed; at least Puerto Rico has a mixture of races that is the same as [Dominicans]. We have the Spanish, the African, and the indigenous elements. These are the three basic elements of our culture. So why do North Americans feel threatened by us? It is something inexplicable .... Currently you go to certain places, and they see you are a little dark, and they deny you entrance. I am not against North Americans. There are good people here. What I resent is that our people have been marginalized." Churches, Latino Panethnicity, and Class

Like the two Catholic churches in Corona, Protestant congregations were sites where Latin Americans of diverse nationalities met, mixed, and worshiped together. The Latino panethnicity that emerged was both experiential and institutional, although the purposes that brought people together were religious. People relied on one another for spiritual support and comradeship and also exchanged practical information about jobs, housing, and other matters. The same kinds of exchanges occurred through networks involving clergy and laity in Roman Catholic churches. People's consciousness of being Latinos or Hispanics arose not only from the Spanish language shared by these congregations but also from firsthand experience of prejudice and discrimination in the wider social environment and, for the Catholics, from their treatment by white American clergy or fellow parishioners. In the Protestant churches, class differences among Queens Latinos were evident. The Pentecostal congregation was primarily working class with modest levels of education, while the Methodist congregation ranged from working class to upper-middle class in terms of occupations and educational levels. Moreover, as individuals moved or became more

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Hispanas de Queens successful economically, they might "climb up" the Protestant denominational ladder. Five Methodists or Presbyterians among those Danta interviewed had earlier been Pentecostals, but no Pentecostals had previously belonged to any established Protestant denominations (Danta 1g8ga, 128-130). (These patterns were similar to those among the memberships of Protestant churches in Latin America [Read, Monterroso, and Johnson 1g6g, 234].) Finally, churches could be bridges to the wider, non-Latino multiethnic community. This was not the case at Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Juan 3:16, where the philosophy was to worship God inside the temple and, when outside, to spread the gospel. But it was the case at the other three churches. At La Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida de Corona, interaction occurred through its various community service programs. At St. Leo's, Latino parishioners shared their church with Italians who were active in block and civic associations, Community Board 4, and the Democratic party (Sanjek 1998). At Our Lady of Sorrows, parishioners were in touch with Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens and the local police precinct, and one of them, Ana Lopez, head of the Father Billini Association, had herself built connections into Queens civic politics (see Chapter 8). Her activities and those of other Latin American women organizers and activists are the subject of Part II.

PART II

Female Leadership and Institutional Latino Panethnicity

6

Introducing Latino Organizations in Queens

I

n 1986 Mayor Edward Koch's Commission on Hispanic Concerns held its Queens hearings in Jackson Heights. (On the background and report of the commission, see Sanjek 1998, 148-149·) Twenty-three persons testified, among them Queens Borough President Claire Shulman and fifteen Latinos involved in Queens organizations or political activities, eight of whom were female and seven male. The men included three representatives of the Comite Cfvico Ecuatoriano who were concerned about official permission for an upcoming Ecuadoran parade in Jackson Heights. The others were Rene Rodriguez of the Interamerican College of Physicians, who spoke about Spanish-language staffing and services at Elmhurst Hospital; Dino Dominguez (Ecuadoran) of the New York Hispanic Soccer League; Pedro Monge (Cuban), representing United Latin Americans of Queens, a political organization; and George Ortiz (Puerto Rican), assistant counsel and Hispanic Affairs adviser to Borough President Shulman, who addressed housing, job training, and translation issues and announced that a "Hispanic Village" was being planned for the 1986 Queens Festival in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Three of the women who spoke, like the Ecuadoran men, represented single-nationality Latino organizations. One represented the Peruvian American Council of Goodwill, another the Casa Social Cultural Ecuatoriana de Nueva York. The third, Alice Cardona, represented the National Council of Puerto Rican Women; she added that she worked for New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and she called attention to a long list of studies on the educational needs of Latino youth and the many recommendations that had never been implemented. "Borough presidents [are] ignoring us. They don't want to talk to the Hispanic community." The theme of neglect by elected officials was also raised by Haydee Zambrana (Puerto Rican), executive director of Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens/Concerned Citizens of Queens, a social service agency serv-

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ing all Latinos. She emphasized as well that Latin American legal residents in Queens were applying for citizenship "like never before," and her agency was submitting sixty to eighty citizenship applications each week. Applicants, however, had to wait one year for an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) interview, and women were frequently harassed with questions of whether they were "prostitutes or 'Do you deal in drugs?'" She called on the mayor to exert pressure on the INS for better treatment of Hispanics. Ana Lopez (Dominican), director of the Asociaci6n Benefica Cultural Padre Billini youth program at Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church, also testified. She mentioned that she had been a member of Elmhurst Hospital's Community Advisory Board for three years and that six other members, including the president, were also Latino. She admitted that translation was a major problem, but pointed to the hospital's Language Bank program utilizing volunteer translators. She added that the board had asked for more Latino professional staff. The other three Latinas worked for Democratic elected officials. Grissel Sepulveda (Puerto Rican), aide to a white American state assembly member from Manhattan, discussed drug and school dropout problems and recommended more corporate and business opportunties for Hispanic student interns, with mentoring by adults "of the same ethnic background." Fior D'Aliza Rodriguez (Dominican), a New York State Democratic Committee member, spoke on behalf of State Assemblymember Helen Marshall, an African American, who was away in Albany. She mentioned school crowding and housing as serious problems, but praised as "benefits to the neighborhood" the many Hispanic merchants who had renovated shopping strips in Corona, which Marshall represented, and the Latino panethnic Ollantay Center for the Arts in Jackson Heights. Aida Gonzalez (Ecuadoran), director of cultural affairs at Queens Borough Hall, explained that she and Ortiz had been appointed a year earlier by Borough President Donald Manes because of "new sensitivity'' toward the growing Latin American population in Queens. "And with Concerned Citizens of Queens, and Mrs. Zambrana pressuring, Hispanics were added to the community boards in unprecedented numbers this year." The associations and leaders appearing at this hearing reflected Latino organizational life in Queens during the 1g8os and 1ggos. Both single-nationality associations and Latino panethnic groups existed, and women were prominent in their organizational activities, several holding positions as directors of agencies and programs or working for elected government officials. In the next three chapters we explore this world of organizations, paying attention primarily to Latino panethnic activities

Introducing Latino Organizations in Queens and the roles of women leaders. (On Latino single-nationality associations and male leaders in Queens, see Janes-Correa 1gg8.) Latina Leaders in Queens

Unlike the mainly working-class Latino residents of Corona, many of the women involved in Queens Latino institutional life were of a middleclass background and education, and tended to be long-term and wellestablished residents of New York City. Several had begun their activism in single-nationality immigrant associations-whether Dominican, Ecuadoran, or Colombian-and then moved into overtly Latino panethnic social service, cultural, and political organizations. From 1986 through 1988 Ricourt interviewed seventeen of these Latina middle-class women, most of them organization leaders. In addition, we followed the careers of several of them, as well as other female and male Latin American leaders in Queens, throughout the 1ggos. Five of these women were Puerto Rican, four Colombian, two Cuban, two Ecuadoran, two Honduran, one Dominican, and one Nicaraguan. Ten had arrived in the mainland United States in the 1g6os, the rest in the 1970s. All were between ages thirty-six and forty-five when we first met them. As a group, they were well educated. One was an M.D., thirteen had master's degrees, and only three had not completed college. They worked as school district evaluators and teachers (six), Queens Borough Hall and New York State political appointees (four), organization executive directors (two), doctor, civil servant, social worker, journalist, and pastor. Ten of the women were divorced or separated, and two were single; all of these were heads of their own households. Eleven of these twelve women had children, half of them younger children who lived with them, and half older children, some of whom now lived on their own. Of the five married women, two had children, and two did not. Thus family and children's needs were part of the experience of most, in addition to their careers and organizational activities. The migration histories of these women were often different from those of working-class Corona women. Aida Gonzalez, for example, differentiated herself from the majority of Latin American immigrants who had come to the United States seeking a better life. She had completed high school and two years at a business college in Ecuador when she was selected to participate in an international conference on development issues; because Peru withdrew, however, the conference was canceled. Nonetheless, she continued to dream of foreign travel. She next obtained a job at the U.S. embassy in Ecuador, and while working there

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Hispanas de Queens met the president of the Jackson Heights Federal Savings Bank, whom she helped obtain visas for travel to several South and Central American countries. She was so efficient and prompt in obtaining the visas that he offered her a job at his bank in Queens and left her his business card. Aida wrote to him explaining that she indeed did want a job, and he responded with a written offer. On the basis of this letter, the U.S. embassy issued her a permanent resident visa in less than two weeks, and she arrived in New York in 1961 at age twenty. In 1970 Aida Gonzalez became an American citizen. In the next decade she became part of the founding group of the Ollantay Center for the Arts, enrolled at Queens College, where she completed her bachelor's degree in 1981 and a master's in political science and government four years later, and began working in state and then city government. In 1985 she was appointed director of cultural affairs for Queens. Women and Men in Latin American Organizations in Queens

Women were more involved as leaders in organizations rooted in and serving the wider Queens Latino panethnic population than in single-nationality associations, where male leaders predominated. This gender difference in panethnic activity was evident to several Latinas we interviewed, and they had clear opinions about it. Elizabeth Mura, a Colombian journalist, stated that men thought more about returning to their homelands, and saving money to do so. Women, on the other hand, thought about their children and worked to provide them with all the privileges that U.S. society could offer. They, more than men, desired to learn English, both to help their children with homework and to communicate with their teachers. Women fought for bilingual education for these reasons, and were also more likely than men to further their educations here. She had discovered, for example, that 6o percent of the Colombians enrolled at La Guardia Community College in Queens were female. She emphasized that Latinas were serious about becoming active in U.S. politics. Martha Cortes, a Colombian cosmetic dentist and a past president of the Latin American Cultural Center of Queens, put it this way: "Women initially are led by this maternal instinct to better the community, their Latino community. As they become involved, more resources are needed, which leads them to have to seek political means for support. As they continue supporting the community, political leadership is presented to them." She described the Queens "Latino community" as diverse in national backgrounds, and stressed that leadership had to be ethnically inclusive to gain support from either Latinos or white American politicians, who were well aware of this Latino diversity. She strongly

Introducing Latino Organizations in Queens

Aida Gonzalez (Ecuadoran), former director of cultural affairs for the Queens Borough Hall and former candidate for the City Council, participates along with other leaders lvonne Garcia (Nicaraguan) and Julio Ferreras (Dominican) in the Gay and Lesbian Parade of Queens.

emphasized that the single-nationality approach could not represent Queens' Latin American population effectively. Aida Gonzalez explained that because Latino men had the responsibility for being breadwinners, they seldom had time for community affairs, either working long hours or building their businesses. Women got involved first by taking children to school and then joining parent-teacher organizations. Still, as new immigrants, "We are very attached to our backgrounds." There were many organizations in Queens related to political issues back home, she pointed out, with men organizing fundraising campaigns for presidential elections and personally bringing monies collected to their home countries. This was a way of proving themselves, she said, and showing their love for la patria, the homeland. Moreover, she identified the differing experiences of male and female leaders in single-nationality associations as another root of women's greater Latino panethnic involvement. She said that Hispanic men wanted the recognition of their own community and were competitive with each other for that recognition. "I have seen qualified women passed over and a man brought from outside for a leadership position in Hispanic organizations. So women have moved into positions relating to the [local Queens] community. Also, we do not compete with each other; we work together."

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These views resonated with scholarly appraisals of leadership and its gendered forms in Hispanic settings. Max Weber (1968, 1112-13) saw leadership, and even charismatic leadership, as "rooted in the need to meet ongoing, routine demands" in everyday activities. "The mission ... of its bearer ... is directed to a local, ethnic, social, political, vocational or some other group, and this means that it also finds its limits at the edge of these groups." Latina leaders in Queens, as we shall see, could succeed when they met "ongoing, routine demands," but were ineffectual when they did not. And as they sought to create a Latino political voice in the broader multiethnic U.S. society, they encountered the "limits at the edge" of their Queens Latino panethnic group. Some were able to transcend these limits and to gain access to resources from the "external order" of formal American political institutions and other ethnic groups. Their activities both strengthened the Queens Latino community and its leaders and shaped the emerging Latino panethnic local presence. Temma Kaplan (1982), writing about early twentieth-century women of Barcelona, Spain, identified a "female consciousness" that accepted the gender system of its society, which assigned women the responsiblity of "preserving life." Working-class women shopped for necessities, secured fuel, and guarded their neighborhoods, mates, and children from danger, and saw these duties as their right. When external pressures intensified, they organized collectively and mobilized their communities to fulfill these obligations and protect their rights. A similar "female consciousness" was evident in the words of Elizabeth Mura, Martha Cortes, and Aida Gonzalez, and also marked the activities of many of the Latina leaders we describe in the following chapters. Among studies of immigrant Latin Americans in U.S. cities, Carol Hardy-Fanta's research in Boston (1993) is relevant to the situation in Queens. She found both women and men, and more men than we did, involved in panethnic Latino political activities in the wider urban environment. Women, however, had a more participatory vision of doing politics than did men, who operated more individualistically. The research in 1991-1992 of political scientist Michael Jones-Correa in Jackson Heights and Corona, Queens, also complements our findings. He observed that "Latin American immigrant men tend to monopolize the leadership positions in [single-nationality] social and cultural organizations. Activist first-generation women, on the other hand, are more likely to seek the roles of intermediaries between immigrants and the American political system" (1998, 6; see also 151-188).

Social Service Organizations

I

n this chapter we focus on social service organizations catering to Spanish-speaking Queens residents, including the senior citizens' program at La Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida de Corona and the multiservice agency Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens. The first social service organization to serve Spanish-speaking Corona residents was a senior citizens' center created in 1979 at La Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida de Corona. A year later a multiservice agency, Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens/Concerned Citizens of Queens (CCQ), opened in Elmhurst to address immigration, naturalization, entitlement counseling, and other problems; in 1987 it moved to larger offices in Corona Plaza. Both programs were directed by women, and each served a diverse Latin American constituency. The Raices-Corona Senior Citizens Center, funded by the New York City Department for the Aging, located at the Methodist church, was designed to welcome all Latino elders, and, reflecting Corona's Hispanic population, became a site of institutional Latino panethnic interaction for its diverse Spanish-speaking clients. Still, its primary purpose was to meet the needs of older persons, and its staff did not enter into the wider arena of Latino panethnic organizations in Queens. CCQ, on the other hand, adopted a strong Hispanic advocacy stance from its inception, and its director became active in Latino panethnic cultural and political activities in the wider Queens milieu. In 1990, however, she was forced to resign following an internal staff dispute, and CCQ's involvement in this wider arena ended. Meanwhile, other Hispanic social service organizations in northwest Queens emerged to pursue similar missions in the late 198os and 1990s. The Raices-Corona senior center moved from the Methodist church to Corona Plaza in 1997. Programa de Corona para Personas Mayores

The Corona Methodist church's second pastor, Reverend Alejandro Lafontaine, first thought of creating a senior citizens' center in 1978 when he noticed several Spanish-speaking elders gathered in Linden Park

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Hispanas de Queens across from his church. The need was right there in the park, he realized, where hundreds of years of experience in their countries of origin and in this country were exposed to the calamities of the weather. A city-funded senior center offering lunch and activities already existed in Corona Plaza, several blocks away, but it was attended mainly by elderly Italians; moreover, a Dominican female church member reported that this program was inhospitable to Spanish-speaking people. A year later the Programa de Corona para Personas Mayores/Corona Program for the Elderly was started in the basement of the Methodist church (in the 1ggos, it became the Raices center). When the center first opened its doors, Italian Americans in the immediate vicinity learned about it and began to come. Few Hispanic elders yet knew of its existence, and Italians quickly outnumbered Latinos. Since its purpose was to serve Spanish-speaking senior citizens, the center's Puerto Rican director, Maria Maine, began to advertise its existence in the Spanish press and on Spanish radio stations. Soon Latino elders started to appear in growing numbers. Senior centers were not a part of their homeland experiences, however, and most who came were persuaded to do so by adult daughters who learned about the program in newspapers or on the radio. The Latino elders' arrival at first provoked some resentment and complaints from the Corona Italians, who felt that "their center" was being "taken over" by Hispanics, Maine recalled. She reminded them that the center was created and funded "for the Hispanic community"; the Italians, she explained to them, were welcome to share it with the Hispanics. After that, complaints ended. Still, many of the Latino clients did not yet think of it as "their center," and seemed grateful to the "Americans" who now welcomed and accepted them. Those who had attended senior centers where white Americans predominated remarked that this program was fairly free of the anti-Latino discrimination they had encountered elsewhere. Everyone interviewed mentioned how friendly the Americans here acted toward them. Director Maria Maine grew up in New York City. Her Puerto Rico-hom mother was blind and did not speak English, and Maria would accompany her to translate during face-to-face interviews at the welfare office. This experience made her aware of how insensitively Spanish-speaking people could be treated in public agency offices. She decided to study social work, and was still completing her bachelor's degree when she began working at the Corona Program for the Elderly in 1g8o. The following year she became director and embarked upon the campaign to increase Hispanic utilization numbers. Maria was also an active member of the Methodist church and served for a time on her

Social Service Organizations local community board. A mother of two teenagers, she had been divorced for several years when she married a Costa Rican Methodist church member in 1988. As director of the center, she was strongly supported by Reverend Dilca Lebr6n-Mazariego, who actively encouraged female leadership in her congregation. "Now is the moment of women's liberation from prejudiced thoughts," Lebr6n-Mazariego explained, "and this helps men to understand female leadership, and also to make ourselves, women, understand how much our leadership is needed." By 1985 Latinos outnumbered Italians at the center by two to one, and with a capacity for only eighty persons, by 1988 there was a waiting list of six hundred. In addition to serving lunch, the center offered entitlement assistance, English classes, trips to Atlantic City, bingo twice a week, a monthly birthday party, and Halloween and Christmas celebrations. Most important, it gave its users the opportunity to converse in their own language and to share experiences with people of their own backgrounds. Women predominated among the Hispanic clientele, who ranged in age from sixty-four to eighty-four, and included Colombians, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Ecuadorans, Argentinians, and a Spanish-speaking Haitian couple. Danta made many visits to the Corona Program for the Elderly, and in 1985 she recorded her impressions of its clientele:

Some were friendly, open, and willing to cooperate from the beginning. Others feel uneasy around me, and leave their tables as soon as I approach them and introduce myself. For example, when I first sat at her table, one Colombian lady told me she did not want to talk to me that day, and said, "Probably some other time." Then she left her place until it was time for lunch. Later I met her on another visit to the center, and she was friendly and willing to talk. There are also some ladies who do not leave their tables as soon as I get there, but who don't talk much, do not seem interested in the conversation, and do not volunteer any information. Then there are those who think I am some kind of social worker, and they tell me their problems in the hope that I can solve them. It does not help to explain that I am not a social worker, and I am not qualified to help them-they still expect me to help them in some way.... Once they do know why I am there, they expect me to ask questions. Some people even push me into asking, their reaction being: "So, what is it you want to know?" But all of them then seem comfortable answering my questions. Most people, however, begin their answers in short, fast sentences.

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Hispanas de Queens Some of these elderly Latinos were longtime Corona residents; others traveled to the center from more distant Queens neighborhoods, and some were recent arrivals who had immigrated to be with their adult children. Most lived with a son or daughter or close to one or more adult children. These children visited and watched over them on a regular basis. One woman was physically unable to travel to her daughter's home any longer but the daughter visited her, brought meals when she did not feel well, and prepared specially cooked dishes on holidays. Another woman was unable to shop by herself, and her daughters did all the shopping for her. Yet another was picked up at the center every day by her son. Few of these elders spoke English. At home they ate familiar foods from their home countries, watched Spanish television, particularly soap operas, listened to Spanish radio, and attended Spanish-language Catholic masses or Protestant churches. Nearly all the women had arrrived in the United States already married and then worked, mainly in sewing factories. Several had only elementary educations, but all their children were high school or vocational school graduates, and some sons had college degrees. Their grandchildren were achieving even higher educational levels, with several employed as professionals. In this third generation, intermarriage with Latinos of different nationalities, and even with "Americans," was common. All the elders were aware that the Latin American population of Corona was increasing, and that some white Americans were moving out because they did not like living next to Hispanics. Those who had long resided in Corona maintained that they got along with Americans and Latinos alike, but they kept to their own homes and tended not to have close relations with neighbors. Most were afraid of crime and did not go out after dark. They also were afraid of local teenagers. Few complained about prejudice, and overall they seemed resigned to life as they encountered it. Danta came to think of the Latin American elders at the center as fitting into several groups. The men usually sat together and played cards. One sixty-five-year-old Colombian in this group told her that he had come to the center looking for a job; after learning there were no openings, he had continued to come for lunch and the company. The women fell into four groups defined by their demeanor and attitude: the sad ones, the happy ones, the regular ones, and the 'Tm different" ones. The lives of the sad ones were full of problems and sorrows. They usually sat together, but they did not keep to themselves. They were ready to tell their life stories to anyone willing to listen, and everybody seemed to know about and express interest in their problems.

Social Service Organizations One of these, an Ecuadoran woman, had been brought to Queens by her married daughter nearly three years before. The daughter lived in New Jersey, but at the time her mother arrived she was in Elmhurst Hospital giving birth to a baby who died a few days later. When the daughter left the hospital, she rented a room with her mother in a house in Corona because the older woman did not want to live in New Jersey. Then, after her mother was settled, the daughter returned to New Jersey, leaving the older woman alone. She went directly to a welfare office to seek assistance but was told she had to reside in the United States for three years before she was eligible; until then, the person who sponsored her immigration was responsible for her. Her daughter continued paying her room and board in Corona until the woman convinced her three sons to leave their jobs and move from Ecuador to New York. When they arrived, she handed over her room to her two married sons and with her single son rented one of four small rooms in a roach-infested basement. Living there made her very depressed. The married sons found jobs at a car wash, but their salaries were low, and with families of their own to support, only one of them was able to give her just ten dollars a week. Her single son worked as a presser for a dry cleaner and eventually rented a studio apartment. The woman now felt better living there, but the rent was high, and her son made only $130 a week. In Ecuador she had worked ironing clothes in people's homes. She took a job in a Corona sewing factory but was fired because she was too slow. She then decided to stop working because there were few jobs she could do in Corona, and she did not want to travel elsewhere. She filled out an application for a senior citizen apartment but was told there was a three-year waiting list. She came to the Corona senior center for the lunch-to save money as well as to be with friends-but also participated in the English and exercise classes. After telling her story, she became upset and started to cry. Another of the sad elders was an undocumented Colombian woman with a kidney disease and diabetes. She had immigrated with her daughter and son-in-law, overstayed her tourist visa, and remained in New York illegally. The daughter, a secretary in Colombia, found a job in a jewelry store and registered for English classes at La Guardia Community College in Queens. The mother began dialysis treatment twice a week at a hospital. The daughter's husband also found work, and they hired a lawyer to help obtain permanent resident visas ("green cards"). Everything was going well until the son-in-law's father in Colombia suddenly became terminally ill. The son-in-law immediately traveled there to be with his father, leaving his wife and mother-in-law behind; he was

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then unable to return to the United States because of his immigration status. Next the daughter lost her job after their lawyer approached her employer for a job offer in writing, as required for her green card application. The mother then wanted them both to return to Colombia, but the daughter refused, because that would end her mother's dialysis treatment, and the procedure was too expensive to continue in Colombia. The happy ones were a group of Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban women who usually sat together but were friendly to everyone else. They claimed to be happy and to lead almost "perfect" lives. All said that Corona was a nice neighborhood where they felt safe, despite the confession of one that she had recently moved to Elmhurst because of a robbery in her Corona apartment. Most lived alone, but their children were in close contact, and invariably one of them, usually a daughter, lived nearby. They spoke of their adult children as good and loving, and as hard-working and well-educated earners of decent livings. They were proud of their grandchildren, and most had a network of other relatives in New York with whom they maintained contact and visited on holidays. They did not seem concerned about symptoms of failing health. Two admitted they were depressed after the deaths of their husbands, but they had accepted the advice of their children to begin coming to the Corona Program for the Elderly, and were glad that they had. They now came to the center to be with each other and to have a good time. They felt accepted by the Italians as well as the Latinos, and claimed to find a friendliness and warmth not present at the other senior centers a few of them had visited. The regular ones admitted to having problems but did not let themselves be consumed by them or pretend there was only happiness in their lives. One of these was a small, sweet Puerto Rican woman who sat with the happy ones but was somewhat withdrawn from them. She had lived in Corona since 1960 when it was mainly Italian and had watched increasing numbers of Latinos move in. She explained that she was very shy and did not make friends easily; she spoke little English and stayed home most of the time when she was not at the center. Her alcoholic husband provided little companionship or moral support. She had become depressed a year earlier after one of her sons died, and her daughter had urged her to start going to the Corona senior center. She felt better now, and said she could talk there with other people who listened and shared their problems, and that she was starting to make friends. Carmen, a Colombian, also worked at the center assisting people with information and filling out applications for welfare, Medicaid, and other entitlements. In Colombia she had taught English and worked in a bank. After her husband died in the mid-1g6os, she had immigrated to New

Social Service Organizations

Women at the Raices Senior Citizens Center pose with Borough President Claire Shulman, Assemblywoman Helen Marshall, and Maria Maine, director of the Senior Center, during a Halloween celebration.

York with her daughter, also a teacher. Her daughter could not find a teaching position here and worked in an office. Carmen was recuperating from a heart attack but did not dwell on it. Although she lived elsewhere in Queens, she enjoyed working at the Corona Program for the Elderly because of her warm feelings for its director and clients. The ''I'm different" ones looked down on other Hispanics, especially those who they said "give our people a bad name." They came to the Corona center only occasionally. One Colombian woman, said she preferred to occupy her time learning "something of value." She did not participate in the center's English class because "I do not want to learn English with a Spanish teacher who does not pronounce words properly." She added that the U.S. government should not allow people who did not speak English to immigrate, yet she admitted she did not speak English herself. "I am different," she asserted, because she was well educated and had entered the country six years earlier with a permanent residence visa. A Haitian woman who usually came to the center with her huband expressed the same views, but in even stronger terms. She also claimed to be "different," and sat at a lunch table with a group of likeminded women. Still, these "''m different" ones, like others at the center, all commented on the warmth, acceptance, and friendliness they found there.

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Betty Weff (Italian), Emma Salinas (Argentinian), Rosanna Bermudez (Colombian), Blanca Pedraza (Puerto Rican), Irma Bular (Uruguayan), Mrs. Martino (Italian), Victoria Catula (Cuban), and Olga Cruz (Dominican) gather during an international celebration at the Senior Citizens Center. Courtesy of Raices Senior Citizens Center Archives. Concerned Citizens of Queens

As holders of expired tourist or student visas, there were some Latin American residents of Corona who confronted problems with their immigration status. Many of these had arrived before 1982 and were therefore eligible to obtain permanent resident status under the Amnesty and Registration Program of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Law. Those who had entered illegally or overstayed their visas after 1982, however, were subject to deportation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and needed legal advice about options available to them. In Corona there was widespread awareness of the advantages of citizenship. Many legal immigrants felt that becoming a U.S. citizen was essential to achieving a better life here, and they sought out citizenship classes and naturalization counseling. Private immigration lawyers offered help, but the costs were high for most Corona residents. In 1g8o a nonprofit organization to provide help with immigration issues for Spanish-speakers in Queens was started by Haydee Zambrana, a Puerto Rican in her thirties and a divorced mother of two teenagers. Haydee attended elementary and intermediate school in Puerto Rico

Social Service Organizations and came to New York as a teenager, finishing high school in Queens. She went to Queens College for her bachelor's degree and later completed thirty credits toward her master's degree in community planning at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her desire to help the Latin American community of Queens arose from her job in a lawyer's office, where she encountered many immigrants residing in Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. Most had problems related to immigration, housing, or their lack of English, and this became her agenda when she created Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens/Concerned Citizens of Queens (CCQ). In 1981 she quit her paralegal job to devote more time to CCQ. From then until 1986 she worked at night as a civilian employee at the 11oth Police Precinct headquarters (covering Elmhurst and the south half of Corona) and during the day saw clients at her CCQ office on Roosevelt Avenue in Elmhurst. She kept a sleeping bag there to catch a few early morning hours of sleep between the two jobs. She began with immigration counseling services, including assistance with applications for permanent resident status and naturalization, and with visa petitions to bring relatives to the United States under the family reunification provisions extended to Latin Americans in 1977 (see Sanjek 1998, 62-64). As volunteers, government funding, and paid staff increased during the 198os, CCQ added entitlement counseling and advocacy, English and citizenship classes, a housing advice clinic, crime-prevention seminars for Latino business owners, and voter registration efforts. The number of citizenship applications that CCQ took to the INS office each week grew steadily, and by the mid-198os amounted to thousands. In 1986 CCQ was funded to operate a Spanish-language telephone hotline to inform undocumented immigrants of their legal rights; it received more than five hundred calls daily. In 1987 the INS awarded CCQ a contract to review and process permanent resident applications of undocumented persons now eligible for amnesty under the new Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). With this new programmatic base of support, CCQ moved to a larger office near Roosevelt Avenue in Corona Plaza and expanded its staff. In 1986 Maritza Sarmiento-Radbill, an Ecuadoran, joined Zambrana, now the full-time executive director, as CCQ's director of immigrant services. Most other employees were also Latinas, and CCQ's male attorneys were all under female supervision. Many of the Corona residents whom Ricourt interviewed or met were aware of CCQ and had used its services. Vicente, a Dominican man, had entered the United States illegally in 1961, traveling first to Puerto Rico and then to Queens. For more than two decades he managed to find jobs through the help of friends and neighbors, but had not been able to pursue work openly on his own. CCQ staff helped him file the proper docu-

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Hispanas de Queens ments to qualify for amnesty under IRCA and accompanied him to his INS inteiView. In 1987 he was granted permanent residence. Nelly, also Dominican, graduated from college with a business degree but was unable to find work in her homeland. Desperate, she purchased a phony U.S. passport and green card and paid to have her photograph pasted on these documents. She then traveled to New York in 1987 and narrowly escaped the notice of an INS officer. A year later she married an African American man in Queens and with the help of a CCQ lawyer obtained the legal permanent residence to which she was now entitled by marriage. The cases of Marta and Damaso, a Guatemalan-Dominican couple, were more complicated. In 1985 a female friend called Marta's brother in Guatemala from her apartment in Flushing, Queens, to ask if he could find a "girl" to do housework in the home of a Jewish family for whom she worked on Long Island. The brother asked Marta if she wanted to travel to the United States to take this job. Marta was enthusiastic about the idea ofliving in New York, ifless so about the job offer. Nonetheless, she went to the U.S. consulate in Guatemala that week and, to her amazement, obtained a five-year tourist visa allowing her to travel back and forth, all on the basis of presenting bonds that her brother had registered in her name to demonstrate her financial solvency. The Long Island employer then sent Marta five hundred dollars in U.S. currency, and two weeks after the first telephone call she arrived in New York. Marta described the family as "modem" because they were not very religious, and she was assigned the tasks of house cleaning and doing the laundry. Two weeks after her arrival the wife and children went on a vacation to Florida. The husband remained at home and soon began to make sexual advances, which Marta resisted. The man got angry, and when the wife returned, Marta was fired. Her brother's female friend in Flushing took her in, and through a newspaper advertisement Marta located another household worker job in New Jersey. Her employers, an orthodox Jewish family, refused several times to pay her weekly salary on time, and without money for transportation she was forced to remain in their home over the weekend. She was allowed only coffee for breakfast and sardines for lunch, receiving a full meal only at dinner. Feeling starved, she stole crackers to eat and developed an intense dislike for sardines. The husband of her brother's female friend, also a Guatemalan, then found her a job at a pizza factory in Flushing. While working there she met Damaso, a Dominican, also an undocumented immigrant. Marta later moved to Damaso's home in Corona, a windowless basement room and kitchen in a two-story house. Damaso, who had arrived in the United

Social Service Organizations States before 1982, had gone to CCQ to file his amnesty application, and a staff lawyer there accompanied him to his INS interview. Marta, however, was not eligible for amnesty under IRCA. After moving to Corona her Ecuadoran and Colombian neighbors had helped find her temporary jobs, but at the last one, in a Long Island factory, she had fled during an INS raid and, fearing deportation, now feared to leave her basement room. She had visited CCQ several times and was following its advice about her relatively limited rights. Several other Corona women whom Ricourt interviewed, all legal residents, had used CCQ for help with naturalization applications. They viewed citizenship as valuable both to better their economic status by having a wider range of potential employment available to them, and to be able to influence political decision making for their community and city. Meanwhile Haydee Zambrana was expanding CCQ's programs. In 1986 she launched an annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Corona Plaza, an event similar to those long sponsored by white American civic groups in Corona Heights and Elmhurst (Sanjek 1992). As we will see in the next two chapters, she also participated in Latino panethnic cultural and political activities and in mainstream local politics in Queens. Facing internal problems at CCQ, she left the organization in 1990. A male executive director replaced her, but CCQ lost its impact in the local and Queens Latino panethnic political arenas, and eventually vacated its Corona Plaza office. Haydee continued to offer immigration counseling at a new organization she began in 1991, Latin Women in Action, but her civic activism diminished (Sanjek 1998, 294-295). Other Latino Social Service Organizations

In 1987 Guadalupe Aleman and a woman friend, both Hondurans, founded Los Hispanos Unidos de Woodside in this Queens neighborhood just west of Elmhurst and Jackson Heights. Guadalupe, an accountant, had visited the United States on a vacation in 1978 and then married and remained here. She had two children, worked as a comptroller, and became president of her apartment building tenant association. She and her friend began by helping other Spanish-speaking Woodside residents to fill out INS and Social Security forms and job and welfare applications, sometimes accompanying them to translate at appointments with bureaucratic agencies. Eventually they decided to create a formal organization, and their agenda began to expand. They started English classes, but when they realized that several people attending could not read and write in Spanish, they began a Spanish liter-

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Hispanas de Queens acy class instead. They also organized to fight drugs and crime in Woodside, met with the local police to form a block patrol, and exerted pressure to have traffic lights added at unsafe corners. With a permit from the local police precinct they organized a Halloween party to deter local youth from disruptive behavior, and held it in a street closed off for the event. Los Hispanos Unidos de Woodside did not survive into the 1990s, and CCQ retrenched, but other organizations arose to serve similar purposes. In 1991 Sara Maria Archila, a Colombian lawyer who had left her homeland for political reasons a year earlier, founded the Latin American Integration Center in Woodside. That year Colombia passed a law permitting dual citizenship, and her goal was to help Colombians in Queens who until now had been reluctant to become U.S. citizens and thereby lose their home-country citizen status. 1 In the first year she helped more than Soo Colombians file for U.S. citizenship. She also recognized that other Latinos needed assistance in becoming U.S. citizens. In 1992 she worked with a Dominican sports and social club in Corona Plaza, Hermanos Unidos de Queens, and collected 300 citizenship applications on their first day. 2 The Latin American Integration Center later began naturalization classes at an Elmhurst public school, printed study materials in Spanish, and by 2000 had processed 11,000 citizenship applications. Other activities included voter and child health insurance registration campaigns, housing and mortgage loan seminars, a breast cancer support group for Latinas, advice to small business owners, and a multicultural youth program. Although staff and board members were Colombians, the center's clients were of more than forty nationalities, including diverse Latinos, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, and Tibetans. Filling the gap in Corona Plaza left by the demise of CCQ, and even occupying its old office, Ruben Quiroz, a Honduran immigrant who had arrived in the United States at age twenty and lived in Corona since 1981, founded Acci6n Latina in 1994- During the early 1990s, he recalled, "I saw that there were very few organizations addressing issues affecting Latinos in Queens." By 1997 Quiroz's organization had assisted 3,ooo people to apply for citizenship and helped 1,500 people to become registered voters. Acci6n Latina also offered assistance to small busi1. Argentina, Panama, and Uruguay have recognized dual citizenship for decades. Following Colombia in 1991, Ecuador passed dual-nationality legislation in 1995, and the Dominican Republic in 1996 (Jones-Correa 1998, 161-163). 2. Headed by Julio Ferreras, who had immigrated to New York in 1974, Hermanos Unidos de Queens had 350 male and 25 female members; it also raised funds to send sports equipment and medical supplies to members' hometowns in the Dominican Republic (Jones-Correa 1998, 145, 159, q8; Ramirez 1997). According to Ferreras, the Mayi murder in 1991 had spurred more active involvement by this group in local U.S. politics.

Social Service Organizations nesses (McKenna 1997). In 1993, also in Corona Plaza, the Sociedad Dominica Americana de Queens/Dominican-American Society of Queens was founded by Carlos Suarez, Ignacio Reyes, and Antonio Santos. Working with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the Dominican-American Society offered citizenship workshops. It also expanded its services, available to all Latinos, to include afterschool tutoring, English classes, computer training, and high school equivalency classes. In 1997, the Raices-Corona Senior Center opened just a block away from its former location at La Primera Iglesia Metodista. Funded by the New York City Department for the Aging, it served up to seventy elders each day, most of them Latinos from various countries but also a few local Italian Americans. In addition to its lunch program, the Raices Center provided entitlement assistance, trips, arts and crafts, English classes, and citizenship instruction. Social Service Organizations and Latino Panethnicity

As we have seen, it was primarily women who developed a variety of social service organizations to serve their diverse Spanish-speaking community. In these cases, an institutional Latino panethnicity was clearly involved in the creation of the Programa para Personas Mayores formed to serve Hispano elders. Likewise, Concerned Citizens of Queens emerged to make available immigration and other services to all Latin Americans in Queens in their own language. Within these new Latino panethnic structures, the local Corona beneficiaries of the services also interacted among each other, and resulting cultural exchange at the level of convivencia diaria thus expanded the range of experiential panethnicity. At the Programa, for example, elders from Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Argentina shared their happy, sad, and other experiences with one another. Yet, as social service leaders also pointed to the needs of the Hispanic community in general, they utilized an inclusive discourse that explicitly embraced a Latinoamericano reality going beyond any single nationality. Here we see the emergence of an ideological Latino panethnicity, one first proclaimed in Corona by the explicitly pan-Hispanic advocacy mission of CCQ's founder, Haydee Zambrana.

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his chapter looks at Latino cultural politics in Queens, first as manifested in the single-nationality associations, schools, and parades, and Colombian and Ecuadoran festivals in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, then as embodied in key organizations and activities such as the Ollantay Center for the Arts, the Father Billini Association, and the "Hispanic Village" at the 1986 Queens Festival. In all these venues we discovered that women were far more involved than men and also that cultural politics provided an important base for the more formal political efforts considered in the next chapter. Beginning in the 1970s a complex of Latin American cultural associations began to form in Queens. Some served immigrants of particular national identities and helped to perpetuate home-country cultural values in the host society. These organizations brought together people from the same nation, region, or town; organized sport and social events; sponsored heritage schools, parades, and festivals; raised funds for charity projects and disaster relief in their countries of origin; and sustained interest in home-country political activities (Janes-Correa 1998, 102-103, 130-136). As political scientist Michael Janes-Correa concluded, "It's as if through these events and organizations immigrants try to prove to themselves that they still are Colombians or Ecuadorans or Dominicans [and] the ideology of return [to their homelands] is intensified" (1gg8, 102). The single-nationality Latin American associations in Queens reflected the diverse nature of the borough's Hispanic population. In addition to the Ecuadoran, Peruvian, and Puerto Rican organizations that testified at the 1986 Mayor's Commission on Hispanic Concerns, they included the Centro Cultural Amanecer Boliviano, Comite Civico Cultural Boliviano, Grupo Folklorico Chilena, Centro Civico Colombiano, Hermanos Unidos de Queens (Dominican), Centro Cultural Guatemalteco, Co mite Civico Mexicano, Club Peru, Casa U ruguaya, and Centro Civico Venezolano. By the mid-1g8os there were also three heritage schools that taught Spanish and Latin American history and culture on Saturdays in rented public schools in Elmhurst and Jackson Heights: Escuela Ar-

Cultural Politics gentina, Escuela Simon Bolivar (Colombian), and Escuela Jose Pedro Varela (Uruguayan). Despite their sponsorship, these schools welcomed children of diverse Latino nationalities, and during the 1990s two similar Latino panethnic heritage schools opened: Escuela Latinoamericana and La Nueva Escuela Latinoamericana de Queens. Although meetings and most activities of the single-nationality associations were conducted for their members and compatriots, the parades and festivals in Queens that they participated in or sponsored were public occasions attracting diverse Latino audiences, as well as Spanish-language and mainstream media, and growing numbers of American elected officials and candidates for office. The annual Ecuadoran Day Parade on 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, with its constituent marching organizations, guests of honor, beauty queens, and commercial sponsors, has been vividly described by Michael Jones-Correa (1998, 134-135). There was also an Argentinian parade on this same street and, beginning in the 1990s, a Mexican parade and a Puerto Rican parade elsewhere in Queens. Even these single-nationality parades, however, had Latino panethnic elements, such as "delegations from more than a dozen Latin American communities" in the 1987 Ecuadoran parade (Velez 1987), and "flags from Puerto Rico, Argentina and Mexico, [and] dancers from the Dominican Republic and Colombia" at the 1999 Puerto Rican parade in Sunnyside (Cabral 1999a). Single-nationality outdoor events in Queens parks featuring music and food included an annual Uruguayan celebration in Forest Park in Woodhaven and a Puerto Rican festival in Astoria, but the largest were the annual Colombian and Ecuadoran Independence Day festivals held each summer in Flushing MeadowsCorona Park The first Colombian Independence Day celebrated in this park was in 1984- It was sponsored by the Centro Civico Colombiano, a membership organization with an annually elected president and a board of directors, all primarily male. Its other activities included English and citizenship classes at its headquarters building in Elmhurst, fundraising for projects in Colombia, and a blood drive following a 1990 Colombian airline crash near New York City. At the 1985 Colombian Independence Day festival, a circle of food stalls faced a large central stage where bands and singers played Colombian and other Latin music and folkloric groups performed Colombian, Peruvian, and Dominican dances. In between, the master of ceremonies advertised sponsoring restaurants, beauty parlors, stores, and lawyers' offices. The audience danced in place to the bands, and those too distant from the stage to hear danced to radios and cassette players. Colombian cumbia, AfroCaribbean salsa, and Dominican merengue predominated, and those

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Hispanas de Queens without partners, especially men, danced by themselves. Food stands sold mainly Colombian food, but one offered Peruvian fare, one Puerto Rican, and one both Ecuadoran and Colombian dishes. A truck sold ices made from tropical fruits familiar to Latin Americans. Some licensed vendors were also selling food near the park's IRT Number 7 subway stop, and individuals in the park sold beer from coolers. In addition, many groups of family and friends had brought their own food and drink, and picnicked in the park; people who had not brought enough did not hesitate to ask neighbors for napkins, forks, or other items. In spite of alcohol consumption, there was no disturbance, and everyone seemed to have a good time. Most of the enormous crowd, including many young people in their teens and early twenties, was Colombian, but other Latinos were also present. The Colombian festival grew in attendance and the number of associated events each year. A festival queen was elected from among younger members of the Centro Civico Colombiano, and beauty queens from Colombia were also featured. A gala fundraising dinner was held in the Terrace on the Park restaurant in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and in 1997 the Centro brought the popular Colombian band Alquimia to play at both the gala and the festival. Mayors, candidates for elected office, and in 1993 the new U.S. Congressmember representing Corona, Nydia Velasquez, a Puerto Rican, made appearances at the festival and gala dinner. Also attracting a large crowd, if smaller than the Colombian event, the Ecuadoran Independence Day festival was sponsored by the Comite Civico de la Colonia Ecuatoriana (a different organization from the one that sponsored the Ecuadoran parade). Like the Colombian festival, it drew a metropolitan-area-wide audience of Ecuadorans, as well as smaller numbers of other Latinos. In 1985 people massed near the central stage where bands and folkloric groups performed. Nearby, families picnicked, and groups gathered near several nets where men played volleyball and around an informal soccer match. Radio music and beer were also evident. Women mainly sat talking together, taking care of children, or preparing food. Two rows of food sellers with flags of the Comite Civico de la Colonia Ecuatoriana on top of their stalls spread out from each side of the festival stage. Delicious odors of roast pork and other dishes drew people toward these food areas. Most stalls were operated by Queens Ecuadoran restaurants and private food carts, but two were from Manhattan and one from New Jersey; several had whole roast pigs being carved for customers. There were also two Colombian and one Filipino food stands. Behind one stand, an older woman danced with a beer can on her head, and others watched and cheered her. One stall sold

Cultural Politics aguardiente. There was no visible drunkenness, and there were fewer teenagers than at the Colombian festival. On the way to and from the park's IRT station, people were distributing handbills in Spanish for immigration lawyers, moving companies, and female cosmetic surgery. Near the festival ground, Haydee Zambrana and a female colleague from Concerned Citizens of Queens sat at a table registering people to vote. They kept busy distributing literature, answering questions, and helping people fill out the forms. Latino Panethnic Cultural Organizations

The universe of explicitly Latino panethnic organizations in Queens was smaller and more modest than all the single-nationality associations taken together, and their activities attracted smaller audiences. However, these groups understood that the unique Hispanic population of Queens-with no nationality group a majority, and all having arrived more or less at the same time-could not be effective in wider political and public funding arenas unless its leaders spoke with a unified voice. Their Latino panethnicity was ideological, clearly formulated, and aimed at gaining resources or building political power. In this chapter we trace the emergence of Queens Latino panethnic leadership through cultural activities. A majority of these leaders were women who well understood the connection between cultural organizations and political influence through channels other than voting. The pioneer Latino panethnic organization, El Desfile Hispano de Queens Inc., staged its first Desfile de la Hispanidad en Queens/Queens Hispanic Day Parade along 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights in 1976, predating all the single-nationality parades and festivals. In 1986 the president was Betsy Davila, a Puerto Rican Queens resident and, since 1969, an employee of the New York City Housing Authority. The work of the Desfile Hispano organization was limited to producing the annual Queens Hispanic Day Parade. Betsy Davila, however, was also the founder and president of the Sociedad Puertorriquefia de Queens and she was a member of both the Grand-Council of Hispanic Societies in Public Service and the National Conference of Puerto Rican Women. In 1986 cries of "Viva Ecuador! Viva Puerto Rico! Viva Colombia! Viva Hispanoamerica!" arose from the 1o,ooo people who watched marching bands and folkloric groups. Grand Marshal Carlos Carrillo, publisher of the weekly Spanish-language newspaper Impacto, declared: "This is what it means to be Hispanic. Not just Argentinian, or Dominican, or Colombian, but Hispanic, and better yet, Hispanic

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The banner marks the start of the Desfile Hispano de Queens in zooo.

A car in the D esfile Hispano de Queens advertises "La Nueva Escuela Latinoamericana."

Cultural Politics American. We are here today to show the world our heritage and our culture." Three floats, one carrying the parade queen and princesses, were joined by marchers from the Club Folkl6rico de Barranquilla playing Colombian cumbia, Caguas International (Puerto Rican), Sociedad Cubana de Queens, Asociaci6n Chino Ecuatoriano (Chinese Ecuadorans), El Ballet Argentino, and El Ballet Folkl6rico Dominicano, among others (Velez 1986). The twenty-fourth Desfile Hispano in September zooo was organized by its new president, Ivonne Garcia, a Nicaraguan and the Hispanic Affairs adviser to Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, vice-president Luz Colon, a Puerto Rican Latina activist, and a planning committee comprised of Colombian, Dominican, and Argentinian ethnic association leaders. Funds were raised through the parade queen contest, and floats were donated by three Spanish-language newspapers. This year's grand marshal was Gloria M. Guzman, a Latina public school principal who was joined at the head of the parade by children and parents from her school and accompanied by a contingent of auxiliary police. They were followed by a Panamanian marching band with baton twirlers, flags of the United States, Spain, and Latin American countries, parade committee members, Jackson Heights' white American State Assemblymember Ivan Lafayette and City Councilmember John Sabini, a float carrying the popular Puerto Rican singing group the Barrio Boyz, and two religious organizations, Misioneros Contemplativos Laicos and Fundaci6n Etudes. Contingents from participating countries came next. The Argentinian delegation included a float with folkloric dancers, the Asociaci6n Nuestra Senora de Lujan (the Virgin patroness of Argentina), and the Sunnyside South American Lions Club. Uruguayan and Bolivian dance groups then followed. Colombians were represented by the Centro Civico Colombiano, the East Elmhurst Colombian Lions Club, a dance troupe, the cultural organization Siempre Colombia and its youth group, and the children's charity Coraz6n a Coraz6n/Heart to Heart. Ecuadorans were next, including the Federaci6n de Instituciones de Pichincha (a region in Ecuador), folk music and dance groups, and marchers advocating amnesty for undocumented immigrants. A float with Mexicans in ethnic dress, the Banda de Guerra Mexicana marching band, a youth folkdance group, and the Mexican society from Jackson Heights' Church of the Blessed Sacrament represented their nationality. The Ballet Folkl6rico de Paraguay, Ballet Folkl6rico Panameiio, and a Peruvian contingent followed, and then a Puerto Rican float accompanied by dancing youth, the Puerto Rican Society of Queens, and organizers of the Puerto Rican Parade of Queens. Dominicans marched next, and included the Domini-

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Hispanas de Queens can-American Society of Queens, the Democratic Party club La Gran Alianza de Queens, and the Public School 19 Beacon School Program. Two Colombian musical groups then appeared, the Tambores Latinos de Colombia and Ballet Folklorico Internacional Mestizo. Concluding the parade was the Centro Civico Venezolano. The Correction Department's Hispanic Society also marched, exclaiming "Viva la Raza!" when they reached the reviewing stand. Here radio personality and parade emcee Jorge Caballero announced each country's name to cheers of "Viva!" as their contingent passed, and this year's parade "godmother," radio personality Patricia Herrera, read a message from the New York Consul of the Dominican Republic. Speaking for Borough President Shulman, Queens Director of Cultural Affairs Aida Gonzalez proclaimed September 15 to October 15, 2000, to be Hispanic Culture Month in Queens. The next Latino panethnic cultural organization in Queens was the Thalia Spanish Theater, which moved to Sunnyside in 1977 (McKenna 1989a). Directed for two decades by Silvia Brito, a Cuban and former actress with the company, the Thalia presented plays in Spanish by both Latin American and Spaniard playwrights, and in Spanish translation by English ones. As its audience diversified, the Thalia also featured Argentinian, Mexican, Spanish flamenco, and other cultural troupes. The theater's activities were funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and National Endowment for the Arts. In 2001, under a new, male director, it remained the only Latino theater in Queens. The Ollantay Center for the Arts

Also in 1977, a group of like-minded Latino panethnic activists inaugurated the Ollantay Center for the Arts to showcase Latin American visual, literary, and performing arts in Queens. Located in Jackson Heights, Ollantay became the first Latin American arts organization in the borough to sponsor workshops, concerts, and art exhibitions on a Latino panethnic basis. The center's name highlighted the aboriginal heritage of Latin American theater, which combines this indigenous background with Spanish and African elements. Ollantay was an lncan play that survived the Spanish conquest. It was based on the life of a warrior who fell in love with the Incan king's daughter but did not come from a suitable lineage to marry her. They eloped and had a daughter named Ima Sumac, and Ollantay created his own settlement to resist the Incan king. Among Ollantay's founders were Aida Gonzalez (Ecuadoran) and Pedro Monge (Cuban), and its board of directors later included Nayibe

Cultural Politics Nunez-Berger (Colombian), Haydee Zambrama (Puerto Rican) and Ana Lopez (Dominican), all women active in Queens Latino panethnic affairs. Pedro Monge was also the center's executive and artistic director and had arrived in the United States in 1961 and began the first Hispanic theater in Chicago before moving to Queens in 1974 (McKenna 1989b). In Monge's view, the Ollantay Center supported no political or national ideology, and no presentations should be exclusively representative of any single Latin American country. Its 1987 Latin American writers' conference, for example, brought together fifty writers from many national backgrounds. Monge encouraged the efforts of Panamanian, Salvadoran, and Colombian artistic groups that wished to perpetuate the traditions of their homelands in New York, but contrasted this with the mission of his center. "Ollantay is helping to pull together Hispanics of different nationalities. Here in Queens, and throughout the United States, it's important that people from all the different Latin backgrounds come together." Monge also stressed the importance of reaching beyond the Latino community. "The other important part is we are presenting the Latin culture to the non-Hispanic. It's a dual contribution. One is preserving, and the other is presenting for a better understanding of our artistic and cultural life." Accordingly, Monge forged ties with non-Latinos; he chaired the cultural committee of Community Board 3, which covered Jackson Heights and the north half of Corona, and was a member of the art task force of the New York State Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus. Ollantay also made its space available to non-Hispanic artists, and in 1986 sponsored an exhibition of African American painters. Somewhat frustratingly, Ollantay may have created a higher profile as a "Hispanic" organization outside the Latino population in Queens than within. According to Monge, "the community accepts Ollantay but does not understand it. It is not seen as Hispanic," he explained, because people usually associated the center with the nationality of board members they knew. "Those who know Nayibe think that it is a Colombian organization; those who know me think it is Cuban." Nayibe Nunez-Berger, Ollantay's board president during the 198os, was born in Colombia and immigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1962. In the late 1970s, working as a psychotherapist at Queens Family Court Mental Heath Services, she was appalled at the lack of services and English translation or classes for Spanish-speaking women who were victims of domestic abuse. She enlisted her friend Aida Gonzalez, and beyond providing one-on-one assistance to individual Latinas, the two women urged Borough President Donald Manes to recognize the needs of the growing Queens Latino population (compare Janes-Correa 1998,

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180-181). Nayibe was also active in the Colombian immigrant community, serving as director of public relations for the Centro Civico Colombiano, where once a month she conducted citizenship classes and a Domingo de los Recuerdos/Sunday of Memories artistic and recreational program for senior citizens. By the mid-198os Nayibe was convinced that efforts in "building up and providing leadership to the Latino American community of Queens" through Ollantay and other activities had produced results. "Six or eight years ago the city knew we were here, but we were considered trouble, and today we are recognized by the mayor and Borough Hall; we are gaining respect." Nonetheless, she acknowledged that there remained "misconceptions about the Latin community" and a "lack of recognition for its contributions" (McKenna 1986). Ollantay had also been important to the career of Aida Gonzalez. From this organizational base she formed ties to the mainstream Queens Council on the Arts and was elected its president in 1983. "It got me known by Borough Hall. I was later invited [by Borough President Manes] to apply for [the director of cultural affairs] position" to which she was appointed in 1985. The Father Billini Association

Ana Lopez, founder of the Asociaci6n Benefica Cultural Father Billini at Corona's Our Lady of Sorrows Church, emigrated from the Dominican Republic with her husband and two children in 1961. Her husband opened a supermarket in Washington Heights, and in a couple of years it had expanded to a chain of supermarkets in upper Manhattan. Ana wanted to work but could not find employment utilizing her nurse's training because she did not speak English. Instead she enrolled in a school to learn sewing and found a job in a garment factory. Her husband, whose business was prospering, pressured her to stop working, and eventually she quit her job. In 1967 he sold the business and returned to the Dominican Republic, and he and Ana divorced. He left her five thousand dollars and a house in Jackson Heights. She moved there with her son and daughter and returned to work in the garment industry. In her new Queens home, Ana walked her two children to school every morning. She noticed that the city bus that ran along her narrow street often crossed over the comer sidewalk when turning onto her block. Concerned about the danger this posed to children on their way to and from school, she spoke with several neighbors about the problem, and they decided to form a block association. The association wrote letters to the Metropolitan Transit Authority and protested at its headquarters. Eventually the MTA changed the bus route. Meanwhile Ana took

Cultural Politics English classes and courses to qualify as a nurse. When she completed her studies, she applied for a position at Elmhurst Hospital. After several rejections, she got a job in the emergency room transferring patients on wheelchairs from one unit to another. Later she took a job as medical supervisor at a shipping company and worked there until1981. That year was a turning point for her. Both her children had graduated from college, and her son had just completed law school. (Her daughter later completed professional training in psychology.) She now dedicated herself full-time to the Father Billini Association, which she had started with two Dominican friends in 1978. Located at Our Lady of Sorrows in Corona Plaza, the organization was named for the nineteenth-century priest Javier Francisco Billini, son of an Italian father and Cuban mother, who founded schools and a hospital for the poor in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic's capital city. The association's original goals were to teach Dominican culture and history and to help children from single-parent homes. Eight children enrolled in 1978 to learn Dominican dances; as numbers grew to 140 by the mid-198os, Puerto Rican, Colombian, and later Mexican dances were added to what was becoming a Latino panethnic children's program. Lopez and the Father Billini Association children performed not only before parents and Latin American audiences but also as a "Hispanic" component in several multicultural events in Queens. They appeared, for example, in 1986, 1987, and 1988 at the annual Three Kings Day celebration at Elmhurst Hospital, a noontime event that began in 1981 and was attended by hospital officials and staff, patients, and community leaders, including Ray Bermudez (Puerto Rican), a Jackson Heights businessman and head of the hospital's community advisory board (Sanjek 1998, 334-335). The event marked the feast of Epiphany, which is celebrated widely in Latin American countries and elsewhere but observed only as a church calendar holy day by most Christians in the United States. In 1986 the Three Kings celebration began with a choir of thirty children from Public School 69 in Jackson Heights, an ethnically mixed group of East Asians, Latin Americans, Indians, and a few white Americans. After they sang Christmas and Hanukkah songs, Sister Naughton, the hospital's Roman Catholic chaplain, read a passage about the Three Kings from the Bible and explained that "the three wise men represent us in this room-East and West, North and South, Jewish and non-Jewish ... no matter what color." Concluding this "ceremony of incorporation," in which "symbols of ethnic diversity and expressions of pan-ethnic communal harmony [were] used to structure events" (Sanjek 1992, 126), was the Ballet Folkl6rico Father Billini. Before the performance, Ana addressed the auditorium audience in Spanish and English.

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Hispanas de Queens The troupe consisted of six girls in long, colorful skirts and white blouses, and six boys in white pants and shirts, and straw hats. They danced Dominican merengues, a Puerto Rican plena, and a Colombian cumbia, all to the delight of the audience. By the mid-1g8os the Father Billini youth program was receiving funding from the Queens Council on the Arts and the Queens Borough President's Office. Ana Lopez was now active in local, Latino panethnic, and Queens affairs. She was president of her block association, a member of Our Lady of Sorrows Council, and a member of Community Board 3, which a group of her program's children represented in a 1987 summer cleanup contest among youth teams from each Queens community district (Gregory 1993; Sanjek 1gg8, 311-313). She was also a member of the Elmhurst Hospital Community Advisory Board, the Ollantay Center Board of Directors, and an officer in United Latin Americans of Queens (see Chapter g). Her cultural politicking continued to bear fruit. In 1g88 her Queens Council on the Arts and Borough President's funding was used to begin a children's homework workshop-an urgent need in Ana's view-to serve the great number of Corona Latino children whose parents did not speak English and who had no one at home to help them with school work. That year she also launched piano, violin, and classical guitar classes at Our Lady of Sorrows. In 1993, with Corona City Councilmember Helen Marshall's support, the Father Billini Society received a large grant from the city's Safe Streets, Safe Cities program to open a Beacon Center at Public School 19 in Corona Plaza. Begun as part of Mayor David Dinkins's "anti-crime" measures, the thirty-seven Beacon programs throughout the city operated after school hours, during evenings, and on weekends in public school buildings and were administered by the Department of Youth Services (Krauss 1994; Ocasio 1994). The Claridad Beacon Center run by the Father Billini Association at Public School 19 offered a wide variety of programs and was open for registration to all children attending School District 24 schools or living in Community District 4, which together included all of Corona. For school-age children, homework help and tutoring were available every weekday afternoon from three to six, and remedial reading and math instruction for third- to fifth-graders on two afternoons. There were also a folkloric dance class once a week, choir instruction twice, musical instrument classes three times, and arts and crafts classes four times a week. Recreational activities included organized football, volleyball, handball, and basketball every day; a gameroom, always open, offering pool, table tennis, and board games; and gymnastics on Saturday mornings. For adults, classes in English as a second language were available two nights

Cultural Politics

A group from the Father Billini Association Youth Program cleans Corona streets during the summer of zooo.

a week and Saturday mornings, and computer instruction on three evenings. The center also provided a high school equivalency program in English and Spanish and offered counseling on substance abuse, parenting, job readiness, and health. Its staff of bilingual outreach counselors, using a blue Father Billini Association van acquired in 1994, contacted teens hanging out in Corona parks and on streets and tried to enroll them in structured sports activities and other Beacon programs. After two years the Beacon Center contract for Public School 19 was transferred, for political reasons, to HANAC, a Greek social service organization based in Astoria, Queens; it hired a Latino director, but following a press scandal the contract was returned to the Father Billini Association. After an investigation, the contract went back to HANAC, which then subcontracted with the Father Billini Society to run certain programs. By 1999 the society's programs at both Our Lady of Sorrows and Public School 19 served nearly a thousand children, among them fifty in the now two-decade-old folkdance program; they also included summer employment for high school students, precollege and job counseling, immigration and citizenship assistance for adults, and a licensed child daycare facilty. Cultural politics over the years had transformed the Father Billini Association into a multiservice agency. And although Dominicans,

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Ana LOpez addresses youth trained for summer jobs in her program at the Father Billini Association.

given their numbers in Corona, continued to be strongly represented among those served by Ana Lopez's programs, a broader Latino panethnic vision marked her organization. "We're not just working with one group," she proclaimed in 1994; "it's for everybody. We have to support one another" (Ocasio 1994). The Queens Festival

I Pueblo Hispano

The annual Queens Festival in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was started by Borough President Donald Manes in 1979, and it grew throughout the 198os, with attendance at this two-day "county fair" running in the hundreds of thousands. Each year the festival grounds housed scores of tents, kiosks, booths, and stages. At the 1986 event the Daily News, New York City Parks Department, churches, the Vietnam Veterans of America, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, the Young Men's Christian Association, women's organizations, borough colleges, and the New York Telephone Company were all represented. Numerous food vendors occupied kiosks, and on various stages music from Ghana, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and the United States was performed, all surrounded by balloons, a frisbee competition, roller-skating area, and emergency-medical-service (EMS) ambulances. Beyond the fair

Cultural Politics site, soccer and baseball games were in progress, as during any summer weekend in the park A major attraction at the 1985 Queens Festival had been the Asian Village, which featured Chinese, Taiwanese, Indian, Korean, and Filipino pavilions, each in a large tent next to a tight-packed area of vendor tables and an outdoor stage (Park 1997, 167-168). Performances also occurred inside each tent, which contained tables with information about numerous organizations. The planning and operations of the Chinese and Korean pavilions became an important arena for internal ethnic group politics (Chen 1992, 232-245). The same would happen with the Hispanic Village, announced at the 1986 Mayor's Commission on Hispanic Concerns by George Ortiz, the Hispanic affairs adviser to Borough President Claire Shulman, who had succeeded Donald Manes earlier that year following his death. Now translated as "Pueblo Hispano," and located across a long empty pool from the Asian Village, this Latino panethnic addition to the Queens Festival was organized by the Ollantay Center for the Arts and cosponsored by the Centro Civico Colombiano, Concerned Citizens of Queens, Father Billini Association, United Latin Americans of Queens, and Spanish-language radio station WADO. Early in June 1986 Pedro Monge, Ollantay's executive director, held a press conference to discuss plans for the Pueblo Hispano. Dennis Donnelly, chairman of the Queens Heritage Corporation, the Queens Festival's fiscal sponsor, and U.S. Congressmember Gary Ackerman of Flushing, Queens, spoke about the festival in general and the importance of the Hispanic community in Queens. Ackerman then unveiled a model of the four Pueblo Hispano exhibits: a Mayan temple guarded by soldiers in Incan dress, a caravela ship like those sailed by Columbus, a Spanish colonial castle, and a Caribbean bohio (a dirt-floored wooden hut with a palm-leaf roof). These had been designed by Pablo Cantin (Dominican) and Monge, who explained that they were not intended to represent every country or even any particular country, but rather to convey a general Hispanic ambiance. In addition, there would be a stage where folkloric groups from various countries would perform, a smaller stage for a fashion show featuring five Hispanic designers, ethnic food stands, a tent where CCQ would conduct voter registration and provide information about its services, and tables with artwork, crafts, and a selection of books by Latin American writers. Information about the Pueblo Hispano had been sent to all New York City newspapers and the several Latin American consulates, but press attendance at this conference was disappointingly small. On the opening Saturday of the Queens Festival on June 28, the four exhibits were still being constructed as crowds began to arrive at midday.

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Hispanas de Queens Unlike the Asian Village tents, which were located close to one another, the Pueblo Hispano tents, stages, and food kiosks were spread along the perimeter of a large, unshaded area that crowds avoided because of the hot weather. A popular exhibit was an Argentinian food kiosk where customers could watch World Cup soccer matches being played that weekend; on Sunday the Argentinian team won the World Cup, and Latinos from all countries cheered the victory. The Pueblo Hispano's opening ceremony and parade through the festival grounds also started late. Delegations from each consulate had been invited, but only the Costa Rican and Guatemalan consuls arrived to speak, the latter joined by a Guatemalan folkloric group whose costumes had won first prize in an international contest. Other speakers from the Pueblo's organizing group, all Latin American men from Queens, included Pedro Monge, George Ortiz, representatives of the Centro Cfvico Colombiano and Comite Cfvico Ecuatoriano, Reynaldo Lindo, a popular figure in the Colombian community, and other members of the Pueblo Hispano's board of directors, one of whom expressed hope that more of the consulates would cooperate in years to come. These dignitaries led the parade, followed by three dance groups scheduled to perform on the Pueblo Hispano stage: Nuevo Panama; Alborada, a Colombian troupe; and, representing the Dominican Republic, children from the Father Billini Association dance program. Earlier a Pueblo Hispano contingent had joined the Queens Festival's own official parade through the fair's attractions and crowd, a procession that symbolized the festival's role as both a large-scale "ceremony of incorporation" (Sanjek 1992) and a route to political recognition for Queens' immigrant communities. It was led by police on motorcycles and horses and by a jeep carrying an American flag, artillery gun, and three Vietnam veterans in battle fatigues. Borough President Claire Shulman and New York's U.S. Senator Alphonse D'Amato came next, in the first of four golf carts. Following them were a brass band, the Old Bethpage, Long Island, mummers band, and an EMS ambulance. Pedro Monge and George Ortiz came next with three Colombian dancers and two dozen children from the Father Billini dance group led by Ana Lopez. A group of dancers and clergymen accompanied by Lebanese and American flags followed. Then the banner of the Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts, the organizers of the Asian Village, appeared, followed by Chinese lion dancers, two Korean dance troupes, twenty young female Indian dancers with their homeland's flag, and marchers from the Taiwanese pavilion. Twenty Panamanian dancers in folk costume and two police cars ended the parade. Once everyone arrived at the main festival stage, Claire Shulman addressed the crowd. "In a few days people from all over the world will be celebrating the Statue of Lib-

Cultural Politics erty. There is no place in this country that better symbolizes that statue than Queens County, because of all the wonderful people that live here, from all over the world-and live here in harmony." The 1986 Pueblo Hispano did not meet its organizers' expectations. Pedro Monge and the board of directors had hoped to cover costs through corporate and business contributions. Most firms, however, preferred to support existing events like the Colombian Independence Day festival, which was known to attract a large audience. Rental fees for the food kiosks were high, and only a few food vendors had been willing to take a risk on this new venture. A large debt remained. At the 1988 Queens Festival, an enormous stage and booming sound system, both provided by radio station WADO, featured performances by popular Latin music bands broadcast live, with a large audience in front. Just one Colombian and one Mexican food stand were present next to this "Hispanic Village USA" stage, as its banner read. Nearby, on Ollantay's small Pueblo Hispano stage, the Saturday afternoon presentations by the Father Billini Association children and a Panamanian folkloric group could not be heard; these were delayed until a microphone and speakers promised by Queens Festival organizers arrived. The Father Billini group again represented the Pueblo Hispano in the official parade. Overall, more large corporate exhibits and fewer community organizations characterized the more commercialized nature of this year's festival. Danta encountered Ollantay's director Pedro Monge and president Nayibe Nunez-Berger on Sunday near the Pueblo Hispano stage, just after Borough President Claire Shulman stopped to greet them both. Nayibe explained that WADO and Nick Lugo Travel, a Puerto Rican-owned firm, had provided the funds for the large sound system. With a diminished commitment from the Queens Heritage Corporation, the Pueblo Hispano had shrunk to one small stage and a few exhibit tables. Monge added, "This year we were practically ignored by the organizers." The next year the Ollantay Pueblo Hispano was gone, and only the WADO "Hispanic Village" stage and its commercial sponsors occupied the Queens Festival's designated Latino area. In succeeding years the commercialization of all Queens Festival entertainment, exhibits, and vendors continued. By 1994 the renamed "Latino Village" was just an empty stage with recorded music and a sparse audience. In 1999 the entire Queens Festival was canceled. The Latin American Cultural Center of Queens

By the early 1990s the Ollantay Center's exhibition space had closed, and the organization continued only through its publications and occasional

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Hispanas de Queens literary presentations. Then in 1993 a new Latin American Cultural Center of Queens (LACCQ) was founded. The founders were the first board of director Nayibe Nunez-Berger, who had resigned from Ollantay; David Glassberg, a second-generation Ecuadoran (and later aide to City Councilmember John Sabini); Luz Leguizamo, a Colombian and member of Community Board 4 and the Centro Cfvico Colombiano (and later aide to State Assemblymember Ivan Lafayette); Guillermo Vasquez, a first-generation Colombian not involved in Colombian immigrant organizations; Enrique Ochoa, an Ecuadoran lawyer; and several leaders of Renacer Ecuatoriano, an Ecuadoran organization which then dissolved. Aida Gonzalez, director of cultural affairs at Queens Borough Hall, served as an adviser to the new group. In 1994 the LACCQ's newly formed thirteen-member board of directors consisted of several professionals and businessmen active in singlenationality organizations, among them Martha Cortes, a Colombian cosmetic dentist, and William Salgado, a Colombian lawyer. A separate eleven-member advisory board included Alice Cardona, a Puerto Rican and the assistant director of the New York State Labor Department's Division for Women; Ana Lopez, head of the Father Billini Association; Ivonne Garcia, the Nicaraguan Hispanic affairs adviser to Queens Borough President Claire Shulman; and Carlos Carrillo, publisher of the Spanish-language newspaper Impacto. In addition, the LACCQ's "Honorary Board" listed white American politicians Lafayette, Sabini, Shulman, and U.S. Congressmember Thomas Manton, chairperson of the Queens County Democratic Organization; U.S. Congressmember Nydia Velasquez (Puerto Rican), first elected in 1992, whose district included parts of Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights; Queens-raised comedian and movie actor John Leguizamo, son of Luz Leguizamo; and composer Luis Nieves. Unlike Ollantay, the LACCQ did not have its own building or performance space, but in 1994 it opened an office in Queens Borough Hall with a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring greetings and an official proclamation from Borough President Shulman. Citations were awarded to Shulman and to five Latino deans and program directors, three of them women, from St. John's University and the four City University of New York campuses located in Queens. A concert of chorales by Latin American composers followed, performed by a classically trained vocal ensemble of white Americans conducted by its Latina musical director. The first two presidents of the LACCQ were also Latinas, Cortes and Leguizamo, the third and fourth Bolivian and Ecuadoran men, and the fifth again a woman, Nunez-Berger, who continued to hold this office after 1997.

Cultural Politics In 1993 Danta began to volunteer at the LACCQ, and during 1994 she worked part-time coordinating an LACCQ children's art program at the Claridad Beacon Center at Public School 19 in Corona Plaza. From 1995 to 1997 Danta served as LACCQ executive director and one-person staff until Elena Acosta, a Colombian and former New Immigrants and Old Americans Project team member, joined her as a part-time assistant in the LACCQ office. Danta's charge was to implement the LACCQ's goals of "strengthening the group identity of Hispanics by preserving and disseminating their cultural legacy" and "nurturing cultural pluralism by building multi-cultural bridges with other ethnic groups." In 1995 the LACCQ, the Queens Borough President's Office, and Consolidated Edison Gas and Electric Company joined in sponsoring a Latino leadership conference. Danta also continued to oversee the LACCQ's Beacon School arts programs, which were maintained under both the Father Billini Association and HANAC through 1997. She enrolled in grant writing, financial management, and not-for-profit fundraising classes in the Queens College continuing education program, and prepared funding proprosals to state and city agencies. In September 1995 her first LACCQ cultural program, a "Central American Celebration" featuring musicians and dancers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama and cosponsored by an African American group, the Cultural Collaborative Jamaica, was held at the Queens Borough (Jamaica) Public Library's main branch. Other events followed during 1996 and 1997, including a dance program with Bolivian, Colombian, and Afro-Cuban performers in Jackson Heights; Christmas and Three Kings Day mariachi music, dance, and storytelling programs in Jamaica; Mexican and Argentinian dance programs; three evening tertulias, or gatherings, at a Jackson Heights restaurant with Latino artists and poets, attracting fifty or more adults; various art workshops and exhibits; a multicultural series of performances, arts and crafts instruction, and museum visits for Latino and other ethnically diverse youth; and a "role models" program in which Latino high school students met with professionals, including two Latino judges, Aida Gonzales and Ivonne Garcia from the Queens Borough President's Office, state government official Alice Cardona, dentist Martha Cortes and her surgeon husband, and lawyer Enrique Ochoa. From Danta's viewpoint, several problems typical of new immigrant organizations confronted the LACCQ. While small amounts of public funding and in-kind support for Latino cultural activities were available, both government and corporate funders preferred to deal with larger, mainstream institutions. Often these well-established institutions employed a Latino to direct a particular project, and smaller, community-

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Hispanas de Queens based Hispanic organizations found it difficult to compete. For example, in 1997 the more mainstream Queens Theater in the Park approached LACCQ president Nayibe Nunez-Berger to cosponsor a summer concert program of commercial Latin American musical acts because their corporate funder, AT&T, wanted to make the grant to a Latino organization; the LACCQ board agreed to cosponsor. The grant was awarded to both organizations for two years, but after that the Queens Theater continued the successful series on its own, listing the LACCQ and Centro Cfvico Mexicano as "cultural advisors." In small or new organizations there are never enough funds for administrative expenses, forcing many organizations to keep a one-person staff that is not only underpaid but also has to work long hours to keep the organization going. At the LACCQ the relationship between a oneperson staff and a large board of directors was unwieldy, involving many delays before directors could be consulted or meet as a group to approve decisions. Board members had taken responsibility for different tasks before Danta became director, and some persons maintained this level of involvement. Although these members considered it prestigious to serve on the board, many were also active in other cultural or Latino organizations as well as in their businesses and professional careers, and time for the LACCQ was limited. There are other internal problems in some organizations such as interpersonal conflicts or competition as well as lack of experience running a not-for-profit organization. After 1997 the LACCQ moved to an office in Astoria, Queens, and continued its cultural activities, but with an emphasis on programs and classical music concerts at Queens Borough Hall, and less visibility in community settings until 2000, when it received funding to expand its Cultural Bridges program through the help of New York State Assemblymember Ivan Lafayette. The LACCQ suffered problems common to other small or new Latino organizations, and many such organizations continue to be underfunded. This situation could be related to the lack of political power still affecting the Latino communities. Cultural Politics and Panethnicity

Cultural activities have played an important role in emergent Queens Latino panethnic leadership. In these activities a majority of leaders were women who understood well the connection between cultural organizations and political influence through channels other than voting. Their activism clearly involved an explicit ideological Latino panethncity

Cultural Politics evident in such titles as Desfile de la Hispanidad en Queens, Pueblo Hispano, and Latin American Cultural Center of Queens. As we shall see, many of the Latin American Queens activists who founded or met through Latino panethnic social service or cultural organizations made use of contacts established there to enhance Latino power in the formal political arena and to win elective office.

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Formal Politics

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his chapter tells the story of Latin American involvement in formal politics in Queens. We include early efforts to attract Democratic Party recognition, Latino appointments at Queens Borough Hall, the creation of United Latin Americans of Queens (ULAQ) and successor groups, redistricting struggles, and efforts to win elective office. In these events we encounter again Haydee Zambrana, Ana Lopez, Aida Gonzalez, and other women active in Latino panethnic social service and cultural organizations. Early Contacts with the Democratic Party

As Corona's Latino population grew from the 1970s onward, so did efforts to achieve representation in civic and electoral politics. Attempts to work within the Democratic Party did not lead the county organization to endorse any Hispanic candidate, and the first Latino to represent Corona, Congressmember Nydia Velasquez, elected in 1992, was from Brooklyn, with Corona constituting one remote pocket of her tricounty district. Her election, however, was followed by the appointment of four Latino members to the Queens County Democratic Organization. Meanwhile, a handful of Latinos had already been appointed to jobs at Queens Borough Hall and to Community Boards 3 and 4 (containing the north and south portions of Corona). And beginning in the mid-1g8os, new political organizations and clubs aimed at electing Latinos emerged, with much of their leadership coming from Latina leaders of Queens social service and cultural organizations. During the 1990s all challenges by male Latino candidates to local white and black elected officials failed, but in 2000 a female candidate representing Corona, Aida Gonzalez, at last gained support from key Democratic party leaders for her city council race in zoo 1. Latino Political Appointments

With the proliferation of pan ethnic Latino cultural organizations and activities in the late 1970s and early 1g8os, white elected officials began to

Formal Politics

notice the burgeoning Queens Latino population. In 1982 Mayor Edward Koch, first elected in 1977, publicly "praised Queens Latin Americans for 'rejuvenating once half-empty churches and opening up many new restaurants and small businesses"' (Sanjek 1998, 148). Two years later at a meeting at Columbia University, Aida Gonzalez asked the mayor why he had never met with Hispanics in Queens. He told her that if she could get an audience of six hundred, he would. When he came to a meeting at St. Joan of Arc Roman Catholic Church in Jackson Heights in 1984, Gonzalez informed the mayor that there were more than eight hundred people in the room. In 1985 Koch campaigned on the theme of addressing the unmet needs of the city's Latinos, and at the beginning of his third term he appointed a Commission on Hispanic Concerns. Donald Manes, Queens Borough president since 1971, was also noting the signs of Latino population and organizational growth in his borough. In May 1985 he demanded that the Transit Authority issue brochures in Spanish detailing construction-related service cuts on the Number 7 subway. "Since the only explanation provided ... when work started was in English, an already difficult situation was made more difficult for the large number of non-English-speaking Hispanic and Asian riders," he proclaimed (Rabin 1985). At about the same time he appointed George Ortiz, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican and lawyer (McKenna 1987), as his first Hispanic Affairs adviser. In July 1985 Manes named Ecuadoran Aida Gonzalez, a cofounder of the Ollantay Center and president of the Queens Council for the Arts, to be director of cultural affairs for Queens. Two months later Manes invited fifty Latino leaders to Queens Borough Hall to honor their efforts in creating their own organizations, stating that "in a relatively short period of time, the Hispanic community has become an important part of our cultural, economic, and political life in Queens." Noting that there were more than 30o,ooo Latin American residents of the borough, he sounded a Latino panethnic note: "Numbers alone are not enough to affect significant change .... It is the unity of those numbers that makes the difference. It's a community that's getting together to act in one voice that makes a difference" (author interview). Manes committed suicide in 1986 and was succeeded by Claire Shulman, who remained Queens Borough president through 2001. She retained Aida Gonzalez as director of cultural affairs, and in 1988 she replaced departed Hispanic affairs adviser George Ortiz with Ivonne Garcia, a Nicaraguan educated in Panama and a U.S. resident since 1962. Garcia also worked for Shulman as a liaison to Queens community districts and attended meetings of Community Board 4 in Corona Heights. Garcia was active in promoting Latino panethnic political empowerment. In 2000 she assumed responsibility for the annual Desfile de

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Hispanas de Queens la Hispanidad en Queens, and she also served as an adviser to the Latin American Women's Council Queens Network, formed in 1988, of which Aida Gonzalez and her Ollantay colleague Nayibe Nunez-Berger were founding members. At its annual ceremony at Queens Borough Hall in 1989 the council presented Claire Shulman with its Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Award, named for a seventeenth-century Mexican nun and poet. Borough presidents have the power to appoint up to fifty citizens active in civic affairs to each of the fourteen community boards in Queens. Although their decisions were advisory, the boards voted on proposed land-use changes and zoning variances and made recommendations on city budget expenditures; moreover, their members monitored local city service delivery and "quality oflife" conditions, and Shulman in particular, who had been Manes's director of community boards, paid close attention to them (Sanjek 1998). At Community Board 4 there had been only one or two Latino members at any time from 1972 to 1984; only three of its nine Latino appointees during those years remained on the board for more than one year, and all but one of them were male. Manes made three new Latino appointments to CB4 in 1984, and three more in 1985. By 1986 the board's Latino membership consisted of one man and five women, including Haydee Zambrana, executive director of CCQ, who served on the board for five years, and Clara Salas, a Cuban social worker and Elmhurst resident, who remained on CB4 through the 1990s and served on its executive committee. 1 By the late 1990s the five Latino members of CB4, including two women-Salas and Luz Leguizamo, a Colombian from Elmhurst-still underrepresented the 45 percent (as of 1990) Hispanic population of their community district. On CB3, serving a 44 percent Hispanic district, there were now six Latinos; they numbered two men and four women, and included Ana Lopez of the Father Billini Assocation, Julio Ferreras of Hermanos Unidos de Queens, and Ludy Herrera of the DominicanAmerican Society of Queens, all Corona Plaza organizations. Among the several hundred community board members elsewhere in Queens, there were only seven Latinos-two on CB1 (Astoria, Long Island City), two on CBz (Sunnyside, Woodside), and three on CB13 (Queens Village, Cambria Heights). Political Organizations and Clubs

In 1974 an Elmhurst-Corona Community Federation was formed by white and African American civic activists who met at the district cabinet 1.

We thank Roger Sanjek for information in this paragraph.

Formal Politics

and community boards in Community Districts 3 and 4 (Sanjek 1998, 280). Four leaders of local Latino organizations joined as well, including Carmen Velasquez, a Puerto Rican, of the United Hispanic-American Democratic Club, and Peter Nefsky, an Argentinian and Elmhurst member of Community Board 4 during 1972-1975. The federation lasted only one year, and neither the Democratic club nor the other Latino organizations involved remained active by the 198os. Velasquez, however, later joined Betsy Davila in working on the annual Desfile de la Hispanidad, and Nefsky headed the mainly white 11oth Police Precinct Community Council (coterminous with Community District 4) during the 198os. 2 Two more Latino Democratic Party clubs were formed in northwest Queens in 1976 and in the early 198os, but neither survived (Jones-Correa 1998, 81). The next organizational step occurred late in 1985 following a talk on the national housing situation by Chicano leaders invited to speak at La Guardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens, by Thomas Manton, a U.S. Congressmember representing Woodside and Elmhurst. Haydee Zambrana of CCQ and Pedro Monge of the 01lantay Center attended, and began to talk with each other about forming a new political organization to represent persons of all the Spanishspeaking nationalities in Queens. They called a meeting at Ollantay that was attended by community leaders and businesspersons, among them Ana Lopez of the Father Billini Assocation; Aida Gonzalez, now at Borough Hall; Nayibe Nunez-Berger of Ollantay and the Centro Cfvico Colombiano; Alice Cardona, who worked for Governor Mario Cuomo; and others of Argentinian, Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Ecuadoran, Puerto Rican, and Spanish backgrounds. At that meeting the United Latin Americans of Queens, or ULAQ, was conceived; George Ortiz, Hispanic affairs adviser to Borough President Manes, was later selected as its executive director. Within a few months ULAQ invited Congressmember Manton, who had become chairman of the Queens County Democratic Organization after Manes's suicide (and remained so as of 2001), to a meeting at El Inca Restaurant on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights. Some three hundred people listened to Manton's proposal to form a Hispanic Democratic club that all politically active Queens Latinos could join even if they also belonged to a local Democratic club. (Most of these local clubs in Queens were white; Jones-Correa 1998, 8o-82.) Manton explained that Greeks and African Americans in Queens had also formed their own clubs. In other informal conversations, both Manton and Borough Presi2.

We thank Roger Sanjek for this information.

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Hispanas de Queens dent Claire Shulman told Queens Latino leaders that the Hispanic vote was still too small for them to "listen to" or "deal with" Latino political demands (Janes-Correa 1998, 79). The ULAQ organizers agreed with Manton's suggestion and also recognized that there were relatively few Latino groups and leaders working on local issues in Queens. And in addition to forming a Democratic Party club, ULAQ members wanted to support Latino candidates in upcoming elections. With this in mind, they also began to discuss advocacy for a Latina-majority district in Queens during the political reapportionment that would follow the 1990 U.S. census. In January 1988 Haydee Zambrana, George Ortiz, Alice Cardona, Manuel Rosa (a Puerto Rican lawyer and Hispanic affairs adviser to Governor Mario Cuomo), Edna Suarez Calomba (also Puerto Rican), and Lolita Fonegra (Colombian) decided to organize a Queens Hispanic Political Action Committee to raise money for candidates. The PAC was officially unveiled in 1989, and each member contributed $100; in addition to the organizers, Aida Gonzalez, Ivonne Garcia, Nayibe Nunez-Berger, and Dolores Fernandez, a Puerto Rican and New York City Board of Education official (and, since 1999, president of the City University of New York's Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College) joined the PAC's executive board. With no successes to point to, however, ULAQ eventually faded. To fill its place and organize for redistricting in Queens, in 1991 a "nonpartisan" Queens Hispanic Coalition was formed. Its initial organizers included several new faces in Queens Latino panethnic politics, among them persons who would reappear as board members and officers of the Latin American Cultural Center of Queens when it was founded in 1993, as well as in other political efforts: Luz Leguizamo, a member of Centro Civico Colombiano; David Glassberg, a second-generation Ecuadoran; Guillermo Vasquez, a Colombian not active in immigrant associations; and Antonio Alarcon, a Bolivian and later a LACCQ president. Other Queens Hispanic Coalition founding members included Arthur Rojas, a Colombian; Elena Acosta, Colombian (and former member of the New Immigrants and Old Americans research team); William Salgado, a Colombian lawyer active in immigrant organizations; Beatriz Montoya, a Colombian; and Luis Echeverria, a U.S.-born Latino. (By 1991 Haydee Zambrana and George Ortiz were no longer active in Queens Latino politics.) As one of its first efforts, the Queens Hispanic Coalition deployed money and campaign workers to help Jackson Heights City Councilmember John Sabini, a white American, win a Democratic primary in 1991 (Finnegan 1993). The next year the Coalition conducted voter registration and turnout drives for the congressional election. Leadership

Formal Politics

then shifted as some members left or became more active in other organizations, and under its president, Nayibe Nunez-Berger, the Coalition backed Alan Hevesi of Queens in 1993 in his successful race for New York City comptroller (Finnegan 1993). In 1995 Nunez-Berger brought the Coalition's support to efforts by Latinos, whites, and African Americans to prevent Mayor Rudolph Giuliani from privatizing cityowned Elmhurst Hospital (Sanjek 1998, 295). In 1993 Aida Gonzalez and William Salgado, both recently appointed members of the Queens County Democratic Organization, acted on the advice Thomas Manton had given the ULAQ years earlier and launched the new Pan American Democratic Association as a political party club. Salgado became president, and members included Bolivians, Colombians, Ecuadorans, and Puerto Ricans, among others. In 1998 another political organization, La Gran Alianza de Queens, was formed by a group of Dominican civic activists in Corona Plaza, including Alianza president Carlos Suarez, Genaro Herrera of the Dominican-American Society of Queens, and members of Hermanos Unidos de Queens. The Alianza aimed at political empowerment through civic education and activism, as well as working for issues and Latino electoral candidates. The first Alianza event was a public meeting with Washington Heights city councilmember Guillermo Linares, a Dominican; meetings on community boards and local school boards, voter registration drives, and a forum with Public Advocate Mark Green, a citywide elected official, followed. The Alianza sought to involve leaders and organizations of diverse Latin American nationalities and also to work with non-Hispanics. As Suarez put it, ''This is an area where no one group has a political hegemony. We have to be able to make coalitions" (Cabral 1999b). Alianza members included Aida Gonzalez, an (Ecuadoran), Ruby Danta, (Cuban), and Ivonne Garcia (Nicaraguan) and the group endorsed Ecuadoran and Bolivian as well as Dominican electoral candidates. Redistricting and Its Results

In 1991 Mayor David Dinkins appointed a commission to draw new city council districts and increase their number from thirty-five to fifty-one. (For more information on city council and congressional redistricting, see Jones-Corrrea 1998, 182-188; Sanjek 1998, 360-366.) African Americans thought that their earlier electoral gains would be preserved, so for the first time in decades the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People did not participate in the 1991 redistricting battles (Sanjek 1998, 361). Latinos, however, saw an opportunity to increase

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Hispanas de Queens their political representation citywide. Under a plan formulated by the Puerto Rican/Latino Coalition for Voting Rights, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), and other groups, two new Latina-majority districts were proposed for Queens. Members of the Queens Hispanic Political Action Committee collaborated in advancing this proposal, expecting the number of Latino voters in the two districts to increase through the 1990s, and to make eventual election of Latino candidates possible. When the redistricting commission presented its preliminary map, however, there was only one predominantly Latino city council district for Queens. At the commission's public hearing on its plan in May 1991, several Latinos from Queens testified on behalf of the "two-district" plan. This group included both veterans of Latino panethnic organizations formed during the 1970s and 198os and members of the recently created Queens Hispanic Coalition: Elena Acosta (Colombian), Rafael Cantellops (Puerto Rican, and a former CB4 member), Alice Cardona (Puerto Rican), Ruby Danta (Cuban), Luz Leguizamo (Colombian), Ana Lopez (Dominican), Pedro Monge (Cuban), Nayibe Nunez-Berger (Colombian), and Guillermo Vasquez (Colombian). Their call to increase the number of "minority" districts in Queens, however, was vigorously opposed by white incumbent politicians and community spokespersons (Jones-Correa 1998, 183-184). African Americans also opposed the twodistrict plan because it placed East Elmhurst and Lefrak City, the two black residential concentrations north and south of Corona, in different districts, whereas during the 198os they had been in the same Twentyfirst City Council District (Sanjek 1998, 361-362). The commission's final plan reunited the two black neighborhoods in the Twenty-first District. In 1991 the PRLDEF joined the Queens Hispanic PAC and the Queens Hispanic Coalition in an antidiscrimination appeal to the U.S. Department of Justice, arguing that Latino voting strength in the Twenty-first District was being diluted. In July 1991 the Justice Department agreed and turned down the redistricting plan. Lefrak City was returned to the newly drawn Twenty-fifth District, which included Elmhurst and Jackson Heights. The new Twenty-first District, encompassing most of Corona, now had a 55 percent Latino population, although its registered electorate was only 24 percent Latino; its other registered voters were 33 percent black and 38 percent white. Later in 1991 Helen Marshall, an African American who had represented Corona and East Elmhurst in the New York State Assembly, was elected to the Twenty-first District City Council seat (and was reelected in 1993 and 1997 [Sanjek 1998, 362]).

Formal Politics

The drawing of new congressional districts was controlled by the New York State legislature, and it resulted in two Latino-majority seats among New York City's fourteen congressional districts. One of them, the Twelfth District, meandered over three counties to include Latinos in Sunset Park, Williamsburg, Bushwick, and East New York in Brooklyn, the Lower East Side in Manhattan, and Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Corona in Queens. While Latinos-about half Puerto Ricans and half other nationalities-made up 58 percent of the Twelfth District's population, they were only 49 percent of its registered voters. The other registered voters were 29 percent white, 16 percent black, and 5 percent Asian (Liff 1992; Mitchell1992; Sanjek 1998, 365-366). Five candidates entered the Twelfth District Democratic primary in 1992: Stephen Solarz, a white incumbent whose district had been eliminated, and four Puerto Ricans, including two women: Liz Colon, a former head of the Association of Puerto Rican Executive Directors, who was backed by Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, the city's highest-ranking Latino official; and Nydia Velasquez, head of the government of Puerto Rico's New York office, who was endorsed by David Dinkins, the city's first African American mayor (Liff 1992; Mitchell 1992). At meetings with the candidates, Queens Hispanic Coalition leaders were more impressed with Colon, who presented herself as seeking to represent the interests of all Latinos, than with Velasquez, who spoke on behalf of Puerto Ricans. They offered their support to Colon. Velasquez, however, won the primary and was elected to Congress (and reelected through 2000). She thus became the first Hispanic elected to any office from Queens. (In 1997 the Twelfth District was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court because of its "odd shape," and then slightly redrawn [Hernandez 1997a, 1997b].) Soon after the 1992 election, county Democratic Party chairperson Thomas Manton announced that four Latino and two Asian at-large district leaders were being added to the county organization, which at that point was composed of fifty-two white and twelve black locally elected district leaders (Janes-Correa 1998, 87-88; Sanjek 1998, 363-364). The four new Latino members, all members of Democratic Party clubs, reflected the diverse population of Queens: Louis Cruz was Puerto Rican; William Salgado, Colombian; Fior D'Aliza Rodriguez, an aide to U.S. Congressmember Gary Ackerman of Flushing, Queens, and already a New York State Democratic Committee member, Dominican; and Aida Gonzalez, Ecuadoran. In June 1993 the Queens Democratic County Organization made its first primary-election endorsement of a Latino office seeker, announcing its support of Bronx State Assemblymember Roberto Ramirez, a Puerto Rican, in his candidacy for citywide public

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Hispanas de Queens advocate. Ramirez lost the race to Mark Green, a white city official from Manhattan, but in return for the endorsement Ramirez's Bronx Democratic Party organization backed the victorious Queens candidate for comptroller, white State Assemblymember Alan Hevesi (Carroll1993). Latino Electoral Candidates in Queens

The first Latino from Queens to run for elective office was a 1976 Republican challenger to white Democrat Ivan Lafayette of Jackson Heights, then making his first successful run for the State Assembly, an office to which he was reelected through 2000. In 1988 George Ortiz, former Hispanic affairs adviser to Borough Presidents Manes and Shulman, campaigned for a Democratic party district leadership post in Jackson Heights, and Judge Jaime Rios collected petitions to run for higher judicial office. Neither had Queens County Democratic organizational support, and neither won. In 1991 three male Latinos ran in the Democratic primary against Helen Marshall for the new "Latino majority" Twenty-first District city council seat. None of them-Victor Hernandez, a Corona real estate agent; Rafael Moreno, an electrical engineer; or Eric Ruanoa, a civil engineer-had a Latino panethnic organizational base, and together they polled fewer than 8oo votes to Marshall's 3,086 (Lin 1991). By the 1980s Hispanic children accounted for one-quarter of the public school enrollment in Queens, but there was no Latino on any of the seven-member local school boards in the borough. All school parents may vote in school board elections, even if they are not citizens; noncitizen parents, however, had to obtain registration forms at their children's school and register before the election. Many were not well informed about this process and did not register and vote. A few Latina candidates ran for Queens district school boards during the 198os, but without success. In 1986 Haydee Zambrana, executive director of CCQ, persuaded Clara Salas, her colleague on Community Board 4, to run in School District 24 (which includes Elmhurst and most of Corona), and Martiza Sarmiento-Radbill, an Ecuadoran and later CCQ director of immigrant services, to run in School District 30 (which includes Jackson Heights and part of Corona). Both lost. Zambrana herself ran unsuccessfully for the school board in District 30 in 1989 (Sanjek 1998, 294). In the 1993 school board election, Zoraida O'Dooley, a Peruvian, was elected in District 30, becoming the first and only Latino on any district school board in Queens. The 1996 School District 30 election had two Latino candidates, O'Dooley and David Glassberg, an Ecuadoran active in the Queens Hispanic Coalition and other Latino panethnic groups. Glassberg won but O'Dooley did not. In 1999 La Gran

Formal Politics

Alianza endorsed Glassberg for reelection and also Maria Mattos, a Bolivian School District 30 candidate. Glassberg won again, Mattos lost, and Latinos remained represented by only one Hispanic school board member in the entire borough. (No Latinos were candidates for School District 24 during the 1990s.) In 1998 a Queens Latino political challenger, William Salgado, confronted incumbent State Assemblymember Ivan Lafayette of Jackson Heights, gaining major press coverage (Del Medico 1998; Lefkowitz 1998; Lewine 1998). A lawyer educated at Columbia College and Boston College, Salgado had been born in Colombia and emigrated at age eleven and was active in Colombian affairs, serving as first president of the East Elmhurst Colombian Lions, founded in 1987, and president of the Centro Cfvico Colombiano during 1998 (Golden 1991; Virasami 1998). He was also a member of the Queens Hispanic Coalition, a founding officer of the Pan American Democratic Association Party club, and, since 1993, an at-large district leader in the Queens County Democratic Organization. "The time is ripe for change," Salgado asserted. "We are similar in our position within the political spectrum, but I think I bring an immigrant perspective which represents an immigrant population." Lafayette countered by pointing to legislation he had supported benefiting immigrants, and insisted that Salgado's "only issue" was that "he is a Latino running in a district with a large number of Latinos .... If the guy had a different vision, then I could understand." Salgado, in response, emphasized Democrat Lafayette's endorsement of Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1997. Neither man claimed to be an ethnic candidate, nor could this be a winning formula. Whites now numbered only 20 percent of the district's Hispanic-majority population, and Latinos were expected to account for only a third of Democratic primary voters (Del Medico 1998; Lefkowitz 1998; Lewine 1998). Alice Cardona, a Puerto Rican veteran of Queens Latino panethnic efforts, served for a few months as Salgado's campaign manager, and he was endorsed by Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, the city's highest-ranking Latino officeholder. Worried, Lafayette approached lvonne Garcia, Hispanic Affairs adviser to Borough President Claire Shulman, for an assessment of the risk Salgado posed. He then asked N ayibe N ufiez- Berger of the Latin American Cultural Center of Queens to endorse him, which she did, as did other local Latino leaders. Shulman and City Comptroller Alan Hevesi also backed Lafayette. "Elected people don't want to take a gamble on new people," Salgado responded. "All these endorsements show is the power of incumbency" (Lefkowitz 1998). That power worked, and Salgado lost his uphill race against Lafayette.

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Hispanas de Queens Other white officeholders now began to draw lines against Latino candidates. In 1999 Humberto Suarezmotta, a Colombian businessman and immigrant organization leader (Sanjek 1gg8, 295), gathered nominating petitions to run against the widow of State Senator Leonard Stavisky, whose district included part of Corona and was 42 percent Latino. Toby Stavisky, who had worked closely with her husband, challenged his petitions and eliminated him from the ballot (Cabral 1gggb). Democratic City Councilmember John Sabini, who in 1996 had endorsed Ecuadoran school board candidate David Glassberg, then his aide, withdrew his support in 1999 and backed his current white aide, Ellen Raffaele, the president of his and Ivan Lafayette's Jackson Heights J.F.K. Democratic Club. (In the multicandidate election, Sabini could have backed more than one candidate.) In 2000 Lafayette was challenged by two Latino primary candidates, William Salgado and Genaro Herrera, president of the DominicanAmerican Society of Queens in Corona Plaza and the candidate of La Gran Alianza. Just two months before the primary election, the threeyear city budget allocation for Herrera's social service organization was drastically reduced, and the funds awarded to other organizations. Many Latinos suspected that Lafayette, who had endorsed Giuliani, was involved. Acci6n Latina, Hermanos Unidos de Queens, and other Corona Latino organizations collected one thousand signatures on a petition supporting the Dominican-American Society's budget request, and rallied at its headquarters. This time Bronx Borough President Ferrer, a candidate for mayor in 2001, endorsed Lafayette, who won with 59 percent of the primary vote. Salgado received 24 percent, and Herrera 17 percent (Dolman 2ooo; Virasami 2ooo; White and Munoz 2ooo). The year 2000 also saw the announcement of Aida Gonzalez's candidacy for the Twenty-first District City Council seat that Helen Marshall was vacating because of term limits. (Although Gonzalez lived in Flushing, not Corona, under city law she could run in any district provided she moved there if elected.) Aida Gonzalez had been a central participant in Queens Latino panethnic organizations and politics for more than two decades. Her many activities included cofounding Ollantay in 1977, advocating in family court in the late 1970s, bringing Mayor Koch to a Queens Latino audience in 1984, joining the ULAQ in 1985 and the Queens Hispanic PAC in 1g88, cofounding the Panamerican Democratic Association in 1993, and advising the Latin American Cultural Center of Queens from 1993 onward. She had also written a column for the Spanish newspaper El Diario and was vice-president of La Gran Alianza. Moreover, as director of cultural affairs for Queens since 1985, and atlarge district leader in the Queens County Democratic Organization

Formal Politics

Helen Marshall, newly elected Queens Borough president; Ana Lopez, director of Asociaci6n Benefica Cultural Father Billini; Mercedes Luna, staff of the Father Billini Association; and Eugene Dessource, member of the Board of Directors of the Father Billini Association, pose during the celebration of Helen Marshall's victory on November 7, 2001.

since 1993, she knew a wide range of white and black, as well as Latino, leaders in Queens cultural, social seiVice, ethnic, and political organizations. Unlike any Latino candidate before her, Gonzalez's campaign was welcomed by leading white politicians of Queens, including Democratic Party chief Thomas Manton, City Comptroller Alan H evesi, and Borough President Claire Shulman, all of whom were sponsors of he r May zooo kickoff fundraiser in Jackson H eights; Shulman also gave a ringing endorsement at Gonzalez's November fundraiser. Her "Friends of Aida Gonzalez" committee and other supporters at these two events included Helen Marshall and a pan-Latino roster of supporters with whom she had worked over the preceding two decades: Antonio Alarcon (Bolivian), Silvia Brito (Cuban), Alice Cardona (Puerto Rican), Luz Colon (Puerto Rican), Ruby Danta (Cuban), Dino Dominguez (Ecuadoran), Julio Fer-

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Hispanas de Queens

Aida Gonzalez registers voters during her City Council campaign.

reras (Dominican), Ivonne Garcia (Nicaraguan), David Glassberg (Ecuadoran), Genaro and Ludy Herrera (Dominican), Luz Leguizamo (Colombian), Nayibe Nunez-Berger (Colombian), Enrique Ochoa (Ecuadoran), and Manuel Rosa (Puerto Rican). Pan·Latino Politics in Queens

Aida Gonzalez's campaign ideology and base of supporters reflected the Latino panethnic political history that had unfolded in Queens since the 1970s. The same was true of the first Queens Latino to win reelection in Queens-School Board 30 member David Glassberg in 1999. His campaign flyers, press announcements, and speeches all presented him as a Latino leader who would represent all Latin Americans. Although Hispanic single-nationality organizations and events retained a strong presence in Queens, all the activists attempting to achieve electoral victories realized that a Latino panethnic approach was necessary. And in forming the boards of directors of Latino panethnic social service, cultural, and political organizations, there was a conscious effort to include people from different nationalities. The Latino panethnic political activists of Queens well understood the reasons behind this effort. First, there was no dominant Latino nationality in Queens. Second, all groups had arrived during the same period, giving none the privilege of being first. Third, all except Puerto Ricans

Formal Politics

had to go through the same process of achieving political status by becoming permanent residents, then citizens, and registering to vote. Fourth, Latinos in Queens were perceived by other groups as one population, and achieving appointed or elected political office depended upon the support of an unfragmented Hispanic community. As the September primary election neared, however, Gonzalez's party support vanished. In June 2001 William Salgado called upon all Latinos to unite behind Hiram Monserrate, a Puerto Rican retired policeman who, although a newcomer to Corona, had in September 2000 successfully challenged a white District Leader supported by the Queens County Democratic Party. Monserrate now ran with the endorsement of that party organization as well as several labor unions and Bronx Puerto Rican Democratic leaders (Hicks 2001; Salgado 2001). Latino ethnic rivalries and charges of "dirty tricks" soon emerged in the four-person city council race, and Monserrate was accused by some Corona Latinos of "being part of a 'Bronx Democratic Party machine'" and a nonimmigrant "interloper who should not represent the immigrant Dominicans, Colombians and Ecuadorans who make up most of the Latinos in the district" (Howell2o01, 2002). Monserrate won the primary with 42 percent of the vote, and Gonzalez came in last, behind two male Ecuadoran and Dominican candidates. The preceding decades of female-led efforts to create an inclusive Latino panethnic voice had not survived the intrusion of male-led machine politics and ethnic divisiveness.

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Conclusion: Women and the Creation of Latino Panethnicity

A

t the beginning of this book we posed the question: What happens when several Latin American national groups reside in the same neighborhood? The evidence from our fieldwork in Corona provides an answer: A new Latino panethnic identity-termed hispano, latinoamericano, Hispanic, or Latina-is created. For nearly two decades we followed this dynamic community at the grassroots level of convivencia diaria, as well as institutional developments in the larger Queens organizational arena, and observed the forging of cross-nationality Latino cultural exchange and interaction. We have analyzed our research results in terms of experiential and institutional forms of Latino panethnic behavior and in terms of categorical and ideological forms of Latino panethnic identification. Central to our findings has been the key role of women of diverse nationalities in developing a collective sense of identity as hispanas/Latinas de Queens. Our results identify several important factors and variables: Spanish language, immigrant geographic concentration, particular workplace and neighborhood settings, the multiplicity and demographic mix of Latin American nationalities in Corona and Queens, and the organizational activities and strategies of men and women. In other studies of Latinos in the United States and elsewhere in New York City, most researchers have looked at individual Latino ethnic groups, or at situations in which various Latino leaders and groups had already been brought together by politics. In contrast, we have begun from the grassroots-residential settings, streets, stores, churches, organizations-and followed what happens when people of many nationalities share locations and create institutions to serve or advocate for a diverse Latino population. We believe this approach is necessary to make sense of the ongoing Latin American diasporas and reinventions of culture occurring widely throughout the contemporary United States. Two decades ago Latino studies in the United States focused largely on the process of migration, modes of incorporation into the labor force,

Conclusion: Women and the Creation of Latino Panethnicity and comparative sociodemographics. Yet each Latino group also confronted new emergent realities: collective labels and attitudes imposed by outsiders and, increasingly, new forms of interaction, in varying local mixes, with other, longer-established or newly arrived Latino groups. By now, we contend, approaches focused on immigrant settlement experiences or on the assimilation of single-nationality groups have reached their limits. Our study suggests that there are still other dimensions for research into transnational linkages-as when, for example, Colombians embrace merengue, Dominicans learn to use new herbs and condiments, hispanas exchange information and resources across nationality lines, diverse Latinos create congregations and worship together, Spanish-speakers experience dialect leveling, or Latino political activists achieve empowerment. As these and other forms of cultural interaction occur, cultural materials from many traditions are blended (Nagel 1994, 164) and reinvented. In Corona and Queens, this happens first at the level of convivencia diaria interaction. Here, in everyday discourse, people identify themselves and others as Latino or Hispanic. This panethnic identification does not replace national identity. Rather, the social construction of ethnicity for Corona residents is a complex process in which both homecountry nationality and Latino panethnicity matter according to the immediate situation, and each form of identity receives multiple categorical, experiential, organizational, and ideological expressions. At the Latino panethnic institutional level, leaders who reside in Corona or Queens assume their leadership positions well aware of the diversity of their community. They refer to themselves as Latinos or Hispanics, and their organizational vision is panethnically Latino. What Carol Hardy-Fanta writes of Boston is also true of Queens: "The 'Latino community' [is] a vibrant mix of people who identify themselves first as Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Guatemaltecos, Salvadoreiios, Chicanos. The self-designation 'Latino' depends on many individual and structural factors[:] people who have an overall language in common, who often live in certain neighborhoods together, and who, when talking about socioeconomic and political needs, use the term 'la comunidad latina' to describe their common identity" (1993, 6-7). Women play different roles from men in the creation of Latino panethnicity. As Terry Haywoode puts it, working-class Latinas in Corona "are responsible for the social construction of local community, defining themselves primarily in terms of connection and affiliation rather than in terms of an individually constituted identity.... Working class women think of themselves as members of overlapping networks that include families, kinship groups, friendship groups, groups of neigh-

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Hispanas de Queens bors, neighborhood communities, religious and other formally defined organizations" (1994, 1-2). For these women, their categorical and experiential Hispanic or Latino panethnicity was rooted in convivencia diaria, in their interactions in apartment buildings, stores, parks, and churches. As they turned to social service organizations to solve practical problems, they entered a largely female-created and female-led Latino panethnic organizational milieu. None of these working-class experiences was exclusive to women, but women engaged in them more frequently and fully than men. For some women of working-class social backgrounds, such as Maria Maine, Haydee Zambrana, and Ana Lopez, the connection between experiential and organizational Latino panethnicity grew directly from a "female consciousness" that "emerges from the division of labor by sex, which assigns women the responsibility of preserving life .... Women of the popular classes perform work associated with obligations to preserve life, such as jobs ranging from shopping for necessities to ... guarding their neighborhoods, children, and mates against danger" (Kaplan 1982, 547). The organizations these women worked in and created were an extension of convivencia diaria into the public arena, providing flexibility to any perceived dichotomy between private and public spheres. Middle-class and professional Latinas make their connections and affiliations with Corona and other Queens Latin American neighborhood concentrations at an intermediary level, through organizational and ideological Latino panethnicity. For Latina leaders such as Aida Gonzalez, Nayibe Nunez-Berger, or Ivonne Garcia, whose Latino panethnic activities began in family court, cultural organizations, or Queens Borough Hall, the point of departure was an awareness of the shared position of Latinos in Queens and their potential ability, through their own activities, to create a political voice and build a better life for fellow Latino community residents. Contrary to stereotypes that middle-class people define themselves according to their own individuality, these middleclass women were leading members and creators of Latino pan ethnic institutions and activities. If working-class women operate to acheive immediate, practical results in everyday concerns over housing, jobs, and child care, middle-class women address the state-associated domains of public resources and power. In this latter struggle, panethnic solidary is frequently the only resource that immigrants, both women and men, have to advance within the broader society. Most middle-class Latina leaders also have knowledge and experience of the male-led, single-nationality Latin American organizations in Queens. Here women tend to be assigned traditional female roles. For example, Danta observed several events at the Centro Civico Colom-

Conclusion: Women and the Creation of Latino Panethnicity biano where women set the tables and served the food. Working-class men, few of whom participate as leaders in these professional- and business-proprietor-led single-nation organizations, have responsibilities as breadwinners and thus have no time for community affairs. When middle-class men do become involved in formal politics, they frequently do so in fundraising campaigns for presidential elections in their countries of origin. In the United States, men seek personal recognition and are competitive with one another. Women here, on the other hand, have taken on positions related to serving local community interests and building collaborative networks within a diverse Latino and wider Queens population, and some men have followed. What Hardy-Fanta concludes about Boston also applies to Queens: The way Latina women ... talk about politics reveals a very different vision of "What is political?" [from] that of Latino men-a visian that goes beyond voting, elections, and office holding .... How Latina women view the meaning of politics and political participation informs their mobilization strategies and makes them more effective than Latino men in mobilizing the Latino community. As women, they reflect a more participatory vision of democracy.... It is more in tune with cultural expectations and it overcomes many of the structural constraints on Latino political participation in this country. (1993, 2) Regardless of class background, Latinas in Corona and Queens create networks, identify connections, expand the emergent Latino community, and give it a palpable identity. The involvement of these women has several key characteristics. They make the best use of their individual resources and provide resources to others. They believe in the importance of concrete personal relationships and networks for generating trust and empowering their neighborhood. And they use the social skills of collaborative effort to achieve their goals at two levels: in their convivencia diaria, they find jobs, babysitting, housing, and other resources; in their organizations, they create a Latino panethnic voice and bring state-allocated resources into the community. This book concerns what may be a unique case: a highly diverse U.S. Latino immigrant community in which no single national group dominates numerically. Just a few years ago, most Latino neighborhoods and cities appeared to be composed of single nationalities-Puerto Ricans in New York, Cubans in Miami, Mexicans in California and the Southwest. The Latino panorama today has changed. More and more neighborhoods are becoming multinationality Latino locations like Corona; it is

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Hispanas de Queens happening elsewhere in New York City and in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Franciso, and Houston. And there, as in Corona, the Spanish language (and churches, we also suspect) play a powerful role in shaping neighborhoods socially and culturally, and potentially bringing diverse Latinos together along panethnic categorical, experiential, organizational, and ideological dimensions. What are the ongoing realities in these other cities? What forces or factors there are uniting or dividing Latinos? This book portrays only the case of Corona and Queens. It is not a predictive model of what will happen elsewhere. However, in terms of its methods and findings, it paves the way for future intensive studies, and for more comparative work on what favors or hinders the creation of Latino panethnicity.

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Index Note: Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Acci6n Latina, 112-13, 144 Ackerman, Gary, 141 Acosta, Elena, 131, 138, 140 Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), 89 Affirmative action. See Discrimination African Americans, 131 businesses of, 40 politics of, 137, 139-40 population of, 15-16 Alarcon, Antonio, 138 Aleman, Guadalupe, 111 Amnesty and Registration Program, 108 Appadurai, Arjun, 7 Archila, Sara Maria, 112 Asian Americans, 13-14, 83 businesses of, 42 population of, 16, 19 Asian Village, 127-28 Asociaci6n Benefica Cultural Padre Billini, 69,92,122-26,131,145 Pueblo Hispano and, 127-29 purpose of, 123 youth programs of, 123-26, 125, 126 Assembly of God churches, 17, 75, 78. See also Pentecostals Baldi's Bakery, 22 Banas,Julia,20-21,32 Baptists, 71 Barretta, Anthony, 59-60, 62-65 Beacon Center, 124-25 Bermudez, Ray, 123 Bermudez, Rosanna, 1o8 Billini, Javier Francisco, 123 Block associations, 20-21 Boch, William, 51 Bodegas, 46-so credit in, 49

dialect leveling and, 49-51 Dominican, 47-49 Bracero Program, 3 Brinkerhoff, Abraham Joris, 15 Brito, Silvia, 120 Bular, Irma, 108 Caballero, Jorge, 120 Cantellops, Rafael, 140 Cardona, Alice, 95, 130-31 politics of, 137-38, 140, 143 Caribbean immigrants, 3-4, 15 Carrillo, Carlos, 117-19, 130 Catholics, 17-18, 57-70 Charismatic, 64-65, 68 panethnicity and, s8-70, 91-92 Catula, Victoria, 108 CB4 (Community Board 4), 21, 136-37, 142 CCQ. See Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens Centro Cfvico Colombiano, 115-16, 119, 122, 150-51 Pueblo Hispano and, 127-28 Centro Cfvico Mexicano, 132 Charismatic Catholics, 64-65, 68. See also Pentecostals Child care search for, 35-36 undocumented workers in, 26 Christian Family Movement, 61, 64, 68 Church of the Blessed Sacrament, 67-68 City University of New York (CUNY), 130, 138 Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens (CCQ), viii, X, 14, 30, 95--96 demise of, 112 founding of, 101, 113 immigration help from, 108-11 Our Lady of Sorrows Church and, 69, 92 Pueblo Hispano and, 127 Claridad Beacon Center, 124-25, 131 Class. See Social class

164

Index Coe, Robert, 15 Colombian Americans Independence Day for, u5-16, 129 population of, 4, 16-17 studies on, 6 Colon, Luz, ug, 141 Columbia University, 135 Comite Cfvico Ecuatoriano, 95, u6, 128 Community Board 4 (CB4), 21, 136-37, 142 Concerned Citizens of Queens. See Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens Convivencia diaria, xi, 3, 56, 150 bodegas and, 49 panethnicity and, g-10 women and, 24-38 Corona, 13-23 businesses of, 39-46, 41, 50-52 churchesoL57-70,71-92,75-80,76 demographics of, 3, 13, 16-17, 19-23 history of, 15-16 regions of, 17-19, 53-56 streets of, 18, 41 See also Queens Corona Heights, 19, 6o businesses of, 40 centennial of, 21-22 Corona Plaza, 17-18, 39 Corona Program for the Elderly, 101-7 Corona Union Evangelical Church, 81 Cortes, Martha, g8--9g, 130-31 Credit associations, 34-35, 37 Cruz, Louis, 141 Cruz, Olga, 108 Cuban Americans, 3-4, 16-17 Cultural Collaborative Jamaica, 131 Cultural organizations, ll7-2o, u8 Cultural politics, u4-33 Cuomo, Mario, 95, 137-38 Cursillo de Cristianidad movement, 64-66, 68 D'Aliza Rodriguez, Fior, g6, 141 D'Amato, Alphonse, 128 Davila, Betsy, u7, 137 Democratic party, 134, 136-39 redistricting and, 139-42 See also Elections Desfile Hispanidad en Queens, 133, 135-37 Desfile Hispano de Queens, ll7-2o, u8 DeSipio, Louis, 3, 9 Dessource, Eugene, 145 Dialect leveling, 49-51 Diaz-Stevens, Ana Maria, 57-58 Dinkins, David, 124, 139, 141 Dios Unanue, Manuel de, 19

Discrimination churches and, 91 employment, 9 housing, 2 Diversity. See Panethnicity Domestic abuse, 121-22 Domingo de los Recuerdos, 122 Dominguez, Dino, 95 Dominican Americans, ix, 13-14, 16-17, 20-23 bodegas of, 47-49 church services for, 58, 67-69 Mother's Day for, 61 population of, 4, 16 studies on, 6-7 Dominican-American Society of Queens, ll3, 139. 144 Donelly, Dennis, 127 Drug dealers, 15, 21 Duany, Jorge, 7 Duarte, Juan Pablo, 67 Echeverria, Luis, 138 Economy, underground, 2, 26, 34-35 Ecuadoran Americans, 95, 128 Independence Day for, u6-17 parade for, ll5 population of, 4, 16-17 Education, 32, 38, 54 churchesand,63,69,83,88-8g employment and, 27-28 panethnicity and, 114-15 Elderly. See Senior citizens Elections Hispanic candidates in, 142-47, 145 redistricting for, 139-42 voter registration for, u2-13, ll7, 138-39, 146 See also Politics Elmhurst, viii, 16, 72, 136-37 Elmhurst Hospital, 54, 95, 123 privatization of, 139 translators at, g6 Employment discrimination and, 9 education and, 27-28 minimum-wage, 2 networks for, 32-34 search for, 32-34 English as a second language (ESL), 27, 65, 79 for elderly, 103, 105, 107 See also Language Escuela Uruguaya, 32, 38 Ethnic identity, 56 children and, go

Index conceptualizing of, 8-10 cuisine and, 8 geography and, 1-2 marriage and, 38 schools for, 32, 38 European immigrants, 2 businesses of, 39-40 See also specific groups, e.g., Italian Americans Evangelicas, 71, 73, 77, 81 Father Billini Association. See Asociaci6n Benefica Cultural Padre Billini Fernandez, Dolores, 138 Ferrer, Fernando, 141, 143-44 Ferreras, Julio, 22-23, 99, 136 First United Methodist Church. See Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida Fonegra, Lolita, 138 Food ethnic, 8 public assistance for, 49 vendors of, 34. SS-56, 116 Fox, Geoffrey, 1 Garcia, Ivonne, 99, 119, 150 Latin American Cultural Center and, 130-31 politics of, 135, 138, 143 Garment workers, ix, 26, 28 factories for, 51-52 unions for, 51 Garrison, Vivian, 72 Gay and Lesbian Parade, 99 Gender issues Hispanic organizations and, g8-1oo panethnicity and, 2-3, 148-52 George, Carmela, 20-21 Giuliani, Rudolph, 139, 143-44 Glassberg, David, 130, 138, 142-44, 146 Golden Age Club, 63, 65-66. See also Senior citizens Gonzalez,AJda,8, 1o,g6-g9,99, 120-22 Latin American Cultural Center and, 130-31 Latin American Women's Council Queens Network and, 136 politics of, 134-39, 141, 144-47, 146, 150 Gran Alianza de Queens, 139, 142, 144 Green, Mark, 139, 142 Greenpoint district, 4 Gregory, Steven, 17 Guarnizo, Luis, 7 Guatemalan Americans, 17 Guzman, Gloria M., 119

Haitians, 4 HANAC, 125, 131 Hardy-Fanta, Carol, g-10, 100, 149, 151 Hermanos Unidos de Queens, 22-23, 139, 144 Hernandez, Victor, 142 Herrera, Genaro, 139, 144 Herrera, Ludy, 136 Herrera, Patricia, 120 Hevesi, Alan, 139, 143 Hispanics businesses of, 40-44 defined, 1,8--g, 148 demographics of, 3-4, 13, 16-17, 19-23 elections and, 142-46, 145, 146 political appointments and, 134-36 studies on, 6-7, 100, 148-49 undocumented, 25-26, 6o Hispanic organizations, 95-100 artistic, 120-22 athletic, 55 cultural, 95, 117-20, 118 gender issues and, g8-1oo leaders of, 97--g8, 113-14, 150-52 political, 134-47 See also Social service organizations Hispanos Unidos de Woodside, 111-12 HIV disease, 89 Home businesses, 34-35 Hondurans, 4, 17 Housecleaners, 26 Housing, 3-6 availability of, 29-32 discrimination in, 2 inflation and, 27 informational network for, 32 Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Juan 3:16, 75-80,76,92 Immigration help with, 108-11 reasons for, 25-26 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 14, 30, 96 Informational networks, 24 bodegas and, 49 employment and, 32-34 housing and, 32 Spanish and, 36-38 Interethnic marriage, 38 Inwood district, 4 Irish Americans, 65-66 Italian Americans, 15-16, 19-22 businesses of, 39-40 elderly, 102-3

165

166

Index Italian Americans (cont.) Our Lady of Sorrows Church and, 65 St. Leo's Church and, 57-60, 62-63 Jackson Heights, 6, 16, us. See also Queens Jehovah's Witnesses, 72. See also Pentecostals Jones-Correa, Michael, 100, 114-15 Kaplan, Temma, 100 Koch, Edward, 95, 135 Korean Americans, 83. See also Asian Americans Ladies' Garment Workers, 51 Lafayette, Ivan, u9, 130, 142-44 Lafontaine, Alejandro, 101-2 La Guardia Community College, 137 Language individuality and, 37 issues with, 36-38 See also English as a Second Language; Spanish Latin American Cultural Center of Queens (LACCQ), X, 129-33 Latin American Integration Center, 112 Latin American Women's Council Queens Network, 136 Latinos. See Hispanics Leadership conferences on, 131 Hispana, 97-gS, u3-14, 150-52 panethnicity and, 3, 71 Protestant churches and, 71 Lebr6n-Mazariego, Dilca, 83-86, 88, 88-go Latina leaders and, 103 Leguizamo, John, 130 Leguizamo, Luz, 130, 136, 138, 140 Levitt, Peggy, 7 Linares, Guillermo, 139 Lindo, Reynaldo, 128 L6pez,Ana,69,92, 121,145,150 Asociaci6n Benefica Cultural Padre Billini and, 122-26,126 Latin American Cultural Center and, 130 politics of, 136-37, 140 Pueblo Hispano and, 128 Loyal friends game, 88 Luna, Mercedes, 145 Lutherans, 71-72 Maguire, Thomas, 51 Mal!ler, Saral!, 10 Maine, Maria, 102-3, 107, 150

Manes, Donald, 96, 121, 126-27 politics of, 135, 137 Manton, Thomas, 130, 137, 139, 141 Marriage, interethnic, 38 Marriage Encounter movement, 68 Marshall, Helen, 22, 96, 107, 124, 145 politics of, qo, 142, 144 Mattos, Maria, 143 Mayi, Manuel, 22 Methodists, 71-72, So-84 convertsto,84,91-92 elderly programs of, 101-7, 107, 108 See also Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida Mexican Americans, 3, 6-7 church services for, 57-58 parade for, 115 population of, 4, 16-17 Minimum wage jobs, 2 Mission Society, 72 Money, words for, so Monge,Pedro,95, 120-21 politics of, 137, 140 Pueblo Hispano and, 127-29 Monserrate, Hiram, 147 Montoya, Beatriz, 138 Moreno, Rafael, 142 Mother's Day, 61, 88 Movimiento Familiar Cristiano, 61, 64, 68 Mura, Elizabeth, 98 Music stores, 46 National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, ll3 National Council of Puerto Rican Women, 95 Nefsky, Peter, 137 Networks. See Informational networks New Immigrants and Old Americans Project, vii, x,

131

business survey by, 39-40 New York Hispanic Soccer League, 95 Nicaraguan Americans, 17 Nieves, Luis, 130 North Corona, 17-19. See also Corona Nunez-Berger, Nayibe, 120-22, 129, 150 Latin American Cultural Center and, 130, 132 Latin American Women's Council Queens Network and, 136 politics of, 137-40, 143 Ochoa, Enrique, 130-31 O'Dooley, Zoraida, 142 Ollantay Center for the Arts, x, 96, 120-22, 135 Pueblo Hispano and, 127, 129

Ortiz, George, 95, 135, 137-38 election of, 142 Pueblo Hispano and, 127-28 Our Lady of Guadelupe. See Virgen de Guadalupe Our Lady of Sorrows Church, 17-18, 57-59, 65-69 , 96 Asociaci6n Benefica Cultural Padre Billini and, 122-23 Ciudadanos Conscientes de Queens and, 6g,g2 festivals at, 66-68 Parish programs of, 68-6g St. Leo's and, 67 school of, 6g PACs (political action committees), 138 Padilla, Felix, g Panamanian Americans, 4, 17 Panethnicity businesses and, 44-46 categorical, 10 churchesand,58-71,go-g2 conceptualizing of, 8-10 cultural organizations and, g8-10o, 117-21, 118 cultural politics and, 132-33 education and, 114-15 emergence of, 1-10 experiential, 10, 37 factors in, 1-3, 9 genderand,2-3, 148-52 ideological, 10 institutional, 10 language and, 1, g--10, 24 leadership and, 3, 71 politics and, g--10, 146-47 Protestantism and, 71 schools and, 114-15 soccer and, 55-56 social service agencies and, 113 transnationalism and, 7, 37-38 women and, 2-3, 148-52 Parishes, 57-70 Pedraza, Blanca, 108 Pentecostals, 71-80, g1--g2. See also Protestantism Peruvian Americans, 17, 95 Political action committees (PACs), 138 Political appointments, 134-36 Politics, 134-47 cultural, 114-33 pan-Latino, 146-47 women and, 149-52 See also Elections

Pregnancy, viii-ix Presbyterians, 71-72, 92 Primera Iglesia Metodista Unida, 17, 25, 82--g1, 83, 88 activities of, 87--g2 elderly programs at, 101-7, 107, 108 Sunday service at, 85-87 Programa de Corona para Personas Mayores, 101-7 Protestantism, 71-92 conversion to, x, 72-73, 91--92 panethnicity of, 71 Public assistance, 26, 49 Pueblo Hispano Festival, 54, 126-29, 133 Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), 140 Puerto Ricans, 95 church services for, 57-58 parade for, 115 population of, 3-6, 16-17 studies on, 6, 24 Queens Democratic party in, 137, 138 festival of, 126-29 Hispanic Coalition of, 138-40 Hispanic organizations in, 95-100 Hispanic Political Action Committee of, 138, 140 population of, 2-4, 5, 16-17 See also Corona Queens Hispanic Parade. See Desfile Hispano de Queens Questionnaires, vii-viii Quiroz, Ruben, 112 Raffaele, Ellen, 144 Raices-Corona Senior Citizens Center, 101-7,10~ 108,113 Ramirez, Roberto, 141 Redistricting, 139-42 Renacer Ecuatoriano, 130 Reyes, Ignacio, 113 Rios, Jaime, 142 Rodriguez, Rene, 95 Rojas, Arthur, 138 Roman Catholics, 17-18, 57-70, 91--92 Rosa, Manuel, 138 Rosary Society, 68 Ruanoa, Eric, 142 Sabini, John, 119, 130, 138, 144 St. John's University, 130 St. Leo's Church, 57-65, 92 Our Lady of Sorrows and, 67

168

Index St. Leo's Church (cont.) parish programs of, 62-65 school of, 63 Salas, Clara, 136, 142 Salgado, William, 130, 138-39, 141, 143-44, 147 Salinas, Emma, 108 Salvadoran Americans, 4, 17 Sanchez-Korrol, Virginia, 24 Sanes, 34-35, 37 Sanjek, Roger, vii, 39 n.1 Santos, Antonio, 113 Sarmiento-Radbill, Maritza, 109, 142 Sassen-Koob, Saskia, 34-35 Senior citizens, x, z8-29, 88, 104-7 church programs for, 63, 65-66 Domingo de los Recuerdos for, 122 English programs for, 103, 105, 107 Sepulveda, Grissel, 96 Seventh-Day Adventists, 71 Seyfried, Vincent, 15 Shulman, Claire, 107, 119 Latin American Cultural Center and, 130 Latin American Women's Council Queens Network and, 136 politics of, 135, 138 Pueblo Hispano and, 127-29 Smith, Michael Peter, 7 Smith, Robert C., 6-7 Soccer, 55, 95 Social class, 2 churches and, 91-92 politics and, 15o-51 Social service organizations, 101-13, 150 elderly and, 101-7, 107, 108 panethnicity and, 113 See also Hispanic organizations Sociedad Dominica Americana de Queens, 113, 139, 144 Sociedades, 34-35, 37 Sociedad Puertorriquefia de Queens, 117, 119 Solarz, Stephen, 141 Spanish catechism class in, 63-64 churchservicesin,s7,6o,6s-66,71 dialect leveling of, 49-51 literacy programs in, 111-12

money words in, so panethnicity and, 1, g-10, 24 periodicals in, 44-45 theater in, 120 See also Language Stavisky, Toby, 144 Suarez, Carlos, 113, 139 Suarez Calomba, Edna, 138 Suarezmotta, Humberto, 144 Sunday of Memories, 122 Taucan, Herman, 76-8o Thalia Spanish Theater, 120 Tiendas, 47· See also Bodegas Transnationalism, 7, 37-38. See also Panethnicity Travel agencies, 45-46 Trust networks, 49· See also Informational networks Underground economy, 2, 26, 34-35 Unions, garment worker, 51 United Latin Americans of Queens (ULAQ), gs, 137-39 Pueblo Hispano and, 127 Vasquez, Guillermo, 130, 138, 140 Velasquez, Carmen, 137 Velasquez, Nydia, 116, 130, 134, 141 Virgen de Altagracia, 58, 67-68 Virgen de Guadalupe, 58, 64, 68 Virgen de las Nubes, 68 Voter registration, 112-13, 117, 138-39, 146. See also Elections WADO radio station, 127, 129 Wakefield, Dan, 72 Waldinger, Roger, 51-52 Washington Heights, 4, 6-7 Weber, Max, 100 Weff, Betty, 108 Welfare, 26, 49 Williamsburg district, 4 Woodside, 111-12 Zambrana, Haydee, 95--96, 108-13, 117, 121 politics of, 136-38, 142, 150 Zentella, Ana Celia, 1, 37

The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues A Series Edited by Roger Sanjek

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