New York: Elusive Unity in La Gran Manzana
Fuentes, Annette
SOME OF THE MOST ENTERTAINING AND telling images of the 1989 mayoral campaign in New York City were the candidates' performances at the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade that June. City...
...invasion...
...The only way we can work is in an organization that includes all of us," she says...
...No longer will they have to wait for Puerto Rican gatekeepers to grant them a seat at the table...
...Every ethnic group has carved out part of the labor force for itself," says Pdrez...
...In office he has allied with other progressive members on issues like police brutality...
...Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, the law-andorder candidate, marched with members of the Hispanic Society of Police Officers, who had endorsed him early on...
...A politician's dream perhaps, but in New York City at least, the reality of the city's many Latino communities is more complex...
...Dale C. Nelson, "The Political Behavior of New York Puerto Ricans," in Clara E. Rodriguez, Virginia SAnchez Korrol, and Jos6 Oscar Allers (eds...
...And incumbent Mayor Ed Koch, for three terms the favorite of Latino voters, sported a peasant'spava hat and outshouted a growing chorus of hecklers...
...He believes forging Latino-black unity is one of the most difficult tasks the community faces, and that movement has been backward, not forward, on that front...
...Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, "Charter Revision and Racial Exclusion: The 1988 Charter Vote in New York City," May 1989...
...Ferrer retaliated by waiting until the last possible minute to endorse Dinkins for mayor...
...Rivera used momentum built during the 1988 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson to keep the Latino-black coalition alive...
...2 4)Only by turning the tables on the city's tradition of ethnic politics will Latinos as a group advance the real interests of their communities...
...For example, only 17% of registered Latino Democrats voted in the 1991 city council primary, compared to 18% of blacks and 20% of whites...
...Once V61lez developed his machine, the party leaders had to pay attention because he could turn people out...
...Subsequent waves of Dominican immigrants in the 1970s were predominantly people from the countryside, who came to work in factories...
...They helped elect Vito Marcantonio, the socialist East Harlem congressman of the American Labor Party, in 1934...
...El Barrio People's Agenda, a group of long-time progressive activists in East Harlem, helped get Powell elected...
...But in this case, the perception of ethnic and racial friction has some real basis...
...Decennial census...
...Revolutionaries, not reformists, the Young Lords remained aloof from electoral politics, insisting that the system would never offer more than the illusion of change and democracy to colonized peoples...
...He and his generation of leaders viewed the community as part of New York, not Puerto Rico, and sought integration into the U.S...
...He then used his office to denounce racism and to passionately defend Latino interests...
...But other Latinos, led by labor leader Rivera, played key roles in Dinkins' mayoral campaign...
...Here was the son of a legendary black politician, who was raised by his Puerto Rican mother on the island...
...V61lez represents another model of how to enter the political arena," says P6rez...
...Annette Fuentes is an assistant editor at New York Newsday, and chair of the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy in New York City...
...T HE 1960S WAS ALSO THE DECADE OF THE War on Poverty, which Republicans now blame for all the country's ills...
...Simply because Latinos don't vote does not mean they are not politically active, or worse, aren't aware of their electoral potential...
...12...
...Powell's Latino backers claimed him as their own...
...To be reelected in 1993, Dinkins will have to clinch that Latino support, just as every candidate for city-wide office must in the New York City of the 1990s...
...mainstream...
...It may tend to distance them from blacks because people don't want to be part of a racial divide...
...The ballot box is not the only way to organize and empower a community...
...In 1983 six Dominicans were elected to the Area Policy Board, which distributes federal funds...
...He had started his own political club in 1960 as an alternative to the Democratic machine, and was elected Bronx borough president in 1966...
...He also backed a progressive slate for the expanded City Council last year...
...Fernando Ferrer, a city councilman, moved into Bronx Borough Hall as president...
...Badillo came in as a reformer following the classic model for immigrant groups," says Richie Perez, vice president of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights...
...the radical Young Lords Party, modeled after and linked to the Black Panthers...
...The corruption scandals of the mid-1980s put a new spin on politics as usual...
...Rosario and Goris, "Political Participation of Dominicans" 18...
...Alberto Moncada, Los Hispanos en la Politica Norteamericana (Madrid: Instituto de Cooperaci6n Iberoamericana, 1989...
...Anti-Dominican sentiment on the island is palpable...
...Dominicans view the uprising as a watershed event...
...When former deputy mayor Basil Paterson withdrew as its candidate, the coalition was set to back Herman Badillo...
...Analyzing the results, Angelo Falc6n of the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy noted that "the notion of a monolithic Latino population is a myth, and the route to Latino unity is not automatic and will not be simple...
...Perhaps the city's most left-leaning politician of any ethnicity, Rivera was a labor decade ago...
...Antonia Pantoja, developed a cadre of Puerto Rican high school students who performed social-service work in the community...
...Jos6 Serrano, a nine-term state assem-blyman, won the congressional seat Garcia was forced to resign in 1989...
...Mayor John Lindsay channeled funds into a variety of agencies in the Puerto Rican community, giving rise to another breed of politician and power broker-the "poverty pimp...
...Many of the people that came after the Dominican Civil War participated in it," says Anneris Goris, director of the Dominican Research Center, in reference to the struggles quashed by the 1965 U.S...
...Vl1ez used the anti-poverty programs to gain money, resources and a tremendous patronage machinery...
...Former U.S...
...This would seem to favor Latino elected officials, most of whom are pawns of the white establishment which uses them to hustle votes and keep their communities quiescent...
...Puerto Ricans broke ground and built organizations and networks now used and replicated by Domini-cans on their way to political representation and empow-erment...
...Tensions between blacks and Latinos are worse than ever because both communities are worse off than 20 years ago," says Richie P6rez...
...Levels of naturalization and involvement in New York City politics remained low until the 1980s...
...Before, just three Latinos held seats, equalling 9% of the total...
...S New York: Elusive Unity in La Gran Manzana 1. Hispanic Policy Development Project, "A More Perfect Union: Achieving Hispanic Parity by the Year 2000," The Aspen Institute, 1990...
...He turned his constituency of 100,000 mostly female, black and Latino members into a powerful political base...
...Aspira also fought for bilingual education in the public schools and against literacy tests which had effectively blocked many Puerto Ricans in New York State from registering to vote...
...Robert Garcia, who had been elected to fill Badillo' s seat in 1978, was convicted of extortion in 1991 as a result of probes into the Bronx-based defense contractor Wedtech...
...T HE REDISTRICTING THAT GAVE DOMINI-cans their elected presence in city government also doubled the proportion of Latinos on the City Council...
...Among those who fought the tests was a young Puerto Rican lawyer from the Bronx named Herman Badillo...
...There are differences in terms of how we view politics," says Goris...
...All three major parties, and several minor ones, have chapters in the city...
...Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign committee in New York, and then founded the Majority Coalition, made up of black, Latino and white labor leaders and activists, which helped bring Dinkins to City Hall...
...13, 1991...
...4. Latino Commission of the Tri-State, "Outlook...
...8. According to Virgina Sinchez Korrol, "As early as 1918 the first Puerto Rican political clubs patterned on a paternalism patronage model and connected with the New York City political party system took shape...
...At a cost of $1 million, the Commonwealth Office, then headed by Nydia Velizquez, signed up 118,000 Puerto Ricans in a year and half.'(2)On primary day 1990, when Gov...
...And in the past decade, a more middle-class, professional Dominican immigrant has been coming to New York, says Goris, who has spent much of the past few years trying to get a Dominican studies program-independent of Puerto Rican studies--established at City University...
...He built a base outside the nity struggles...
...Bronx Borough President Simon and Democratic boss Friedman both landed in jail...
...Despite worsening poverty, climbing high school drop-out rates, and continuing under-representation in municipal employment, Puerto Rican officials gave Mayor Koch almost uncritical support in return for his endorsements during his 12-year tenure (1977-1989...
...Badillo' s liberal politics mirrored the black civil rights movement of his day...
...3. Latino Commission of the Tri-State, "Outlook: The Growing Latino Presence in the Tri-State Region," United Way of Tri-State and Regional Planning Association, 1988...
...The reverberations shook the establishment and certainly tarnished Mayor Koch...
...The city-wide redistricting process in 1990, mandated by a U.S...
...The nearly one million Puerto Ricans living in New York today represent more than half of the city's Latinos.5 But that is changing fast...
...Casteniera Col6n, meanwhile, has been reelected four times despite his consistent opposition to measures which would improve living standards in his district, such as commercial-rent regulation and anti-warehousing provisions to free up needed housing...
...He notes that incumbents who receive party endorsements and face no opposition, like State Sen...
...Long simmering tensions between the two groups erupted more than once during the redistricting process...
...Elected officials have no incentive to mobilize new voters," says Rodolfo de la Garza, of the University of Texas...
...The plan finally approved by federal courts protects several black incumbents, and has only three clear Latino districts, not the four some had advocated.(21)Of course, what happens among politicians doesn't necessarily mirror or determine what happens among their constituents...
...And then there is Dennis Rivera, head of Local 1199, the health and hospital workers union...
...We Puerto Ricans use the term Latino as an umbrella to leverage more power and increase numbers without being willing to share power...
...Because Rivera transcends ethnic politics to advocate economic democracy, he represents the best hope for a new kind of progressive Latino agenda...
...1990 new groups emerged to deal with the increasing size, permanence and needs of Puerto Rican communities in Brooklyn and East Harlem.8 As an ethnic group in a city dominated by ethnic politics and the Democratic machine, Puerto Ricans set up clubs affiliated with the Democrats, but they also worked with the Republican and Fusion parties...
...Puerto Ricans are the largest and oldest Latino community in New York with roots that reach back to the Spanish-American War, though most arrived after the Second World War...
...There' s been a real cynical manipulation by city leadership: the police commissioner is black, so the fire commissioner is Latino...
...Dinkins trounced Koch in the Democratic primary and went on to win in November...
...19)The process was not without rancor, in particular between African Americans and Latinos...
...Mexicans have a growing presence in the city, but due to their relatively small numbers-some 60,000 officially counted-and often undocumented immigration status, they are a constituency with no real political clout.7 Until the l980s Latino politics equalled Puerto Rican politics...
...Or will progressive Puerto Ricans, like Dennis Rivera, Adam Clayton Powell and those in community organizations, find a way to ally with Dominicans, other Latinos and blacks to promote real change...
...See Virginia Sinchez Korrol, Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1917-1948 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1983...
...Some Latino leaders have instead exploited racist sentiment to win votes...
...In New York City minorities are the majority, and Latinos seem destined by demographics to overtake all other groups as we enter the new century...
...Though sizable undocumented immigration makes a precise count impossible, Dominicans are the second largest Latino group in New York City-making up about 20% of the city's Latinos...
...3)Although voter participation among Latinos is very low, this characterization is wrong on several counts...
...Counting Dominicans born here, some 300,000 Dominicans nationwide now have the right to vote and most seem to have the will to exercise it...
...At the eleventh hour, African-American Assemblyman Denny Farrell of Manhattan proclaimed his own candidacy, rupturing the coalition...
...The relationship of Puerto Rican politicians to the white establishment has long been an ambivalent affair, based on mutual need and mutual distrust...
...The first Puerto Rican political organizations, like Club Bonnquen, were extensions of those on the island, and supported Puerto Rican independence from Spain, and then from the United States after 1898...
...After 1920 TABLE 4 Population Of New York City, 1990 by "Hispanic" and Seited National Origin Number Percent of Percent of Total Hisiics All Persons 7322,564 1(X) - Hispanic Origin 1,783,511 14.0 100 Puerto Rican 896,763 12.2 50.3 DonTinicax 332,713 4.5 18.7 colombian 84,454 1.2 4.7 Ecuadonan 78,444 1.1 4.4 Mexican 61,772 0.8 3.5 Cuban 56,041 0.8 3.1 Other Hispanic 273,374 3.7 15.3 Source: U.S...
...I hear Puerto Ricans saying Dominicans are come pldtanos (plantain-eaters)," says Goris, "and Dominicans say los puertorriqueiiosno tienen bandera (Puerto Ricans have no flag...
...He pointed out that Latino leaders don't always promote change...
...Juan E Rosario and Anneris Goris, "Political Participation ofDominicans...
...Most people didn't know there was a primary," says Pedraza...
...Although they'd been Koch supporters for years, Serrano and Ferrer backed Dinkins in the 1989 mayoral primary...
...Linares' victories have forced the machine to deal with him," says Anneris Goris, "but we expect he will have to compromise...
...The excitement reached a crescendo in the fall of 1991, when community activist Guillermo Linares became the first Dominican elected to the City Council...
...Rafael Hernindez Col6n wanted mainland Puerto Ricans to vote, believing they would favor continued "commonwealth" status...
...The fact that Dominicans have a stronger African component doesn't bring them necessarily closer to African Americans," says Frank Bonilla...
...7. Institute forPuerto Rican Policy, "The Distribution of Puerto Ricans and other Selected Latinos in the U.S., 1990," Datanote No.11, June 1992...
...Of the city's Latino registered voters, about 80% are Puerto Rican, but they represent less than 40% of Puerto Rican New Yorkers eligible to vote...
...Demonstrations turned violent and for five days sporadic rioting, looting and arson put the Heights and the Dominican community on the national map...
...Supreme Court ruling, had galvanized the community to carve out the council district in Upper Manhattan that Linares now represents...
...When Adam Clayton Powell IV ran for City Council in 1991, African-American and Latino loyalties were merged in his very candidacy...
...Aspira, a community-action group founded in 1961 by Dr...
...Will new deals be cut in the same old fashion...
...But the reality is white males control these agencies...
...Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, "Primary Election Analysis: Puerto Ricans and Other Latinos Make Major Gains in NYC Council Primary," Sept...
...See also, "Dominican Immigrants in the United States" (New York: Dominican Research Center, 1990...
...Valentfn, a vehement foe of Vl1ez, cultivated the support of Puerto Rican home-town clubs, tenant associations and other grassroots groups to win a seat on the City Council in 1978...
...Dominican voters backed David Dinkins in 1989 and tended to support progressive candidates regardless of ethnicity...
...A reputed drug dealer had been shot to death by police...
...And pay attention they did...
...22)A real but unacknowledged threat to Latino unity is the friction between the two largest and best organized groups: Dominicans and Puerto Ricans...
...Latino officials Fernando Ferrer and Jos6 Serrano accused certain black leaders of selling out Latinos by not supporting a plan for more Latino-dominant council districts...
...They make sure he knows that," says Anneris Goris, "and get him to report back to them monthly...
...Because community leaders gained city-wide, even national, visibility, they believe their place in the city's Latino pecking order has shifted...
...A 1991 survey of Latinos commissioned by Univision's Spanish-language Channel 41 reviewed inter-group attitudes among Cubans, Colom-bians, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans...
...Four years later he became the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress...
...Stephen Solarz, a veteran congressman whose largely Jewish constituency was divided by redistricting, ran in the primary against five Latinos, Though the Latino vote was split, NydiaVelizquez, the former representative of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to the United States, parlayed endorsements from Dennis Rivera, Jesse Jackson and David Dinkins into a narrow victory over Solarz...
...The conflict between Latino and black elected officials reflects the scrabble for scarce resources in a city where minorities are collectively the majority, but a white minority still controls the purse strings and patronage in city government...
...Farrell lost in the primary, of course, but relations between Latino and black elected officials have been tenuous ever since...
...In New York, enterprising Dominicans now operate 90% of the comer stores, which used to be the small-business base of Puerto Ricans.(23)Resentment surfaces in prejudiced remarks by both sides as they compete for a piece of the Gran Manzana...
...New York Newsday, June 12, 1989...
...Some 15,000 Dominicans have entered the country legally every year since 1980.6 According to the 1990 census, more than half a million Dominicans live in the country, over two thirds of them in New York City...
...The 1.8 million New Yorkers originally from South and Central America, Mexico, and the Spanish-speaking Car-ibbean share a common language and common experience with colonialism, but their diverse cultures, class backgrounds and aspirations weigh against the much assumed unity of Latinos.4 Another factor limiting the potential impact of the Latino vote is the opportunism of the few Latino elected officials, many of whom trade on their ethnicity to get elected, only to deliver allegiance to the party machinery, not their constituents...
...The ultimate fusion candidate, Powell won a runoff, and arguments over his real racial identity gave way to questions about how to keep him accountable...
...Mario Cuomo was up for reelection, sociologists Anneris Goris and Pedro Pedraza interviewed voters in El Barrio, the East Harlem neighborhood, which is the city's oldest Puerto Rican community...
...I was there one night when he left a city council dinner to meet with them...
...The "sleeping giant" image also implies that Latinos are a unified group that will vote as a bloc...
...Both had been nurtured in the machine of Simon and Friedman, but had staked out independentpositions, and are currently viewed as alternatives to machine politics...
...5. Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, "Puerto Ricans and the 1989 Mayoral Election...
...Unwilling to compromise, and lacking the support of a broader coalition of progressive forces, Gerena Valentin was vulnerable to the machine...
...Political participation seems to have no clear correlation to level of assimilation or length of time in the United States, according to Frank Bonilla, chair of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquefios at Hunter College...
...Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins had forgone his usual custom-tailored suit for a guayabera...
...half were voting for the first time...
...Elder statesman Badillo, for example, quit Congress to be Koch's deputy mayor in 1977, only to break with Koch two years later in a bitter dispute over Badillo's renewal project in the South Bronx...
...In the past, the city's power brokers often found it convenient to heighten differences among Latinos...
...Badillo returned the favor by backing Koch over Dinkins in the 1989 mayoral primary...
...His Puerto Rican opponent, William del Toro, a machine politician in the V61ez mold, claimed Powell was black and should not represent El Barrio...
...These tests were outlawed in 1965 after 21-year-old Maria Lopez challenged them in court...
...6. New YorkNewsday, July 2, 1990...
...He represented a breakthrough, breaking the color line with his looks and accent...
...Dominicans have the sense that Puerto Ricans are acting as gatekeepers of the whole Latino political system," says Palmira Rios, a professor of urban policy at the New School for Social Research and one of the few Puerto Rican professionals who has worked to build bridges between the communities...
...Some Puerto Rican politicians tried to operate outside the machine...
...Colombians were perceived as the most involved in drug trafficking by 56% of Puerto Ricans, 46% of Do-minicans, 42% of Cubans and 70% of Colombians themselves...
...1)Linares, who came to New York as one of nine children of undocumented parents, was an elementary school teacher and, in 1989, was the first Dominican to be elected president of a local school board...
...There was no sense that the election had any impact on resolving their problems...
...After the war, the United States and the Dominican government wanted to let the cabezas calientes (hot-heads) out, so anyone who wanted to leave could...
...He was beaten by Vdlez crony Casteniera Col6n in a 1982 primary race so close it was decided by recount...
...When he referred to Puerto Rican nationalists Lolita Lebr6n and Irving Flores as "assassins" during Nelson Mandela's visit to New York last year, Dinkins' popularity took a nosedive...
...Many came directly to Washington Heights, in Upper Manhattan, the city's largest Dominican enclave...
...As late as 1990, some 20,000 Dominicans returned home to vote in the presidential election...
...The previous year, Dinkins, as state campaign chair, delayed naming Fernando Ferrer as a delegate to the Democratic convention...
...Gov...
...Alberto Moneada, Los Hispanos en la Politica Norteamericana...
...And that happens only if we understand the differences among us...
...30% of Dominicans and 33% of Colombians said Cubans are...
...Although the circumstances remained cloudy, word of the shooting spread through the neighborhood like wildfire, unleashing years of frustration with a police precinct perceived as insensitive and biased...
...Rivera's foray into council politics with the Majority Coalition slate, which evoked immediate and pointed attacks from the machine, showed the potential of a multi-racial, poly-ethnic coalition for economic and social justice...
...He chaired Rev...
...Black-Latino friction has deep roots, and the protagonists have long, unforgiving memories...
...1992...
...Like the young Herm6n Badillo, Linares has defied clubhouse politics, deriving his support from the grass roots...
...A third model of politician rarely talked about is that of Gilberto Gerena Valentin," says Richie P6rez...
...Their experience is of electing people who don't do anything for them...
...In one of those districts, Rep...
...2. Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, "Puerto Ricans and the 1989 Mayoral Electionin New York City: A Discussion Paper," (March 1989...
...This effort was sparked by the move to call a plebiscite on the island's colonial political status...
...Rosario and Goris, "Political Participation of Dominicans...
...PWrez, for example, is currently supervising a voter-registration drive in Harlem for the city's oldest social-service institution, the Community Service Society...
...Cooler heads, led by Guillermo Linares and activist Mois6s P6rez of the Alianza Dominicana, ultimately prevailed...
...He promoted multicultural education in the heavily Do-minican schools, parental involvement and independence from the central Board of Education...
...Rivera speaks to the class issues that have always lurked behind ethnic politics...
...andNew York Newsday, Oct...
...The scandals also opened the door to a new generation of Latino leaders...
...By the mid-1970s the Bronx Democratic machine, controlledbyboroughpresident Stanley Simon and party hoss Stanley Friedman, had ceded the South Bronx to V61lez, who in turn backed a series of political prot6gds, including current city-council members Rafael Casteniera Col6n and Israel Ruiz...
...Aside from a few progressive renegades, these Democratic Party hacks have not aggressively fought for the housing, education and social-service needs of an increasingly impoverished Latino population...
...Puerto Ricans were perceived as the pioneers by a vast majority of all groups, while 47% of Dominicans and 49% of Puerto Ricans believe Dominicans are displacing Puerto Ricans economically and politically...
...13, 1991...
...In late June, that balance ofpower dramatically shifted...
...Likewise, Rivera's endorsement of Jerry Brown before the New York presidential primary was condemned as nonsensical when all labor and party leaders were offering Bill Clinton their unquestioned support...
...The final plan created 12 majority-black districts, and only six majority-Latino ones, even though the two populations are roughly equal...
...The 1991 election brought nine Latinos to the council, for an 18% representation on that legislative body...
...A week before the Democratic National Convention converged on Manhattan, a civil uprising burst into flames in Washington Heights, just seven miles north of Madison Square Garden and the impending festivities...
...Differences among Latinos don't have to represent an obstacle, says Anneris Goris...
...One African-American leader who backed Farrell over Badillo was then-City Clerk David Dinkins...
...One of the most enduring and notorious is Ram6n V61lez, once a city-council member and president of the Puerto Rican Day Parade...
...Their political clout was bolstered by growing numbers and a new generation born and raised in the city...
...Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, "Latino Inter-Group Relations in the New York Area," Datanote No...
...9. Bulletin of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueos, Winter 1991-92...
...His candidacy was backed by Dennis Rivera and the Majority Coalition...
...The Puerto Rican Struggle: Essays on Survival in the United States, (New York: Puerto Rican Migration Research Consortium, 1980...
...Ultimately, though, the potential for Latino unity-or for a genuine coalition among Latinos and blacks-lies not with party hacks, but with activists who seek community empowerment...
...As mayor, Koch closed down one of Vl1ez's citywide agencies, the Puerto Rican Community Development Project, but ended up embracing Vdlez and welcoming his political support during his last term...
...Voter-registration drives in the 1980s reaped 10,000 new voters in Washington Heights alone.(1 6)In the 1984 elections, New York's Dominicans were the largest group of Latino voters after Puerto Ricans...
...They figure, stay with the ones you have, because nobody knows what new voters will do...
...Olga M6ndez, don't even bother campaigning...
...4) Dominicans certainly bring to New York City a vibrant and varied experience of political activism and participation...
...Jos6 Serrano was the only Puerto Rican official to show his face in Washington Heights to help restore calm...
...In 1985 Badillo accused Koch of inciting racial divisiveness, but then backed him four years later over mayoral aspirant David Dinkins...
...They organized community protests and demonstrations, and promoted Puerto Rican art, culture and language...
...Welcome to politics in La Gran Manzana, the largest Latino city in the country after Los Angeles.' Latinos make up a quarter of the city's population [See Table 4, p. 28], about the same percentage as blacks, but they account for only 15% of all registered voters.2 Because of this dormant potential-and the fact that nationally the Latino population is expected to double in the next 30 years-political analysts often refer to the Latino vote as a "sleeping giant...
...Racism, like the kind promoted by V61ez, is alive in Latino communities...
...In that primary, Jackson won 63% of the Latino vote-in the Bronx he won 72...
...Institute forPuerto Rican Policy, "Puerto Ricans and the 1989Mayoral Election...
...In 1977 when Ed Koch first ran for mayor as a reformer, he railed against Vl61ez, whom he accused of diverting funds fromthe poor...
...A majority of all groups polled believed each group looks out for its own as opposed to pulling together as Latinos...
...The city's first black mayor owed his victory in large part to the 53% of Latino voters who supported him over Koch in the primary, and the nearly 70% who supported him over Giuliani in the general election...
...A savvy and respected leader, Rivera has gained state-wide and national recognition for his bold labor strategies and aggressive involvement in city politics...
...In 1985, the Coalition for a Just New York, spearheaded by Assemblyman Al Vann of Brooklyn, strategized to dump Mayor Koch...
...Despite this success, his fate was that of any politician-black, white or Latino--who bucks the established party structure...
...Fifty-one new, smaller city council districts replaced the previous thirty-five...
...Colombians are the next largest national group, with some 85,000, according to official counts, although they are outnumbered by Central Americans in the greater New York metropolitan region...
...There was talk of the plebescite in Puerto Rico, of drugs and community problems...
...In truth, the dispersion of Latinos and the greater geographic concentration of African Americans made it easier to ensure black representation than Latino...
...During the fight over council redistricting, for example, he was criticized by many Latinos for arguing that political agendas should take precedence over ethnic and racial solidarity...
...Jewish city council member Stanley Michaels has long represented the Wash-ington Heights neighborhood and has garnered substantial Dominican support by advocating affordable housing, community involvement in local school boards, and tenant rights...
...ELATIONS AMONG LATINOS THEMSELVES are far from idyllic...
...City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin salsa danced his way through the crowd...
...I grew up in the South Bronx," Purez adds, "and remember hearing Ram6n V61lez' sound trucks at election time: 'Vote for the Puerto Rican or the molletos (niggers) will get in...
...But slowly the realization set in that what many had viewed as a temporary stay in the United States was becoming permanent.15 Between 1982 and 1986, close to 50,000 Dominicans became naturalized citizens...
...Rivera argued that Clinton's right-to-work labor policies and support for an English-only amendment in Arkansas were antithetical to Latino and labor interests...
...CERTAINLY ONE REASON PUERTO RICAN elected officials have not been held accountable is the low level of voter participation...
...One study concluded "the socialization experience of Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico is more supportive of participation than that of New York Puerto Ricans....It may be that second generation Puerto Ricans have little desire to participate actively in a political system that offers them few tangible rewards or incentives...
...Puerto Ricans have been at it a long time...
...Part of the rift can be traced to Puerto Rico, where many Dominicans have been migrating illegally in order to enter the United States, sometimes passing as PuertoRicans...
...Latino approval of Mayor Dinkins fell to only 29% in June, reflecting a widespread perception that the mayor caters more to the African-American and Jewish communities and has not repaid the debt he owes Latino voters.(20)Congressional and state legislative redistricting efforts this spring again provoked conflicts between black and Latino politicians...
...Two areas of tremendous competition are the Health and Hospitals Corporation and the Board of Education, where these two recent arrivals in the system-blacks and Latinos-have achieved some control and are guarding their turf...
...Today the Dominican Republic is the third largest source of current Latino immigration to the United States (after Mexico and El Salvador...
...In Puerto Rico, for example, political participation is much higher than among Puerto Ricans in the United States-87% as opposed to about 30% of eligible voters...
...Race and racism are not often or eagerly addressed in discussions of Latino-black relations...
...He now lives in Puerto Rico...
...And there are no powerful organizations promoting unity...
...Like Puerto Ricans before them, Dominicans have stayed active in the politics of their country...
...8, Jan...
...Now they prefer to employ the umbrella term "Hispanic," and seem willing to acknowledge an untapped constituency much the way Madison Avenue marketeers now wish to mine Latino consumers...
...For us this is still new and exciting...
...While many social scientists often assume that immigrants to this country leave behind traditions of political alienation and adopt a new participatory culture here, they are wrong in the case of Latinos...
...The growing clout and visibility of Dominicans add a new dimension because so many Dominicans are dark-skinned...
...Most Puerto Rican leaders have done little or nothing to defuse these tensions, because they fear the nascent Dominican leadership...
...In 1937, Oscar Garcia Rivera, a Republican Party candidate, became the first Puerto Rican to run for the state legislature.9 Not until the 1 960s did Puerto Rican political and social organizations achieve any power...
...Many former Young Lords remain activists today, if through more moderate means...
...Thirty-six percent of Puerto Ricans said Dominicans are most prejudiced...
...Juan E. Rosario and Anneris Goris, "Political Participation of Dominicans in New York City: The Case of Dominicans in Washington Heights" (New York: Dominican Research Center, 1990...
...There were no significant efforts to register Latinos until 1988 when the government of Puerto Rico launched a campaign, Atrivete en '88, (Dare to vote in '88...
Vol. 26 • September 1992 • No. 2
