History > 2007 > USA > Hispanics

Puerto Ricans, Cuban-Americans, Haitians, Mexicans (I)

Lives Are Growing Harder,

Hispanics Say in Survey

December 14, 2007
The New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON

After a year of stepped-up enforcement against illegal immigration and polarized debate on the issue, about half of the Hispanics in the United States now fear that they or a relative or close friend could be deported, a report released Thursday by the Pew Hispanic Center found.

About two-thirds of Hispanics said their lives had been made more difficult by the political fight over immigration and the failure of Congress to address the situation of illegal immigrants, the Pew survey found. Roughly half the Hispanics in the poll said the heightened attention to immigration had had a directly negative impact on them, in some cases making it harder for them to find jobs or housing.

Some 41 percent of Hispanics said they or someone close to them had had a personal experience of discrimination in the past five years, an increase of 10 percent since 2002 of Hispanics’ reporting such experiences, the survey found.

Yet despite their worries about the political climate, almost three-quarters of Hispanics are happy with their lives, the survey found, and they are overwhelmingly optimistic that their children will be more successful than they have been.

The findings came in the annual survey of Hispanics by the Pew center, a nonpartisan organization in Washington that is a leading source of demographic and opinion research on Latinos in this country. The study included Hispanics born in the United States and immigrants born in other countries.

The survey did not include questions about the legal status of the immigrants who responded. Based on census data, Pew researchers have estimated that about one-quarter of all Hispanics are illegal immigrants.

Some 47 million Hispanics in the United States are the nation’s largest minority, making up about 15 percent of the population. They are a fast-growing group among voters. Almost one million Latino immigrants applied in the past year to become naturalized citizens, many with the hope of voting in the 2008 presidential election.

The study indicated that the increase in high-profile immigration raids at workplaces and in immigrant communities over the past year has had a strong echo effect among Hispanics across the country. Two-thirds of Hispanic immigrants said they worried about the possibility of a deportation hurting their family. Strikingly, even among Latinos who are United States citizens and so run no risk of being deported, about one-third said they feared it could happen to a relative or friend.

“It suggests that Latinos in this country are part of extended families and communities living in a political and policy climate where this concern is part of their lives,” Paul Taylor, the acting director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said in a conference call to discuss the survey.

About 12 percent of Hispanics in the survey said they had faced difficulties finding or keeping a job as a result of the public clamor over immigration, and 15 percent said they had had a harder time finding housing. About one-fifth said they had been asked more frequently in the past year to show documents to prove their immigration status.

While about half of non-Hispanics in the country favor the crackdown, Hispanics strongly oppose it, the study found. Three-quarters of Latinos disapprove of raids at job sites, while 51 percent of non-Hispanics approve. Latinos most vigorously oppose cooperation between federal immigration agents and local police officers, with 79 percent opposing those measures.

Fifty-five percent of Hispanics said they opposed immigration status checks during the application process for driver’s licenses. By contrast, 85 percent of non-Hispanics said immigration status should be checked during the licensing process. Non-Hispanics were polled in a separate Pew survey.

The survey’s conclusions resonated with Hispanics in different regions consulted by telephone Thursday. Narciso Camarillo, 37, a naturalized citizen born in Mexico who owns a pizza parlor in the Bronx, said he knew three illegal immigrants in his immediate social circle who feared deportation.

“Every day I wonder what will happen to them tomorrow,” Mr. Camarillo said. The authorities “are coming down more and more on the immigrants,” he said.

Maria Covarrubias, 62, another Mexican immigrant who has gained American citizenship, said she was dismayed by how Mexicans had been portrayed in news reports and the televised presidential debates.

“They say we are drunks and bad people, but they could not live without us,” said Mrs. Covarrubias, who came to the United States 12 years ago and lives in Sacramento. “The politicians want our vote, but they don’t want us.”

The worries are shared by some native-born Hispanics. “Even people who have been here for 20 years are afraid to go out,” said Patricia Pineda, 19, who was born in Torrance, Calif., and now lives near Los Angeles. Ms. Pineda said she was registering to vote to support a presidential candidate who would offer legal alternatives to illegal immigrants.

Despite their concerns about the current atmosphere, about 71 percent of Hispanics surveyed described the overall quality of their lives as good or excellent. More than three-quarters said they were confident that their children would grow up to have better-paying jobs than theirs.

The survey was conducted by telephone from Oct. 3 through Nov. 9 with a sample of 2,003 Hispanic adults, with a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

Lives Are Growing Harder, Hispanics Say in Survey,
NYT, 14.12.2007,

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/us/14latino.html

In U.S. Name Count,

Garcias Are Catching Up With Joneses

November 17, 2007
The New York Times
By SAM ROBERTS

Step aside Moore and Taylor. Welcome Garcia and Rodriguez.

Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, according to a new analysis released yesterday by the Census Bureau. But for the first time, two Hispanic surnames — Garcia and Rodriguez — are among the top 10 most common in the nation, and Martinez nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.

The number of Hispanics living in the United States grew by 58 percent in the 1990s to nearly 13 percent of the total population, and cracking the list of top 10 names suggests just how pervasively the Latino migration has permeated everyday American culture.

Garcia moved to No. 8 in 2000, up from No. 18, and Rodriguez jumped to No. 9 from 22nd place. The number of Hispanic surnames among the top 25 doubled, to 6.

Compiling the rankings is a cumbersome task, in part because of confidentiality and accuracy issues, according to the Census Bureau, and it is only the second time it has prepared such a list. While the historical record is sketchy, several demographers said it was probably the first time that any non-Anglo name was among the 10 most common in the nation. “It’s difficult to say, but it’s probably likely,” said Robert A. Kominski, assistant chief of social characteristics for the census.

Luis Padilla, 48, a banker who has lived in Miami since he arrived from Colombia 14 years ago, greeted the ascendance of Hispanic surnames enthusiastically.

“It shows we’re getting stronger,” Mr. Padilla said. “If there’s that many of us to outnumber the Anglo names, it’s a great thing.”

Reinaldo M. Valdes, a board member of the Miami-based Spanish American League Against Discrimination, said the milestone “gives the Hispanic community a standing within the social structure of the country.”

“People of Hispanic descent who hardly speak Spanish are more eager to take their Hispanic last names,” he said. “Today, kids identify more with their roots than they did before.”

Demographers pointed to more than one factor in explaining the increase in Hispanic surnames.

Generations ago, immigration officials sometimes arbitrarily Anglicized or simplified names when foreigners arrived from Europe.

“The movie studios used to demand that their employees have standard Waspy names,” said Justin Kaplan, an historian and co-author of “The Language of Names.”

“Now, look at Renée Zellweger,” Mr. Kaplan said.

And because recent Hispanic and Asian immigrants might consider themselves more identifiable by their physical characteristics than Europeans do, they are less likely to change their surnames, though they often choose Anglicized first names for their children.

The latest surname count also signaled the growing number of Asians in America. The surname Lee ranked No. 22, with the number of Lees about equally divided between whites and Asians. Lee is a familiar name in China and Korea and in all its variations is described as the most common surname in the world.

Altogether, the census found six million surnames in the United States. Among those, 151,000 were shared by a hundred or more Americans. Four million were held by only one person.

“The names tell us that we’re a richly diverse culture,” Mr. Kominski said.

But the fact that about 1 in every 25 Americans is named Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller or Davis “suggests that there’s a durability in the family of man,” Mr. Kaplan, the author, said. A million Americans share each of those seven names. An additional 268 last names are common to 10,000 or more people. Together, those 275 names account for one in four Americans.

As the population of the United States ballooned by more than 30 million in the 1990s, more Murphys and Cohens were counted when the decade ended than when it began.

Smith — which would be even more common if all its variations, like Schmidt and Schmitt, were tallied — is among the names derived from occupations (Miller, which ranks No. 7, is another). Among the most famous early bearers of the name was Capt. John Smith, who helped establish the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Va., 400 years ago. As recently as 1950, more Americans were employed as blacksmiths than as psychotherapists.

In 1984, according to the Social Security Administration, nearly 3.4 million Smiths lived in the United States. In 1990, the census counted 2.5 million. By 2000, the Smith population had declined to fewer than 2.4 million. The durability of some of the most common names in American history may also have been perpetuated because slaves either adopted or retained the surnames of their owners. About one in five Smiths are black, as are about one in three Johnsons, Browns, and Joneses and nearly half the people named Williams.

The Census Bureau’s analysis found that some surnames were especially associated with race and ethnicity.

More than 96 percent of Yoders, Kruegers, Muellers, Kochs, Schwartzes, Schmitts and Novaks were white. Nearly 90 percent of the Washingtons were black, as were 75 percent of the Jeffersons, 66 percent of the Bookers, 54 percent of the Banks and 53 percent of the Mosleys.

Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami.

    In U.S. Name Count, Garcias Are Catching Up With Joneses, NYT, 17.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17surnames.html?em&ex=1195534800&en=626ea278c51d9d22&ei=5087%0A#

A Mexican Baby Boom

in New York

Shows the Strength

of a New Immigrant Group

June 4, 2007
The New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN

When Lilian Vazquez was born in Brooklyn on Thursday, a rosy 8 pounds 12 ounces and 20 ½ inches, she joined a baby boom among Mexican New Yorkers — one that bucks an overall decline in New York City births.

A new analysis by city demographers showed a 28 percent increase in births to Mexican women living here from 2000 to 2005, with 8,234 babies born in 2005, the last year for which statistics were available. For the first time, the number of babies born to Mexican women surpassed births to Dominican-born women, which dropped by more than 10 percent in the same period.

Native-born mothers, who account for fewer than half of all births in the city, had 7 percent fewer babies over the five years. And with births to foreign-born women showing only a small increase, the total was down by 3 percent.

To Dr. Iffath Hoskins, who oversaw Lilian’s delivery at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn — a hospital whose patients include immigrants from more than 100 countries and which was founded more than a century ago to care for the families of Norwegian sailors — the numbers open a new chapter in a familiar story.

“We’ve seen the shift,” said Dr. Hoskins, chairwoman of obstetrics and gynecology at the hospital and a 30-year veteran of delivering babies in a city where Dominicans have been the largest immigrant group since 1990. “The Dominican population came earlier, and they have done what every immigrant population does: They have assimilated more, so their lives are beginning to mirror the native-born — getting married at later ages, working in offices, seeking education and having smaller families.”

Mexicans are now estimated to be among the city’s top three immigrant groups, joining Dominicans, who are still No. 1, and Chinese. Mexicans began arriving in large numbers in New York only within the last 10 years, and most of them are here illegally. Lilian’s 19-year-old mother, Teresa Vazquez, came from the state of Puebla, where agricultural traditions encourage big families. Ms. Vazquez, a housecleaner married to a busboy, joined two brothers and a sister in New York two years ago and has another four siblings in Mexico.

“They’re fresh immigrants,” Dr. Hoskins said. “Girls are having babies, becoming wives and mothers at a far earlier age. They tend to have more children because they bring their Mexican culture with them.”

On Friday, with newborn Lilian nestled on her chest, Ms. Vazquez was focused on her firstborn’s American future. “I’m very happy,” she said in Spanish of her daughter’s United States citizenship, “because she won’t have problems with her papers.”

Downstairs, at a prenatal class about labor and delivery, six women in advanced stages of pregnancy spoke of the advantages their children would have as citizens — and of the hope that they would grow up to be educated professionals. Five of the women were from Mexico, one from the Dominican Republic, and all lacked legal immigration status.

It is difficult to forecast the shape the Mexican baby boom will take in New York City, experts say. Mexican men still outnumber women among immigrants, and the rise in births partly reflects the arrival of wives, sisters and daughters who had been left behind. On the other hand, a study released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center found that the growth of Mexican immigration to the United States, mostly illegal, had slackened since mid-2006. And like those who preceded them, Mexican immigrants are already having fewer children.

“It’s striking to see the dramatic shift in family sizes within one generation,” said Alyshia F. Galvez, a cultural anthropologist engaged in a two-year research project concerning Mexican women who give birth in New York. “These women are coming from families of 6, 7, 11, 12 siblings. Usually they have two children, and when you ask, ‘How many would you like to have?’ they usually say three.”

Ms. Galvez has interviewed more than 60 women for her project, which examines what is known as the Mexican birth weight paradox: that recent Mexican immigrants with many risk factors for low-weight babies and high infant mortality actually have healthier babies and lower infant mortality rates than Mexican-American women or immigrants who were raised here.

Census data show that Mexican immigrants in New York have the least schooling, the lowest per-capita income and the lowest rate of English proficiency of the city’s immigrant groups. But Ms. Galvez, who teaches at New York University, said she had been impressed by the extraordinary cultural strengths and swift adaptation of these young parents.

“Families are deciding to have, as they say, the number of children they can care for,” she said. “Earlier, it was about having as many children as you could possibly feed because you needed them for agricultural labor. Now, it’s not just about giving them food, it’s about communication and education and love.”

For women like Hanet Cortes, 26, a Mexican mother with a daughter born in New York and another due soon, schooling is a primary concern. “An American diploma is worth something all over the world, while a Mexican diploma is worth nothing here,” said Ms. Cortes, who also is a patient at Lutheran Medical Center.

Educating such children to their potential will not be easy, said Robert Courtney Smith, a sociologist and author of “Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants.”

“On the one hand, Mexicans are the hardest-working people I have ever met, and many children of immigrants are jumping into the middle class in one generation,” Professor Smith, who teaches sociology and immigration studies at Baruch College, wrote in an e-mail message. “On the other hand, Mexicans will present a particular challenge for the educational system.”

Nearly half of Mexicans in the city aged 16 to 19 are neither in school nor high school graduates, he said. At age 14, about 95 percent of boys are in school, but by age 18 or 19, the number is down to 26 percent. For girls, it falls to 31 percent from 96 percent. But the city’s Mexican population — conservatively estimated at about 350,000, including children born here — is so dispersed that there is no political leader focused on this issue, Professor Smith added.

“What is desperately needed is some targeted intervention that will help fight the high dropout rate among Mexicans,” he said. “Because it is the first large cohort of young Mexicans to come of age in New York, we can make a huge difference if we intervene now.”

Tanzina Vega contributed reporting.

    A Mexican Baby Boom in New York Shows the Strength of a New Immigrant Group, NYT, 4.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/nyregion/04births.html

New Routes and New Risk,

as More Haitians Flee

May 19, 2007
The New York Times
By MARC LACEY

PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos, May 16 — There is no conceivable way to get from this island to Miami by bus. But the traffickers who ply Haiti’s northern coastline in search of those willing to risk their bleak lives for better ones abroad tell some tall tales to fill their rickety boats.

They describe this island chain, 150 miles off Haiti’s northern coast, as being an easy hop to Miami, the ultimate goal of most migrating Haitians. Sometimes they tell migrants from Haiti’s interior that the United States is a bus ride away as they talk of the big paychecks and full stomachs that await them.

The reality is different, of course, as was made clear when an overloaded Haitian sloop capsized off the coast of Turks and Caicos recently. As many as 90 migrants may have died in that episode, which passengers on the vessel blamed on the aggressive tactics of the local police.

They were part of a swelling number of Haitians abandoning their country this year, apparently disillusioned with the slow pace of change coming from Haiti’s year-old government. But with patrols along the Florida coastline making it increasingly difficult to land there, desperate Haitians are “island hopping,” as the United States Coast Guard calls it, looking for alternative routes and badly straining relations with their neighbors.

Turks and Caicos is hop No. 1, and it is not altogether happy about it. Local Haitians charge that authorities’ efforts to combat illegal migrants have become so aggressive that they believe accusations that a police boat may have caused the capsizing of the Haitian vessel on May 4, despite official denials.

Haitians now make up a huge percentage of the population here, exceeding the number of other residents, according to government estimates. With migrant boats landing regularly, authorities here and across the Caribbean are struggling to contain them.

“It’s a tremendous strain on the government, and we’d appreciate international assistance,” said Lee Penn, who runs the detention center for illegal migrants in Providenciales, the financial capital of Turks and Caicos. “We’re feeding them and housing them and repatriating them — and it’s costing us.”

What exactly happened at sea on May 4 remains uncertain, and is still under investigation by maritime authorities from Britain, which administers the territory.

But it is clear that the voyage was hellish. After a day and a half packed together in a tiny craft, with nothing but water all around, the migrants finally saw lights on the horizon as they approached Turks and Caicos. Excitement grew, and then dreams turned to nightmares.

With a police boat on the scene in rough waters, the Haitian boat went over on its side. Screams filled the air and bodies hit the water. In all, 61 dead Haitians were plucked from the sea, some of them with shark bites. Twenty or so others were never found.

“The closest thing I could compare it to was Katrina, with that many people floating in the water,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jennifer Arko, a Coast Guard helicopter pilot who responded to the scene and who had done search-and-rescue work over post-hurricane New Orleans.

Of the 69 men and nine women who survived, none would succeed in escaping their desperate lives back home. All were flown back to Cap Haitien, a city on Haiti’s northern coast and a major departure point for migrants.

Inspector Hilton Duncan of the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force said it was a fierce storm, not the police, that forced the Haitian sloop to capsize. He acknowledged that the crowded boat was being towed to shore by the police when it went over. Immediately, he said, a rescue effort ensued, involving the police, other government boats, good Samaritans and the Coast Guard.

“For five officers on a boat, at that time of morning, with that type of weather, rescuing 78 people ought to bring a commendation,” said Inspector Duncan. “But people don’t see it that way.”

But before they were returned home, the surviving Haitian migrants charged that the Turks and Caicos police boat had not responded to their capsized vessel, as the police originally said.

The migrants charged that the police had rammed them in the rough waters and that the overloaded sloop went over when it was being hauled farther out to sea by the police boat.

“We fell into the water and many people drowned,” Marcelin Charles, 37, one of the passengers, told The Associated Press. “I was swimming past dead bodies left and right.”

The tragedy focused attention on the growing exodus of Haitians in recent months and the increasing enforcement efforts to thwart them. In April alone, the United States Coast Guard picked up 704 Haitians at sea, almost as many as the 769 migrants interdicted during all of last year.

President René Préval took office last May amid high expectations that he would end a long bout of violence and economic stagnation. But reversing course has proved challenging: after a spike in kidnappings at the end of 2006 that terrorized residents of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti has only recently begun to make headway in controlling the insecurity there. Meanwhile, hunger and joblessness linger.

The Haitian migrants follow the wind to the Bahamas, to Bermuda, or here in Turks and Caicos, any place that might offer a way to make a living or might take them closer to the United States.

It is a pattern similar to that of other Caribbean migrants. Cubans, for instance, are trying alternative routes to escape that island. The emerging route: west to the Mexican coast and then overland to the United States border.

But Haitians have it harder than others. They are not allowed to stay if they reach American soil, like the Cubans. They are not granted temporary protected status while their countries recover from war and natural disasters, like those who have fled Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

And if they make it ashore on Turks and Caicos, their efforts at escape have just begun.

Immigration agents are on the lookout for illegal Haitians throughout the eight inhabited islands that make up Turks and Caicos, demanding proof of legal residency from everyone they stop.

“We’re a small country, and if these people are continuing to come, it causes problems for us,” Mr. Penn said. “We’ve become a stepping stone.”

Residents here speak of the need to maintain their identity. A British territory, the islands have a governor appointed by Queen Elizabeth as well as a local premier. One government survey estimated the population at 33,000, only a third of whom are longtime residents. Haitians make up the bulk of the foreigners.

In recent months, immigration agents in search of illegal Haitians have waited outside Haitian churches on the island to grab parishioners without papers. In one case, they barged inside All Saints Baptist Church and took five migrants out. Legal Haitians who hire or house a migrant — or even allow one into their homes — face legal jeopardy, local Haitians say.

Residents recall that back in 1998 another boatload of escaping Haitians died off the shore here, after the police fired at the boat. Authorities say they were firing warning shots and did not cause that vessel to capsize.

“We’re still human and ought to be treated that way,” said James Prosper, a Haitian-born pastor who has lived in Turks and Caicos for 24 years and who complained to the government recently about the rough treatment endured by those caught without papers.

“If a Haitian is mistreated, I feel it, because it’s in my blood,” said Ronald Gardiner, a Haitian-born businessman who is now a “Belonger,” as citizens of Turks and Caicos are called.

On Turks and Caicos, Haitians pick up trash and sweep the streets. They make the hotel beds and pour the concrete.

The tourism industry here is booming, a far cry from the 1990s when a Gallup poll found the islands had the lowest name recognition in the world. Now, Hollywood stars vacation in hidden bungalows. Other well-heeled sun worshipers fly in on tickets that can cost less than the several thousand dollars some Haitians pay to get a spot on a sloop.

The police here say some migrants smuggle drugs and guns, which means every sloop is considered a security threat. In fact, the recent deaths revived a call among local officials to create a defense force to better patrol the surrounding waters.

“These are poor people seeking a better life but among them are criminals,” Inspector Duncan said in an interview. “We believe some of them may be former members of the Tontons Macoute,” a reference to the armed thugs who ruled the Haitian countryside during the long years of the Duvalier dictatorships.

The Haitian authorities hope the tragedy may help keep more Haitians home. They are considering using photos of the latest overturned vessel and the resulting bodies thrown into the sea as part of a public education campaign to discourage others from making the trip.

“The answer to migration is economic development and, as you know, that won’t happen overnight,” said Louis Joseph, who is Haiti’s ambassador to the Bahamas. “When you don’t have money to eat or to send your children to school, you don’t know what to do. So you leave — or you try, like these people did.”

    New Routes and New Risk, as More Haitians Flee, NYT, 19.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/world/americas/19haiti.html?hp

Bush Asks Florida Graduates

to Back Immigration Change

April 29, 2007
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, April 28 — President Bush used a speech to mostly Hispanic graduates of Miami Dade College on Saturday to press for an overhaul of immigration law, calling for changes that “resolve the status of those who are already here without amnesty, and without animosity.”

Mr. Bush urged the 1,500 students, many of whom were born in other countries, to join the national debate on immigration policy, saying they “see every day the values of hard work and family and faith that immigrants bring” and so should make their voices heard.

Nearly 80 percent of graduates at the college’s campus in Kendall, where Mr. Bush spoke, are Hispanic; many are Cuban-American. Mr. Bush got a standing ovation and fervent applause, even as hundreds of protesters waved signs along the perimeter of the suburban campus opposing the war and calling for the president’s impeachment.

Mr. Bush’s younger brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush, came to hear him speak, along with Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, and several Cuban-American members of the state’s Congressional delegation.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Bush discussed immigration in his weekly radio address, calling on Congress to reach agreement on the “critical challenge” of improving immigration laws. Administration officials estimate that 12 million illegal immigrants are in the United States, and that the number has been growing by an average of 400,000 a year.

Mr. Bush is trying to bring both parties together on immigration legislation, even as he is fighting with Democrats over Iraq. He wants to create a temporary worker program and a way for some illegal immigrants already here to legalize their status, while stepping up border patrol.

“We need a system where our laws are respected,” Mr. Bush told the graduates. “We need a system that meets the legitimate needs of our economy. And we need a system that treats people with dignity and helps newcomers assimilate into our society.

“We must address all elements of this problem together, or none of them will be solved at all. And we must do it in a way that learns from the mistakes that caused previous reforms to fail.”

Miami Dade is the largest community college in the nation, and only the second community college where a sitting president has given a commencement address. Christopher Miles, president of the student government association at the Kendall campus, told Mr. Bush the school was nicknamed “Democracy’s College,” and said more than half the graduates were the first in their families to enter higher education.

Though Mr. Bush received the warmest of welcomes, some faculty members wore green and white ribbons on their robes to advocate an end to the war.

Before Mr. Bush spoke, the names of every nation that the graduates hailed from were announced, with Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua and Venezuela drawing some of the heartiest cheers.

As he has often done when visiting Miami, Mr. Bush criticized Cuba, where he said “the opportunity to participate in an open debate does not exist.” He also alluded to Fidel Castro’s recent illness, saying the day is nearing when “the light of liberty will shine” on Cuba.

“The reign of every tyrant comes to an end,” Mr. Bush said.

    Bush Asks Florida Graduates to Back Immigration Change, NYT, 29.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/washington/29bush.html

Hispanics Reshaping U.S. Catholic Church,

Study Finds

April 25, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

The influx of Hispanic immigrants to the United States is transforming the Roman Catholic Church as well as the nation’s religious landscape, according to a major study of Hispanics and faith released today.

The study, conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, found that many Hispanics practice a “distinctive form” of charismatic Catholicism that includes speaking in tongues, miraculous healings and prophesying — practices more often associated with Pentecostalism. Among non-Hispanic Catholics, these traditions are practiced by some but are not so widespread.

The study also found that most Hispanics are clustering in “ethnic congregations” with Hispanic clergy, Spanish-language services and where the majority of congregants are Hispanic. These ethnic congregations are cropping up throughout the country — not just in neighborhoods with a concentration of Hispanics, but even in areas where Hispanics are sparse.

According to the survey, 68 percent of Hispanics are Roman Catholic, 15 percent are born-again or evangelical Protestants, 5 percent are mainline Protestants, 3 percent are identified as “other Christian,” and 8 percent are secular (1 percent refused to answer). This is a very different picture than that of non-Hispanic Americans, where the largest groupings are 20 percent Catholic, 35 percent evangelical and 24 percent mainline Protestant.

About one-third of Catholics in the United States are now Hispanic. Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said: “There are several measures on which Hispanic Catholics look different than your basic white suburban Catholics, which has been the dominant form of American Catholicism for about a generation now.

“They are different in terms of beliefs, practices, language and culture, but they remain very Catholic,” Mr. Suro said. “The open question here is, does the institution adapt to them, or do they adapt to the institution?”

The study also found that conversion is a common experience for many Hispanics. Nearly one in five changed either from one religion to another, or to no religion at all. The conversions have resulted in an exodus from the Catholic church, and a boon for evangelical churches. Half of Hispanic evangelicals are converts, most of them former Catholics. The study finds a link between conversion and assimilation. Hispanics born in the United States are more likely to convert than are first-generation, foreign-born immigrants.

These changes could have political repercussions. The Hispanic electorate is largely Democratic (63 percent). But Hispanic evangelicals are twice as likely as Hispanic Catholics to be Republicans — a far greater gap than exists among whites.

The study, “Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion,” is based on several surveys — the main one conducted from Aug. 10 to Oct. 4, 2006 — that involved more than 4,600 adult Hispanics. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percent.

    Hispanics Reshaping U.S. Catholic Church, Study Finds, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/us/25cnd-hispanic.html?hp

As East Harlem Develops,

Its Accent Starts to Change

January 21, 2007
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and TANZINA VEGA

Inside a wooden shack set in a garden on East 117th Street, a group of Puerto Rican men, many of them in their 70s and 80s, are playing a spirited game of dominoes on a rainy winter afternoon. A painting of a woman wearing a burgundy shawl over a flamenco-style dress hangs on a wall, and in the garden, tomatoes, peppers, corn and culantro, an herb used in Caribbean cooking, grow in the summer.

But outside their little retreat, a thick dust, the pounding of hammers and the shouts of construction workers inundate the block, signaling the transformation of East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio (the neighborhood). Many see it changing from the Puerto Rican enclave it has been for decades to a more heterogeneous neighborhood with a significant middle-class presence, luxury condominiums and a Home Depot.

It is a familiar story of gentrification in New York City, but this one comes with a twist: the many newcomers who are middle-class professionals from other parts of the city are joining a growing number of working-class Mexicans and Dominicans.

The result is a high degree of angst among many Puerto Ricans who worry they will be unable to prevent their displacement from a neighborhood that is far more than a place to live and work. “We’re in crisis mode right now, and as far as retaining the Puerto Rican and Latino identity in the neighborhood, we’re in red alert,” said Rafael Merino, who is on the local community board. “If we don’t pick up speed, we’ll lose a lot of it.”

While East Harlem — which had previously been an Italian neighborhood — was not the first place Puerto Ricans settled after arriving in large numbers in New York after World War II, it became the de facto center of cultural life after large-scale displacement from Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, the Upper West Side, and more recently, Williamsburg and the Lower East Side.

East Harlem is the place where people come to celebrate Three Kings Day and quinceañeras, to gather the night before the Puerto Rican Day Parade, and to play dominoes on weekends.

But in recent years, rising rents have caused many Puerto Ricans to leave for more affordable Hudson Valley towns, or for cities like Allentown and Bethlehem in Pennsylvania and Stamford and Bridgeport in Connecticut.

“You have a choice, try to pay that rent, or move out,” said Tony Ramirez, a plumber who has lived in East Harlem for 43 of his 47 years. “Puerto Ricans in El Barrio is like being extinct. None of the people I grew up with are around. People feel like strangers in their own town.”

An illustration of his lament can be seen on several blocks of 116th Street, long Puerto Rican East Harlem’s main shopping strip, which are now filled with shops selling Mexican food, flags and pastries.

In 1980, there were 856,440 people of Puerto Rican descent living in New York City, compared with 787,046 in 2005, according to census data.

In East Harlem, the number of Puerto Ricans has also been declining, to 37,878 in 2005, from 40,542 in 1990, according to the census. They now make up about 35.3 percent of the neighborhood’s population, down from 39.4 percent in 1990.

Carmen Vasquez, public relations manager for Hope Community Inc., a private, nonprofit real estate and cultural organization in the neighborhood, said that the concentration of public housing and other low-income apartment units in East Harlem would keep the Puerto Rican population stable for now.

“There will be some displacement, but we will retain our heritage and our culture,” she said. “You won’t stop gentrification, but you can contain it and slow it down.”

But the changes are unmistakable.

For decades, there had been no doubt about where the Upper East Side ended and East Harlem began: 96th Street, the last major east-west street before the start of East Harlem’s clusters of high-rise public housing projects.

Taxi drivers sometimes dropped off passengers at 96th Street rather than venture farther north to what they considered to be a crime-ridden area. Some courier services also refused to cross the line. Even the row of upscale shops along Second and Third Avenues stopped just short of 96th Street.

That demarcation line is softer now, and nicknames for the southern tier of East Harlem abound: the Upper Upper East Side, Upper Yorkville and SpaHa — short for Spanish Harlem.

Peter Lorusso, 25, who works for a shipping company, has lived for about a year in the Aspen, a 234-unit luxury apartment complex at 101st Street and First Avenue, where one-half of the units rent at market rates.

The three-year-old building has its own garage with valet parking and a 10,000-foot courtyard with bamboo trees. It also offers a free shuttle van every 20 minutes to nearby subways during the morning and evening commutes — as do several other new upscale buildings in the neighborhood.

Mr. Lorusso said he does not usually go north of 101st Street. Instead, he and his friends “do the pub crawl” on the Upper East Side along Second Avenue. The Aspen, he said, is “an extension of the Upper East Side.”

“People are bringing more money north, which is a good thing,” he said. “You just got to be street smart.”

Jon Rich, 30, a stockbroker who lives in the Aspen, had previously rented apartments in TriBeCa, Battery Park City and Midtown. He now splits the $2,800 rent for his two-bedroom apartment with a roommate. “I couldn’t afford to stay where I was,” he said.

Fifteen blocks north of the Aspen, on the site of the former Washburn Wire Factory at 116th Street and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, workers have dismantled the plant to make way for the $300 million East River Plaza shopping center, which will feature a Home Depot, a Best Buy and a Target store.

A second large development in the area was derailed by the Bloomberg administration last year after widespread opposition. The $1 billion project, known as Uptown New York, had called for retail space and 1,500 apartments in an area between 125th and 127th Streets and Second and Third Avenues. Eighty percent of the apartments would have been rented or sold at market rates.

Still, residents say many of East Harlem’s new residential developments are unreasonably expensive. On 117th Street between First and Pleasant Avenues — a block that the police say has been home to a thriving drug market and where two people were killed in the past six months —more than eight buildings are being renovated or constructed.

One of the buildings is the Nina, nine units of “luxury condominiums” where a one-bedroom penthouse is on the market for $850,000.

“The Upper East Side is now the playground for the sophisticated bohemian,” reads the Nina’s Web site. “East Harlem will be known as the area that will feature SoHo-type lofts, with a NoHo sensibility, and a Village flair, without the hefty price tag.”

Jose Hidalgo, 76, one of the men playing dominoes in the shack on 117th Street next door to the Nina, has lived in the neighborhood for 55 years. He grew up in Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico.

“Where am I going to live with these people and their condominiums?” he asked. “If I have to leave, I’ll go back to my country. I don’t have to pay rent; and I have a house there.” But Mr. Hidalgo said he believes that even if the new condos and co-ops find buyers, their owners won’t stay.

“These people come here and they don’t last long,” Mr. Hidalgo said. “Once they see what the neighborhood is really like, especially in the summer,” he said, when the streets become noisy and the crime rate typically climbs, they will sell their apartments and leave.

His friend, Jose Vazquez, 65, who has lived in East Harlem since 1959, said poor people are going to be forced out. “People who used to pay $600 a month are now paying $900 a month.”

But Henry M. Calderon, a real estate broker and president of the East Harlem Chamber of Commerce, said some Puerto Ricans believe they are entitled to live in East Harlem, although they failed to buy property when it was cheaper.

“Is it a right to live here or a privilege?” Mr. Calderon asked. “Is it a right to have an apartment facing Park Avenue? We cannot expect that we have a right to live where we want to live.”

Nicholas L. Arture, executive director of the Association of Hispanic Arts and treasurer of the East Harlem Board of Tourism, said even without significant rates of Puerto Rican home ownership, one way to preserve the area’s pedigree is to market it to visitors. One plan calls for transforming 106th Street east of Fifth Avenue into a “cultural corridor” showcasing Puerto Rican heritage through murals and cultural centers, art galleries and restaurants.

Mr. Arture said the area’s Puerto Rican flavor has already attracted visitors who want to know more about the neighborhood. Recently, a group of graduate students from Kenya said they wanted to visit after having read about the neighborhood on the Internet. “They wanted to eat rice and beans,” Mr. Arture said. “They wanted to experience the culture.”

As East Harlem Develops, Its Accent Starts to Change, NYT, 21.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/nyregion/21east.html