New York Local News

by Pablo Guzmán
  EDITOR'S NOTE: In a two-part series of reports March 1-2, 2007, CBS 2's Pablo Guzman chronicled the positive impact many in the Latino community are having. Click the video player on this page to see his reports. Click on the links below to see more extensive interviews with the subjects of his stories. Below the links you'll find a detailed explanation from Pablo about his series.

The National Hispanic Business Group
Investment Consultant Myrna Rivera
Economics Professor Dr. Hector Cordero-Guzmán
Angelo Falcón, Political Analyst
Phil Suarez, Restaurant Owner

About two months ago, our News Director, David Friend, called me into his office. Quite honestly, my first reaction was "uh-oh." When the boss calls you into his office, you start getting flashbacks about getting hauled into the principal's office. Or your mother calling your name with that certain inflection that meant she found out about the lamp.

This was not one of those times.

Mr. Friend had been to a function a few nights earlier, and was impressed with the sizable number of successful Latinos in attendance. And that most of them owned their own businesses. "And they all seemed to know that group you were in. Do you have footage of that?"

Thus is a series born.

"That group" was the Young Lords Party. A Puerto Rican radical organization that, between 1969 and 1976 or so mobilized thousands of people to fight for things like getting a new Lincoln Hospital built in the South Bronx. Because the old building had been condemned by the city for 25 years. And for 25 years, the money that was allotted to construct the new one was always used for something else. The message the people of the South Bronx got was, You don't count. Finally, doctors and nurses took us inside, and showed us the rats running through the emergency room. We took the hospital over with their help, and embarassed the city into building the new one.

Notice in the preceding paragraph I said "mobilized thousands of people to fight for things". The key word being "fight". In the early '70s, the system was so dead-set against people standing up for themselves, that when we went to the Sanitation Department (which is how we began, in June 1969) to ask for brooms and garabage cans to clean up streets in Spanish Harlem, we were cursed at and the cops were called. So we took the garbage that wasn't being picked up --- piles of stuff that both fed the image of how dirty "those people" were, and also fed the depressing self-image kids especially had growing up around all that --- and laid it out across Lexington Avenue and 110th Street, blocking traffic at rush hour. After a series of such tactics, interspersed with running battles with the police (Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was a sergeant in one of the Spanish Harlem precincts back then, and we joke now at his attempts to arrest me back then), the city finally changed the frequency of garbage pickups. And put more garbage cans on the corners.

By the time of the Lincoln Hospital takeover ten months later in April 1970, the Young Lords' reputation was established. We were building chapters in Philadelphia, Bridgeport, Hoboken, and Newark. With student groups on campuses in Boston, Ann Arbor, and California; and through our paper, Palante, generating support among both servicemen and prisoners. Needless to say, this put us, along with the Black Panther Party, on the FBI radar.

But it also inspired several generations of Latinos. You have to understand, that before the Young Lords, and the rise of the whole Puerto Rican movement in the United States, Puerto Ricans officially were a "zip." I'm not kidding: Birth certificates said "black" "white" or "other" (my birth certificate says "white", in keeping with some bureaucratic reasoning back then that Puerto Ricans, since they were not "black," i.e., the people who came from the slave ships down South and spread across America, must, then, by this crazy logic, be…"white". And if you've seen me on TV, you know I'm hardly white).

Caught in America's political and cultural wars, there was no sense of identity -- of what it was to be Puerto Rican. And proud. The Young Lords Party had a lot to do with changing that. In fact, I get more invites to speak at colleges across America about the Young Lords now than I did then. And "back in the day", I got invites from colleges as far-flung as Tallahassee, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Chicago, Detroit, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. I was even invited, and did spend, three months at the end of 1971 in the People's Republic of China.

(Side note: when my plane landed in Beijing -- then "Peking" -- in September 1971, the rest of the group of American radical organizers I was with saw Air Force One on the tarmac through the windows as we taxied to the terminal. Since relations with the U.S. did not exist, we flipped out. We found out it was Henry Kissinger, engaged in what would later be called "ping pong diplomacy." Because the Chinese really were isolated from America, while they were talking to Kissinger, they also wanted to talk with Americans like myself to get a fuller picture of what life was like in America at the time. There was even a meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai in the Great Hall of the People. When it started, he had a translator next to him, who later became familiar to Americans. But when the translator began, Zhou waved him off. And in perfect English said, "I don't think that will be necessary. We are among friends." About four months later, in February 1972, I was back home in New York, and saw how Kissinger's secret diplomacy had paid off. Nixon was in China, resulting in the normalization of relations between the two countries. And there, constantly, on TV, was Zhou Enlai. And that translator. I turned to my friends and said, "That guy is really slick. He speaks English.")

However, from the mid-1970's to the present, all the gains in what appeared to be a rising tide of political power did not translate into a substantial reworking of how, say, power in the city operates. Even though the number of Latinos here (legally, by the way) has jumped from the Young Lord days those numbers have not been marshaled into anything that gives you the sense the day-to-day decision making is being shared equally. At City Hall, where there has still never been a Puerto Rican mayor (not that that would automatically mean everything's great; but, even for just the symbolic value, you know?). At the editorial boards that shape public opinion. And so on.

But at the same time, as Angelo Falcón of the National Institute for Latino Policy says in our series, "Come the 2000 census; come Jennifer Lopez; and all of a sudden, this century begins with a tremendous recognition and visibility of the Latino community." Madison Avenue took notice. The Latino market. And politicians took notice. Bloomberg and Pataki are campaigning in Spanish! (by the way, I tried for nearly a month to get a brief comment from Mayor Bloomberg on the significance of the Latino vote and the importance of Latino business for this series, and was rebuffed constantly).

So, with all those numbers, and with all that energy that had been generated by the Puerto Rican movement, what happened? Well, nature, you know, abhors a vacuum. And while politically there's a lot that needs to get done -- not a few people I talked to said they were turned off by the Democratic Party clubhouse politics that dominates the world of Latino elected officials in this town -- it would appear that "all that energy" did go someplace. To Latinos starting their own business. Or working their way up the corporate ladder. (I didn't have the time this go round, but my research for this project put me in touch with a large and growing class of Latino MBAs who are beginning to have an impact at places like Goldman Sachs, Verizon, etc. Maybe next time.)

Dr. Hector Cordero-Guzmán, chairman of Black and Latin economic studies at Baruch College, agreed. "I think that you're right in that there's been more growth, and perhaps more dynamic change, in the business sector." The good doctor has been crunching seven years of business data compiled by the Census Bureau regarding Latinos in business, and has come up with some fascinating info. Like, of the states with large Latino populations, New York has had the fastest rate of growth (though it started behind states like Texas and California). Like how the Latin business community generally breaks down into three groups: the traditional "mom and pop" type operation, classically represented by the bodega (and while the bodega is often a subject for humor, the Bodega Association of America --- you heard right --- claims $7 billion in annual revenue). The group of basically self-employed professionals and consultants (lawyers, architects, etc) that has seen the most growth of the three business classes the last ten years or so; and the still-emerging group that Dr. Cordero-Guzmán thinks will be the dominant force in the future: the entrepreneurs, the true business men and women "who have an actual payroll, and a significant number of employees; who are in light industry, or major service fields."

To learn more from this class, which is really the focus of this series, I talked with six representatives of the National Hispanic Business Group, each of whom is building their own company into sizable enterprises: Bill Sotomayor, of TSC Design Associates; Jose Velazquez of Tri-Line Contracting Corporation; Mario Rios, of Classico Building Maintenance; Bob Sanchez, United Print Group; Mario Torres, Mario Torres Productions; and Armando Rodriguez, A&A Maintenance. I spoke with Myrna Rivera, an investment analyst with years of experience at places like Smith Barney, who started her own firm, Consultiva Internacional, with offices in Puerto Rico and NewYork (and I was lucky to catch her before she took off again for Puerto Rico, where she is based!).

Then there is the supernova, Phil Suarez. His parents emigrated from Puerto Rico, to Washington Heights where he grew up ("we used to sing doo-wop on the steps of Yeshiva University", a pcouple of blocks down from his building at 188th & Amsterdam). As a young man, he landed a job in the mail room at the George Lois ad agency. Lois was really into the company softball team, and put out a call for someone who could play this game. "I got through advertising on the softball scholarship," Phil jokes.

His hustle on and off the field carried him through the agency and eventually a partnership with groundbreaking director Bob Giraldi. Their videos for commercials and music became the gold standard. ("Yeah, I'm the guy that burned Michael Jackson's hair." Actually, he was the guy producing the commercial for Pepsi.)

Secure after completing that stage of his life, Phil next turned to restaurants. "What I essentially do is execute the concept." And how. Teaming with legendary chef Jean Georges, Phil turned their flagship restaurant on Columbus Circle into a chain of ten dining experiences, each with its own theme and cuisine. Thai street food, Latin fusion, new French…and they're not stopping. Their Las Vegas restaurantin the Bellagio is the highest-grossing restauarant in America. They are opening in China and Japan. They have completed a deal with Starwood Hotels, for places like the Meridien, W, and the St. Regis.

Phil has also expanded into real estate development, co-developing a stunning group of towers on West Street and Perry in the Village where "apartments" --- that is, whole floors --- sell for $11 to $14 million. And the "tenants" include Martha Stewart, Calvin Klein, and Nicole Kidman (and of course Jean Georges has a café in one of the lobbies).

You can hear all these folks by clicking on the links, and get a lot more than we had time to put on the air. Believe me, they are all fascinating. I wish there was time for Jorge Ayala of "La Fonda Boricua" on 106th Street between Lexington and Third; and Jeffrey Melo, the bodeguero's son, who was running the place at 115th and Lex when we stopped in. But I want to thank them for letting us shoot inside their places, so you could get a feel for the real cornerstones of the Latino business explosion -- rice and beans. And, the bodega.

Oh, and besides that taste of Rita Moreno from "West Side Story", the music you hear in Part One is "Vamonos Pa'l Monte", and in Part Two, "Chocolate Ice Cream". Both by the great Eddie Palmieri.

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