In Boston, Hispanics press for cultural recognition

BOSTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) The grocers sell chili pods and sugar cane. Salsa dance rhythms boom from cafes, and people crowd into sidewalk restaurants for batidos, empanadas and other Latin delicacies.

Boston's Spanish-speaking Jamaica Plain neighborhood, which teemed with European factory workers in the 19th-century, is now the city's unofficial ''Latin Quarter'' -- and its residents are flexing their political muscle.

The city, one of America's oldest and still closely identified with the country's European heritage, elected its first Hispanic councilor, Felix Arroyo, in 2003.

Arroyo, a native of Puerto Rico, wants to change a half-mile stretch of Jamaica Plain's Centre Street to ''Avenue las Americas,'' one of several proposals he is resubmitting to Boston's City Council.

Flags representing each country in the Americas -- from the Caribbean to Central America, South America and Canada -- would fly from street corners in the spirit of the Avenue of the Americas in New York, Miami and El Paso, Texas, he said.

''People will feel welcome if they see that the symbols that identify them are welcomed and accepted as part of the city,'' Arroyo, who circulated copies of the proposal to city councilors in August, said in an interview. ''We will resubmit them no later than the last week of February.'' Another group of residents want Mozart Park, where neighborhood teenagers play basketball, to be renamed ''Park de las Americas''.

Some have proposed erecting a statue in Boston to Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has embraced the community, promoting the city's unofficial ''Latin Quarter'' to tourists with glossy maps and brochures that exhort visitors to ''practice your Spanish, sample authentic Latin and Caribbean food, and shop for guayaberas or that special Salsa CD''.

''If the community supports changing the name to 'Boston's Latin Quarter' and changing the street name to 'Avenue de las Americas' quite possibly it would happen. It really depends on the level of interest,'' said Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for the mayor.

FROM BRITISH PURITANS TO BATIDOS The push for cultural recognition reflects shifting demographics in a state settled by British Puritan pilgrims, built on Yankee Protestant wealth and governed by tight-knit Irish-American Roman Catholics for most of the 20th century.

Voters elected the state's first African-American governor, Deval Patrick, in November. The civil rights lawyer who rose from the slums of Chicago's South Side has stirred hope among ethnic minorities, who often criticize Boston as unwelcoming and racially divided despite its liberal reputation.

As in other US regions, Boston's Hispanic identity is growing fast. Over the last 25 years, the share of immigrants in the Massachusetts workforce has nearly doubled, according to independent research group MassInc.

Today, 17 per cent of the state's workforce are immigrants -- up from roughly nine per cent in 1980. Nearly half of all new immigrants are from Latin American and the Caribbean; between 2000 and 2003, nearly one out of every five immigrants entering the state was Brazilian.

''Massachusetts has been dependent on immigration for all of its employment growth since the late 1980s,'' said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. ''In the absence of new immigrants, the labor force could have actually declined considerably.'' In Boston's ''Latin Quarter'' on Centre Street, between Jackson and Hyde squares, about 85 per cent of the businesses are owned by Latinos. Stores advertise in Spanish and English. A tailor's shop can wire money to Puerto Rico. One cafe calls itself the ''king of the Cuban sandwich''.

''Over there is Spanish, next door is Spanish; it's all Spanish around here,'' said Alfonso Martinez, owner of a hole-in-the-wall jewelry repair shop, gesturing with his hand at beauty salons and other businesses on the street.

The neighborhood's Hispanic community say they see more room to grow. But so do young, upwardly mobile singles, artsy hipsters and budding families. Rents are climbing as stability replaces decades of decay in an area that was besieged by violent crime just 15 years ago.

Developers are opening up about 70,000 sq feet (6,500 sq metres) of retail space in the next five to six years with preliminary plans for 380 subsidized low-income homes, said Jaime Calitto, director of the Hyde/Jackson Square Main Street community group. Another 205 homes would go at market prices.

Calitto wants the Latin Quarter to resemble Boston's historic North End and bustling Chinatown -- hubs of ethnic businesses that are often clogged with tourists.

But Juan Reyes, owner of Miami Restaurant in Jamaica Plain, where it helps to speak Spanish when you order, questions whether the area's Latino and Hispanic community will keep growing as gentrification spreads and pushes newer immigrants into fast-growing Hispanic communities in western Massachusetts.

''Many of the people are moving to western areas of the state where it's a lot less expensive. My business is down about 10 percent from last year,'' said the 59-year-old Cuban native, who has lived in Boston since 1978. ''If rents keep climbing I'm not sure who is going to live around here.'' REUTERS BDP RS0855