University Place

Centro Hispano and Latino Flavors

– The opinions expressed today are those of the presenter and not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the museum’s employees. Sujhey Beisser has been working with Park Bank for 16 years. She is currently a branch manager and she enjoys working in the community banking space. Sujhey was born and raised in Venezuela, and has been a Madison resident since 2001 where she lives with her husband and two wonderful children. She is the former president of Centro Hispanos, board of directors where she served from 2008 until earlier this year. Sujhey is also the content creator behind the food blog Five Senses Palate, where she shares delicious recipes prepared and photographed by her. In addition, she has a monthly column in the Capital City Hues, dedicated to share the flavors of her Latin home cooking with readers. Here today to discuss the growth of the Latino population of Wisconsin and the impact they have had on Wisconsin’s new culture, please join me in welcoming, Sujhey Beisser. (applause)

– [Sujhey] Really quickly to start with my relationship with Centro and the 10 years that I’ve served on the board. I’m often approached as to how did I connect with Centro in the first place? And I like to tell people I moved here in 2001 and I came related to Centro in 2008 and it wasn’t until I found the community of Centro that I felt that I had a place in this community. So, that’s why it’s so important to me. And I think the best way for me to give back to an agency that has given me so much is to put this presentation together and let you all know what Centro is. So, Centro Hispano of Dane county, the beginning of the agency, we go back to 1983. It was founded by a group of community volunteers including Elo Toms, who also served as the agency first Executive Director. Initially, the creation of Centro was the sign to cover the needs of a number of Cuban immigrants and refugees that have been settled in Madison. Much of the agencies services focus on language and cultural-related needs for adults. At the time, there weren’t enough people that relate to the Cubans so they formed this group. And they basically just found the language barrier for us number one and then they wanted to have a sense of community which is why Centro was formed. It started as a private non-profit agency with an annual grant from United Way. I don’t know how much that was, but given that it was 1983, I want to say it probably less than $100,000.

By 1989, it had grown into an organization with a budget of more than $250,000. Some of the initial services offered bi-central Hispano, included AIDS education, drugs and alcohol prevention, amnesty counseling, and job training. It was designed to fill critical gaps and services that otherwise may not have reached segments of the Madison growing Hispanic population believed to be at that time at about 7,000 and I will show you some data later on. So, Ilda Toms, was one of the founders of Centro Hispano. I didn’t know Ilda. She passed before I even came into this community, but anyone that comes around that you ask about Ilda, all they have to say about her are great words. They said that she was always looking for opportunities for all. She was committed to support education, education was top central for her. She wanted to support children and families. And she left a true legacy.

I believe that she would be very proud of what Centro has become today. So, in order to give you some history here about– We’ll come back to Centro Hispano, but I wanted to make sure that I give you some demographics, some data. I wanted to give you some facts and also some myth about the Latino population and the community in Wisconsin to help you understand what Centro does and why they exist. So, this profile contains demographic and economic facts about the Hispanic population in the state of Wisconsin. This was taken from the Pure Research Center. This is the total Hispanic population in Wisconsin as an estimate of 2014. Hispanics are 6% of the population of the entire state. The Medium Annual Personal Earnings for Hispanics is $20,000. The poverty rate among Hispanics is 34%. Hispanics without Health Insurance: 23%.

Hispanics that own their own home: 42%. This is Hispanics as the percentage of the from K to 12, It’s 11%. So, 11% of the students in all the schools in Wisconsin, 11% of them are Hispanic. Hispanic in Wisconsin that were born in the United States: 63%. And this is always a number that people get shocked by because a lot of people always think if you’re Hispanic, you were not born here. And this is the average Hispanic that graduate from High school: also 63%, which is a pretty high rate for high school graduation. So here is some other facts about Latinos in Wisconsin. The birthplace of Latinos, as of the census of 2010, 44% of the Latinos in Wisconsin were born here, 19% were born elsewhere in the United States, and 37% were born outside of the United States. The language spoken at home: 34% speak English only, 49% speak Spanish and English well or very well, and 17% Spanish and English not at all or not well. This slide right here is from a– It’s the Latino demographic and economic trans report and this was prepared by the Applied Population Lab, UW-Extension in collaboration with the Latino Wisconsin Research group.

What it shows here is the counties that have the largest concentration of Latinos. You can see Dane County there, right in the center. Milwaukee is the largest county that holds the latino population and then we would be second. Right with 32,000 and that’s again an estimate from the study that UW-Extension did in 2014. So we have about 32,000 Latinos in Dane County. And then here in the map you can see the concentration a little bit better, a little bit picture of where the higher concentration. There is a lot of Latinos in the Brown County which is the Green Bay area. Dane County again and Milwaukee County and then Kenosha, and the counties south the border of Wisconsin. You know when the UW-Extension did this study, they collected a lot of information about Latinos and I think some of the data that I would like to share today would be the age. The Latino population is on average younger than the Non-Latino population.

The median age of Latinos is approximately 1/2 than those that are Non-Latinos. The share of Latinos below the age of 15 is roughly twice the comparable share of non-Latinos and in the rural countries represented is even greater. What this tells us, if we look more into this, is just how the Latino population has been growing and why there is a lot more younger Latinos and they also reproduced a lot more than the White population. Then I wanted to focus a little bit on Dane County and show you, because Centro was formed in 1983, so I wanted to go back and show you the numbers. In 1990, this was the census to show that there were 5,700 Latinos in Dane County. In 10 years, the population grew 151%. We were now 14,000. And then 10 more years and that was another 100% to count 29,000 of Latinos. And them we estimate, there was an 8% growth from 2010 to the estimate that we have from 2014. But when you look at the whole picture, we have grown 461% since 1990.

So that tells you Latinos are rapidly growing and we are the largest minority in Wisconsin. Some other facts about Latinos in Dane County: 3/4 of the Latinos in Dane County live in the town and around the Madison, rental neighborhoods and northern edge of Fitchburg. A smaller communities that are in the northeastern Dane County, like Sun Prairie, Marshall, and DeForest. And since the late 1990’s, growing rapidly due to the more recent immigration. Also 72% of Hispanic population growth reports to be of Mexican heritage. And in the ration of men to women is five to three. Now, I am going to move a little bit about the myth about Latinos. The first thing that I want to point out, is people always get confused with the term “Hispanic” or “Latino.” Are they the same? Are they different? Why? So, “Hispanic,” it refers to the language that we speak which is Spanish. And then Latino refers to the geographic countries where we come from and where they are located. So, Latinos are considered all of those that were born in Latin America and Central America, and then some islands of the Caribbean like Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Dominican Republic. Now, Spain is in Europe, but they speak Spanish. Also, there’s a little tiny country in Africa called Guinea that speaks three languages and one of the three languages is Spanish as well. So they are Hispanic, although they are not Latino. And then we’re all Hispanic and some of us are Hispanics and Latinos. Then you have Brazil. Brazil is in Latin America. They are Latinos, but they speak Portuguese. So, they are not necessarily Hispanic, but they are Latinos and part of our community as well. Then myth number two: all undocumented immigrants are Latinos.

Is that true? Well, as it comes out at 20% of undocumented immigrants are from Asia, Europe, Africa and Canada. Who would think Canada, right? That’s so weird. A large percentage of immigrants are from Mexico and Latin America. According to the Hispanic report, 9% of undocumented immigrants are from Asia, 6% are from Europe and Canada, and 3% are from countries in Africa. Now, this is another important number. Most immigrants, 76%, are in the country legally, while a quarter are undocumented. In 2015, 44% were naturalized U. S. citizens. So we’re going to move to myth number three: Latinos are a drag on economy. How much do we hear this these days? In 2017, the estimated buying power of Hispanic is 1. 7 trillion. A figure that is 50% higher than in 2010. Buying power growing that rapidly can hardly be a drag on the economy. 1. 4 million Latino- owned companies found that the most intense activity was the administrative support and waste business, construction, and healthcare, and social assistance. Latino businesses tend to be a lot smaller than their known Latino counterparts. The Latino enterprises average about $156,000 in year sales, compared to $573,000 for non-Latino counterparts. (Man in audience comments in Spanish) Yes. (laughing) And this is an article that was on the Cap Times.

Over 13,000 of the immigrants in Wisconsin are entrepreneurs. So when you relate that to the number that I gave you earlier, you know that we have a majority of people that are entrepreneurs. The Hispanic-Latino workforce grew from 6,374 in 2007 to 8,085 in 2013. The total number of Hispanic workers in Madison grew by 4. 5% per year during this period. The Hispanic-Latino workforce is particularly important to a few sectors of the economy. 11% of them work in construction, 14% work in cleaning and maintenance positions, and 18% of them work in the food services positions. In Dane County, Hispanic-Latinos are also over 1/3 of the total agriculture force. Food service is by far the economic sector that accounts for the largest numbers of jobs among Hispanic-Latinos in the Madison and Dane County area. And the last myth about Latinos: We’re all brown skin and we are all the same. We’re all the same, but we’re not. The cultural influences in our community, Hispanic and Latino, come from diverse social economic and geographic backgrounds making us all very different depending on the family heritage that we have and depending on the national origin that we have. We do have, however, some cultural similarities. The language: we all speak Spanish or Portuguese. The religion, the majority of Hispanics and Latinos identify themselves as Catholics. The cuisine: even though our cuisine is so diverse and so different. We all tend to like each other’s Latino culture’s cuisine’s and we tend to just gear towards that. Now I want to go back to Centro Hispano and give you some numbers. Remember when we started in 1983? It was just volunteers and it was just a very small agency. Today, Centro Hispano’s largest programs are those that serve the Latino youth in Dane County schools.

At the same time, the agency’s cultural, educational, and social service programs for adults have also grown. From the strong foundation, Ilda Thomas Conteris and others gave the agency. In 2006, Centro Hispano became the owner of an 18,000 square-foot facility, 810 West Badger Road, where it is still located in the heart of Madison, in the south side. In 2010, Centro Hispano served over 4,000 families. In 2014, and I can’t remember if it was ’14 or ’13. I think it was 13, we hired our current executive director, Karen Menendez Coller, who has poured herself into the agency creating a strategy for every goal, working tirelessly with the community partners and funders, hiring key strategic staff, and making the agency grow from the inside out. And these numbers should speak for themselves. We now have 22 paid staff members. This is our annual operating budget. We serve over 5,000 clients every year. We serve over 2,500 families every year. We see over 850 immigration-related cases in our support program, and this is a one person’s job. We serve over 350 children. We participated in over 100 community events. 84% of the Caminos CNA Program attendees that are employed by the end of the program. 79% of the attendees of the Pathway Program. At the end of the program they move from having either no employment or a part-time employment to a full-time employment, also almost doubling their salary. 60% of the Juventud students that participate in the leadership summit and 60% of the Escalera students complete an internship experience. So this right here shows you a little bit of how much Centro has grown in the last 35 years. Now, in 2017, 11 years after buying that building, Centro was a recipient of the Design for a Difference facility makeover from Design for a Difference and FLOOR360.

About 50 donors and partners organizations donated time, money, and materials to make the Design for a Difference makeover happen. And donated project costs that were close to $600,000. The designers and volunteers spent months planning the new design making sure that each space reflected the voice of the staff and the clientele that visits Centro every day. This was an incredible gift. Centro’s space has always been inviting, but it has now spaces with functionality. The designers did a great job and we can’t thank Design for a Difference and FLOOR360 enough for what they did for our community center. It looks beautiful. So here are the three pillars that Karen created for Centro. As much as we’ve always had the programs at the agency, when Karen came along, she just kind of wanted to identify and separate each one of them and who we serve. So, for the stability at home, she feels we have to have strong support services, and that’s where our adult programs come in.

The general support program, who sees about 2700 cases every year, 850 of those cases that you saw in the slide before are related to immigration. The New Routes for Adults, that is a community program that tries to reintegrate Latino offenders in the judicial system through legal advocacy program. Again, that’s also 1 person at Centro that serves that program and he sees about 400 cases in a year. Then the second pillar is the youth aspiration and that would be the youth programs. The youth programs are to improve retention rates of Latino students in the Madison high schools and to create a pipeline of students that are engaged in school and supported academically until graduation. Increased economic mobility for Latino youth in Madison through career awareness planning and asset mapping. “Believing in success and not in failures.” And that is a quote from Karen. And those are the programs that I just mentioned before also along with the programs that are inside of each school that Centro has, all working with the Madison School District. And then the last pillar is the Neighborhood Environment Community Outreach programs.

So the idea here is to implement community outreach with the intention to create a well-balanced and thriving community for the Latino families. Centro has created programs to engage in wellness activities promoting food equity, health, fitness, and overall community investment in their personal health. The food equity initiatives include Centro’s family garden that is in our own back yard. El Mercadito de Centro that happens every Wednesday. Pa’Ponerse Saludable, that is a series of classes that are geared to learn about well-being and how food nurtures us. And there are cooking demonstrations as well. La Tierra Hizo Mi Almuerzo or The Earth Made my Lunch, is a cooking class for kids, to teach them where food comes from and how they can prepare their own foods. And in the fitness initiatives includes Zumba, Yoga, Belly Dance, Ballet Folklrico, and more. So again when you see all of these programs are created to intertwine with each other and to help a family thrive, by having some stability at home, by having the kids being educated, by having the mothers come to Centro and also get part of this wellness program and to be a part of the community as a whole. So now we’re going to learn a little bit about the Latino flavors that influence our palate. For those of you that know me well, know that I’m always about food. So, I’m thinking you’re probably expecting to see the first Taqueria, right here. And we’re going to talk about that later. But the first thing I want you to see is this picture. . . and think about how this influenced what we put on our plate. In Wisconsin, the history of Tejano migrant farm workers stretches to the early decades of the twentieth century. Latino hands have been picking the state’s produce for centuries and have played an important role in the food industry. The Tejano’s have traveled to Wisconsin as migrant labor for decades, working in the sugar bid industry during the 1930’s.

The number of Tejano’s arriving in Wisconsin grew dramatically throughout the late 1940’s and early ’50s. These migrants were reported in 23 counties out of 71 counties in the state, during the summer of 1947, totaling more than 5,000 workers and their families. Between 2007 and 2013, the total number of Latinos working food service jobs in Dane County grew from approximately 1,000 to 3,300. More than one new Latino food service worker hired every single day. Today, about 23% of all Latino workers in Madison and Dane County work in the food service industry. So, even when we think about how the Latinos have influenced what we eat today, if it wasn’t for the work of the Latino’s that have been working in the state for decades, some of the vegetables and some of the foods that make it to your plate everyday, may not be there. And I think this is one of the issues that have actually come to light recently with the dairy industry. Just thinking what it would be of the dairy industry if we didn’t have the Latino workers. 1931, I found this picture actually on the website of the history museum. Tijuana Hot Tamales, and this is a street in Madison.

Apparently this food cart was around the Capitol Square and down on State Street selling hot tamales. What I find very interesting though. . . just the way that the tamales were described and just by looking at obviously the owner of this cart, I thought he might be Cuban maybe. But the more and more I look into it, he wasn’t. He was Black. And, I didn’t think at 1931, Latinos would be, I don’t know, like they would have enough presence to have a food cart in the square. However, they did have some influence in the food and I’m going to quote this from the book Madison Food History: A History of Capital Cuisine, because I thought was very interesting about this food cart. “It’s likely that this version of tamale described as a Spanish and peppery sandwich, in the Cap Times in 1931, were the kind that cross into Mississippi Delta cuisine with migrant workers in the early twentieth century and then came to the Midwest with northward, Black migration.” Then we had Paco’s in 1967. This restaurant was on State Street and it was open until the early ’80s. I don’t know why it closed, but I found this quote, too, also from an ad from the restaurant that I’m going to read because I thought that was very interesting. “This space is brought to you by the letter “M” which stands for Madison, Mexican food, and Margaritas. Since 1967, Paco’s has served Madison’s finest Mexican food and some astonishing Margaritas. The letter M also stands for Marginal, Misleading, and Mediocre. And if that is what you like, check out some of our less-than competent fast-buck chain restaurant competitors.” (laughing) This was apparently an ad for the restaurant that was in the restaurant. So with that, I am assuming he was probably referring to something like Chi-Chi’s, or Pedro’s, or maybe even some of the other national restaurants. These were some of the Latin flavors that influenced Madison in the ’80s.

Pasquals, actually that one in Monroe Street, is closed now, but he still has three more Pasquals Cantinas, one on East Washington, another one on Hilldale, and one in Verona. Pedro’s still has one location, they used to have two. Casa de Lara’s still here. In the 1990’s, more restaurants were opened. La Paella was one of my absolute favorite restaurants when I first moved here; it was Spanish tapas. El Pastor is still here, opened in 1998. La Hacienda is still here too, opened in 1996. And Laredo’s opened in 1996 as well. So, keeping on the influence of Latin flavors. Some of the restaurants that were named as best new restaurants either by Madison Magazine or The Isthmus. Throughout the years, I found all this information on the Madison Food and History of Capital Cuisine and I just highlighted all of the restaurants that were owned by Latinos or Hispanic, or that were influenced by Hispanic cuisines. So we had in 1987, all the way through 2014. My friends from La Taguara, that’s the only Venezuelan restaurant in Madison by the way. So, it’s funny to me to see how through the decades there was a change. Obviously there were more Hispanic restaurants open. They all tended to be towards the Mexican cuisine. Assuming because the Mexicans are the largest amongst our own minority. But then, when the 2000’s come, then you start seeing a little bit more of other Caribbean cuisines and other Latin cuisines as well. Today, if you just do a simple Google search for Latin restaurants in Madison, more than 30 restaurants come up. I don’t think that the map does justice to all the restaurants that there are.

But as you can see, where are all over. . . the place, like now you can actually go and have Latin food whenever, anywhere. When I first moved here, and I wasn’t very familiar with Mexican food at all, because I just didn’t eat Mexican food in Venezuela. But when I started having Mexican food, it was always at the bigger restaurants, the bigger chains. And then it wasn’t until I started having real Mexican friends, like my friend Brenda, when she was like no no mija, let me just show you what real Mexican is, that I started exploring with the flavors of Mexican food and started liking it, more. So, from all of that to food blogging which was the reason that I basically contacted to do this and I wanted to tie this up back to Centro. I have a passion for cooking that I grew up with. I grew up cooking with my family, with my grandma.

I always bring food when I go to parties, when I’m not too busy. And people always ask me for recipes. Or, how did you make that? How do you make this? Why does it taste this way? So I chose to start sharing my recipes online with all the technology. Started learning about food blogs. And I thought why can’t I just share my recipes and then when people want to know how I make something they can go there. So that’s how I started Five Senses Palate about four years ago. And then also, with my passion for cooking and tying up back to Centro about also around the same time I started the blog, I had this little itch that I wanted to do some personal chef cooking. I didn’t know if I wanted to go to school to learn techniques and things about cooking. Or what I wanted to do with it. But we were working on a silent auction for Centro Hispano and I thought, “Hey, why don’t I just say I’m going to donate a dinner and then I’ll try to be a personal chef for a day and see how that works.” I’ve donated so far, four dinners for Centro Hispano and I actually started doing it as my own business last year. So, that’s another little tight that I feel that I owe to Centro as well. So, lastly, I want to leave you with some thoughts. I want to leave you with this question: What are we doing to support the Latinos in Madison? I hope that through this presentation, you learned that we have been around for a very long time. That we have been doing hard work, and a little bit at a time, we have been claiming our spot in this community. We’re making our presence louder and we’re multiplying rapidly. There is no way to stop us and we’re here to stay. In critical, political times like we’re living right now, agencies like Centro Hispano play a crucial role in growing communities like Dane County. I want to invite you all to connect with us, get involved, and by all means, give your support where you can. Thank you.
(applause)