Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics, and Everyday Life PDF
Preview Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics, and Everyday Life
Making New York Dominican The CiTY iN The TweNTY-FirsT CeNTurY eugenie L. Birch and susan M. wachter, series editors A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. Making New York Dominican small Business, Politics, and everyday Life Christian Krohn-hansen uNiversiTY oF PeNNsYLvANiA Press PhiLADeLPhiA 21363 21363 Copyright © 2013 university of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by university of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the united states of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krohn-hansen, Christian, 1957– Making New York Dominican : small business, politics, and everyday life / Christian Krohn-hansen.—1st ed. p. cm.—(The city in the twenty-first century) includes bibliogaphical references and index. isBN 978-0-8122-4461-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) Dominican Americans—New York (state)—New York—economic conditions—21st century. 2. Dominican Americans—New York (state)—New York—Politics and government—21st century. 3. Dominican Americans—New York (state)—New York—social life and customs—21st century. 4. small business—New York (state)—New York—history—21st century. 5. New York (N.Y.)—ethnic relations—history—21st century. i. Title. ii. series: City in the twenty-first century F128.9.D6K76 2013 305.8968'72930730747—dc23 2012018056 21363 CoNTeNTs introduction 1 PArT i 29 1. From Quisqueya to New York City 31 2. origin stories 47 PArT ii 91 3. From Bodegas to supermarkets 93 4. From Livery Cabs to Black Cars 134 PArT iii 171 5. Dominicans and hispanics 173 6. up Against the Big Money 201 7. in search of Dignity 230 Conclusion 264 21363 vi Contents Notes 269 references 285 index 299 Acknowledgments 310 Figure 1. Upper Manhattan. 21363 21363 Bronx Community districts, 2000 Figure 2. Bronx Community districts, 2000. Introduction I t was a hot Tuesday afternoon in late August 2002, and I was in La Nueva España, a small restaurant on 207th Street in Inwood, at the northern- most point of Manhattan. The restaurant, owned and run by a Domini- can, served mainly Dominican food, and most of the guests were first- and second- generation Dominican immigrants. The man sitting with me at the table was the reason I had come. These days La Nueva España functioned as his regular café. He was a friend of the owner and lived with a sister in a tenement around the corner. José Delio Marte was a Dominican immigrant who had arrived in New York City in 1965, at eighteen.1 While his first jobs in New York had been factory jobs in midtown, he had spent most of the last thirty- seven years as an owner and operator of small businesses, mostly bodegas, small, Spanish- speaking Dominican neighborhood or street- corner grocery stores, in Upper Manhattan. During these years, he had seen the city and northern Manhattan change conspicuously: he had seen the Dominican community emerge. I had met with him for the first time a couple of weeks previously. Then as now, I had asked him to tell me about the Dominican immigration to the city and about the creation and the construction of New York’s Dominican com- munity. I had asked him to tell me why, and how, he and so many other Do- minican immigrants had ended up in small businesses— taxicab operations, neighborhood grocery stores, restaurants, travel agencies, beauty parlors, car- repair shops, small and medium- sized supermarkets, and other enterprises. One of Inwood’s busiest commercial streets is 207th Street. This short stretch on the northern tip of Manhattan has two subway stations, one for the 1 train on Tenth Avenue, and one for the A train on Broadway. Next to La Nueva España was a McDonalds. A few of the businesses on 207th Street were owned by Americans of Arab ancestry, and a couple were Mexican, but the great majority were run by Dominicans. The language on the sidewalks and in the stores was Spanish, and most of the livery cabs that cruised the neigh- borhood were owned and driven by Dominicans. Inwood was dominated
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