Hispanic Task Force sponsors Dominican and Puerto Rican relations forum

By Tony Vera, CSW, President, Alliance of Hispanic Social Workers
(October 1993)

The state of relations between New York City's Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and the implications for social work practice was the focus of the Chapter's Hispanic Task Force meeting of September 8, held at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Invited speakers Moises Perez, Executive Director of the Alianza Dominicana and Luis A. Miranda, President of the Hispanic Federation of New York City and Chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, provided the stimulus to rare dialogue among Latino social workers.

Mr. Miranda gave thematic direction to the forum by summarizing the Federation's recent survey findings among New York City's Latinos. The survey findings revealed a spectrum of views with a strong conservative bent which challenge the assumptions social workers might make about their knowledge of the city's Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and other Spanish-speaking nationality groups. On the question of welfare, for example, Mr. Miranda reported that, while Latinos believed that government has a duty to respond to the needs of the poor, 87% of the sample reacted favorably to finger-imaging for all welfare applicants, and three out of four support workfare for recipients - including women with children. It was also found that ethnic identification runs strong among Latinos, but Puerto Ricans, more than any other Spanish-speaking group, strongly disliked the idea of being referred to as "Latino." Puerto Ricans, Mr. Miranda said, want to be called Puerto Rican, more so than Cuban or Dominican respondents, both of whom lean more toward their national identity. Regarding the performance of Mayor Giuliani, Puerto Ricans "wearing their New Yorker's hat" as Mr. Miranda put it, responded favorably, but less so when asked how Giuliani responded to the needs of Puerto Ricans. Dominicans, on the other hand, were more negative in their assessment of Giuliani, with and without their New Yorker hats on.

The stereotype of Dominicans as drug dealers and "bodegueros" who buy out Puerto Ricans was addressed with candor and stimulating exchanges. Mr. Perez exhorted forum participants to seek a better understanding of Dominicans through a historical perspective covering two U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic which created the economic and social conditions for large spurts of emigration to the U.S., New York City in particular.

Social and economic instability generated by right wing governments and popular resistance also help to explain the New York Dominican community's explosive growth, Mr. Perez argued. [The Dominican Republic ranked first among the 10 largest supplier countries to New York City's immigration flow during the period of 1965 to 1980, representing a thirteenfold increase from 9,000 to 120,000 residents. The 1985 NYC Department of City Planning estimated 1:1 ratio of documented to undocumented residents suggests that the actual census of Dominicans may be twice the official count.]

The wave of Dominican emigration followed the tidal proportion of Puerto Ricans migrating to New York City in the mid 1950s, which was generated by catastrophically large surplus labor in Puerto Rico during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Both groups entered New York City at peak levels as the City's economic infrastructure was in a structural transition marked by the decline of the light industrial and manufacturing sector which has been supplanted by the finance and banking, insurance and real estate sector from which most Dominicans and Puerto Ricans continue to be excluded.

Mr. Perez posed the dilemma Puerto Rican and Dominican leaders face on the question of power sharing: Can power, in fact, be shared? If Puerto Ricans and Dominicans must compete, can there be principles of engagement that benefit both nationality groups? Can Dominicans and Puerto Ricans learn to disagree without creating mistrust and disunity or zero-sum power games? Such questions, many in the audience suggested in their remarks, can only be answered through continued dialogue and promotion of mutual respect on many levels. It became apparent that the paramount reality for both groups is that New York's public resources can be most effectively accessed by Latinos through maximum participation in the political process. Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, together with the many Central and South American nationality groups represented at the forum, have a role to play in the political process, of which Latino social workers must also be a key part. All social workers, not just the Latinos among them, must learn to promote political empowerment among the client population without being politically partisan and staying within the ethical bounds of the profession.

The most provocative question raised by a forum participant focused on "the welfare dependency of Latinos." Mr. Perez was emphatic in pointing out that the question must be reframed to one of jobs and a living wage. Dominicans, Mr. Perez said, are eager to work, often traveling long distances to earn the equivalent of subsistence wages to meet the high cost of living in New York City. Mr. Miranda suggested that the complex and socially volatile question of welfare required a separate forum to adequately address its many dimensions and the mythologies that feed so much misinformation among New Yorkers, most notably the average - dare I say - Latino.