Centering Colombian-American Collective Memory and Subjectivities: Challenging New Jersey’s Liberal Multiculturalism in Elizabeth – The Rutgers Latino Studies Research Initiative

Yamil Avivi

Preface

This early article asks questions about the Colombian community in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which arguably was the second largest Colombian northeast cluster after Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. The essay, originally published in 2003 and titled “Recuperando la Historia de los Colombianos en Elizabeth: Redefiniendo la Historia de la Ciudad,” was re-edited by the author, Yamil Avivi in 2014, during his doctoral studies at the University of Michigan. The article examines the Elizabeth Colombian community of the 1970s-1990s. The author was a Fulbright Scholar to Colombia (1999-2000) and a soon-to-be NYU graduate student when he first wrote the piece. Avivi expands on the political implications of those moments when the historians documented Elizabeth Cubans and Puerto Ricans but failed to document anything about Elizabeth’s Colombian life and community in books of “official history.” This essay’s original publication in the journal Sociedad e Economia from Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia, came after breaking studies such as the mid-1990s studies of Colombian transnationalism, principally in (Queens) New York City and Los Angeles and the 2001 Florida International University study of the South Florida Colombian diaspora. The article, as it reads, marks a moment, based on oral history interviews Avivi conducted mostly in the summer of 1999, and is transparent about its methods, research advances, and findings while being empirical and evidence-based, relational, and highlighting pan-Latino discussions.

Introduction

Growing up as a second-generation Colombian American in Elizabeth, NJ, I remember quite vividly in the mid to late 1980s going every weekend to Los Faroles Restaurant[1] on Morris Avenue[2] with my parents. For as long as I can remember, Morris Avenue in Elizabeth[3], NJ was the heart of the Colombian community, or as my mother referred to the Avenue and surrounding blocks, “la colonia Colombiana.” Growing up in Elizabeth, a city where Latinos[4] of different national identities—Cuban, Colombian, Peruvian, Salvadorian, Honduran, Puerto Rican[5]—grew up together and went to public or Catholic school, I later felt isolated at NYU because the only Latinos largely visible and represented there were Puerto Ricans from the island and NuYoricans. Some of the Puerto Ricans I encountered at NYU found my New Jersey “(Elizabeth) Colombianness” alien, and as a result I felt unwelcomed.

As an urban studies major who grew interested in studying Latino community formation in the New York and New Jersey area, I discerned how hard it was to find any sense of history or experience of the U.S. Colombian community in places like Jackson Heights, Queens[6], Elizabeth, Miami, etc. After being trained to conduct oral histories, I put together an oral history project about Colombian settlement and identity in Elizabeth, NJ. During the summer of 1999, I collected a sample of 35 structured and recorded oral histories[7] primarily from first-generation Colombians who had migrated into the town between 1965 and the late 1990s. The interviewees represented the many faces of the Elizabeth Colombian community: ordinary residents, single mothers, undocumented individuals, elderly men and women, poets, small businessmen and businesswomen, etc. The timing of each individual’s arrival from Colombia suggested a number of different lived experiences –individual and collective – about the Elizabeth they arrived in and how they were received. For example, Colombians who arrived in the late 1960s experienced a community without propinquity,[8] whereas in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, later-arriving Colombians faced a bit less nostalgia due to the centrality of a Colombian marketplace consolidated on both Morris and Elmora Avenues. However, during the mid-1980s to late 1980s, U.S. Hollywood[9] and local portrayals[10] of Colombians as drug carriers deeply impacted the growing ethnic community, causing mistrust among one another, as interviewees suggest by the end of this essay.

While collecting these oral histories about the Colombian experience in the town, I started to examine the town’s history and documentation of ethnic identities. After looking over historical[11] books, Charles L. Aquilina’s, Richard T. Koles’, and Jean Rae Turner’s Elizabethtown and Union County: A Pictorial History (1982) and Jean Rae Turner’s and Richard T. Koles’ Elizabeth: The First Capital of New Jersey (2003), I grew surprised at first to find that despite the heterogeneous Latino community that Elizabeth NJ holds, the only Latino group that had been incorporated into the town’s history were the Cubans. Puerto Ricans were also among the earliest Latinos to arrive in Elizabeth, and yet were documented much less. What these historians had done was to generalize about the Latino community in Elizabeth and either neglect or avoid talking about specific ethnic groups other than Cubans. Specifically, I will show what the historians failed to include about Colombians and, to a lesser extent, about other Latinos in their works. What were the consequences of the consistent failure to include Colombians? Not including the already visible Colombian presence in Elizabeth suggested that historians were partial regarding which Latinos belonged to the local and national community. What was happening to the narrative of Colombians as historians wrote and published these books? How do the subjectivities of Colombians in Elizabeth, through the collection of oral histories produced by this project, argue against the production of an exclusive, official history? This paper will attempt to document some articulated Colombian subjectivities from my interviewees that enlighten us on the space, collective memory, and experiences that fill in the unwritten void of what it has meant to be Colombian in Elizabeth, NJ In sum, I will show that while historians had incorporated lived experiences of Cubans in two larger historical texts published in 1982 and 2003, not including anything on Colombians suggests the strong perception that the Colombian narrative was not worthy to be told for the following reasons. First, under a liberal multicultural strategy, white historians wrote about “good” qualities of growing ethnic groups, specifically those qualities that were unthreatening to a white supremacist power structure[12] and that could be consumed (legally) by larger society or engender a depoliticized integration among ethnic groups. Colombians were perceived as newly arrived in the early 1980s vis-à-vis the older and politically established Cuban community. Second, Colombians were largely perceived as sojourners in the 1970s and 1980s, unlike Cubans, who had become permanently settled Latinos in the U.S. Third, Colombians faced a strong drug stigma[13] in the 1980s that uniquely cast them as the group with the “drug problem,” and therefore deemed them criminal and far from being law abiding citizens. The image of the drug carrier imposed on all Colombians reinforced the image of a foreign national,[14] not welcomed, not American. These negative and essentialized ideas about Colombians are the same ideas that influenced historians to not include this group in the town’s official historical narrative.

The Official Historical Narrative(s) and the Liberal Multicultural Agenda

By the 1970s, the U.S. government began viewing ethnicity as a marker for moving cultural pluralism forward, especially in an inevitably changing ethnically diverse America. The Civil Rights Movements had demonized racial markers and U.S. racialization projects and therefore ethnicity became a way to celebrate diversity but also to order and categorize it. Liberal multiculturalism[15] became a U.S. hegemonic strategy to celebrate diversity and individual groups when their good qualities or model minority status contributed to distinctions of good citizenship, healthy integration, depoliticization, and marketability that moved local society and nation building under a white supremacist hegemony at play forward. With that said, diversity and ethnicity could be celebrated, but in ways that did not demonstrate cultural excess, subversion, oppositional groupings (like pan-Latinidad or pan-ethnic movements), or downward mobility. By the 1980s, Elizabeth’s local Latino population had increased to 30% of the town’s population, which alarmed long-standing and allegedly anti-Hispanic mayor Tom Dunn (1964-1992) regarding the inevitable Hispanicization of Elizabeth. By 2000, the Latino population had grown to half the town’s population, which meant that successful oppositional movements could more easily get a Latino mayor in power and change long-standing power constructs. In light of all this, how did Cubans become documented under this liberal multicultural agenda?

Puerto Ricans and Cubans were the older Latino immigrants of Elizabeth, negatively or positively incorporated into U.S. society. White historians deemed Puerto Ricans as native minorities that needed to be documented as American citizens even though their cultural identities and Spanish language maintenance hardly adhered to dominant U.S. mainstream norms. Yet by the time of a large arrival of Colombians into Elizabeth in the 1970s, Cubans and Puerto Ricans had established either a strong business community[16] or strong civic, community and political leadership that was complicit (or not) with a white supremacist governance in Elizabeth. It was actually the Cuban community that had the upper hand due to a strong business community as well as strong political and civic leadership. While some Puerto Rican businessmen had bodegas, their business leadership could not match the Hispanic Business District achieved by the Cubans. By the 1970s, Cubans had achieved model minority status as examples to other immigrants and native minorities, suggesting that their good and distinctive qualities, including hard work, entrepreneurship, community and political leadership, and American patriotism, must be followed by other groups to achieve this status. Neither the 1982 nor 2003 narrative demonstrate relationality among Cubans and Puerto Ricans and certainly none among recently arrived Latinos of the time, including Colombians. Both official narratives I examine demonstrate that historians placed Cubans on the top of a Latino ethnic hierarchy without documenting relationality among Latino ethnic groups although those relationships did exist. For example, Cuban and Puerto Rican leaders had been elemental at times in helping later-arriving immigrants like Colombians organize themselves, such as when Colombians founded the Colombian American Lion’s Club in the early 1980s. Under a liberal multicultural agenda, it is encouraged to show divisions or no relationality between the top group in a hierarchy and less privileged groups. It is also encouraged to archive the moments when groups are in competition or at odds with another instead of documenting strong pan-ethnic and pan-Latino building because these can resemble subversive groupings to white supremacist power constructs.

Having said that, the historians did not include “bad” Cubans or “bad” Puerto Ricans that were not compliant with a liberal multicultural agenda in their official narrative. Racialized and low-income to working class Puerto Ricans were often stigmatized by mainstream society. For example, Elizabeth’s local official newspaper, the Elizabeth Daily Journal, published several newspaper articles like “Cubans Shun Aid” (1964), “Hughes Praises Refugees – Cubans Called a New Jersey Asset” (1966), “Save Elizabeth! Leadership Needed to Reverse the Decay Symbolized by Steinbach’s Problems” (1974), and “Hispanic Influence Felt in Elizabeth” (1975) that persistently compared Puerto Ricans and Cubans on issues of leadership, sufficiency, mobility, and use of welfare/social services. While the Cuban community is privileged and praised in these articles, Puerto Ricans, in contrast, are viewed overall as a problem. This disfavoring of Puerto Ricans around these issues further suggests why Cubans became the hegemony[17] for Latinos and other minorities in Elizabeth. Even more, in nearby Newark, poor to working class Puerto Ricans living there were involved in Newark’s Puerto Rican Civil Riots and other subversive activities, including the Young Lords Movement, which led historians to perceive this minority as far too connected with a militant African American blackness or Civil Rights (civil disobedience) agendas that were threatening to the whiteness of mainstream society and hegemony. This left them far from achieving the Cuban model minority status. In fact, in a first published study of Newark Puerto Ricans by a Puerto Rican community organization, Aspira, entitled, “The Puerto Ricans in Newark, NJ,” the writers make a sharp contrast between the good incorporation of New Jersey Cubans and the government’s and media constant portrayal of Puerto Ricans as a problem (11-14). Ultimately, early New York Puerto Rican community studies[18] “from within” influenced these writers in this 1971 study to write about how Newark Puerto Ricans must develop ethnic unity and militancy to gain the leverage power that disrupts white supremacist power in which they are able to “control their own service institutions and begin to move into the mainstream of larger society” (8). Clearly, these Puerto Ricans were not writing to become a model minority like the one some Cubans had achieved.

Yet, some Cuban leaders in Elizabeth also showed oppositional political leadership that was threatening to the dominant society and therefore associated with bad Latino qualities that were not included in a liberal multicultural official historical narrative of Elizabeth. For example, first-generation Cuban American, long-time Board of Education member and business owner, Rafael Fajardo ran twice for mayor against Mayor Tom Dunn in the 1980s. Fajardo’s political and community supporters were alarming to long-standing mayor Mayor Dunn because of Elizabeth’s increasing Hispanicization. Even more, in Fajardo’s campaigns, he made political connections with Elizabeth’s African American community that I argue here were oppositional/subversive[19] to a liberal multicultural agenda. Also, it is not surprising that the Marielito influx into Elizabeth was not included in either narrative because its racial, class, and sexual composition[20] were considered bad and threatening to a white supremacist Elizabeth society (likely to imminently relate with bad and oppositional African Americans and racialized minorities) in contrast to the early wave of white, largely middle class and heteronormative Cubans that became the hegemony for Latino Elizabeth. Both official narratives celebrate the good and unthreatening qualities among Cubans that deserved to be part of a liberal multicultural Elizabeth and U.S.

Even though these official narratives were manipulated by a liberal multicultural agenda, the truth is that historians privileged good Cubans and Puerto Ricans by documenting them while more recently arrived Colombians and other Latino ethnic groups were left undocumented and therefore relegated them as “the other” category. Because historians did not document Colombians, this gave the perception that the group on a whole was not established, was fully alien, not civic or unable to belong or incorporate themselves within Elizabeth life and society. As a result, my oral history project became an urgent action to collect interviews of Colombians and their experience of settlement and belonging while placing those subjectivities at the center. This oral history collection became a strategy of decentering or disrupting how Colombians had remained unacknowledged, invisible, and amassed as “Spanish,” Hispanic, or Puerto Rican[21] in a Cuban hegemonized Latino community. In fact, several Colombian interviewees informed me that non-Latinos, whether whites or African Americans, had perceived them to be Puerto Rican first before understanding that they were Colombian.

What Historians Documented in the 1982 Official Historical Narrative

Among the limited historical sources regarding Elizabeth’s contemporary history is the book, Elizabethtown and Union County: A Pictorial History, which was published in 1982. In this book, the author recognizes the Elizabeth Cuban community’s quick mobility, facile assimilation, and most important, its great influence on the political, economic, educational and social spheres of the city that none of the other Latino, native minority or white ethnic groups had achieved. Written from a privileged white perspective and with an arguably sweeping Cuban-centric understanding of Elizabeth’s Latino community, the authors write that Cuban Americans, “have achieved an unprecedented success in their ability to integrate with mainstream economic, political, and civic life of Elizabeth and other neighboring communities” (129). Also, the authors mention an older leader of the Cuban community, Samuel Rodriguez, who was the first Latino councilman and was responsible for the earliest established political and civic presence that Latinos achieved. The authors document that Cubans, “have contributed greatly to the social and education climate of Union County” (129). First, the text recognizes a number of professors, including Dr. Orlando Edreira, president of the Department of Foreign Languages for Kean College.[22] With respect to social-civic leadership, the historians acknowledge the Cuban community for being responsible for twenty clubs and associations and two Spanish language newspapers. Second, the book describes the positive impact the Cubans had on the existing business sector on Elizabeth Avenue, “in renovating old buildings, opening up restaurants and shops, and transforming decaying streets” (129). These are examples that confirmed the Cuban hegemony and good contributing qualities among Latinos in Elizabeth.

Unfortunately, other Latinos that had arrived before the publication of this book were not mentioned, including Colombians who began arriving at least fifteen years prior to the book’s publication. Obviously, one must question the social and political implications as well as the perspectives and sentiments of these historians. For the white majority, these Latino groups were invisible and not contributing to the liberal multicultural agenda during this time as well as not civically inclined, or non-existent, or mistakenly viewed as Puerto Rican. Compared to the Cubans, Colombians had not reached nearly the degree of visibility that the latter group had, especially when considering that the Colombian marketplace was just starting to grow on Morris Avenue. Moreover, while Cubans and Puerto Ricans might not be perceived as sojourners or foreign nationals to the extent that other ethnic Latinos were, it was different for Colombians and other Latino newly arrived groups coming from South and Central America who were perceived[23] in those ways. Exiled Cubans had arrived to stay permanently, given that it was no longer possible in the near future for them to return to their native country. Puerto Ricans are US citizens yet that did not liberate them from being treated as foreign nationals. For Cubans, this one-way migration into the United States is actually what accelerated Cubans’ social mobility and what got them quickly started in assuming civic responsibilities and socio-political organizing. For Colombians, it is only from the late 1990s until the present time that this group seriously contemplated not returning to live in Colombia permanently, given the country’s deteriorating political situation that had forced a middle to upper-middle class Exodus[24] into the U.S. and other parts of the world. One old-time leader I interviewed explained, “The idea of returning is something that is always there. It is something that is always there, but day-by-day it starts to become only a distant [illusion] because of the situation in Colombia. But realistically, I see it like only a dream.” Another community leader and pharmacist I interviewed contrasted the reality for Cubans in Elizabeth to his sojourner-minded Colombian clients that shopped in his store:

“[The Cubans] were obligated to realize themselves here because they had been deprived of liberties [in Cuba]. They came as refugees looking for a future. However, the majority of other Hispanics have always come with the mentality that, “I am going to work three or four years and then I will return. The majority of the Colombians that came here, when I worked in the other store, I asked them, ‘what?’ ‘Are you going to buy a house?’ [They responded,] ‘No! I am not going to buy a house. In five years I am leaving.” But there are still here [many years later]…and that was twenty…twenty-nine years that I am here…and you still see them. And if you ask them…[They say,] ‘No, I will leave in one year! And they don’t go. They don’t go. They don’t adapt.”

The possibility for Colombians to repatriate at any time back then complements the arguably weak civic and political influence of the community as well as its resistant attitude to acculturation and a sense of belonging in the city and US life and society. These “weak” influences and belief in a destiny to repatriate fueled Colombians’ acting in ways that were not perceived as distinctive enough or good enough to be included in a liberal multicultural narrative. Yet, what is not arguable is that Colombians had been organizing socially and politically by this time and historians writing official historical narratives failed to include those ethnic developments in the record of the changing city. Moreover, the book emphasizes all that Cubans have been able to accomplish: “besides the first French refugees, it has taken the majority of groups two generations to reach middle-class social status and economic and civic distinction” (129). This distinction suggests that Cubans were deserving of incorporation into an official historical narrative from the standpoint of white American historians, unlike other newly arrived Latinos. While these historians compare Cubans with another older white ethnic groups that also settled in Elizabeth and faced great obstacles but achieved mobility and acculturation, it is evident that the Cuban success is therefore a contrast or binary to the unmentioned non-Cuban Latino or Colombian groups that did not have the same social, economic, and political fortune at the time. Even more, this official narrative becomes a justification for why Cubans became synonymous with positive and visible representations of the Latino community that easily gloss over smaller and less politically influential Latino ethnic groupings and their socio-political agency.

What Historians Failed to Document in the 2003 Official Historical Narrative

In another more recent book titled, Elizabeth: The First Capital of New Jersey (2003), the authors use the term “Latinos” throughout the text but make a consistent reference only to Elizabeth Cubans, with nothing in particular about any other specific Latino groups, even though by the 2000 Census, Colombians are documented as being the third largest group in Elizabeth next to Cubans and Puerto Ricans. In contrast to the book published in 1982, while it is evident that these historians continue ignoring the formation of specific Latino groups, in the 2003 narrative they make it a point to differentiate white ethnics in an older Elizabeth (see quote below) in which each had their own distinct neighborhoods. Why did they not do the same among Latino ethnic groups in contemporary Elizabeth? The Latinos of different ethnic groups had become a majority in Elizabeth well before the publication of this latest narrative; Latino non-Cuban groups, especially Colombians, had constructed certain neighborhoods and marketplaces as theirs. Taking this into account, the Colombian community marketplace had sufficient visibility that it should have been regarded with some distinction. Why did these historians fail to mention the Colombian community, which was arguably visible in some form in the 1980s but even more and undeniably by 2000? Evidently, there is not even the minimum intent to convey any kind of closer interpretation about other ethnic Latino groups and each of their particular marketplaces and neighborhoods. Yet these ethnic distinctions are apparent among white ethnics of an earlier Elizabeth, of which these historians are well aware and which they tediously document. Here is an example of the text:

“In addition to the Polish and Russian Jews, there were Polish, Russian, Italian, Greek, Slavic, and Swedish people. After 1900, there were Turks and Armenians…People of the same nationality grouped together in various sections of the city. Peterstown, named for the Peters family that once operated a farm in the vicinity around Bryant Park, became the Italian section of the city. Bayway, with its Polish Club and St. Hedwig’s Church, became Polish. Ripley Place with the St. Peter and St. Paul Lithuanian Catholic Church was settled by Lithuanians. South Park and the Germans stayed close to St. Michael’s on Smith Street for many years…” (pp. 111-112).

Some pages later, the authors describe Cuban settlement in Elizabeth as if it were the only Latino group:

“Following the rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba, hundreds of Cubans migrated to Elizabeth. Many of them were well-educated and were professors, teachers, doctors, poets, and lawyers in Cuba. They settled in the port area and operated stores and restaurants along Elizabeth Avenue until they became acclimated to America. Advertising salesmen for the Journal used to say that saved Elizabeth Avenue. They started their own weekly newspaper La Voz, a Spanish-language newspaper” (130).

By 2003, the Elizabeth Cuban American community had significantly decreased in numbers because many first-generation immigrants were moving out into the neighboring suburbs or to Miami-Dade. By the 1990s, other Latino ethnic groups, particularly Colombians, had grown to be almost equal to the Census recorded account of Cubans in Elizabeth. Along with this fact, the Colombian marketplace along Elmora Avenue and Morris Avenue had grown to a considerable degree, along with community organizations like the Colombian Lion’s Club and Colombian American Alliance. With the dwindling Cuban American population in Elizabeth, this quote above from this 2003 official historical narrative is a static representation of the changing demographic and social composition of the Elizabeth Latino community. Even more, this pre-1980’s portrayal of Cubans shows how these historians’ later official narrative fails to discuss the Cuban Marielito arrival, which would not only complicate Elizabeth Cuban life, identity and society but taint the image of a “good,” “white,” and “thriving” Cuban community that neatly fits within the state’s liberal multicultural agenda of privileging good ethnic groups and devaluing bad ones to maintain distance between ethnic groups and keep (white supremacist) power structures in place.

Giving these historians the benefit of the doubt, we could conclude that they possibly did not feel authorized to assume the responsibility of writing such a nuanced and complex history about Hispanics. Ultimately given the distance between Colombians and the white historians vis a vis the “unsuccessful characteristics” of this group when we think about language barriers, acculturation, discrimination, illegal immigration, and stigma – I wonder if these historians had the sufficient understanding to write and engage these groups adequately? As a result, oral history projects like mine are urgent and useful as far as acknowledging “from-within” vantage points and knowledge that add to and challenge the discourse about what has been documented about minorities and Hispanics. It is the stance[25] that collective memory and lived experience should be collected “from within,” and written by a minority or Colombian who personally understands how ethnic groups are racialized, stigmatized, stripped of value, and left to remain invisible.

From a more cynical perspective, these historians can be perceived as blind sighted, partial, not well researched and discriminating. Overall, they can be perceived as unprepared to appreciate the full complexity and texture of the entire Latino community and the larger ethnically changing town. These historians keep groups like Colombians invisible, starting from the fact that they are not aware of the Elizabeth Colombian-American institutions and their social, civic, and political agendas. Going back to the latest book, in the chapter that focuses on contemporary history, the authors mention the existence of several civic organizations throughout the town, in particular the Lions Club International, a well known civic organization like the Rotary Club and Knights of Columbus. However, the authors mistakenly write that there are only two Lions Clubs in Elizabeth, the Portuguese Lions Club and the Elizabethport Lions Club (p. 151). The Elizabeth Colombian Lions Club was founded in 1981 and has continued delivering community services and cultural activities to all of Elizabeth and Union County. Some of the projects that the Elizabeth Colombian Lions Club has repeatedly undertaken are the Colombian Independence Festival, Diabetes Awareness Month and Hispanic Awareness Month. This organization also requested that the city declare that the week when Colombian Independence Day falls (July 20th) the official Colombian heritage week for the city. In the following section, you will find interviewees from members of the Colombian Lions Club.

Failure of Historians to Note Distinction: Colombians Challenging the Cuban Hegemony Outside the Elizabeth Cuban Marketplace

Colombians began to distance themselves from the Cuban sector and, little by little, unravel their own marketplace, neighborhood, and community organizations within the town. This process suggests that this community counteracted Cuban hegemony and moved from being a community without propinquity to a more centralized community with a more visible Colombian market and social space on Morris and Elmora Avenues. Why did this happen? What were the social and political implications, and as a result why should history be written accordingly? A small businesswoman that opened her hair salon on Morris Avenue after working for many years with a Cuban hair salon business owner on Elizabeth Avenue explained a certain kind of business incentive going on in Morris Avenue, “because here there is more of a Colombian community…in reality the majority of the businesses are the Colombian community’s.” Some interviewees describe a few Colombian-run businesses named “Las Palmas” and “Septimo Cielo,” which were located in the port section of Elizabeth. These businesses were built in the 1970s along with a couple of restaurants that were distributed without any centrality. It was in the 1980s when the first Colombian business owner put his store on Morris Avenue and subsequently other Colombian restaurants, bakeries and travel agencies began to appear nearby. During the interviews, I asked business owners why they did not remain on Elizabeth Avenue, given that it is a Latino market. One matter to have in mind and which some of these interviewees raised was that the prices of the store rents on Morris Avenue were cheaper. However, given the responses some of the interviewees gave, which I have provided in the next section of this essay, it is clear that this distancing from Elizabeth Avenue became strategic and raises the question of how this Colombian market of Colombian flagged awnings could be glossed over by a largely Cuban-centric Elizabeth Latino official historical narrative. Historians glossing over the distancing and movement of Colombian business owners onto Morris and Elmora Avenue suggests an exclusively-written history where scholars fail to mention the strides of other ethnic groups and maintain a static official Latino historical narrative. With respect to Colombians displacing themselves from what Cubans had established on Elizabeth, there is a counternarrative that establishes a process of differentiation, which this official Elizabeth history fails to address. In contrast, the oral histories offer the subjectivities, collective memory and lived experience of how Elizabeth Colombians differentiated themselves from a Cuban hegemony.

Narratives[26] of Colombian Identity and Subjectivity in Elizabeth, NJ to Incorporate into Future Historical Narratives

The Construction of the Marketplace

In the three narratives that follow, three store owners share their experiences of opening up stores on Morris Avenue. All three discuss the differentiation made by them and others between a Cuban market space and a Colombian market space. The second owner is more neutral to Cuban business owners, most likely because Cuban political and business leaders served as mentors to later arriving non-Cuban ambitious ethnics. Yet, the second business owner emphasizes that he found it better to put up his bakery in a space that was not Cuban and free of the town’s long-standing Cuban hegemony. The first business owner is more critical about how Colombians needed a market for themselves to unravel their own space and visibility and be distinct from Cubans. In his view, putting a store in a space that is primarily Cuban would not be nearly as successful because Cubans would not enter nor consume Colombian products. The third business owner suggests how even while Cubans did sell Colombian products on Elizabeth Avenue, these Cuban stores felt slightly foreign to them because they were not Colombian. Buying Colombian products from a Cuban store is not as satisfying as buying it from a store owner that identifies with one’s cultural identity and positioning. Thus, securing a Colombian market space was a matter of celebrating “lo nuestro,” or in other words, “our own” Colombian-identified space that was not Cuban. Ultimately, all the store owners suggest that moving onto Morris and Elmora Avenue was a way of pulling away from a Cuban-dominated business sector and providing a different market space that was entirely Colombian. This pulling away is worth mentioning in a historical counternarrative that offers a more nuanced understanding of Elizabeth Latino life and society from a non-Cuban or non-Puerto Rican perspective.

The Pioneer on Morris Avenue

“Well in Elizabeth, being at General Motors, I was laid off in ’74. While walking around Elizabeth I went to a store owned by a Colombian and we began talking about some things. He told me that he had a vision of putting a restaurant and that we should enter into a partnership. Going into partnership really did not interest me because I have not been a friend of partnership but I decided to going into partnership with him…I already had a store, right? Over there, you sell everything, right? You sell from a needle to beer, aguardiente, rum, everything…So, it did interest me…I watched my father, and my uncle prepare a lechon[27] and tamales by my mother and well we began like that. We opened the restaurant in ’74. Right here. We still continue selling the Tolimense lechon. I bought a part of the store and in two months I bought him the other part and afterwards I went solo with my family, my wife and my daughter…

Q: And you had the only store in the area?

A: Well, fortunately for the Colombians…! I was the first Colombian and first Hispanic that put a business in this area.

Q: How was it with the business owners next to you?

A: Well, they always looked at you crazily. Colombian food. Rice and beans. Bananas is what they would say, right? And so one would show them the food. I learned how to prepare a lot of plates: seafood plates, paella, and….good clientele started to come, thank god. I had the restaurant for eleven years and after that I converted it into a bodega…The restaurant is a good business but very slavish. You have to depend a lot on your employees and deal with the employees, which is very serious.

Q: Why did you choose Morris Avenue and not Elizabeth Avenue or Elmora Avenue?

A: Well, for example, Morris Avenue caught my attention. We were able to gain this street corner and the rent was very good, [the rent] wasn’t too bad and on Elizabeth Avenue it was plagued with Cubans and Cubans were only about them. There were a lot of [customers out on Elizabeth Avenue and all,] but it was all about the Cubans there, vaya!

Q: How has the Colombian market evolved?

A: There are travel agencies, hair boutiques, barbershops, shoe stores with Colombian-made shoes, shoe repair stores, jewelry stores, and remittance stores for all of Latin America. The only Colombian bodega is this one. This is really a small Colombian marketplace. I had the idea of perhaps achieving that among these two blocks, here on Morris Avenue, we could get the city to name this area “Avenue Colombia.”[28]

The Bakery: There is no need to go to Queens for a Pandebono[29]

Q: Did you have a bakery in Cali?

A (Husband): Yes. I had both a bakery and a smoothie store.

Q: What motivated you to come to Elizabeth?

A (Husband): Really, I don’t know.

A (Wife): We were crazy! (She laughs.)

A (Husband): Yes, really, yes. We were fine [over there]. I had my business and my job. I worked at the Universidad del Valle in the faculty of medicine and psychology.

A (Wife): One brother told me: Uy! That bakery in the United States would do well [for you]. And so we decided to go…We started to look for a store and a locale. The Americans very good, there were no problems, the [American] people were very nice. I didn’t [encounter] any problems or complaint. They helped us even though we didn’t know any English, it went well for us.

Q: Why on Morris Avenue?

A (Husband): Legally speaking, it wasn’t here on Morris Avenue. I did not look for any locale on Morris, no. In the beginning, I found a place on Elmora Avenue, right? I was actually putting the shop together and everything. But I did not know what it was like in the states to have a rental contract, a lease is what they call it, right? So I began to put together my business, my bakery. I came to Elizabeth with the machines that I had bought in New York, Jersey City, Union City to get the bakery running, like the ovens, and mixers….[When I returned with the machinery] I saw a sign on the store that he had sold the business. Unfortunately, I lost time there, right? Some months, too. So I came [to Morris]. Someone told me [to look] on Morris. So I established myself on Morris.

Q: Why did you not think of putting the bakery on Elizabeth Avenue?

A (Husband): I don’t know. I really did not know anything….I came here with my eyes closed, right? How I went to Elmora Avenue, I could have gone to any other place.

Q: How did you perceive Elizabeth Avenue?

A (Husband): It was only Cuban businesses, right? I remember Mr. Salerno, that is the [business man] people knew most. Mr. Lopez the [businessman] who owned that furniture store. The Cubans were very nice.

Soledad Travel: The Travel Agency

Q: When did you think that you would put in a travel agency?

A: We had the idea that I would study, that I would do something [in school] so that I could find a good job and so that I could be able to achieve and do something professional. But there was not really much of a choice, right? So Fanny found [a job] well we began to work in a factory and so then an Argentine put a travel agency on Morris Avenue and so at that point we began to find a stable job and people always like Fanny and so then, she began working in the travel agency business. Me too. We worked together…The Argentine no longer wanted to work in the [travel agency business] so then Fanny separated from her husband…there were problems….So then Fanny, with the help of a cousin that came from Colombia told her, ‘Fanny, why don’t you put up a travel agency?’ ‘Look the people know you….why don’t you do it?’ And really [Fanny] put a lot of enthusiasm [in making it happen]. The building where the business was an old house, that locale all ugly. My cousin fixed it. Well there we arrived and so the business was placed…The lady Lenore put Los Faroles restaurant later and little by little the other business owners started to come.

Q: Did the both of you establish yourselves on Morris Avenue because of the other Colombian stores?

A: You know, not really. Everybody started to settle around here without us imagining that after all this time elapsed, the majority of Colombians were going to look for this area, right? In reality a lot of the businesses here [are Colombian].

Q: What is your relationship to Elizabeth Avenue?

A: Very little. Well the Cubans have what is Salermo, one of the stores or the stores that is the oldest. They sold everything…records, Colombian newspapers, magazines, everything. Well you would go to buy a magazine or newspaper and there were stores and would one go once in a while for clothes, shoes, or something. I visited but not all that often, right? Well since that area is for Cubans and this area is for Colombians!

The Formation of Colombian Community Organizations and Their Agendas

In the narratives in this section, the interviewees reflect on the agendas of Elizabeth Colombian community organizations since the 1980s. The first interview offers a testimony of the needs for Colombians to organize and build Colombian community organizations that were independent of the city’s Cuban leadership. This interview demonstrates how Colombian community leadership felt that Colombians needed to build distinctive organizations to work on their group’s own ideas that a Cuban hegemonic leadership did not prioritize because, naturally, they were not their issues. Even though Cubans and Puerto Ricans formed Latino organizations with a pan-Latino agenda, the leadership consistently maintained primarily Cubans at the seats of power in these organizations, which prevented effective building within and among ethnic groups that moved away from a Cuban hegemony. Ultimately, the official narrative leaves out ethnic groupings and maintains Cuban social and political organizations as representative of all Elizabeth Latinos, which is simplistic and inaccurate. The second and third narratives suggest how Colombians have positively impacted non-Colombians in and outside of Elizabeth in ways that inform the local community and mainstream society that the Colombians are incorporating into American society by being civic and organizing themselves. Furthermore, the second interviewee conveys how Colombian civic projects were distinguished from Cuban civic projects, which should be noted in an Elizabeth Latino official narrative. Furthermore, the Colombian Festival that happened in July from the 1980s until the present was a patriotic celebration attended not only by Colombians but also non-Colombian Latinos and non-Latinos from Elizabeth and outside Elizabeth. Such a festival that brings tens of thousands of people to consume Colombian food, culture, music, and dancing suggests how problematic it is for an official narrative to gloss over such a large and successful non-Cuban Latino festive activity and contribution that is part of Elizabeth’s life and society.

The Perspective of an Old-Time Leader

Look, before the Lion’s Club… every one that they arrested here, involved with the famous program of the drug traffickers…every person with drugs was Colombian. So then me and a woman Amy Peters (Colombian, married to an US Citizen, non-Latino) got together— before the Colombian Lion’s Club nor any other Colombian associations—with the current chair of [Elizabeth’s] Board of Education who was very involved in [the town’s] politics. So speaking with him, we asked if we could do something…that when one of our people were arrested not to use Colombian to identify that individual, as had been done with the Cubans with the Marielitos…Nothing came out of that because it was only the two of us. We were creating a force but there was no support from within the community. And when we would meet up with the councilmen, they told us that we had to form a group…big and also have at least two lawyers that could represent us so that we could motivate in the way that the Cubans were resolving with the Marielito problem because when they arrested a Cuban they would say Marielito and so they were damaging the Cuban reputation and the Cubans fought against that and finished that problem off. So then I got immersed in the issue and tried to get something accomplished but the support was very little.

My objective was to organize…to form a Colombian association with which we could politically seek to gain respect for our name and that when someone was arrested that their exact nationality be documented in the media because here they arrested Cubans and Ecuadorians and they would classify them as Colombian. They never said any other nationality. That was before ’80, way before ’80, around ’77-’78 more or less just when drugs had gained a lot of power. The drugs came long ago. There was a certain kind of discrimination. Honestly, not exaggerating, there was discrimination. Not so much with the educated Colombian, professional or with an individual that had a good respectable job but very much those [who were discriminated were] the laborers…they were given ugly stares an in the factories they were asked, ‘Bring something?’ ‘You have something?’ ‘You selling something?’

Here there are cases…I know people who are imprisoned or who were in prison….They told me about a case because the guy had a business and inside the business people who were involved with drugs went to the business. But he never made any kind of deals with these people. He sold to these people the service he provided which was selling flights. That was his business [not drug selling]. And because [these drug dealers] went there, they thought that he was involved. So the business owner paid for this. He lost his [US permanent] residency, his family was destroyed, he was deported and apart from all that he paid 14 years in prison and the guy is completely innocent.

Q: Did you feel discriminated in that way?

A: No, no in that regard because I knew how to respond that it is not the Colombian nor the Colombian community that does this.

Q: Why do you think the Colombians began to organize and why was it a success at that moment in time?

A: Well, it’s because the community needed representation. The Colombian community was looking for some form of representation. In those days, the Cuban Lion’s Club – who were our mentors – were heavily supported by the community and they still do. And so others wanted to emulate them. There were a lot of us but of course but after it was founded many of the people did not pursue the next step. It is one thing to be a member of a club and it is another to work in the club. People did not understand this…People have to come into these kinds of organizations with the wish to work and collaborate…When they found out that [being a member] consisted of attending the meetings, attending social gatherings, and also to request support or collect funds, people just gave up.

Q: What were the first social projects for Elizabeth and for the Colombian community?

A: The first project that was formed was to try to get the citizenship processed. What happened was that the Lions cannot do this kind of work directly. It’s one of these matters that the Lions [International] does not permit. The Lions came together to help the blind…those with a disability….it is not a political organization. Help would always be offered. After we started with David, with Esteban Echeverri, with another guy, we tried to form an association that was not only political. It was also a social group with a political vision. There would be two roots. The first would be to offer support to the community but also there was a political component on the other end. We named it the Colombian American Alliance. I think it is one of the only Colombian associations that are registered and everything.

Q: How would you evaluate the participation among the community in general?

A: Well the issue with the Alliance is that it’s still…taking its baby steps. It’s just started taking its first small steps. It’s just started to stand upright and walk with two feet. And we hope that….it takes the angle that it needs to take. The Colombian community, not only in Elizabeth but around it’s vicinity which is very big and let’s see it is not well represented. The representation needs to be as much political as it is social for the associations: Lion’s Club, Clubs of Montebello, or how Colombian civic groups don’t have political representation that can organize a big group to demand from the politicians to request from them something in return for what is given to them, the votes that are given to them.

Q: I remember that you a while back, some years ago, called my father and you mentioned to him that a youth group was being formed. What happened to that?

A: This is what we are doing with the Colombian Alliance. But then if one tells them…Many don’t come through…no one says anything…It doesn’t help that you say to advise [the youth] to come…. To tell them, ‘Go [to the youth group meeting]! The problem is that because the parents were never organized it is difficult [now] for the children to be organized.

One interviewee, a female poet, whose works have been read at the various events sponsored by the Colombian Lion’s Club, offers her thoughts about her own participation:

“I have participated in some of the activities with them like the patriotic festivities that I like very much, literatures and cultural activities…I participated in an assembly held in Philadelphia where from many parts of the world the people that came were very happy…And the Colombian Lion’s Club has always been distinguished: I remember the project of the school of …, the bank for the blind, and the parties for the seniors…And the drives when there is a natural disaster in our country [Colombia].”

Another founder of the Elizabeth Colombian Lion’s Club, a business owner on Morris Avenue explains in his interview,

“We had a couple of years ago a festival with [salsa] bands. At that festival, we united about 60,000 people. This was directed and organized by the Elizabeth Colombian Lion’s Club here in Elizabeth, which was funded in 1981. I am [one of the] founders…There are like five founders y like eighty or something members. I am still active.”

Experiences with drug trafficking and profiling

As a result of the drug problem that peaked in the 80s, a strong social differentiation occurred among Colombians and especially among waves of migration. These interviewees describe lived experiences that offer us first-hand testimony that counters simplistic and flat media portrayals that often led to generalizations and stereotypes of Colombians. These interviewees humanize Colombians, showing how they have been deeply impacted by social stigma yet convey the message that not all Colombians should be blamed or stigmatized for drug trafficking. The collective memory in these narratives indicates that unity within the Colombian community greatly suffered and a general mistrust[30] among Colombians and from others toward Columbians ensued. An official narrative that does not examine how an ethnic group that was so visible by the 2000s dealt with such a deep stigma maintains a static and negative view about all Colombians in the Elizabeth Colombian community as potential suspects unworthy of belonging.

A Small Business Woman’s Perspective from Soledad Travel: The FBI Comes for a Visit

This informant describes the sense of social unity and trust that existed among Colombians before the drug trafficking scandals among Elizabeth Colombians and how resulting social mistrust impacted the community. She explains,

Well when one comes here, one finds oneself with a lot of different people and one starts to meet a lot of people [meet] this one and this other one – all are from the same city from where we came from and so we [grow nostalgic and] remember…how good… It’s so different! That now work and…well….In those times people were more into nurturing friendships and…well, one generally had more of a better life [in that way then]. Well one began to make reunions [here] and… ‘Come over here, we are going to have a reunion!’ So then we would be nostalgic, laugh together, tell jokes, the typical…in the Colombian way, right?

…But those times began changing. It was better now not to have too many friends that, well many things started to happen. After all of [the good times], the people from that time, there was a good football team, but the people started…how can I explain…[it] started with their business…strange matters. So then we had to distance ourselves, separate ourselves because one does not know who is who and instead of having a problem it was better to just move away… In the 80s, starting in‘84…,’83…., ’85…right? It is the time when everything became so complicated, so difficult….

Several times, [the FBI] has come [to the office] to investigate. Sometimes they would come and say. ‘We are from this entity.’ They would show us their badges and you would have to inform as much as you can…to say without trying to avoid, deny, hide, well…because…if you know of someone they are looking for and had bought flight tickets here…well one knows because one provides service to the public.

In the following account, a female interviewee makes distinctions between Colombians who arrived among different waves, particularly those who settled in the 70s and those who arrived in the 80s:

“In 1971, those who left did not have much education…one would come to the United States to make some money and return. But now, in this moment and working in an office, there are many who are coming from Colombia with a great degree of education. We are almost at the par during the times in Cuba when Fidel Castro entered the picture: all the people that left were professionals. At this moment this is what is happening. Before…, in the 70s, people with not much money left, but they left to get money to return. In the 80s, garbage started [coming into Elizabeth] that got money through drugs, brought drugs and sold it here and went there to bring more and enjoyed [in Colombia] what they sold here. Those are the changes that one sees with the Colombian and now you are seeing those who are coming with education. The people who came in the 70s although they were people that did not have money they were honest people that came to work. Those from the 80s were people that came here to make it easy for themselves and these are the kind of people that I cannot offer anymore information because I did not want to have any contact with them.”

A male interviewee who came to Elizabeth from Colombia at that age of 15 in 1979 explains,

“Many people’s telephones were tapped illegally. You talk of profiling in those days they investigated Colombian families. Their phones were tapped in the houses and monitoring around those who were Colombian….These were not police checks on the turnpikes but police checks on the streets…

Another interviewee shares his experience moving into Elizabeth’s white middle class neighborhood, Elmora Hills:

“Here is the only block in Elizabeth that closes from here to there. A picnic is done….Here there are mainly Irish and Italians. Here a lot of people are retired…Let’s say that, in the beginning, the attorney told me, when I was going to sign the contract for the house, the attorney told me that I had been investigated fifteen years back. By law, no one is supposed to investigate me. They investigated fifteen years of my life: what I did, this and that…

Q: Who?

A: The neighbors, since many of the police live here, many officials from the FBI, so they investigated [my background].

Q: How do you feel?

A: Look, in a way I did not feel bad…Actually I felt good… You want to know why? Because I proved to all those people that not everything they talk about us is logical. There are people…well, there a bad people everywhere.

The interviewee explains above what he confronted when he moved into a neighborhood, Elmora Avenue and bought a single family home. Elmora Hills is the most desirable area of town and is composed of a white middle-class majority. At that time, very few Latinos/Colombians had moved there. The interviewee is an Afro-Colombian, and race added another texture to his experience. The interviewee supports the view that to be Colombian in Elizabeth was associated with working class immigrants who lived in rent-only rooming houses or multi-family housing. Being largely aliens, these immigrants were perceived by natives as not having the right to home ownership. With the Colombian stigma attached to this interviewee as drug trafficker, not only was being a newly arrived Latino immigrant perceived as not belonging but the fact that he was Colombian invoked suspicion. How did this individual have the money and resources for home ownership? The interviewee conveys a strong sense of feeling rejected and stigmatized as a potential drug dealer by white hegemony in Elizabeth.

Another interviewee below shares her experience of being a suspect. She explains that because of her national identity, she was targeted. Her perspective also shows why Colombians became targets, especially those with resources that newly arrived, working class immigrants are not supposed to have. The narrative suggests that FBI officials were investigating suspects who lived conspicuously and showed and flaunted their material goods, suspected of being purchased with drug-dealing income:

“I studied in a school of cosmetology in Newark [New Jersey]. I became a cosmetologist. So I went to a school that was named the Wilfred Academy. And there…when they realized I was Colombian, they investigated whether or not I spent a lot of money, yes indeed, I did invite a lot of my girlfriends. They also investigated what car of the year I had, how I came, how I went…if I offered anything at the school. Ultimately, they did investigate me…I sensed [I was being investigated] and afterwards the detective came and told me, ‘You have been investigated, I’m sorry!’ ‘You are a ‘good person.’

This essay shows how historians have failed to study important developments, whether good or bad, regarding particular ethnic groups in Elizabeth. Because those historical narratives were written to promote liberal multicultural strategies and white supremacist powers at play, I respond to decenter the meaning of history in Elizabeth as displayed in these two official texts. Clearly, these historians have intentionally or unintentionally oppressed certain groups by leaving them out and keeping them invisible. I collected Colombian narratives to assert our own historical perspective, subjectivity, and sense of belonging. Clearly, the findings I provide show that the hegemonic forces at play are not interested in incorporating us, nor our contributions in local Elizabeth. I examine some of the issues that need to be (re)told from our perspective as gained from the collected interviews. These interviews are the start to understanding what a “from within” history project looks like in light of the static and atemporal narratives these white historians have written. Using these Colombian interviews to identify some gaps in the official history, my informants’ articulations can offer a counterhegemonic narrative to get at the breadth of Latino life and society in Elizabeth. Importantly, a counterhegemonic narrative would define its own markers, not according to hegemonic expectations like the “good” and “bad” markers I have shown under a liberal multicultural context. With that said, written from our perspective, our written history allows us to write our struggles, stigmas, and relationships to other groups in uncensored, unyielding and unforgiving ways that do not support a white supremacist hegemony and governance.

[1] Located between the 80s and 90s on Morris Avenue. It has been regarded as one of the major Colombian restaurants of the 1980s and 1990s. When new owners bought the restaurant, it was moved between Elmora and Westfield Avenue, near another Colombian-American marketplace area.

[2] When I talk about Morris Avenue, I am looking closely at three blocks that have become a central point for the Colombian market and where the Colombian festival is held. They are the last three blocks on Morris Avenue before getting into the midtown district.

[3] According to the 2000 Census, Elizabeth has a total population of 120,568 people. Historically, Elizabeth was an important industrial city both regionally and nationally. The town is a domestic and international port. During the industrial period, Elizabeth, which had many factories, including the Singer factory, became an important industrial city where many white ethnic immigrants settled and found factory jobs. Elizabeth today is predominantly a working- to lower- middle-class community.

[4] According to the 2000 Census, the Latino population in Elizabeth is 59,627 people which constitutes about half of Elizabeth’s population. The other 60,941 is composed of non-Latinos (whites, Jews, African Americans, Africans, and Black Caribbean people).

[5] In this regard, working class Puerto Ricans have allied with other later-arriving Hispanic immigrants to gain visibility and political clout, and to disrupt hegemony at the street and community level. See Juan Flores’ From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

[6] Jackson Heights has had the highest population of Colombians living in the Northeast since the late 1960s. Jackson Heights has been the center of the New York City experience for Colombians, while places like Elizabeth and other secondary cities comprise the Colombian New Jersey experience.

[7] I have reserved the real identities of my interviewees in this paper.

[8] A term used to denote a community without any centrality and where social ties and networks live far from each other. This term in found in William Hawkeswood’s, One of the Children: Gay Black Men in Harlem, 1996.

[9] Movies like Scarface (1983), Romancing the Stone (1984), and Blow (2001).

[10] See footnote 13.

[11] I looked at older Elizabeth history before the 20th century and did not find any information on Latinos in Elizabeth.

[12] These text discuss white supremacy: Andrea Smith’s “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color Organizing,” Color of Violence: the Incite! Anthology, Eds. Andrea Smith, Beth Richie et al. Cambridge: South End Press, 2006. 66-73. and Moon-Kie Jung’s, Joao H. Costa Vargas’ and Eduardo Bonilla Silva’s State of White Supremacy: Racism, Governance, and the United States. California: Stanford University Press, 2011.

[13] It is important to show an example of newspaper articles that were being published in Elizabeth and throughout New Jersey that potentially harmed the entire Colombian community by labeling Colombians as potential drug carriers. Examples of such articles are:

Scandale, Frank, “Cocaine Trial Proceeds with Interpreter,” Elizabeth Daily Journal 22 June 1984. Hopkins, Kathleen, “Kilo of coke confiscated, pair arrested,” Elizabeth Daily Journal 22 January 1988 pg. 2. Haines, Diane, “Two Colombians enter guilty pleas in $400 million cocaine conspiracy,” North Jersey Herald News 19 May 1987 pg. B1. “Colombian is cited in Paterson after mailed cocaine is seized” The Herald News 7 February 1985: A8.

[14] During the 70s, the only New Jersey newspaper articles that talked about Colombians and other South American groups regarded the illegal immigration problem – how it was not being controlled and how it was worsening. Some examples of articles are: Fiess, Mary, “The ‘Illegals: Their Journal is Rewarding But Risky,” Paterson News 6 May 1974: 1-2. Bondy, Filip, “They Learn to Live with Risks,” Paterson News 28 February 1978: pg 1. Another good piece to look at regarding how Colombians in the U.S. context were kept foreign in light of the drug trafficking problem is Arturo Ignacio Sanchez’s “Colombian Immigration to Queens, New York: The Transnational Re-Imagining of Urban Political Space,” Dissertation: Columbia University, 2003. He writes, “…the drug problematic was externalized and directly linked to the non-American ‘other’ i.e. drug traffickers operating out of Colombia and the ‘illegal immigrants’ living in the United States. And by emphasizing the supply side as opposed to the demand side of the drug equation, the drug problematic was associated with an external threat. As such, the drug issue was conflated with the ‘immigrant problematic’ and reinforced long-standing nativist concerns that are deeply rooted in U.S. history” (103).

[15] The following are examples of texts that discuss the concept of liberal multiculturalism: Nicholas De Genova’s and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas’ Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship. London: Routledge, 2003, and Robert G. Lee’s Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

[16] Ultimately, there were important ties between Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Puerto Ricans did show strong civic and political leadership. With respect to civic and political leadership, both Cubans and Puerto Ricans became pillars for other newly arrived Hispanic groups, which is mentioned by a Colombian community organizer and leader in the last section of this paper. One example of strong Puerto Rican leadership is the building of PROCEED Inc 501 (c)(3), which was originally established in 1970 to address the socioeconomic needs of the Puerto Rican community in Elizabeth, NJ. PROCEED Inc. has since expanded its services to include everyone in need. Check out www.proceedinc.com. As far as Cubans are concerned, the political leadership in Elizabeth/North New Jersey of Robert Menendez (Mayor of Union City and current U.S. Senator), Raphael Fajardo (Chair, Elizabeth Board of Education, 1980s-2010), Samuel Rodriguez, (Elizabeth Councilman in the 1980s), Estrada (Union County Freeholder 1990s-2000s) are significant and helped pave a Cuban-led Latino community in Elizabeth and New Jersey.

[17] The concept of hegemony is explored in Alejandro Portes’ and Alex Stepick’s City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami, University of California Press, 1993. This book helps to understand how the Cuban community in Elizabeth became the hegemony for the Latino community much in the same way it happened on a greater scale in Miami. Another piece to read is David Rieff’s Going to Miami: Exiles, Tourists, and Refugees in the New America University Press of Florida, 1999. Also, see Portes, Alejandro (ed). The Economic Sociology of Immigration: Essays on Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995, pp. 23-29.

[18] The 1971 Aspira study refers to Miss Antonia Pantoja’s 1964 Study of Poverty Conditions in the New York Puerto Rican Community.

[19] In 1984, among several articles the Elizabeth Daily Journal published were “Hispanic Challenger Set to Face Mayor Dunn,” “Dunn Gets Challenge,” and “Fajardo Wraps Up Campaign.” In the first article, Fajardo is noted for being influenced by Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition.” In all of these pieces, the journalists note Fajardo’s ties to or endorsement by leaders of Elizabeth’s African American community.

[20] At the same time that Marielitos were arriving in Elizabeth, the largest influx to the U.S. was arriving in Miami. Susana Pena, in her essay, “Visibility and Silence: Mariel and the Cuban American Gay Male Experience and Representation,” discusses how mainstream media evaded reporting about the large presence of non-heteronormative and “obviously gay” refugees. Full reference: Pena, Susana. “Visibility and Silence: Mariel and Cuban American Gay Male Experience and Representation.” In Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship and Border Crossings. Eds. Luibheid, Eithne and Lionel Cantu Jr. 125-145. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2005.

[21] In other recorded interviews, older Colombians and other Latinos that immigrated to NJ in the 60s mentioned that they were perceived as Puerto Rican. Until this day however, Colombians are mistaken as Puerto Rican or are assumed to be of the later group because non-Latinos came to understand Hispanics or Latinos to be synonymous with Puerto Ricans or in particular the “bad” attributes of brownness, working-class or low-income status, dependency, or cultural/disaporic excess. Unlike Puerto Ricans, Cubans were viewed in more positive ways than Puerto Ricans because they came to be associated with whiteness, middle-classness, and self-sufficiency, and willing to assimilate. In other words “Latino” was not synonymous with Cubans, or other Latinos could not easily be perceived as Cuban.

[22] Located on the border of Elizabeth, Hillside, and Union, New Jersey. It is now called Kean University. The lands of Kean University are in fact owned by the distinguished Kean family.

[23] One local New Jersey newspaper article that comes to mind is a Feb. 1978 article from the Paterson News, Filip Bondy’s “They Learn to Live With Risks.” It documents the difficulties for South American arrivals living in the Paterson, NJ area. This article resonates with the statewide portrayal of these immigrants, suggesting their inevitable return to their countries though they were at that current time living “illegally” in New Jersey cities like Dover, Elizabeth, Paterson, Jersey City, and Union City.

[24] A reference about how the Colombian Exodus impacted the Colombian community and Miami Hispanic community is Michael Collier and Eduardo A. Gamarra’s The Colombian Diaspora in South Florida: A Report of the Colombian Studies Institute’s Colombian Diaspora Project, Florida International University, 2001.

[25] The Historical Society; Elizabeth NJ has been working on their Community Treasures project for over five years documenting oral histories of largely people of color and minorities. Check out https://visithistoricalelizabethnj.org/

[26] All the names of interviewees and businesses are changed to protect their identities.

[27] Roast pig. He will later explain that he makes and sells lechon Tolimense. Tolima is a department in Colombia and based on the region in Colombia, foods are prepared slightly differently. Most Colombians in Elizabeth are either from el Valle or Antioquia and so you will see certain foods described by these regions as well.

[28] This reminds me of Arlene D’Avila’s Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York, which documents how among Puerto Ricans the lower east side came to be known as Loisaida, which represented the space, territory, and the social-political and cultural identity among Puerto Ricans there. In the same way, unofficially naming these three blocks of Morris Avenue Avenida Colombia in the 1990s also represented the Colombian presence in Elizabeth.

[29] A cheese bread pastry that is typical in Colombia. Pandebono is usually eaten for breakfast or as a snack. In a community without propinquity, as was experienced in the 60s and 70s among Colombians in Elizabeth, it was very hard to find Colombian products and goods. By then, Jackson Heights had some kind of marketplace growing and so Colombians living in Elizabeth went to Jackson Heights, Queens to visit the bakeries and restaurants that had opened there. It is an hour and a half drive from Elizabeth to Jackson Heights, Queens, give or take traffic.

[30] Luis Eduardo Guarnizo, Arturo Ignacio Sanchez and Elizabeth M. Roach, “Mistrust, Fragmented Solidarity, and Transnational Migration: Colombians in New York City and Los Angeles,” in Ethnic and Racial Studies. 22.2 (March 1999): 367-396.