“Esta es nuestra herencia Latina
La voz que representa nuestra raza cósmica
Y que me oigan en las Antillas, el reggaeton Latino se queda
Pa que lo bailen desde España a Sud America
El reggaeton Latino se queda
En los Estados Unidos y Centroamérica
El reggaeton Latino se queda
Sien-tan el poder
Del reggaeton Latinoooo…
El reggaeton se ha convertido en la identificación de los Latinos
Y los pocos elegidos son los preferidos
Los encargados de mantener a los Latinos unidos”
Reggaeton Latino Chosen Few Remix
The first time I heard Reggaeton Latino by Don Omar and his collaborators, I felt an immense sense of panethnic pride. The track and some of its predecessors like “Oye Mi Canto”, were explicit in their valorization of a panethnic Latino identity. They called out various Latin American countries in their choruses and verses in an effort to unite Latinos under the banner of this emerging musical genre. Though many of us share a language, religion, and certain staple foods, the strength of our panethnic ties has been questioned since the use of the moniker emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Summarizing my experiences spending time in various ethnic enclaves (Jackson Heights, Queens, Central Falls, RI, Miami, FL), I’ve often offered that some places, like Miami, have a Latino culture but no Latino politics, while others have a Latino culture and a Latino politics. Below, I recount finding the latter in Central Falls.
In the Fall of 2016, I was elected to the Central Falls city council alongside two other political newcomers: Maria Rivera and Franklin Solano. Our addition to the council gave Latinos a 4-3 majority and made us the first Latino majority council in the city and state’s histories. What I didn’t recognize at that time was just how much that election would shape my academic trajectory and thinking. It wasn’t just that Latinos held a majority of the seats in local power (most would write this off as the population-seats relationship; or in layman terms as the logical result of a majority Latino population), it was that the four of us represented four different Latin American countries of origin. The incumbent Latino, Hugo Figueroa, was born in El Salvador, Solano was born in the Dominican Republic, Rivera is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents and my parents both hail from Colombia. Over time, I was struck by the evidence and strength of panethnic solidarity in Central Falls. It led me to change the direction of my dissertation work and begin focusing on what I’ve now deemed “the Panethnic Postindustrial City”.
In most cases, I’ve found that the term Latino politics is somewhat of a misnomer. It’s used to describe a group that has historically been more homogeneous in its local iterations than the panethnic moniker and the group’s continued lumping suggests. In Miami where I grew up, Latino politics was Cuban politics. In New York City where I spent my summers, Latino politics was really Puerto Rican politics until the 2000s when it started transitioning to Dominican politics. Much of the writing on Latino politics has called our attention to its local manifestations in these contexts where one group has the numbers to eclipse and exclude others. Some key factors underscoring the lack of collaboration were the different structural, political, and economic conditions that groups faced in their respective contexts. Early political activity by Mexicans was focused on labor conditions (generally in the agricultural sector where they were heavily concentrated) and legal status. Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens by birth, were believed to care less about legal status and more about urban issues (poverty, unemployment, housing, etc) and sovereignty (the continued saga of American statehood versus independence). Cubans, whose early migrant waves were highly selective by race, class, education, and occupation were understood as middle class aspiring whites focused on international relations (particularly communism in Cuba) (for a more in-depth account, see “Making Hispanics” by Cristina Mora 2014). As a result of these profound differences, when an aspiring Latino ran for political office, they tended to be a member of the largest group in the geographic area where they were running and they tended to take up the issues relevant/important to that particular group. Yet here I was in 2016 representing Rhode Island’s most Latino city alongside three Latinos with origins different from my own all residing in the same square mile.
The fissures I reviewed above were the divisions of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The last four decades have resulted in profound shifts that likely inform Latino identity, collaboration, and solidarity. Latinos today are more likely to co-reside across intra group lines than they are to reside along whites, asians, or blacks (Kim & White 2010). Mexican migrants continue to be overrepresented in the agricultural sector but migration streams have moved them to urban areas as well where advocacy has taken up similar issues to Puerto Ricans in prior eras. The special statuses originally afforded to Cubans in their naturalization process have largely been revoked or amended, leaving them in similar structural migration positions as other Latinos. Puerto Ricans continue to have a large presence in several northeastern cities and in central Florida but these places have also witnessed their respective Latino populations grow via newer migrants. Migration chains from Latin America have grown to include more countries around the continent. In Central Falls’ square mile, there are Latino families from at least ten discrete origin countries. This increasing heterogeneity means that today’s contexts of reception are markedly different from those same sites in previous eras.
Throughout my recently completed dissertation, I argue that Central Falls, and other northeastern postindustrial cities like it, are becoming emblematic of a new Latino politics. A local politics where Latinos share a sense of what scholars of black politics in America have termed “linked fate”. The various subgroups truly see themselves as members of this broader panethnic category and adopt a politics that brings intra group members in rather than exclude them from the political process. After four decades of Latino migration to the city where the community did not have a single Latino elected official, Ricardo Patiño was elected to the city council in the year 2000. When I interviewed him, Councilman Patiño noted that he was elected by LATINOS (his emphasis), not just Colombians. The Rhode Island Latino Political Action Committee (RILPAC) which provided support and resources for his campaign included members from Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Peru, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Argentina. As such, Patiño believed that he was elected by getting votes from a combination of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Colombians (the three largest Latino origin groups at the time) as one group alone would not have been enough for him to win. From 2000 to 2010, Latinos (all Colombian) tended to hold one or two seats on the council. As such they were demographically underrepresented and following the trajectory of the classic literature on urban and ethnic politics (the TL;DR version is that after years of struggle, generally the first and largest minority group is able to broker with the established power base and secure a seat in office but they rarely, if ever, achieve parity in representation). Then, almost like a wave, a truly panethnic Latino politics emerged.
James Diossa, a Colombian American, was elected Mayor of Central Falls in 2010 in the wake of the city’s bankruptcy and the former Mayor’s federal indictment on corruption charges (as sociologist Eduardo Bonilla Silva once told me “they let us take power after they’ve let everything where we live go to shit”). Having served just one term on the council, Diossa had his work cut out for him, but he recognized a latent potential in the constituency that had gotten him elected. Like Patiño before him, Diossa knew that he’d gotten elected with help from more folks than just the Colombians. He encouraged some of his supporters to run for office and several of them did. By 2014 the council included Stephanie Gonzalez, a Colombian, and Shelby Maldonado, a Guatemalan, who, along with two other former Diossa supporters (Tammi Johnson and Tia Ristiano Siegel), gave women a majority on the council (a first in the city and the state). Between the 2014 and 2016 elections, Diossa and his team began recruiting potential candidates to maintain a mayoral-friendly council. Enter Acosta, Rivera, and Solano. Each of us were courted by the Mayor’s Chief of Staff (a Latino) and asked if we’d be interested in serving on the council. We came together and pooled our resources under a unified campaign for all seven council seats and the Mayor’s office. In 2016, this new panethnic local political machine won six out of seven seats on the council and the Mayor’s office. Since that election, no candidate working outside of the local machine has secured an electoral victory in the city.
Detractors and non believers may argue that this sense of solidarity and collaboration is just a result of the constraints faced by Latinos in this particular context, but they’d be missing the very real ripples this local dynamic has created and the way it’s resulted in a context of reception for new migrants that encourages the adoption of a panethnic Latino identity and membership within the group. Between 2018 and 2019 when President Trump ramped up his crackdown on undocumented migrants, Central Falls was brought into the fray via its controversial quasi public-private detention facility. Investors and administrators at the Wyatt were incentivized by the administration’s offer to house undocumented migrants for more than $120 per day per person (this rate was $20-$40 higher than that of other types of inmates). In the city, residents and local elected officials were outraged. The Council President, a Puerto Rican, organized her colleagues (present company included) and worked with the Mayor to deliver a press conference denouncing the facility’s cooperation with ICE. We went on to stage a protest that led the locally appointed board to terminate the contract (as officials with a “fiduciary responsibility” to the facility, we were subsequently sued and the administrators were able to reinitiate the contract). Why would a Puerto Rican and her respective sub group constituents care about migration issues? A pessimist might argue she might be trying to score political points, but the reality is that migrants are a real and valued part of our community and constituency. The city we live in is a city of migrants (predating the very establishment of the city in 1895). As such, elected officials find it necessary to stand up for and represent the interests of those residents. The Latino-ness of the constituency, I argue, is part of what makes elected officials Latino and not just members of the respective countries of origin.
The case of the Wyatt-ICE battle is just one example of panethnic solidarity in the city. A couple years prior, the city held an intimate community gathering of residents, school leaders, department heads (including the police and fire chiefs), and local elected officials to assuage concerns about Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and assure residents that our obligation was to them and not to immigration enforcement officials. In addition to these formal city government anecdotes, it bears mentioning that Rhode Island’s largest migrant social service agency, Progreso Latino, is housed in Central Falls adjacent to City Hall and carries the panethnic label proudly in its name. Thanks to the work of Latino oral historian Marta Martinez, we know that the precursor to that organization was a series of organizations established in the early 1970s by the Catholic diocese meant to serve peoples from all of Latin America (Martinez 2014). In the 1990s during my first stint in the city, most of the “Latino” small businesses were Colombian owned. Today, when you drive down Dexter Street or Broad Street, you see evidence of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Mexicans in storefront windows across the busy corridor. In short, Central Falls is a city that has become a home for heterogeneous streams of Latinos and a context that is notably more panethnic than others.
In the Fall of 2023, Latinos secured four out of seven seats on the Reading, Pennsylvania City Council which, along with the first Latino Mayor in the city’s history, gave them a governing majority. That same year, voters in Lynn, Massachusetts elected the first Latino, a man of Guatemalan descent, and the first Afro Latina, of Dominican and Haitian ancestry, to the City Council. I believe that the future of Central Falls and other cities like it is a panethnic Latino one. My academic work calls our attention to these forgotten postindustrial cities and the Latinos who are revitalizing them. My political work is focused on building solidarity between the various members of the “rainbow people”, as I once heard Felipe Luciano refer to Latinos, and recruit the next generation of panethnic politicians.


Pictured here are Mayor Maria Rivera, Council President Tempore Franklin Solano, and I, Senator Jonathon Acosta. A group who entered politics together and are emblematic of a new Latino politics. Councilman Solano was term-limited and will leave office in January 2025. The incoming Central Falls City Council will continue having a five out of seven Latino majority and include members of Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Colombian origin.