The Origins and Formation of the Latino Community in Northeast Ohio, 1900 to 2009

In August 2009, Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as a Justice on the Supreme Court, making her the first Puerto Rican to sit on the court. For individuals of Latino/Hispanic ancestry, this was a moment of pride and joy. In the course of the nomination and the hearings, members of the Senate and others spoke about her background and accomplishments to demonstrate how the American dream was still possible. The process also brought forward critics and skeptics who focused on particular statements made by the new Justice. During the hearings, we, as a people, were reintroduced to the nation’s largest minority. Yet one issue became clear: as a nation, we are still painfully ignorant about the history of the largest minority group in the United States. If we are to learn about this cultural group, our historical knowledge about the Latino population in the United States has to move away from subspecialized fields within the field of American history and into the mainstream public discourse. Scholars of Latino studies need to do a better job of pushing their scholarship into the larger narrative of our nation. Furthermore, the scholarship about Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and other individuals of Latin American background needs to move away from the more traditional geographical isolation that confines the study of certain groups to specific regions (i.e., for Puerto Ricans, the East Coast; for Mexican Americans, the Southwest and California; for Cubans, Miami).

This article promotes a new research agenda for those investigating the history of Latinos or Hispanics in the United States. By recentering the study of Latinos from the traditional areas of investigation into areas that have been neglected, in this case Ohio, this article searches not to provide answers but to create a series of questions about the history of Latinos. The history of Ohio Latinos should provide scholars with a fertile model for the exploration of historical themes such as patterns of migration and immigration, development of cultural institutions and community organization, involvement of Latinos in local politics, and interethnic relations in the workplace and community. Furthermore, current trends in population growth show that Latinos are moving in large numbers into understudied areas such as the midwestern and southeastern United States. Therefore, a historical understanding of how those older communities adjusted to and dealt with Latino migration can also shed light on current trends.

During the 1990s, Spanish-speaking individuals constituted the fastest-growing portion of America’s migrant population. Though the Latino population in Ohio did not grow as rapidly as that in Florida or California, the rate of change in Ohio does reflect national trends. In the 1980s, Ohio was a state with a solid white majority and a large African American minority. However, a steady shift in the demographic composition of the state began to take place during the 1990s. Between 1990 and 2004, the Latino population grew from 139,000 to 220,000.¹ According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 42 percent of the Latino population in Ohio is of Mexican descent, 31 percent is composed of Puerto Ricans, 2 percent is Cubans, and 25 percent is Central/South Americans or “other.”² Puerto Ricans are predominant in northeast Ohio, whereas Mexicans concentrate in the northwest portion of the state; central and southwest Ohio have more diverse populations. There are Latinos residing in each of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties. Latinos are now more visible across the state, working in many sectors of Ohio’s economy. However, many Ohioans mistakenly believe that their presence in the state is a recent phenomenon.

The Latino American Population in Northeast Ohio, 1900s to 1940

Immediately after the Cuban-Spanish-American War, Latin Americans, mostly Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, were recruited to fill shortages in the agricultural labor force in the United States and Hawaii. Although census documents do not register Latino Americans residing in Ohio until the 1930s, oral history projects and local histories show Mexican migrants living in Lorain in the years immediately after World War I.³ Mexican Americans...