(563)LIVING LA VIDA LATINA IN THE WASHINGTON METRO AREA

摘要

Over the last few decades, the Washington Metropolitan Area has emerged as a major destination forimmigrants from around the world.1 The presence of the federal government and associatedindustries, international institutions, foreign diplomatic corps, bio-technology firms, top-rankinguniversities, and regionally based international headquarters of companies like Lockheed Martin andthe Marriott Corporation have been a powerful magnet, drawing the foreign-born in increasingnumbers to this region. Its labor markets have absorbed immigrants with levels of education higherthan the national average, as well as large numbers of individuals with low levels of formal educationand English proficiency to fill occupations in the construction, hospitality, healthcare, retail trade, andbuilding and grounds maintenance sectors.However, our story shall begin in bygone days around 1800, at a time when Georgetown, part of theFederal District, in sharp contrast to its chic present, was described by First Lady, Abigail Adams -wife of President John Adams (1797-1801)- in a letter to her sister, Mary Smith Cranch, as “…thevery dirtiest hole I ever saw for a place of any trade, or respectability of inhabitants. It is only one milefrom me but a quagmire after every rain.”2This paper will highlight the incursions of a small, but discernible, group of Latinos into Washington,DC, then an emerging national capital, as diplomats, students, and refugees in the nineteenth century,and will offer the portraits of three prominent Latinos presently residing in the Washington Metro Areanow, as a full-blown region and a major immigrant gateway.3 Hopefully, these historical snippets,involving the experiences of a handful of immigrants and sojourners with diverse motivations andbackgrounds in the same geographical setting, will shed light not only on their differences, but on theirsimilarities across time, i.e., the lure to the Washington Region for better opportunities and an a safehaven for both deposed rulers as well as for ordinary political refugees fleeing recurrent conflicts inLatin America.