8033: Baltimore More Latino.

From USA TODAY…

Baltimore shows how Hispanics’ influence grows

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

BALTIMORE — In this city’s Greektown, home to generations of Greek families, you are just as likely to see Latino-owned bakeries, grocery stores and restaurants as Greek coffee houses.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese started its first bilingual English and Spanish program this year to attract more Hispanic families.

And City Hall set up a commission two years ago to determine the education, job, public health and social needs of the growing Hispanic population, which increased 45% to 16,000 in 2008 from 11,000 in 2000.

“They live in every community. … We’re seeing more restaurants, stores and shops that are just sprouting up,” says Baltimore Councilman Jim Kraft. “It’s creating a new identity.”

In cities like Baltimore across the USA, the impact of Hispanics is wide-reaching and growing. The number of Hispanics in the U.S. is expected to reach 133 million by 2050, when the group is projected to make up almost a third of the nation’s population.

The meteoric growth has meant gains in education, business and politics, but the recession and strong sentiment against illegal immigration have rolled back some of the progress. The group still lags in areas such as education, poverty and jobs, says Mark Hugo Lopez of the Pew Hispanic Center, a non-partisan research center.

“Latinos are very optimistic, but … there are a lot of challenges they face,” Lopez says.

In the first part of the decade, the gap in unemployment rates between Hispanic and non-Hispanics almost closed, Lopez says. Then came the recession. Now the unemployment rate is 9.6% for the nation and 12% for Hispanics.

In Baltimore, there have been other setbacks. This summer, a half-dozen Hispanic immigrant men were beaten and robbed in separate incidents, Kraft says. The most recent in August led to the death of Honduran immigrant Martin Reyes. A suspect told police he hated Mexicans, Kraft says.

As the community celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, its influence as the nation’s largest minority group, 48 million people, is seen not just in food and popular culture but also in government, business and education.

Today, more than 6,000 elected leaders are Hispanic, including the mayors of two of the nation’s biggest cities, Los Angeles and San Antonio. The number of Hispanic registered voters reached 12 million in 2008.

The number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States increased by 44% to 2.3 million from 2002 to 2007, more than twice the overall national increase of 18%, the Census Bureau says.

The biggest changes are in schools, where one in five children are Hispanic. The number will grow because one in four newborns is Hispanic, the Pew center says.

“The future will see this wave of young Latinos going through the schools, going through college, able to vote for the first time,” Lopez says. “All this will be playing out in the next 20 to 30 years.”

Hispanics in Baltimore say the city has been welcoming. In Greektown, they have opened more than a half-dozen businesses in a two-block area.

‘This could be Latino Town’
In another 10 or 20 years, “This could be Latino Town,” says Jesus Romero, 35, owner of Charro Negro, a Mexican bar. “Some of the businesses closed down, and that’s when the Latinos, we came and got those businesses. We’re basically building up the economy in Greektown.”

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