- [Ellen] Today we are pleased to introduce Sujhey Beisser
as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's
History Sandwiched In lecture series.
The opinions expressed today are those
of the presenter and not necessarily those
of the Wisconsin Historical Society
or the museum's employees.
Sujhey Beisser has been working with Park Bank for 16 years.
She is currently a branch manager
and she enjoys working in the community banking space.
Sujhey was born and raised in Venezuela,
and has been a Madison resident since 2001
where she lives with her husband and two wonderful children.
She is the former president of Centro Hispanos,
board of directors where she served
from 2008 until earlier this year.
Sujhey is also the content creator behind
the food blog Five Senses Palate,
where she shares delicious recipes
prepared and photographed by her.
In addition, she has a monthly column
in the Capital City Hues, dedicated to share the flavors
of her Latin home cooking with readers.
Here today to discuss the growth
of the Latino population of Wisconsin
and the impact they have had on Wisconsin's new culture,
please join me in welcoming, Sujhey Beisser.
(applause)
- [Sujhey] Really quickly to start
with my relationship with Centro
and the 10 years that I've served on the board.
I'm often approached as to
how did I connect with Centro in the first place?
And I like to tell people I moved here in 2001
and I came related to Centro in 2008
and it wasn't until I found the community of Centro
that I felt that I had a place in this community.
So, that's why it's so important to me.
And I think the best way for me to give back
to an agency that has given me so much
is to put this presentation together
and let you all know what Centro is.
So, Centro Hispano of Dane county,
the beginning of the agency, we go back to 1983.
It was founded by a group of community volunteers
including Elo Tomás, who also served as
the agency first Executive Director.
Initially, the creation of Centro was the sign
to cover the needs of a
number of Cuban immigrants
and refugees that have been settled in Madison.
Much of the agencies services focus on language
and cultural-related needs for adults.
At the time, there weren't enough people
that relate to the Cubans so they formed this group.
And they basically just found the language barrier
for us number one and then they wanted to have
a sense of community which is why Centro was formed.
It started as a private non-profit agency
with an annual grant from United Way.
I don't know how much that was,
but given that it was 1983,
I want to say it probably less than $100,000.
By 1989, it had grown into an organization
with a budget of more than $250,000.
Some of the initial services offered bi-central Hispano,
included AIDS education, drugs and alcohol prevention,
amnesty counseling, and job training.
It was designed to fill critical gaps and services
that otherwise may not have reached segments
of the Madison growing Hispanic population
believed to be at that time at about 7,000
and I will show you some data later on.
So, Ilda Tomás, was one of the founders of Centro Hispano.
I didn't know Ilda.
She passed before I even came into this community,
but anyone that comes around that you ask about Ilda,
all they have to say about her are great words.
They said that she was always
looking for opportunities for all.
She was committed to support education,
education was top central for her.
She wanted to support children and families.
And she left a true legacy.
I believe that she would be very proud
of what Centro has become today.
So, in order to give you some history here about--
We'll come back to Centro Hispano,
but I wanted to make sure that I give
you some demographics, some data.
I wanted to give you some facts and also some myth
about the Latino population and the community in Wisconsin
to help you understand what Centro does and why they exist.
So, this profile contains demographic and economic facts
about the Hispanic population in the state of Wisconsin.
This was taken from the Pure Research Center.
This is the total Hispanic population in Wisconsin
as an estimate of 2014.
Hispanics are 6% of the population of the entire state.
The Medium Annual Personal Earnings
for Hispanics is $20,000.
The poverty rate among Hispanics is 34%.
Hispanics without Health Insurance: 23%.
Hispanics that own their own home: 42%.
This is Hispanics as the percentage of the
from K to 12, It's 11%.
So, 11% of the students in all the schools in Wisconsin,
11% of them are Hispanic.
Hispanic in Wisconsin that were born
in the United States: 63%.
And this is always a number that people get shocked by
because a lot of people always think
if you're Hispanic, you were not born here.
And this is the average Hispanic
that graduate from High school: also 63%,
which is a pretty high rate for high school graduation.
So here is some other facts about Latinos in Wisconsin.
The birthplace of Latinos, as of the census of 2010,
44% of the Latinos in Wisconsin were born here,
19% were born elsewhere in the United States,
and 37% were born outside of the United States.
The language spoken at home:
34% speak English only,
49% speak Spanish and English well or very well,
and 17% Spanish and English not at all or not well.
This slide right here is from a--
It's the Latino demographic and economic trans report
and this was prepared by the Applied Population Lab, UW-Extension
in collaboration with the Latino Wisconsin Research group.
What it shows here is the counties that have
the largest concentration of Latinos.
You can see Dane County there, right in the center.
Milwaukee is the largest county that holds the latino population
and then we would be second.
Right with 32,000 and that's again an estimate
from the study that UW-Extension did in 2014.
So we have about 32,000 Latinos in Dane County.
And then here in the map you can see
the concentration a little bit better,
a little bit picture of where the higher concentration.
There is a lot of Latinos in the Brown County
which is the Green Bay area.
Dane County again and Milwaukee County and then Kenosha,
and the counties south the border of Wisconsin.
You know when the UW-Extension did this study,
they collected a lot of information about Latinos
and I think some of the data that I would like
to share today would be the age.
The Latino population is on average younger
than the Non-Latino population.
The median age of Latinos is approximately 1/2
than those that are Non-Latinos.
The share of Latinos below the age of 15
is roughly twice the comparable share of non-Latinos
and in the rural countries represented is even greater.
What this tells us, if we look more into this,
is just how the Latino population has been growing
and why there is a lot more younger Latinos
and they also reproduced a lot more
than the White population.
Then I wanted to focus a little bit
on Dane County and show you,
because Centro was formed in 1983,
so I wanted to go back and show you the numbers.
In 1990, this was the census to show
that there were 5,700 Latinos in Dane County.
In 10 years, the population grew 151%.
We were now 14,000.
And then 10 more years and that was another 100%
to count 29,000 of Latinos.
And them we estimate, there was an 8% growth
from 2010 to the estimate that we have from 2014.
But when you look at the whole picture,
we have grown 461% since 1990.
So that tells you Latinos are rapidly growing
and we are the largest minority in Wisconsin.
Some other facts about Latinos in Dane County:
3/4 of the Latinos in Dane County live
in the town and around the Madison, rental neighborhoods
and northern edge of Fitchburg.
A smaller communities that are in the northeastern Dane County,
like Sun Prairie, Marshall, and DeForest.
And since the late 1990's, growing rapidly due
to the more recent immigration.
Also 72% of Hispanic population growth reports
to be of Mexican heritage.
And in the ration of men to women is five to three.
Now, I am going to move a little bit about
the myth about Latinos.
The first thing that I want to point out,
is people always get confused with
the term "Hispanic" or "Latino."
Are they the same? Are they different? Why?
So, "Hispanic," it refers to the language that we speak
which is Spanish.
And then Latino refers to
the geographic countries where we come from
and where they are located.
So, Latinos are considered all of those
that were born in Latin America and Central America,
and then some islands of the Caribbean
like Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Dominican Republic.
Now, Spain is in Europe,
but they speak Spanish.
Also, there's a little tiny country
in Africa called Guinea
that speaks three languages
and one of the three languages is Spanish as well.
So they are Hispanic, although they are not Latino.
And then we're all Hispanic
and some of us are Hispanics and Latinos.
Then you have Brazil.
Brazil is in Latin America.
They are Latinos, but they speak Portuguese.
So, they are not necessarily Hispanic,
but they are Latinos and part of our community as well.
Then myth number two:
all undocumented immigrants are Latinos.
Is that true?
Well, as it comes out at 20% of undocumented immigrants
are from Asia, Europe, Africa and Canada.
Who would think Canada, right? That's so weird.
A large percentage of immigrants
are from Mexico and Latin America.
According to the Hispanic report,
9% of undocumented immigrants are from Asia,
6% are from Europe and Canada,
and 3% are from countries in Africa.
Now, this is another important number.
Most immigrants, 76%, are in the country legally,
while a quarter are undocumented.
In 2015, 44% were naturalized U.S. citizens.
So we're going to move to myth number three:
Latinos are a drag on economy.
How much do we hear this these days?
In 2017, the estimated buying power
of Hispanic is 1.7 trillion.
A figure that is 50% higher than in 2010.
Buying power growing that rapidly
can hardly be a drag on the economy.
1.4 million Latino- owned companies
found that the most intense activity was
the administrative support and waste business,
construction, and healthcare, and social assistance.
Latino businesses tend to be a lot smaller
than their known Latino counterparts.
The Latino enterprises average about $156,000 in year sales,
compared to $573,000 for non-Latino counterparts.
(Man in audience comments in Spanish)
Yes.
(laughing)
And this is an article that was on the Cap Times.
Over 13,000 of the immigrants
in Wisconsin are entrepreneurs.
So when you relate that to the number that I gave you earlier,
you know that we have a majority
of people that are entrepreneurs.
The Hispanic-Latino workforce grew
from 6,374 in 2007
to 8,085 in 2013.
The total number of Hispanic workers
in Madison grew by 4.5% per year during this period.
The Hispanic-Latino workforce is particularly important
to a few sectors of the economy.
11% of them work in construction,
14% work in cleaning and maintenance positions,
and 18% of them work in the food services positions.
In Dane County, Hispanic-Latinos are also over 1/3
of the total agriculture force.
Food service is by far the economic sector that accounts
for the largest numbers of jobs among Hispanic-Latinos
in the Madison and Dane County area.
And the last myth about Latinos:
We're all brown skin and we are all the same.
We're all the same, but we're not.
The cultural influences in our community,
Hispanic and Latino, come from diverse social economic
and geographic backgrounds making us all very different
depending on the family heritage that we have
and depending on the national origin that we have.
We do have, however, some cultural similarities.
The language: we all speak Spanish
or Portuguese.
The religion, the majority of Hispanics
and Latinos identify themselves as Catholics.
The cuisine: even though our cuisine
is so diverse and so different.
We all tend to like each other's Latino culture's cuisine's
and we tend to just gear towards that.
Now I want to go back to Centro Hispano
and give you some numbers.
Remember when we started in 1983?
It was just volunteers and it was just a very small agency.
Today, Centro Hispano's largest programs are those
that serve the Latino youth in Dane County schools.
At the same time, the agency's cultural, educational,
and social service programs for adults have also grown.
From the strong foundation, Ilda Thomas Conteris
and others gave the agency.
In 2006, Centro Hispano became the owner
of an 18,000 square-foot facility,
810 West Badger Road, where it is still located
in the heart of Madison, in the south side.
In 2010, Centro Hispano served over 4,000 families.
In 2014,
and I can't remember if it was '14 or '13.
I think it was 13, we hired our current executive director,
Karen Menendez Coller, who has poured herself into the agency
creating a strategy for every goal,
working tirelessly with the community partners and funders,
hiring key strategic staff,
and making the agency grow from the inside out.
And these numbers should speak for themselves.
We now have 22 paid staff members.
This is our annual operating budget.
We serve over 5,000 clients every year.
We serve over 2,500 families every year.
We see over 850 immigration-related cases
in our support program, and this is a one person's job.
We serve over 350 children.
We participated in over 100 community events.
84% of the Caminos CNA Program attendees
that are employed by the end of the program.
79% of the attendees of the Pathway Program.
At the end of the program they move
from having either no employment
or a part-time employment to a full-time employment,
also almost doubling their salary.
60% of the Juventud students
that participate in the leadership summit
and 60% of the Escalera students complete
an internship experience.
So this right here shows you a little bit
of how much Centro has grown in the last 35 years.
Now, in 2017,
11 years after buying that building,
Centro was a recipient of the Design for a Difference
facility makeover from Design for a Difference
and FLOOR360.
About 50 donors and partners organizations
donated time, money, and materials to make
the Design for a Difference makeover happen.
And donated project costs that were close to $600,000.
The designers and volunteers spent months planning
the new design making sure that each space reflected
the voice of the staff and the clientele
that visits Centro every day.
This was an incredible gift.
Centro's space has always been inviting,
but it has now spaces with functionality.
The designers did a great job and we can't thank
Design for a Difference and FLOOR360 enough
for what they did for our community center.
It looks beautiful.
So here are the three pillars that Karen created for Centro.
As much as we've always had the programs at the agency,
when Karen came along, she just kind of wanted to
identify and separate each one of them and who we serve.
So, for the stability at home,
she feels we have to have strong support services,
and that's where our adult programs come in.
The general support program,
who sees about 2700 cases every year,
850 of those cases that you saw in the slide before
are related to immigration.
The New Routes for Adults,
that is a community program that tries
to reintegrate Latino offenders in the judicial system
through legal advocacy program.
Again, that's also 1 person at Centro that serves that program
and he sees about 400 cases
in a year.
Then the second pillar is the youth aspiration
and that would be the youth programs.
The youth programs are to improve retention rates
of Latino students in the Madison high schools
and to create a pipeline of students
that are engaged in school
and supported academically until graduation.
Increased economic mobility for Latino youth in Madison
through career awareness planning and asset mapping.
"Believing in success and not in failures."
And that is a quote from Karen.
And those are the programs that I just mentioned before
also along with the programs that are inside of each school
that Centro has, all working with
the Madison School District.
And then the last pillar
is the Neighborhood Environment Community Outreach programs.
So the idea here is to implement community outreach
with the intention to create a well-balanced
and thriving community for the Latino families.
Centro has created programs to engage in wellness activities
promoting food equity, health, fitness,
and overall community investment in their personal health.
The food equity initiatives include
Centro's family garden that is in our own back yard.
El Mercadito de Centro that happens every Wednesday.
Pa'Ponerse Saludable, that is a series of classes
that are geared to learn about well-being
and how food nurtures us.
And there are cooking demonstrations as well.
La Tierra Hizo Mi Almuerzo or The Earth Made my Lunch,
is a cooking class for kids,
to teach them where food comes from
and how they can prepare their own foods.
And in the fitness initiatives includes Zumba,
Yoga, Belly Dance, Ballet Folklórico, and more.
So again when you see all of these programs are created to
intertwine with each other and to help a family thrive,
by having some stability at home,
by having the kids being educated,
by having the mothers come to Centro
and also get part of this wellness program
and to be a part of the community as a whole.
So now we're going to learn a little bit about
the Latino flavors that influence our palate.
For those of you that know me well,
know that I'm always about food.
So, I'm thinking you're probably expecting
to see the first Taqueria, right here.
And we're going to talk about that later.
But the first thing I want you to see is this picture...
and think about how this influenced
what we put on our plate.
In Wisconsin, the history of
Tejano migrant farm workers stretches
to the early decades of the twentieth century.
Latino hands have been picking the state's produce
for centuries and have played an important role
in the food industry.
The Tejano's have traveled to Wisconsin
as migrant labor for decades,
working in the sugar bid industry during the 1930's.
The number of Tejano's arriving
in Wisconsin grew dramatically throughout
the late 1940's and early '50s.
These migrants were reported in 23 counties
out of 71 counties in the state,
during the summer of 1947,
totaling more than 5,000 workers and their families.
Between 2007 and 2013, the total number of Latinos working
food service jobs in Dane County
grew from approximately 1,000 to 3,300.
More than one new Latino food service worker
hired every single day.
Today, about 23% of all Latino workers
in Madison and Dane County work
in the food service industry.
So, even when we think about
how the Latinos have influenced what we eat today,
if it wasn't for the work of the Latino's
that have been working in the state for decades,
some of the vegetables and some of the foods
that make it to your plate everyday, may not be there.
And I think this is one of the issues that have actually come to light
recently with the dairy industry.
Just thinking what it would be of the dairy industry
if we didn't have the Latino workers.
1931, I found this picture actually on the website
of the history museum.
Tijuana Hot Tamales, and this is a street in Madison.
Apparently this food cart was around the Capitol Square
and down on State Street selling hot tamales.
What I find very interesting though...
just the way that the tamales were described
and just by looking at obviously the owner of this cart,
I thought he might be Cuban maybe.
But the more and more I look into it, he wasn't.
He was Black.
And, I didn't think at 1931,
Latinos would be,
I don't know, like they would have enough presence
to have a food cart in the square.
However, they did have some influence in the food
and I'm going to quote this from the book
Madison Food History: A History of Capital Cuisine,
because I thought was very interesting about this food cart.
"It's likely that this version of tamale
"described as a Spanish and peppery sandwich,
"in the Cap Times in 1931,
"were the kind that cross into Mississippi Delta cuisine
"with migrant workers in the early twentieth century
"and then came to the Midwest
"with northward, Black migration."
Then we had Paco's in 1967.
This restaurant was on State Street
and it was open until the early '80s.
I don't know why it closed,
but I found this quote, too, also from an ad
from the restaurant that I'm going to read
because I thought that was very interesting.
"This space is brought to you by the letter "M"
"which stands for Madison, Mexican food, and Margaritas.
"Since 1967, Paco's has served Madison's finest Mexican food
"and some astonishing Margaritas.
"The letter M also stands for
"Marginal, Misleading, and Mediocre.
"And if that is what you like,
"check out some of our less-than competent
"fast-buck chain restaurant competitors."
(laughing)
This was apparently an ad for the restaurant
that was in the restaurant.
So with that, I am assuming he was probably referring
to something like Chi-Chi's,
or Pedro's,
or maybe even some of the other national restaurants.
These were some of the Latin flavors
that influenced Madison in the '80s.
Pasquals, actually that one in Monroe Street,
is closed now,
but he still has three more Pasquals Cantinas,
one on East Washington,
another one on Hilldale,
and one in Verona.
Pedro's still has one location, they used to have two.
Casa de Lara's still here.
In the 1990's, more restaurants were opened.
La Paella was one of my absolute favorite restaurants
when I first moved here; it was Spanish tapas.
El Pastor is still here, opened in 1998.
La Hacienda is still here too, opened in 1996.
And Laredo's opened in 1996 as well.
So, keeping on the
influence of Latin flavors.
Some of the restaurants that were named
as best new restaurants either
by Madison Magazine or The Isthmus.
Throughout the years, I found all this information
on the Madison Food and History of Capital Cuisine
and I just highlighted all of the restaurants
that were owned by Latinos or Hispanic,
or that were influenced by Hispanic cuisines.
So we had in 1987, all the way through 2014.
My friends from La Taguara,
that's the only Venezuelan restaurant in Madison by the way.
So, it's funny to me to see how
through the decades there was a change.
Obviously there were more Hispanic restaurants open.
They all tended to be towards the Mexican cuisine.
Assuming because the Mexicans are
the largest amongst our own minority.
But then, when the 2000's come,
then you start seeing a little bit more
of other Caribbean cuisines
and other Latin cuisines as well.
Today, if you just do a simple Google search
for Latin restaurants in Madison,
more than 30 restaurants come up.
I don't think that the map does justice
to all the restaurants that there are.
But as you can see, where are all over...
the place, like now you can actually go
and have Latin food whenever, anywhere.
When I first moved here,
and I wasn't very familiar with Mexican food at all,
because I just didn't eat Mexican food in Venezuela.
But when I started having Mexican food,
it was always at the bigger restaurants, the bigger chains.
And then it wasn't until I started having
real Mexican friends,
like my friend Brenda,
when she was like no no mija,
let me just show you what real Mexican is,
that I started exploring with the flavors of Mexican food
and started liking it, more.
So, from all of that to food blogging
which was the reason that I basically contacted to do this
and I wanted to tie this up
back to Centro.
I have a passion for cooking that I grew up with.
I grew up cooking with my family, with my grandma.
I always bring food when I go to parties,
when I'm not too busy.
And people always ask me for recipes.
Or, how did you make that? How do you make this?
Why does it taste this way?
So I chose to start sharing my recipes online with all the technology.
Started learning about food blogs.
And I thought why can't I just share my recipes
and then when people want to know how I make something
they can go there.
So that's how I started Five Senses Palate
about four years ago.
And then also, with my passion for cooking
and tying up back to Centro about also
around the same time I started the blog,
I had this little itch that I wanted
to do some personal chef cooking.
I didn't know if I wanted to go to school
to learn techniques and things about cooking.
Or what I wanted to do with it.
But we were working on a silent auction for Centro Hispano
and I thought, "Hey,
"why don't I just say I'm going to donate a dinner
"and then I'll try to be a personal chef for a day
"and see how that works."
I've donated so far, four dinners for Centro Hispano
and I actually started doing it as my own business last year.
So, that's another little tight
that I feel that I owe to Centro as well.
So, lastly, I want to leave you with some thoughts.
I want to leave you with this question:
What are we doing to support the Latinos in Madison?
I hope that through this presentation,
you learned that we have been around for a very long time.
That we have been doing hard work,
and a little bit at a time,
we have been claiming our spot in this community.
We're making our presence louder and we're multiplying rapidly.
There is no way to stop us and we're here to stay.
In critical, political times like we're living right now,
agencies like Centro Hispano play a crucial role
in growing communities like Dane County.
I want to invite you all to connect with us, get involved,
and by all means, give your support where you can.
Thank you.
(applause)