Masculinity and entrepreneurship in the history of Latino New York
Every New Yorker knows the value of the bodega. These small but mighty corner stores, where one can buy nearly any item at any hour, embody the variety and efficiency that set the city apart. As Pedro Regalado explained at a recent meeting of the Clayman Institute’s Faculty Research Fellows, bodegas hold a special history for New York’s 2.5 million Latino residents as sites not just of convenience but also of community-building and economic entrepreneurship.
Regalado, assistant professor of history at Stanford, presented work from his upcoming book, Nueva York: Making the Modern City. This fascinating and deeply researched study of New York City and its Latino residents stretches from the Spanish American War of 1898 through the late 20th century. Regalado demonstrates how Latino New Yorkers navigated the city’s role within U.S. empire, built new financial institutions and technologies, and forged a collective identity through shared cultural and economic experiences.
In his presentation, Regalado examined how gender norms influenced the legacy of economic entrepreneurship among Latino New Yorkers. “It is clear that Latino business owners helped to build the economic infrastructure of Latino New York in ways that we just haven’t understood,” Regalado stressed, “but they did so through a particular vision of economic citizenship that was rooted in masculinity as patriarchal family responsibility. No doubt that vision mattered insofar as it opened doors for credit, for property, for leadership, but it also set the terms of inclusion.”
Regalado highlighted the history of the Puerto Rican Merchants’ Association (PRMA), which provided an important platform for Latino men to support their families and communities. Latino merchants had first gained a foothold in 1920s and 1930s New York and quickly became anchors of neighborhood commerce and politics. Their influence grew in the 1940s, as New York’s Latino population boomed in the wake of World War II. In 1946, a small group of Brooklyn bodegueros (bodega owners) founded the PRMA to organize and defend the rights of Latino businesses.
Despite its name, the association believed strongly in cultivating a pan-ethnic identity among Spanish speakers and, by the late 1960s, represented the interests of more than 12,000 businesses across New York City. This was no simple trade association: the PRMA offered financial credit, legal support, health screenings, death and disability benefits, and other social services. Regalado explained that the PRMA envisioned merchants “as stewards of communal well-being” and masculine ideals. “It very much tried to define what a good Latino merchant was supposed to look like – what he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be a provider, a family man, and very much a leader of the community.”
The model of manhood promoted by the PRMA had two main influences, Regalado explained. First, Latino migrants to New York carried with them standards of masculinity shaped by cultural and political trends in their homelands. For instance, Puerto Rico was at midcentury engaged in an industrial modernization effort that championed male breadwinning as the key to economic uplift. Second, upon arrival in New York, Latino migrants encountered pervasive prejudice that cast them as overdependent on public resources. In the face of such stereotypes, cultivating an image of respectability and responsibility was a form of resistance. The PRMA strove to build a coalition of “selfless, honest, and honorable men who are sacrificing themselves for the community” to push back against prejudice and provide resources for relief.
Even as the ideal of masculine responsibility offered opportunities for economic advancement, it reinscribed gender and racial hierarchies. The wives of PRMA leaders, who had limited roles in the association’s public functions, were expected to adhere to a traditional image of domesticity and typically worked only within the household or family business. As difficult as it can be to excavate the details of women’s experiences in the archives, it is evident, said Regalado, that women’s labor “made possible the public authority that male merchants took on in this context of anti-Latino sentiment.” Regalado also stressed the importance of approaching this history through an intersectional lens and considering the “vast color spectrum that is characteristic of the Puerto Rican community and other Latinos as well.” In the housing market, for instance, racism and colorism often influenced which Latino families were deemed “respectable” and able to access credit and purchase property.
Accounting for gender and race thus enriches our understanding of the particular obstacles and opportunities that Latino New Yorkers encountered as they built communities, established economic institutions, and shaped the largest city in the United States.
