History Lesson 
Pueblo Nuevo
When I moved to Houston from San Antonio two years ago, I thought I would miss Texas' best city for Latinos. Instead, I found it.
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Though the majority of Latinos are of Mexican descent, a significant 12 percent have ties to Central America, 7 percent are from South America, and another 1 percent are from Cuba and Puerto Rico. The city's proximity to Mexico and the convenient nearby location of Continental Airlines' southern hub have helped immigrants maintain a strong relationship to the homeland. "I think," Mindiola says, "we're going to rival Miami as the international gateway for Latin America."
Take a stroll through Harrisburg Plaza, on the city's southeast side, where the Rent-A-Center screams "¡Se habla español!" where Amco Auto Insurance promises low, low monthly payments, and the Korean-owned Seven Mart Factory Outlet serves up everything from Last Supper beach towels to strings of multicolored cardboard cutouts spelling out good wishes for your party: "Feliz Bautizo" ("Happy Baptism"). Most of the CD racks at the neon-lit Ritmo Latino store are crammed with regional Mexican sounds—banda, cumbias, rancheras, norteñas—and you can wire money anywhere south of the border while you're at it. Next door, Su Optica Latina advertises Thalia eyewear; across the street, Pegasso Tours sends off a bus every evening, "comfortable and safe," to Monterrey. On the sidewalk the snow-cone and popsicle vendors offer their products in the delightful flavors of back home: tamarindo, chicle, piña colada. In the parking lot, rickety Grand Marquis and shiny F-150's burst with jumpy children and giddy young couples and grandmothers in flowery skirts. The spirit is one of presence, of vibrancy, not one of life on the margins. The burden of history feels a little lighter here; perhaps it helps that there is no Alamo to remind its people of a more difficult past.
Latino radio is thriving, and Univision is now Houston's most-watched television station in the daytime. But Houston's Latin Americans are also permeating more-privileged cultural places—the Museum of Fine Arts, for one, recently featured two Latino-related exhibits at once and has hired a Puerto Rican curator to develop a permanent Latin American collection. Latinos are also forging their own cultural institutions. Organizations like Talento Bilingüe and Nuestra Palabra provide weekly and monthly venues for writers and artists to strum their guitars, dance the tango, and recite poetry about growing up in the tougher streets of Houston. This month Edward James Olmos' Latino Book and Family Festival comes to town, the first time the massive Los Angeles-based gathering has traveled to Texas.
Although the stereotype has it that Latino immigrants are credit-averse, in Houston they're enthusiastically buying into the biggest American promise, taking out loans not just to buy cars and refrigerators but to open up their own restaurants and flower shops and contracting companies. During a recent morning talk show on Estéreo Latino 102.9 FM, the city's most popular Spanish-language radio station, one Latino immigrant contractor called in to boast about the earnings he can make in Houston without a college degree. He likes this city, he announced, because he can stroll into a restaurant in his cowboy shirt and his "pumpkin-colored boots" and nobody stares. "They don't have these built-in fears about not being able to make it," says Houston native Richard Torres, the president of the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "They're used to struggling, and that's what it takes to make that jump and open up a business." Hailing from countries where factory jobs are few and many people are forced to live off of their skills, be it baking sweet Guatemalan coronas or crafting Tweety Bird piñatas, Latino immigrants are poised to become Houston's new class of entrepreneurs.
But factor in the opportunity this city provides at the other end of the economic ladder—factor in, that is, the more highly educated arrivals, the upwardly mobile Mexican Americans from Houston and beyond—and it increasingly means six-figure salaries at big corporations and law firms. Last year, the president of the Houston Bar Association was a partner at Locke Liddell and Sapp, Roland Garcia; this year, J. P. Morgan Chase's Houston-region chairman is David Mendez. The diversity is as great economically as it is ethnically. "That's what I like about Houston," says Sylvia Garcia. "If you want barbacoa al pozo, the way we used to make it in Palito Blanco, you can find it. But if you'd rather go to a black-tie event at one of our country clubs and eat filet mignon, you can find it, and you can get in without a problem."
Long-standing problems endemic to Houston's Latino community do remain. Being Latino in Houston, even more than in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, too often translates to construction worker, hotel janitor, dishwasher, nanny. Latinos often complain about police harrassment, and the beating death in nearby Baytown of migrant laborer Luis Alfonso Torres has only fueled suspicions of racially motivated violence. (The FBI is investigating whether the mentally unstable man's civil rights were violated, as a video shows him being pummeled by the officers who had subdued him.) Politically, much work remains to be done. Latino's entrance into local government still has to be pitched on ethnic terms. Turnout is also a problem. When Sanchez came close to winning the mayoral runoff, Latinos rejoiced that their share of the vote hit an all-time high—but it constituted a meager 15 percent of the vote. "We've emerged from being a small vote to being an important swing vote," says Mindiola, "but we have yet to achieve our full potential." And then there's the seemingly never-ending project of improving public schools in an immense school district where 56 percent of the students are Latino and three fourths are low-income.
"Structural oppression" we call it in graduate school. History, poor resources, and a lack of access to power have collided to make life tough for ethnic groups, especialy in large urban areas. So how could I sit before my keyboard in good conscience and argue that Houston is the best place for Latino's to live? I picked up my phone and dumped my dilemma on a friend, Guadalupe San Miguel, a professor of history at the University of Houston. He's an activist intellectual who protests the inadequacy of bilingual education before the school board and gets numerous gigs speaking to groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens. He encourages his students by asking them to study their communities—to write about their own experience, to study culture on the streets. He would know. I posed the million-dollar question: If structural oppression exists, how can Houston's Latinos still be so chirpy?
He confirmed what everbody else had been saying all along: optimism. While recognizing their disadvantages, he said, Houston's Latinos are more interested in finding ways to get ahead. "When I give speeches in the communities," he confessed, "I can't be too negative because people are having positive experiences too. I would argue that both the immigrants here and the Chicanos, at least the activist Chicanos, have the optimism." Sharing my wonder, he added, "I haven't seen that anywhere else."
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