The food was hearty, the mood was upbeat, and the English was a bit mangled – as was the Spanish attempted by most Anglos. But despite the festive ambiance and the informal setting, the gathering at Ada’s Creations on Monday was all about business.
Laurie White, the new president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, has made it a priority to reach out to the Hispanic community, and this reception, at one of Broad Street’s most upscale eateries, was her first chance to meet many local merchants.
A full 30 percent of the Providence population is Hispanic, and Hispanics are the fastest-growing segment of Rhode Island entrepreneurs, with a 56.2-percent increase in businesses from 1997 to 2002, seven times the growth in the state’s total business count.
In places like South Providence, where Ada’s has expanded into a large takeout shop, a restaurant and a popular nightspot, Latinos dominate the business community. But only about 5 percent of the Providence Chamber’s members are Hispanic, White said.
Latinos have already been making inroads at the Chamber through the local Hispanic-American Chamber of Commerce, an affiliate of the Providence Chamber led by entrepreneur Juana Horton that provides dual membership for all who enroll.
In the trenches, however – in the little bodegas, takeout restaurants, gift shops, beauty salons and other small businesses run by Latinos across the city – Chamber membership has not, for the most part, taken root. But another group, the Greater Providence Merchants Association (until recently, South Side Merchants), has been gaining membership and clout by organizing Latinos at the grass-roots level while bringing top government officials into the neighborhood to meet the merchants right in their own businesses.
In September, the president and founder of that group, José Brito, was named to the Providence Chamber’s board of directors, and in October, White went on one of Brito’s tours, with U.S. Sen. Jack Reed. They had lunch at Ada’s, and that led to the idea of the reception.
“I was really excited about doing this,” White said. “This is such an emerging growth area.”
Before introducing White, Brito took a moment to outline the local merchants’ agenda: to organize and educate the business owners so they can access the resources they need – and in the bigger picture, to push for a better life for their community, with affordable housing, health care, good educational programs and economic development initiatives.
White noted that these are all common goals: “They are all pivotal, absolutely pivotal to all of us businesspeople.” Afterward, in an interview, she said she’d been “really heartened” to realize how closely aligned their goals were.
“If we coalesced our forces,” she said, “then we could get some traction.”
Given the language barriers – White speaks no Spanish, and many of the Latino merchants speak no English – only some of the guests were able to connect directly with White. But speaking to their hostess and amongst themselves, they made it clear that they have high expectations for the Chamber, because they could use a lot of help.
Euclides Grullón, owner of the Webster Meat Market, at 249 Webster Ave., and an 18-year veteran of local business, said the Chamber has “100 percent” more clout than any single merchant, because of the large community it represents, and Latinos could really use that.
“We have some problems with the language, and we don’t understand the system,” Grullón said. “But the Chamber does know the language, the laws, the country. And so they can represent us if we have any kind of problem.”
Grullón also said he hopes the Chamber would draw attention to South Providence, because it has “a lot of merchants who work very hard, and we’ve made progress, but we need more help. And they have to reach out, because sometimes we can be stuck in our shells, and the institutions need to make a bigger effort to get us out of it.”
Hints of that were in view on Monday night – not only from White, but from Denise A. Barge, executive director of the Minority Investment Development Corporation, and representatives of The Met School, the Community College of Rhode Island, Bank of America and Cranston-based DomesticBank.
In brief remarks to the merchants, Barge noted that “business is business, no matter where you come from or what language you speak.”
It was exactly the kind of attitude that Maria Dalmari, Brito’s wife and owner of the Elegant Beauty Salon, at 1017 Broad St., said she hopes will become the norm someday soon.
“We want to be acknowledged as real businesspeople,” she said, “not just in the South Side, but all across Rhode Island.”
