Hispanic New York

Over the past few decades, a wave of immigration has turned New York into a microcosm of the Americas and enhanced its role as the crossroads of the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds. Yet far from being an alien group within a "mainstream" and supposedly pure "Anglo" America, people referred to as Hispanics or Latinos have been part and parcel of New York since the beginning of the city's history. They represent what Walt Whitman once celebrated as "the Spanish element of our nationality." Hi