Becoming Visible
Running for Public Office

In Worcester, Latino trailblazers have paved the way for others to participate in politics and run for public office. The first civic and community leaders arose from among the original Puerto Rican families to settle in the Heart of the Commonwealth, many of whom migrated from the New York metropolitan area or from cities in the Connecticut River Valley such as Hartford, Connecticut, or Springfield, Massachusetts. Pioneers include the Ojeda, Reyes, Pérez, Rodríguez, and Cruz families, who settled in Worcester in the 1950s and ´60s, followed soon after by families such as Sarai Rivera´s and Juan Gómez´s, the latter of both Puerto Rican and Dominican descent.

In 1989, Juan Gómez was the first member of the Latino community to campaign for political office, running unsuccessfully for a seat on the Worcester School Committee. In the wake of the death of Salvadoran immigrant Cristino Wilfredo Hernández from injuries sustained during his arrest at the hands of Worcester police officers in 1993, community outrage motivated renewed interest among Latinos in running for public office. José Pérez Jr., who succeeded his father as pastor at Rock of Salvation Church, ran for a seat on the Worcester School Committee, losing to better-known candidates. And Gómez ran for political office again, this time for the Worcester City Council. Placing seventh out of twelve candidates, he just missed the mark for one of the six at-large seats. Two years later, in 1995, Gómez initiated his third bid for political office, running for a second time for an at-large seat on the City Council, but had to withdraw from the race for personal reasons.

A watershed in the fight for political representation by the Worcester Latino Community was the 1997 campaign run by Maritza Cruz as a City Council candidate for the Fourth District. Although she did not win the election, her campaign, in collaboration with the Worcester Latino Voter Registration and Education Project under the leadership of Marilyn Reyes, registered a combined total of over 4500 new voters in that District, most of whom were Latinos, and voter turnout reached a record high.

In 1999, Juan Gómez made the difficult decision to run again for Worcester City Council. This time, his perseverance paid off and he became a Councilor on 26 July 2000 when Stacey Deboise Luster resigned from her at-large seat. Gómez went on to run successfully for at-large seats on the Council in 2001 an 2003, but lost in 2005, after which he became executive director of CENTRO (formerly Centro las Américas), which he has led for the past fourteen years. In 2007, Maritza Cruz ran again for the Council, this time as an at-large candidate, but did not make it past the primary.

The first Latina to serve on the Worcester City Council, 2012-present, is Sarai Rivera, co-senior pastor at Christian Community Church, founded by her parents upon their arrival in Worcester in the early 1970s. Rivera represents the Fourth District, which encompasses Vernon Hill, Green Island, Main South, and Webster Square, running from Elm Park in the north to Cookson Field in the south.

Latino representation on the Worcester School Committee has been even more elusive. Until Hilda Ramirez was elected in 2013, no members of the Latino community had served in that capacity and, after Ramirez´s unsuccessful bid for reelection in 2015, there has been no subsequent Latino presence. As all members of the School Committee are elected at-large (since the City's most recent charter reform in 1987), lack of incumbency is a significant obstacle to name recognition. Despite a steady rise in the numbers of Latino students in the public schools over the past four decades (see chart below), all other Latino campaigns have been unsuccessful--José Pérez Jr. in 1995 and 1997, Sam Rosario in 1999, Hilda Ramirez in 2015, among others. Under the auspices of Worcester Interfaith and the Worcester branch of the Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a coalition of Black, Asian and Latino residents of Worcester filed a federal voting rights lawsuit on February 8, 2021, alleging that the City’s at-large system for electing School Committee members discriminates against communities of color. According to the lawsuit, “the use of an at-large system for all seats on the Worcester School Committee dilutes the voting power of minority voters in Worcester, violating the federal Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.” (Narrative by Cynthia Stone, College of the Holy Cross)

Sources

Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts Boston and Women's Pipeline for Change, "Profiles in Leadership: Women of Color Elected to Office in Massachusetts" (2015). Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy Publications. Paper 27. http://scholarworks.umb.edu/cwppp_pubs/27

Diaz, Roberto. 2013. “Puerto Ricans and Political Power in Worcester: Multiethnic Coalition Building of Autonomous Voices of Political Power.” Master’s thesis, Clark University.

Gómez, Juan. 2002. “An Insider’s View of Latino Politics: Worcester.” In Latino Politics in Massachusetts: Struggles, Strategies and Prospects. Eds. Hardy-Fanta, Carol, and Jeffrey Gerson.. New York: Routledge.

LHP oral interviews with Maritza Cruz, Juan Gómez, Domingo Medina, Hilda Ramirez, Sarai Rivera, Ruth Rodríguez

Samuel Morse interviews with Luis G. Pérez and Juan Gómez

Susana Amaral interview with Domingo Medina
Worcester Women´s Oral History interviews with Sarai Rivera, Hilda Ramirez, Gladys Rodríguez Parker, Isabel González Webster