Friday, November 29, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Burgeoning Hispanic population growing more powerful in Las Vegas marketplace

Jaime Martinez, who owns four La Bonita grocery stores in Las Vegas, is one of a growing number of Hispanics catering to the area's burgeoning Hispanic population. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

Jaime Martinez's four area grocery stores stock the sort of products you would find in a Mexico City mercado.

Tender cactus. Nopalitos. Chiles. Mazapan.

You might spot them in a Von's or Albertson's, but they are definitely on La Bonita's shelves.

Thousands flock to the stores each week, seeking Latin American foods and flavors.

Although the store has started advertising on a local English-language cable television station, most of the customers are Hispanic. So are most of the stores' 100 workers. Spanish is the predominant language.

If a Las Vegan wants to eye the city's future much of it can be spotted in La Bonita's crowded aisles, where young families from Mexico and Guatemala and El Salvador shop for food.

"As long as there are jobs, and people are telling their families in Arizona and Los Angeles that there's work people will keep coming," Martinez said. "We're trying to survive. That's all."

Southern Nevada is experiencing a significant change in ethnicity, a transformation that has changed the face of the West.

Retired seniors and blue-collar whites continue to flock here in search of relatively inexpensive housing, low taxes and jobs that pay a living wage. The same holds true for Hispanics, who build homes, landscape yards, wash dishes, practice medicine and law, teach school and management companies.

The numbers are growing exponentially, generating a change that is helping drive the economy and alter the community's social and political makeup.

For example:

• An estimated 320,000 Hispanics lived in Southern Nevada in 2000, constituting about 25 percent of the region's population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That total may be closer to 370,000 today.

That compares with an estimated 80,000 Hispanics, who comprised 11 percent of the population in 1990. The vast majority are here legally, although an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 are undocumented, immigration law experts say. No one knows the exact number.

• Twenty-three percent of all Clark County School District 12th-graders are Hispanic, but 37 percent of all kindergartners are.

The numbers reflect the influx of young Hispanic families who have found work in the region and are purchasing their first homes and cars and everything else that comes with new-found buying power.

• Hispanics generate about $17 billion of Southern Nevada's $69 billion gross regional product, said Keith Schwer, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas economic professor who studies such numbers.

That is one of every four dollars spent on all goods and services sold locally.

• An estimated 9,000 Hispanic housekeepers successfully pushed talks between labor and management in what led to new five-year contracts for the 45,000 members of Culinary Local 226.

• A record 28 Hispanics appeared on the Clark County election ballot for the May primary. Five were elected to office.

"If you removed all the Latinos from Las Vegas this town would be extremely damaged, especially the economy," said Maria Raquel Casas, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

One sign of that is the growing number of Hispanic businesses sprouting up in Southern Nevada.

The Small Business Administration, for instance, reports a rapid growth in Hispanic businesses in Nevada, as reflected in the number of Hispanics obtaining SBA loans. Twenty-four small businesses owned by Hispanics obtained $6.07 million in SBA loans in 1997. In the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the total was 44 Hispanic-owned businesses with $9.9 million in loans.

John Scott, Nevada district director of the SBA, attributes the growth to their "strong family ties and strong work ethic." Family support can play a key role in the "lonely profession" of running a small business, he said.

"A strong extended family can lend essential support to lead to long-term success," he said.

Much of the Hispanic community lives in geographic pockets off Charleston Boulevard or Sahara Avenue, near Decatur and Valley View boulevards, off Eastern Avenue, to name a few. Enclave residents typically live in high-density apartment buildings and older, inner-city homes. A sizable percentage house more than one family.

While Mayor Oscar Goodman and other city officials try to develop ways to lure suburbanites and white-collar workers to the city's troubled downtown, Hispanics already live and shop in the urban core.

Downtown businesses who cater to Spanish speakers have a growing stream of customers, the sort of free-spenders that Goodman hopes to attract to the aging business corridor.

"That's possible. That would make sense to me," Clark County planner Cherie Garrity said of a greater commercial appeal to Hispanics by downtown's business community.

Anglo-operated businesses are increasingly seeking Latino dollars. Station Casinos, the Valley Auto Mall and Bank of America advertise on Spanish-language radio and TV stations, which claim some of the country's most loyal audiences.

Aggressive businesses are hiring bilingual workers to better communicate with their customers. Spanish-language billboards have begun to appear along the city's roadways. Yet, many major casino operators have failed to comprehend the depth of the Hispanic market, Las Vegas marketing executive Joseff Vann argued.

"When speaking about a casino's offerings Hispanics are an exceedingly untapped consumer base with cultural predispositions and propensities to gamble," Vann recently wrote. "They are fiercely brand loyal and will respond and continue to support if properly invited."

The Mexico City-born marketing executive is managing director of Grupo Hall Communicaciones, a division of the Las Vegas-based advertising firm Hall Communications.

"For gaming companies not to pay attention to it doesn't make good marketing sense to someone like me," Vann argued.

With each passing year, Hispanic buying power grows throughout the region. Like the one-time Polish emigrés of Chicago, the Irish of Boston, the Eastern Europeans of New York City, many Latinos are beginning to make the leap to the higher-end neighborhoods of Summerlin and Green Valley.

"Hispanics are very industrious and have been able to start with small businesses and have been able to expand in areas that were dilapidated before," immigration law expert Malena Burnett said.

"Most of them have a drive for work. They are more motivated to succeed because they know the difference between where they came from and what they have here. If they crossed deserts and climbed mountains I think the easiest thing they can do is succeed in business."

But there are challenges.

The troubled national economy has cut into business at Martinez' La Bonita. Sales have slowed during the past six months. He has hired fewer workers, and there is a glut of job-hungry Hispanics in the community.

"The promised land is starting to fade out because there are so many of us," Martinez said. "There are a lot of people looking for work, a lot of people coming here but not so many stay."

A dramatic increase in the price of a new Las Vegas home during the past decade -- from less than $100,000 in the early 1990s to $183,456 in August -- has further cut into the city's luster for Hispanics, the entrepreneur said. The median price of a used home was $153,000 in August.

And it is difficult for young Hispanics to receive financing to start their own businesses, largely because many lack a record of past business success.

"It's tough, very tough getting started," Martinez said.

Review-Journal writer John G. Edwards contributed to this report.