"Salvadoran Americans in the DC Area" is an installment in the DC History Center’s Context for Today series of online conversations with thoughtful and thought-provoking historians, activists, journalists, and community members.
These resources on Salvadoran immigrant communities and the Latina/o/x presence in Washington offer a beginning to the ongoing historical documentation of these relative newcomers to Washington, DC.
Salvadoran Americans amid the Latina/o/x world of DC
Today DC’s Latina/o/x residents account for approximately 12% of the city’s population. While Salvadoran Americans are the fourth largest Latina/o/x group in the United States, they are by far the largest Latina/o/x group in DC.
Although DC has had a Mayor’s Office of Latino Affairs since 1976, the Latina/o/x communities in general still lack political representation at a city level. This is also a particularly fraught time in our national history, when federal policies to support immigrants, such as the reprieve from deportation provided by Temporary Protected Status, were threatened by the Trump administration.
To understand the impact of the absence of political representation, it’s helpful to go back in time. The 1970 Census—the first to try to identify individuals of Hispanic origin or descent—counted 17,561 Latina/o/x people. But those numbers were a far cry from the actual number. Because city services are delivered in large part based on census numbers, undercounting would have disastrous effects on residents who were already underserved. The Census undercount was a galvanizing force for advocates of representation and civil rights. 
The Latino Festival was established in 1970 to bring together disparate communities with a common goal: literally to show the city and its government that they existed. That celebration continues more than 50 years later as Fiesta DC. The Latino Festival addressed the issue of defining community and interests. To many Washingtonians, Black and White, these 20th-century immigrants appeared to be a monolithic, Spanish-speaking population competing for turf in Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, and Columbia Heights. But for the people—who moved here from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Panama—they were anything but monolithic. Their nationalities and their class and race differences, not to mention their varying reasons for leaving behind their homeland, were stronger markers of identity than commonalities of language.
These decades-old issues continue to reverberate through successive waves of gentrification, assimilation, and political change. The immigrants’ history is found throughout the DC Metropolitan Area. To provide some context to this picture, we offer these resources on the Salvadoran immigrant community.
On March 18, 2021, Professor Ana Patricia Rodríguez and oral historian José Centeno-Meléndez discussed how DC’s Salvadoran immigrant community maintains its cultural identity in DC. They were joined by special guest Abel Nuñez, executive director of CARECEN, for a conversation about issues of Salvadoran political representation and the impact of both local and federal politics on the community.
Washington Post and New York Times articles are free with your DC Public Library or other local library card. To access the full list of newspapers available through DCPL click here.
Washington History Magazine can be viewed and downloaded from JSTOR after making a free account. Current and past issues are available for purchase from the DC History Center's online store.
Many thanks to Ana Patricia Rodríguez, PhD, and José A. Centeno-Meléndez for their guidance in developing this reading list further exploring the contributions of, and challenges faced by, DC area Latina/o/x communities.
Help us keep the DC History Center's guide up-to-date. Send additional resources and/or edits to library@dchistory.org. We appreciate your efforts and contributions!
