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Besides the presidential election, there is also a Senate election in Massachusetts Tuesday. NEPM and GBH hosted a senate debate in October with incumbent U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, and Republican candidate John Deaton. Both answered post-debate questions about supporting Latino business owners in western Massachusetts.
Warren highlighted her ongoing efforts to help Latino-owned businesses in the region.
“For example, a restaurant wants to get started. But there's a lot of startup costs and inspection fees. Who's got that kind of money? Banks are just not going to lend to these little businesses getting started,” Warren said.
She pointed out that she had secured around half a million dollars in funding to assist Springfield’s Latino Economic Development Corporation, which helped support local businesses. “They have lent it out, and here’s the best part: they’ve gotten repaid and lent it out again. And they’ve gotten repaid again,” she noted.
Deaton emphasized his background growing up in a subsection of Detroit and expressed support for tax incentives for Latino businesses.
“I come from the inner city and what you see is, you see a migration out of the inner city. We have to get people to go back into the inner city.” Deaton said. “One way to do that is to give tax credits to Latino-owned businesses and encourage that.”
Andrew Melendez, founder and director of the Latino Economic Development Corporation, discussed the significance of the funding secured by Warren and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-MA.
“Elizabeth Warren came to our office, sat down with local businesses and wanted to see how their investment, the federal side, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, have both signed on to, to support the Latino EDC with a 550,000 earmark,” Melendez said, highlighting that the earmark supported initiatives such as helping Springfield-based Latino restaurant Las Kangris set up a presence at the Big E.
Melendez also responded to Deaton's proposal for tax credits.
“I think the candidate for Senate is onto something. But to get a tax credit, you have to have the cash to begin with,” Melendez noted, pointing out the broader issue of access to capital for Latino businesses.
Xiomara DeLobato, of the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts, echoed this sentiment.
“There isn’t extra savings that they can use to help their business. They rely on getting paid for their services as soon as possible,” DeLobato said. “And then two, there's some grants and stuff from the state, from the federal government that have funding that small businesses really need in order to, pay their staff, buy equipment.”
Despite the challenges, DeLobato expressed optimism.
“I do think that our politicians and our elected officials and our municipal leaders are looking out for the best interests of businesses and Latino businesses. And I say this because Latino business owners are the fastest growing group in the business sector,” she said.
DeLobato shared data showing that from 2007 to 2019, Latino businesses in sectors such as construction and agriculture saw growth of more than 20%.
Pedro Arroyo, the owner of Juguitos, a juice and healthy food store in downtown Springfield, shared firsthand the difficulties Latino entrepreneurs face when seeking loans.
“We try to go get a traditional loan from the bank. It's almost impossible. And I can't believe it's even till this day, I'm going on four years and we're constantly getting turned down,” Arroyo said.
He described how, even with proven business success, securing funding is a challenge.
“The only thing that gets offered to us, tt's these things called merchant cash advances. And those things are horrible. Like I don't even, I don't even know how those things are legal. They're predatory,” he added.
Despite these obstacles, Arroyo emphasized the importance of community solidarity.
“There's so much more that we could do as a community. Honestly, that whole idea was just like, you got the Black community, the Hispanic community and all that. I look past that,” he said, noting that “no matter what race you are, we all should be working together and helping each other out.”
This is part four of a five-part series for The Latino Election Project. The previous four stories, with corresponding Spanish versions, are here. The series wraps up with a post-election story.
