An Hispano Landscape: 1900–45
After the Spanish-Cuban-American War, Spaniards and Latin Americans came to New York in ever-greater numbers, increasingly making their presence felt in the wider city. Their communities and organizations served as portals, through which home country cultural influences flowed, and as crucibles, wherein innovative cultural forms were created in fruitful interplay with metropolitan institutions and peoples.
The colonia hispana—to use a contemporary term that embraced all the city's Spanish-speaking communities—also mobilized around social and political issues. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), New York hispanos rallied to both sides of the conflict. In doing so they left behind older antagonisms, rooted in Latin American struggles against the Spanish empire, that had divided them along national lines. The result was a more cohesive Spanish-speaking community, one better prepared to meet the challenges of the postwar era.