From time to time we will publish articles about El Centro to give readers a sense of our long tradition and commitment to dignity, respect, and justice for those who have immigrated to our community in search of a better life for themselves and their families.
We are very pleased to inaugurate the series with an article by John Ripton, one of the group of community activists, religious leaders, and refugees from the wars in Central America who in 1984 founded El Centro Hispanoamericano.
Created not only to aid those fleeing conditions in their homelands but also to help change the policies of United States that contributed to those conditions, El Centro continues its legacy of serving the immigrant community in New Jersey.
John presently is Chairperson of the History Department at Gill St. Bernards School in Peapack, NJ. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “Salvadoran Peasants and the Global Market”. He also is adjunct instructor at Rutgers University.
The Founding of El Centro Hispanoamericano
by John Ripton, Co-founder of El Centro Hispanoamericano
I welcome the opportunity to reflect upon the founding of El Centro Hispanoamericano in 1984. Since I consider the creation and first decade of El Centro to be one of the most politically dynamic periods of my life, I accept as a privilege to be able to share some reflections on this experience.
The initial idea for a Latino community organization in Plainfield surfaced over the course of several meetings in which local U.S. citizens and recent Salvadoran immigrants discussed the civil wars in Central America, particularly El Salvador, the U.S. government role in the region, and what we, as a community could do to address the escalating violence there. We were also very concerned about the plight of refugees and their needs as they arrived in central New Jersey.
Several persons were instrumental in those early discussions and the founding of El Centro. In addition to me, there were Brooks Smith, then pastor at the Watchung Avenue Presbyterian Church in North Plainfield; Tony and Gloria Sanchez who had fled El Salvador as students after the university was occupied by government troops; Ivan Flores, also a refugee from El Salvador; Ed Schneider, pastor of the Congregational Church of Plainfield; Reverend Ted Miller of the United Presbyterian Church of Plainfield; and Patricia Bender, who was at the time director of the Plainfield Senior Citizen Center. The first two directors of El Centro – Sandra Gold and Madlyn Wohlman – gave shape to our programs, initiating the outreach and services that established El Centro’s vital presence in Central New Jersey.
Later Esther Chavez of Rahway and Denis Johnston of Elizabeth became very influential persons in El Centro’s early history, playing central roles as Director and Board member respectively. Esther had personally witnessed much of the violence in El Salvador before immigrating to New Jersey where she became a community activist. Denis was the executive director of the American Friends Service Committee in Newark and had traveled extensively throughout Latin America. Erik Werfel of Cranford and Joyce Phipps of Plainfield, both attorneys, contributed countless hours to clients. Erik became Board Chair in the 1990s and continues to lead the organization.
Brooks Smith was a driving and resourceful force behind fundraising campaigns to establish and operate El Centro during that first decade. He facilitated church funding and guided El Centro into accepting and effectively using government grants. Tony Sanchez and I shared leadership of the Board as Vice Chair and Chair, respectively. In addition to our Board responsibilities, we all volunteered many hours each month at El Centro. We engaged in political activity as well as provided legal services and social service support. We obtained pro bono attorney assistance and eventually funded an attorney position, even funding a significant portion of our legal services operations through sliding-scale client fees. The most frequent legal cases involved family petitions along with many applications for political asylum.
Within a few years we acquired a staff of three including a full-time executive director, a full-time para-legal and a part-time social services coordinator. Sandra Gold, served as our first executive director, having been in the Peace Corps and completed a Masters degree in education. One of our para-legals was a volunteer from the Claretian Order of priests. The International Institute in Jersey City assisted us with legal advice and training, even representing some of our first legal clients in immigration court at the Federal Building in Newark. The Presbytery of Elizabeth provided the majority of El Centro’s funding during the early years. El Centro eventually selected Esther Chavez, as its first executive director from the Central American immigrant community.
Political asylum cases were one side of more extensive political activities in which we engaged in those early years. We sponsored public film screenings and discussions about the wars in Central America. We demonstrated against labor conditions at sweatshops in Central America and organized a civic protest in front of the Tia Rosa restaurant on Somerset Street in North Plainfield when Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani stopped there, entering through the back door. The Star-Ledger covered our demonstration on its front page. Cristiani prosecuted war against his fellow countrymen while posturing as a beacon of democracy. El Centro Director Esther Chavez and many Board members were photographed with ketchup, symbolizing the blood being spilt in the region, on our raised hands.
Most of us – Central American community leaders and birthright citizens residing in central New Jersey – believed that the foreign and domestic policies of the U.S. government had to be challenged. We also believed that those policies and the documented torture taking place were directly related to the stream of Central American refugees into New Jersey. We participated in national marches in Washington, DC and at least two Board members were arrested and detained with dozens of other activists for participating in nonviolent civil disobedience on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.
This activism was not without consequence. Our offices were broken into one night and our computer hard drives were stolen. Later in 1989, a clearer political message was registered when our offices were broken into again. A photograph of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero was trashed and the office was ransacked, leaving files of confidential documents strewn across the floor.
During this period, El Centro’s staff and Board members also sponsored cultural events. Some raised funds for our educational programs (English as a Second Language and Citizenship Readiness) while also offering engaging entertainment with political, historical and cultural content. We organized two concerts that drew several hundred people to the United Presbyterian Church of Plainfield. The Boston-based Central American group “Flor de Cana” played its popular dance music. Also, the Salvadoran group “Cutumay Camones” from the “liberated zone” of Chalatenango sang original musical interpretations of the popular insurgency. We also presented traditional meals, sold traditional crafts, and commemorated the life and words of the assassinated Archbishop Romero in March each year. Our annual Navidad fiesta for community children was a personal highlight enabling me to play Santa on a couple of wonderful winter days in December.
In those days we gathered for annual retreats, usually at a Board member’s home. As Board chair, I put together presentations with newspaper articles, important documents, photographs, advertising posters, our brochures, protest materials and excerpts of Board minutes to remind us of our mission and where we had been as an organization. Hopefully it affirmed our existence as a significant community organization and provided some perspective for developing new goals for the upcoming year.
In the early 1990s El Centro entered one of its most trying periods. With the Central American peace accords signed, the broad violence of the region was reduced yet the future remained uncertain. At the same time many Central American immigrants had established family roots in New Jersey and were less interested in returning to their home countries where life was no longer what they had known. Moreover, their children were often American by popular culture if not by birth. Consequently, a new direction for El Centro was warranted. The time had come for El Centro to become an organization within the Latino community geared toward helping people establish and maintain healthy lives here in New Jersey.
It was not an easy transition but twenty years later it is clear that the new direction has met with significant support in the community. I know challenges lie ahead, as they always do for a small nonprofit organization. But I applaud the new initiatives being taken by the Board and El Centro’s talented executive director Silvia Hernandez in continuing to build the community base and expanding the vital services El Centro Hispanoamericano provides to those in need. I am pleased to be a member the newly created Advisory Committee of El Centro and to be able to reconnect with Brooks, Esther, Denis, Erik and others who have helped shape this vital organization.
In its 28th anniversary year I offer this thought to commemorate El Centro Hispanoamericano – a fence never wants to be built, it only wants to be torn down, and if it is ignored it will fall in peace.
From time to time we will publish articles about El Centro to give readers a sense of our long tradition and commitment to dignity, respect, and justice for those who have immigrated to our community in search of a better life for themselves and their families.
We are very pleased to inaugurate the series with an article by John Ripton, one of the group of community activists, religious leaders, and refugees from the wars in Central America who in 1984 founded El Centro Hispanoamericano.
Created not only to aid those fleeing conditions in their homelands but also to help change the policies of United States that contributed to those conditions, El Centro continues its legacy of serving the immigrant community in New Jersey.
John presently is Chairperson of the History Department at Gill St. Bernards School in Peapack, NJ. His doctoral dissertation was entitled “Salvadoran Peasants and the Global Market”. He also is adjunct instructor at Rutgers University.
The Founding of El Centro Hispanoamericano
by John Ripton, Co-founder of El Centro Hispanoamericano
I welcome the opportunity to reflect upon the founding of El Centro Hispanoamericano in 1984. Since I consider the creation and first decade of El Centro to be one of the most politically dynamic periods of my life, I accept as a privilege to be able to share some reflections on this experience.
The initial idea for a Latino community organization in Plainfield surfaced over the course of several meetings in which local U.S. citizens and recent Salvadoran immigrants discussed the civil wars in Central America, particularly El Salvador, the U.S. government role in the region, and what we, as a community could do to address the escalating violence there. We were also very concerned about the plight of refugees and their needs as they arrived in central New Jersey.
Several persons were instrumental in those early discussions and the founding of El Centro. In addition to myself, there were Brooks Smith, then pastor at the Watchung Avenue Presbyterian Church in North Plainfield; Tony and Gloria Sanchez who had fled El Salvador as students after the university was occupied by government troops; Ivan Flores, also a refugee from El Salvador; Ed Schneider, pastor of the Congregational Church of Plainfield; Reverend Ted Miller of the United Presbyterian Church of Plainfield; and Patricia Bender, who was at the time director of the Plainfield Senior Citizen Center. Later Esther Chavez of Rahway and Denis Johnston of Elizabeth became very influential persons in El Centro’s early history, playing central roles as Director and Board member respectively. Esther had personally witnessed much of the violence in El Salvador before immigrating to New Jersey where she became a community activist. Denis was the executive director of the American Friends Service Committee in Newark and had traveled extensively throughout Latin America. Erik Werfel of Cranford and Joyce Phipps of Plainfield, both attorneys, contributed countless hours to clients. Erik became Board Chair in the 1990s and continues to lead the organization.
Brooks Smith was a driving and resourceful force behind fundraising campaigns to establish and operate El Centro during that first decade. He facilitated church funding and guided El Centro into accepting and effectively using government grants. Tony Sanchez and I shared leadership of the Board as Vice Chair and Chair, respectively. In addition to our Board responsibilities, we all volunteered many hours each month at El Centro. We engaged in political activity as well as provided legal services and social service support. We obtained pro bono attorney assistance and eventually funded an attorney position, even funding a significant portion of our legal services operations through sliding-scale client fees. The most frequent legal cases involved family petitions along with many applications for political asylum.
Within a few years we acquired a staff of three including a full-time executive director, a full-time para-legal and a part-time social services coordinator. Sandra Gold, served as our first executive director, having been in the Peace Corps and completed a Masters degree in education. One of our para-legals was a volunteer from the Claretian Order of priests. The International Institute in Jersey City assisted us with legal advice and training, even representing some of our first legal clients in immigration court at the Federal Building in Newark. The Presbytery of Elizabeth provided the majority of El Centro’s funding during the early years. El Centro eventually selected Esther Chavez, as its first executive director from the Central American immigrant community.
Political asylum cases were one side of more extensive political activities in which we engaged in those early years. We sponsored public film screenings and discussions about the wars in Central America. We demonstrated against labor conditions at sweatshops in Central America and organized a civic protest in front of the Tia Rosa restaurant on Somerset Street in North Plainfield when Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani stopped there, entering through the back door. The Star-Ledger covered our demonstration on its front page. Cristiani prosecuted war against his fellow countrymen while posturing as a beacon of democracy. El Centro Director Esther Chavez and many Board members were photographed with ketchup, symbolizing the blood being spilt in the region, on our raised hands.
Most of us – Central American community leaders and birthright citizens residing in central New Jersey – believed that the foreign and domestic policies of the U.S. government had to be challenged. We also believed that those policies and the documented torture taking place were directly related to the stream of Central American refugees into New Jersey. We participated in national marches in Washington, DC and at least two Board members were arrested and detained with dozens of other activists for participating in nonviolent civil disobedience on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.
This activism was not without consequence. Our offices were broken into one night and our computer hard drives were stolen. Later in 1989, a clearer political message was registered when our offices were broken into again. A photograph of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero was trashed and the office was ransacked, leaving files of confidential documents strewn across the floor.
During this period, El Centro’s staff and Board members also sponsored cultural events. Some raised funds for our educational programs (English as a Second Language and Citizenship Readiness) while also offering engaging entertainment with political, historical and cultural content. We organized two concerts that drew several hundred people to the United Presbyterian Church of Plainfield. The Boston-based Central American group “Flor de Cana” played its popular dance music. Also, the Salvadoran group “Cutumay Camones” from the “liberated zone” of Chalatenango sang original musical interpretations of the popular insurgency. We also presented traditional meals, sold traditional crafts, and commemorated the life and words of the assassinated Archbishop Romero in March each year. Our annual Navidad fiesta for community children was a personal highlight enabling me to play Santa on a couple of wonderful winter days in December.
In those days we gathered for annual retreats, usually at a Board member’s home. As Board chair, I put together presentations with newspaper articles, important documents, photographs, advertising posters, our brochures, protest materials and excerpts of Board minutes to remind us of our mission and where we had been as an organization. Hopefully it affirmed our existence as a significant community organization and provided some perspective for developing new goals for the upcoming year.
In the early 1990s El Centro entered one of its most trying periods. With the Central American peace accords signed, the broad violence of the region was reduced yet the future remained uncertain. At the same time many Central American immigrants had established family roots in New Jersey and were less interested in returning to their home countries where life was no longer what they had known. Moreover, their children were often American by popular culture if not by birth. Consequently, a new direction for El Centro was warranted. The time had come for El Centro to become an organization within the Latino community geared toward helping people establish and maintain healthy lives here in New Jersey.
It was not an easy transition but twenty years later it is clear that the new direction has met with significant support in the community. I know challenges lie ahead, as they always do for a small nonprofit organization. But I applaud the new initiatives being taken by the Board and El Centro’s talented executive director Silvia Hernandez in continuing to build the community base and expanding the vital services El Centro Hispanoamericano provides to those in need. I am pleased to be a member the newly created Advisory Committee of El Centro and to be able to reconnect with Brooks, Esther, Denis, Erik and others who have helped shape this vital organization.
In its 28th anniversary year I offer this thought to commemorate El Centro Hispanoamericano – a fence never wants to be built, it only wants to be torn down, and if it is ignored it will fall in peace.