- you know how they used to say the streets of new york were paved with gold? and then wave after wave of immigrants came here to make their lives better for themselves. the irish, the italians, the jews, the chinese they all got whole neighborhoods named after them. but what about us latinos? we ve been here in this city, and we ve got every kind of latino. you want your puerto ricans? wepa. you want your cubans? dale! dominicans? que lo que tigre. colombianos? todo bien, todo bien. mexicanos? no manches, guey. and this is where i grew up, too. and when i was a kid, i don t know what the streets were paved with, but it damn sure as hell was not gold. but that didn t stop latinx new yorkers from making big contributions. basquiat, rita moreno puerto rican. cardi b dominican. supreme court justice sotomayor, nuyorican from the bx. even the very first non-indigenous person to live and work in the island of manhattan in the 1600s