DMV Latino neighborhoods by nationality
By hola | Published | No Comments
While Latinos live all over the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and in every ward in the District, different national groups have established their communities in different places.
Latinos started to move to the Washington, D.C. area in the 1940s for various reasons. Many came to work at Latin American embassies that opened along 16th Street NW after World War II, first settling nearby in the Adams Morgan and Mt Pleasant neighborhoods and eventually spreading out around the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area.
This summer we started our mapping project by looking in the District and then expanded our focus to the surrounding areas. Using maps made by Diane Patterson and Nicholas John based on 2010 Census data, we learned a lot about where Latinos live in the Washington area, mapping population clusters for eight of the Washington area’s largest Latino national groups.
What is immediately obvious is that the region’s largest Latin American national groups each have a significant presence in the District of Columbia, while Peruvians and Bolivians live almost exclusively in Washington’s Maryland and Virginia suburbs, where most of the region’s nearly 1 million Latinos have settled. In the D.C. area, the counties with the largest Latino populations are Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland and Alexandria and Fairfax in Northern Virginia.
– Story by Jeniffer Peña Alvarez
– Maps by Diane Patterson and Nicholas John
Recent Stories
