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From The Providence Journal
1.28.2001
Three who are making it

Cesar E. Mullix was 15 years old when his parents left the Dominican Republic for Rhode Island. Though they were professional social workers in their home country, their limited knowledge of English confined them for two years to low-wage work in Providence's jewelry factories.

Mullix learned English at Mount Pleasant High School, and his parents made sure that he and his siblings kept their noses firmly planted in books.

Now 26 and a self-described "workaholic," Mullix is preparing this spring to launch RILatino.com, the state's first Web site devoted to Latinos. The Web site will be a clearing house for information from registering a car to finding a church, a job, a bus route, and news about Spanish-speaking countries from Argentina to Venezuela. Visitors will be able to sign up for free e-mail accounts, and take part in online discussions on subjects from relationships and technology to Sammy Sosa and Pedro Martinez.

Mullix and his wife bought their first house last year. His office, for now, is a room in the basement where his three computers sit on an old glass-top kitchen table and across from a bookshelf full of computer programming books.

But he has big ideas. He is preparing a business plan to seek venture capital for the company and has already registered domain names he hopes to turn into businesses or sell: MASSlatino.com, CTlatino.com, NEWYORKlatino.com, and FLlatino.com.

One recent morning, he reached for a scrap of paper and drew a graph of the projected growth in Latino computer owners. He is betting that businesses will want to advertise on his site to reach them. Though RIlatino.com is still a work in progress, he says it is already receiving 15,000 hits a month.

"If we can create a good business model in Rhode Island," Mullix said the other day in his office, "we can do it anywhere."

Mullix is taking night classes to complete his bachelor's degree at the University of Rhode Island, and has worked as a computer programmer and Web designer for companies here and in Connecticut. But his future, he says, is as an entrepreneur.

"I had a lot of Latino friends with computers," he said. "Between them and myself, we thought there was not enough information on the Web about what was happening. We didn't have a resource from which we can find information of Latino interest."

Jorge Sanchez de Lozada, a Bolivian immigrant, worked for 10 years polishing and soldering jewelry in Providence. Then, one day in 1990, he needed to find a company to upholster his couch. He picked up the Yellow Pages and, with his spotty English, felt lost.

That year, the "Directorio Hispano: The Hispanic Yellow Pages," was born. The directory has grown over the past decade from a flimsy pamphlet of 56 pages to a glossy 206-page volume. Sanchez now has an office on Smith Hill and employs three part-time salesmen. His wife, Angelica, helps runs the business.

He said that his revenues have doubled over the past five years, and he hopes to soon place the directory on the Web. "We don't have enough money yet," he says.

When he first solicited big businesses to advertise in the directory, he heard excuses ranging from "not interested" to "We don't have staff that speaks Spanish." But in the past five years, he says, companies such as the ReMax and DeWolfe real estate agencies, BankBoston, Citizens Bank, Western Union, and the U.S. Postal Service have started calling him.

"The mentality now is, 'We want to do business with Hispanics,' " he said.

Evelyn Moronta's father still works second shift vacuuming and dusting offices at Brown University. Her mother operates a machine at a box-making factory. Both came from the Dominican Republic.

Moronta herself had worked summers at jewelry companies since she was 13.

But her parents pestered her at the dinner table and at family reunions to stay in school, even as her friends at Central High School were bunking or dropping out. Her parents asked her questions such as, Do you want do to what I'm doing? Do you want better things for your children? "Trust me," they'd say.

"When I was in high school, it was, 'Yeah, whatever,' " she recalls of her reaction to the parental advice. "But when I was almost done with college, the reality check kicked in.

"I didn't see myself doing what they were doing, because I see the struggle: having to work all day, coming home taking care of children, not being able to take nice vacations they always wanted to, not providing us everything like taking us to Disney World or giving us the cars we wanted," says Moronta. "They wanted to, but they couldn't afford it."

To help pay tuition at Rhode Island College, Moronta worked as a part-time teller at Fleet her freshman year as part of a work-study program. Within three years after graduation, she was promoted to branch manager at triple her starting salary. Moronta, 29, manages the Fleet Bank branch in Providence's predominantly Hispanic Washington Park neighborhood.

She has an office, supervises nine employees, and has a 401(k) retirement plan. She bought a duplex in Providence's Silver Lake section two years ago and drives a 1998 Volvo sedan.

She enjoys a kind of life -- including vacations to places such as Cancun and Disney World -- unavailable to her parents. "I'm living much more comfortably," she says.

- Ariel Sabar

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