Digital Extra

  3/25/99
She planted seeds of hispanic community

By MARTA V. MARTINEZ

As women are being recognized for their accomplishments during March, I would like to mention a lady who - until now - has never been formally honored for her significant contributions to Rhode Island's history.

Josefina Rosario will be honored on June 11 by the Rhode Island Historical Society during its first awards for the state's " history makers." She will be among three men, two women and an organization honored that night - the only Hispanic to be acknowledged.

I first met Josefina Rosario, affectionately known as "Dona Fefa," at a gathering in a friend's home in 1991. Dona Fefa and her family, my friend Juanita told me, had opened the first Hispanic restaurant in Rhode Island in the late 1950s. I also learned that she was one of the first women to become involved in educating the Puerto Ricans living in Rhode Island in the 1960s about the importance of registering to vote. And she and her husband, Tony, would offer to drive people to and from the polls on election night.

These brief stories impressed me so, I left the party feeling like I wanted to get to know more about Fefa. A few months later, I called and asked if I could pay her a visit.

Armed with a tape recorder, I drove to her house with a reporter from The Journal, whom I had invited because I thought there was something special about Fefa, and I wanted the newspaper to honor her for Mother's Day that year. As we talked through the night, I indeed discovered that there was more to Fefa's story than even she and her family had ever realized.

Her story has now become an important piece of an oral history project of the Hispanic community of Rhode Island that I am writing, a portion of which I would like to share with you as we celebrate Women's History Month in Rhode Island.

Josefina was born in the Dominican Republic when Rafael Trujillo came to power and established one of the longest-lasting dictatorships in Latin America. It was during Trujillo's reign of terror that many Dominicans, fearing they would be killed by his men, began to flee to the United States.

Fefa was personally affected by Trujillo's power in 1937 when secret service men murdered her father while he was in a hospital recovering from gunshot wounds. Her mother was left alone to raise 10 children. Fefa, the youngest, eventually made her way to New York City.

"I was twenty-one years old when I came to the United States." Fefa told me. "My sister Minerva del Rio lived in New York and I came to live with her for what I thought would be a brief visit."

She remembers that it was cold when she arrived, not like the temperature in Santo Domingo, where she had left behind warm tropical weather. It was Sept. 8, 1949. Her "brief" visit turned into months, then years. She met and married Antonio Rosario, a Puerto Rican man who also was living in New York.

After eight years in the city, Fefa and her husband moved to New Haven, where they found jobs working for the owner of a Greek restaurant.

"I started out there washing silverware. After a few years, Connie (the owner of the restaurant) and his wife decided to open a new place over here, in Rhode Island. A restaurant called Les Shaw, located right across from the airport in Warwick. . . . My husband was hired as the cook, and I was the salad lady."

This was 1957, a time when Hispanics were rare in Rhode Island, and the Rosarios felt the isolation keenly.

"I strongly believe that my family and I were the first Dominican family to live in Providence, and maybe Rhode Island," said Fefa. "I believe that because, in 1959, when we moved from Warwick to Providence - I was pregnant with a baby girl at the time - my husband decided he wanted to open his own Spanish-food restaurant. So, he went up to a policeman on the street and asked him: 'Donde esta la comunidad Hispana? Donde viven los Hispanos?' - 'Where do the Hispanic people live over here?'

"The policeman said, 'I don't know where (the Spanish-speaking people) live in Providence, but I know of one Hispanic family in East Providence.' . . . We went over there and asked around, and finally someone there told us about two Puerto Ricans who lived there. I asked about any Dominican people or more Puerto Rican people, and they said that there were no other Puerto Ricans over there, no other Hispanics anywhere."

Stayed in Rhode Island

Soon after the Rosarios moved to Providence, the restaurant in Warwick closed and the owners moved back to Connecticut. "When that happened," said Fefa, "They asked me and my family to go back with them to Connecticut, and my husband said: 'I don't want to depend on you all the time. I have a family now and I want to stay here.' "

But how to make a living?

"We got the idea of opening a market soon after we moved to Providence," Fefa recalls, "because we would often - almost every weekend - drive to Connecticut in our blue station wagon to buy food for ourselves. Things like platanos, yuca, cafe, cilantro . . ."

"We would do that because they didn't have Spanish products here at all. We would drive to New Haven and sometimes to New York and bring back food and sell it door-to-door, como de domicilio, right on Chester Avenue."

In 1959, with the Hispanic community growing in Providence, the Rosarios opened a market on Broad Street, "right on the corner of Broad and Bacon," Fefa recalls. "Across from the entrance to Roger Williams Park in Providence: 1130 Broad St. We called it Fefa's Market.

"And then, not too much time later, we also opened a restaurant, right next to the market."

Fefa ran her business seven days a week, and it soon became a popular place to eat in South Providence, especially as the community began to become more and more ethnically diverse.

Brought back more than food

Eventually, food was not the only thing the Rosarios would bring back with them from their journeys to Connecticut and New York. Many Dominicans and Puerto Ricans who were looking for work or a quieter place to live soon began hopping a one-way ride back with them to Providence.

"I also had a lot of people living with me in my house, people my husband and I brought or sponsored from Santo Domingo," says Fefa. "They stayed with us until they could find their own apartment or house. The Dominicans really got their start right there, on Chester Avenue. We had a sort-of boarding house for people who also wrote to us from Santo Domingo who wanted to come to the United States."

To this day, people who remember Rosario from those days call her "Dona Fefa." The first Dominican families, their children, relatives and other Hispanics who came later to Rhode Island see her today and still remember how Fefa brought them here.

Fefa remembers how small the community was in the 1960s: "By the mid-' 60s, there were around 10 of us . . . well, very few of us. After that, between '66 and '69, that's when more and more Hispanics started buying houses. Then they started writing to their families and friends, asking them to come join them in the United States.

"The Dominican community started slowly growing then, and they began to settle in homes off of Broad Street, and people started to open a few businesses then, too.

"Today, I feel like many Hispanic people treat me like I am somebody special. I guess I brought an awful lot of people together. See, we were such a small community here back then, and we took care of each other. In those days, when people needed something, they would come to us. They knew we would help them. And we never felt we could ever turn anybody down."

About her role in educating Hispanics on their voting rights, she remembers: "There was a time when I worked hard to help Hispanic people register to vote. Especially many of the Puerto Ricans who had already been living here for a few years. They had never registered before, so my husband and I went out and helped them register.

"I remember when (Mayor) Buddy Cianci was running for office, my husband went out and got a school bus. And if you could see the people that he put in that bus to go and register to vote . . . wow] There were lots of them. Many of them had no idea about politics or who to vote for, and we helped with that, too."

Now 'retired' from activism

I spoke recently to Dona Fefa and she told me that she is now "retired" from her active life in the 1960s and '70s.

She also knows that many people still remember her from those days. And she is aware of how the younger generation of Hispanics look up to her, children and grandchildren of the first wave of Dominicans who settled in Providence.

"So many young people from this generation that I don't really know personally, know who I am. Sometimes, when I am sitting in my car waiting at a stop light, I will hear a car honk and somebody say 'Fefa]' And when I look up, you know, I don't know who that person is] Then they will say, 'I'm related to this person or that person . . .' It seems everybody knows me, but I don't know everybody else]"

Dona Fefa and her family are responsible for planting a seed back in the 1950s, one which has now grown and turned into a proud group of individuals. Immigrants who are now citizens, who have earned their place in the history and growth of Rhode Island.

Marta V. Martinez lives in Warwick. She is the publications director for the Rhode Island Historical Society and chairs the Rhode Island Hispanic Heritage Committee. For more information about the society's history makers night, call 331-8575. If anyone has a story to share about Los Primeros - the first Hispanic families in Rhode Island - please write to Marta Martinez care of The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.