Latino Leaders and Heroes

Banquet and conference will recognize achievements of local Latinos and allies

Luis Velázquez celebrated his 31st year as a Knoxville resident this July 4, and his contributions to the community in that time will be celebrated July 18 at the Latino Leaders and Heroes banquet and conference.

Velázquez moved from Puerto Rico to Chicago in 1971 as a civil engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers, arriving in Knoxville in 1977 to join the Department of Energy in Oak Ridge. Since he retired from that position, he has served as a board member for five community groups, worked with Leadership Knoxville, seen his wife receive a PhD from the University of Tennessee, where she went on to work for 18 years, and looked on as his children and grandchildren became fluent in both English and Spanish. He is currently the executive director of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of East Tennessee, an organization founded in 2005.

Through the Hispanic chamber, Velázquez now works to extend similar opportunities locally to newer members of the Hispanic community. Approximately 170 businesses and organizations are members of the chamber, receiving technical support, networking and employment information, and information about how to reach out to Latino customers or form business relations with other companies.

“I think the Hispanic chamber is a very useful tool to bring together the local businesses and the new businesses that are coming up,” he says. “Many people are advertising in Spanish because they recognize there is a new emerging Hispanic market throughout the nation and in Tennessee, so we as a chamber play a very important role for that purpose and to advocate and serve the Hispanic community [and] integrate the Hispanic community as they grow and become part of this region.”

Velázquez says a growing emphasis on bilingual communication in advertising and the service industry is a sign the chamber is succeeding in its role promoting integration.

“It is recognized that being bilingual is not a negative thing like many people try to portray, that Hispanics don’t speak English, and so on,” he says. “We just want to keep our language, but the reality is we do have to express our identity and speak the language we have known and grown up with.

“At the same time, we have the challenge and opportunity to become English-speaking people, and as a result, we have access to two different worlds and have a lot to offer that is often not recognized by the community.”

Velázquez says while the chamber serves the business needs of local Latinos, other organizations provide various services in the realms of social services, legal assistance, cultural heritage and politics.

Many of those organizations, their members and non-Latino allies will also be recognized at the Latino Leaders and Heroes event, including Catholic Charities, Bill Murrah from Legal Aid of East Tennessee, Lisa Barba of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Sgt. Savannah Ajube of the Knoxville Police Department, Karen Fitzpatrick from Telemon, Fran Ansley of Jobs with Justice, Cynthia Finch and Alianza del Pueblo.

A July 19 conference will present multiple speakers on issues such as black/brown relations and immigration reform, with a separate youth track for younger participants.

The Latino Task Force, a program of the Community Economic Development Network of East Tennessee, is organizing the banquet and conference. The task force is one of three that developed out of CEDnet meetings in the ’90s, including the Rural Task Force and the African American Task Force. It meets the first Tuesday of each month and provides networking for its members as well as resources, referrals and cultural information about adapting to life in the United States.

The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Centro Hispano, a non-profit operated through Catholic Charities currently seeking a building for its youth and community services, are both initiatives of the Latino Task Force.
Lynn Milton, coordinator of the task force, says the group has made many strides for local Latinos in addition to creating charitable and advocacy organizations and hosting the banquet to recognize the community’s achievements.