Population grows fast, but the roots are deep

From politics to religion, from culture to the economy, Hispanics are making their presence felt as the fastest-growing ethnic group in Iowa.What many Iowans fail to realize, however, is that Spanish-speaking people were also among the state's first settlers.

The 1850 U.S. Census, taken just after Iowa became a state, lists 16 residents from Mexico and one from South America. That's hardly surprising given that this region was once owned by and settled by Spain.

Among the first Hispanic inhabitants of Iowa was a Spaniard named Manuel Lisa who conducted a fur-trapping business in the 1780s, according to "Conoceme en Iowa," a 1975 state report on Hispanics in Iowa. Lisa, the report noted, married a Sioux Indian and lived among his wife's people.

In 1856, the state of Iowa took its own county by county census. That census included several of the state's earliest Hispanic residents, including a Venezuelan living in Butler County, a Mexican in Clinton County, a South American in Dubuque County, eight more South Americans living in Iowa City and a Chilean living in Marion County.

The Iowa Census of 1895 placed the number of Hispanics living in Iowa at 30. According to "Conoceme en Iowa," many of them had come here to work for the Santa Fe Railroad. These Mexican laborers moved into boxcars in Fort Madison provided to them by the railroad, forming the first Hispanic colony in Iowa in 1895.

By 1925, the Hispanic population of Iowa had grown to 2,597, according to the Iowa Census, most of them drawn here by jobs with the railroad or in the fields. Some, like long-time Des Moines resident Mary Campos, 70, ended up staying.

Campos said her parents were migrant workers who came to Iowa from Oklahoma to help harvest sugar beets, corn and potatoes. When her father suffered a ruptured appendix (either in 1933 or 1934, Campos isn't sure of the exact date), the family decided to settle in Des Moines along with several other families that travelled with them.

Hispanic migration to Iowa slowed considerably during the Depression when jobs were scarce for everyone and some Hispanic Iowans found themselves "encouraged" to seek work elsewhere.
In "Conoceme en Iowa," one Des Moines resident, Francisca Garcia, told of roaming the city dumps in search of food to feed her large family after her husband lost his job picking crops.
World War II and Korea created renewed need for Mexican labor in Iowa, leading to a second wave of Hispanic migration in the 1950s. By the 1970 U.S. Census, the first census to tally Hispanic populations as a group rather than just by country of birth, there were 21,017 persons of Spanish origin living in Iowa. Five years later, members of then-Gov. Robert Ray's Spanish Speaking Task Force estimated the number of Hispanics in Iowa at closer to 30,000.
That discrepancy between census counts and the estimates of those who live in and work with Iowa's Hispanic community continues today. The latest estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau gives a figure of 56,936 Hispanics living in Iowa in 1998.

Many think that number is too low, including Sandra Charvat Burke, a sociologist at Iowa State University. Using the 1990 census counts of the Hispanic population, 1989-1991 school enrollment figures for Hispanic children, and current school enrollment numbers, Burke estimates Iowa's Hispanic population was actually closer to 73,000 in 1998.

According to the 1990 census, the vast majority of Hispanic Iowans are of Mexican descent with Puerto Ricans a far distant second. Iowa's Hispanic population also includes people, however, who can trace their roots to Cuba, Colombia, Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru.

• Des Moines Register