Success Stories of Latino Washingtonians

Our Time: Success Stories of Washingtonians of Latino and Hispanic Descent | Washingtonian
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Our Time: Success Stories of Washingtonians of Latino and

Hispanic Descent
These high achieversfrom often modest, hard-working backgroundsare wielding inuence in business, lobbying,
politics, and more. For them, the struggle is no longer so much about getting their voices heard as it is about paving
the way for the next generationmany of whom may not identify themselves as Latino or Hispanic at all.
By Luisita Lopez Torregrosa | December 4, 2013
Making their mark in DC and beyond: Bert Gomez, Univision senior vice president for government relations; Susan Isabel Santana, AT&T assistant VP for federal relations; Luis
CdeBaca, State Department ambassador-at-large; Cristina Antelo, lobbyist with the Podesta Group; Lorena Chambers, head of Chambers Lopez Strategies; Andrs W. Lpez,
fundraiser for Barack Obama; Mark Hugo Lopez, director of the Pew Research Centers Hispanic Trends Project; Giovanna Huyke, executive chef of Mio restaurant; former
http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/our-time-success-stories-of-washingtonians-of-latino-and-hispanic-descent/
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travel-and-hospitality executive Karla Iguina; and Manuel Iguina, Mios owner. Photographs by Chris Crisman.
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On this evening, with a whiff of spring in the air, the crowd at Mio stands chest to chest at the bar, three, four
deep, elbowing for a view of the World Baseball Classic championship match between the Dominican Republic
and Puerto Rico playing on the TV. A swarm of business-suited executives and tweedy lawyers roars, slaps highves, and calls out for shots of Barrilito rum. In the lounge, young women cram thigh to thigh on the low sofas,
balancing margaritas and mojitos, half listening to the wonks and political operatives plying them with attention.
But the real action is a few steps up, in the semiprivate mezzanine dining area, where the ball game is playing on
a movie-size screen and white-clothed tables are grouped against the walls to make space for a standing-roomonly crush of Latino insiders, several members of Congress and White House advisers, Democratic Party donors,
and an assortment of hangers-on, many of them personal guests of Andrs W. Lpez, a Puerto Rican lawyer and
major fundraiser for Barack Obama.
For months after the election, Lpez was courted and toasted,
his brisk rise in party politics celebrated in Latino circles. In a
short time he had become a familiar face: He starred in and was
executive producer of the rst Latino inaugural celebration at
the Kennedy Center, and in March he picked up an award for the
Futuro Fund he cofounded with actress Eva Longoria and San
Antonio businessman Henry R. Muoz III. Together they had
raised a record-breaking $32 million from fellow Latinos, a feat
that proved to the political world that Hispanics could bring in
the votes and, whats more, big money.
Lpez is 43, with a steamrolling personality, Ivy League tailoring
and boyish charm, two Harvard degrees, athletic six-foot-four
looks, a picture-perfect family (a lawyer wife and three young
sons), and a fast-track career that has him shuttling between San
Juan and Washington, with side trips to Miami and Orlando. A
certied up-and-comer in the Hispanic ecosystem of
Washington, he could have any party room at the citys big-name
hotels and just about any restaurant table. But Mio is special.
Andres W. Lopez: Hispanics gave Barack Obama 71 percent of their vote

in 2012, and this Harvard-educated Obama fundraiser is part of the reason
why.
Everyone goes to Mio, people told me when I hit town last winter. A contemporary Latin American restaurant on
a dull stretch of Vermont Avenue in downtown DC, its a mini-power hub and party central, its booming
popularity paralleling the rising wave of Latino high achievers in Washingtons political culture.
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Andrs Lpez and Manuel Pico Iguina, Mios owner, share interests beyond their place of birth. Iguina has
fashioned Mio into a beehive where deals are transacted and connections made under the whir of piped-in
Caribbean rhythms. He knows how to listen and how to keep his mouth shut. He works the house, bear-hugging
regulars, cheek-pecking women friends, lingering with newcomers while keeping an eye on the busy open
kitchen where his fellow Puerto Rican, Giovanna Huyke, the ftysomething veteran chef, utters from station to
station.
On any given day, patrons might include Ralph G. Patino, a trial
lawyer and Futuro Fund board member; Representative Jos
Antonio Joe Garcia Jr., a Miami lawyer who is former president
of the Cuban American National Foundation; and Jose F. Nino,
former United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce president
and a big fan of Andrs Lpez.
Id back him for anything, Nino tells me, Senate, Congress
you name it.
Iguina beams hearing this. He had spotted Lpez early on, when
Lpez rustled into his restaurant with an entourage. Iguina
offered him a regular table in a partly secluded corner, and
Lpez invited Iguina and his wife, Karla, a former travel-andhospitality executive from Mexico, to the White House for a
Christmas party with the Obamas.
I felt very humble, Iguina says, trying to appear modest. The
52-year-old son of a prominent San Juan family, a college
dropout and juvenile beach bum, he has come a long way from
the kitchens of Georgetown restaurants where he got his start in
his twenties.
Cristina Antelo: The lobbyistthe child of a Cuban couple who divorced

when she was twogot a scholarship to boarding school and graduated
from Georgetown and GW.
I loved chopping and cutting and servingcould do it for

hours, Iguina says. After he learned the basics of the trade in Georgetown, he opened a place in San Juan with his
savings and a little family money, got married, had two daughters, went broke, escaped for a year in a friends 40foot sailboat, then returned to Washington to start over.
With Karla keeping the books at the restaurant and keeping him in line, hes pretty much settled. They live near
Alexandria with their 1-year-old, Carlos Manuel, and have plenty of family around. His mother lives with them;
Karlas mom, a physician, visits often from Chiapas, Mexico; his older sister lives in Silver Spring; and his two
adult daughters, who work with him, live nearby. On Sundays, he kicks back at home, relaxing in the kitchen,
cooking for friends, and, in summer, roasting whole pigs in a pit in his yard the way it was done in his childhood.
But his business antenna pings six days a week from morning to late night. He can smell a winner, and a phony.
He can spot a big sh and the biting minnows around it.
I put people together, he says. Thats what I do. I am the kitchen, and I am the front of the house. I am
everything.
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Manuel Iguina and Andrs Lpez personify a dening moment,

as an ascendant generation of Latinosambitious, afuent,
sophisticatedis becoming increasingly inuential in politics,
government, and the private sector.
The 2012 presidential election was a tipping point.
Latinos played a crucial role in President Obamas reelection,
giving him 71 percent of their vote and contributing tens of
millions to his campaign. They also helped elect a record
number of Latinos to Congress. A total of 37 Hispanics serve in
the current Congressfour in the Senate and 33 in the House.
Among them are several young Democratic stars, including
Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas, a newcomer to the
House and the twin brother of Julin Castro, the mayor of San
Antonio; Representative Garcia, of Miami; and Michelle Lujan
Grisham, the rst New Mexico Latina to serve in the House.
But Latinos are also leaving their imprint on the Republican
Party. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Ted Cruz of
Texas, both Cuban-Americans, are on everyones shortlist of
potential 2016 presidential candidates.
Lorena Chambers: The media and ad executive wants to broaden

English-language marketing campaigns targeting Hispanics who know
little or no Spanish.
National numbers tell part of the story. Hispanics are the largest
minority and the biggest driver of the nations population growth. The countrys 53 million Hispanics make up 17
percent of the total population, but that number is expected to grow to between 26 and 29 percent by 2050,
according to the Pew Research Center. Latinos make up 10 percent of voters, according to Pew, and that gure is
expected to double within a generation. Immigration reform could boost the total share of Latino voters if the 11
million immigrants living in the United States illegally become eligible for citizenship.
Right now, Hispanics are positioned to decide elections across the boardin heavily Hispanic blue states, in
battleground states, even in red states like Texas. They could nominate and help elect a Latino President or Vice
President as early as 2016.
Meanwhile, corporations are taking note of Latino buying power, estimated at $1 trillion annually. Advertisers
spent $4.3 billion to reach Hispanics in 2010, according to the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. In
part because of those numbers, Univision teamed up with ABC News to create a cable channel called Fusion that
premiered on October 28, catering to English-speaking Latinos. ABC and Univision executives are betting on the
fast-growing demographic of young Latinosespecially second-and-up generations of 20-to-30-year-olds who
prefer to speak English and are assimilating into the mainstream faster than earlier generations.
The ABC-Univision team appears to be on the right track. According to Pew, second-generation Hispanic
immigrants follow the same patterns as previous immigrant groups: making higher incomes, graduating from
college, owning homes, speaking English.
And though the immigration debate has consumed media and political attention for at least a decade,
immigration is not the top issue for the majority of Latinos.
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There are many folks who want to paint the immigrant, the illegal-immigrant experience, as the Latino
immigrant experience, says Mark Hugo Lopez, director of the newly renamed Pew Research Centers Hispanic
Trends Project and a grandson of Mexican immigrants. But thats not the experience of all Latinos.
Conicts over identity run deep.

A 2012 Pew survey showed that 40 years after the federal government coined the terms Hispanic and Latino,
many prefer to identify themselves by their familys country of origin. Other studies, focusing on MexicanAmericans, the USs largest Hispanic group, suggest that a sizable number of third-and-up generations, especially
well-educated high-earners, dont identify as Latino or Hispanic. Researchers call this trend ethnic attrition, and
it concerns activists who worry about preserving their roots and language. Few talk candidly about differences in
social status and class or sensitive issues about color, cultural and physical traits, and ancestry.
At what point do Latinos become plain old Americans?
Susan Isabel Santana, a Mexican-American lawyer and assistant
vice president for federal relations at AT&T, says: As a Latina,
my journey has been like a bridge between different worlds
where I can condently traverse from one side to the other. The
main similarity that unies rather than divides Latinos
especially professionals from second and third generationsis
the ability to move between different worlds and the fact that we
remember and respect the struggles of the generations that
preceded us.
Manuel Iguina: The owner of the Latin American restaurant Mio is an

important player in the Hispanic community: I put people together. Thats
what I do.
Like many other Latinos, Santana, a lobbyist who is a graduate of

the University of California at Berkeley and UCLA School of Law,
has climbed up the framework of minority afrmative-action
policies, grants, internships, and scholarships. This
infrastructure is highly concentrated in Washington, the nations
clearinghouse for all sorts of minority-minded nonprots,
nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, research centers,
foundations, and institutions.
Washingtons Latino population is among the nations most

educated and most prosperous. The region has 807,000 Latinos in all economic levels. Many are low-wage
immigrants from Central America. But Washington also has a greater share of Latino college graduates and
perhaps a larger Latino middle class and upper-income professional class than almost any other metropolitan
area.
Mark Lopezwho grew up in a Chicano neighborhood east of Los Angeles, graduated from Berkeley, and earned
a doctorate in economics at Princetonhas lived in Washington since the mid-1990s. Hes now 46, on a panel at
the National Academy of Sciences, and a much-quoted Latino expert.
Its one thing about Washington, he says. For many Latinos, this is where opportunity exists. This is where you
Page 5 of 12
12/24/15, 11:48 AM
come if you want to have inuence and have an impact.

Susan Santana, an old friend of Mark Lopezs, puts it this way: We are not only sitting at the table now but in
some cases leading the table discussion. As a Latina, I feel I can inuence policy, and at times politics.
Washington is a small pond. Latino circles overlap, interests crisscross, and goals merge or clash. The Latino
elites here watch out for one another, promote and befriend one another. Their tracks lead from one to another
and back again.
Wearing a form-tting indigo Chanel-style suit and in high heels,
her dark hair framing a tan face and brown eyes, Susan Santana
bounds up from behind the massive wooden desk in her large,
sunlit ofce on the ninth oor of the AT&T building in DC. She
offers me coffee, a seat on a sofa, and her complete attention,
leaning forward on a chair. Her legs are crossed, her hands
clasped, her ngernails manicured in enamel red.
Santana has Sofa Vergara looks, without the actresss silly
batting eyelashes and puckering lips, and Facebook chief
operating ofcer Sheryl Sandbergs intense focus. Shes tightly
wound, telegraphing executive condence and impatience with
small talk. A series of nervy decisions have landed her in the
upper levels of the corporate world.
Her marriage to Bert Gomez, a Cuban-born senior vice president
for government relations at Univision, brings together a
bipartisan couplehe a moderate Republican, she a middle-ofthe-road Democrat. They wine and dine stakeholders and
colleagues several times a week at Mio, Charlie Palmer Steak,
Susan Isabel Santana: The main similarity that unifies Latinos, the
Fiola, and Central Michel Richard; contribute to congressional
lobbyist says, is the ability to move between dierent worlds.
campaigns and serve on the Congressional Hispanic Leadership
Institute; and live with their seven-year-old son, Eric, in McLean, where they entertain friends on weekends.
But theyre not trust-fund babies. Theyre up-from-the-ground, self-made overachievers with advanced degrees.
I am probably one of the highest-ranking Cuban-American lobbyists, Gomez says over lunch at Charlie Palmer.
Hes looking sporty in an Italian-cut dark-brown jacket and crewneck sweater his wife picked out for him. His
ofce, a set of contemporary minimalist rooms where no noise penetrates, is several oors up in the same
building, a three-minute walk from the Capitol.
Gomez and his parents left Havana on a Pan Am ight in 1970. We came to Miami because you always go where
you have relatives. My father didnt have the resources to start a business, but he knew mechanics and became an
auto mechanic, spent 30-plus years at Miami Lincoln Mercury. Gomezs parents, now retired, still live in Miamis
gritty Hialeah area.
They sacriced everything to get me through college, he says. Gomez made it through the University of Miami,
answered a newspaper ad, and became a sales rep for Dow Chemical Company: I started working my way and
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12/24/15, 11:48 AM
learning corporate America.

After ve years with Dow Chemical in Florida and South Carolina, he quit and started a big job, lobbying for R.J.
Reynolds. After nine years, he drove a U-Haul north to work for the company from Washington. His ofce was at
the Willard hotel: Imagine, a little Cuban at the Willard!
He knew what he had going for him. I was a networking kind of person and had good instincts, he says.
Lobbying is all about good instincts. You know when walking into a room who are the Democrats and
Republicans. You cant learn that.
From R.J. Reynolds, it was on to Univision.
How Susan Santana got to this point is something of a telenovela. Her father was born just outside Guadalajara, in
western Mexico, her mother in the western state of Sinaloa, a place now best known for drug cartels. Somehow
those two found each other after they both arrived in Chula Vista, California, a border town south of San Diego.
He had only a high-school education but enlisted in the Army and got training in electronics and his
naturalization papers.
Her father repaired TV sets; her mother was a beautician. Susan didnt lack for anything and considered herself
middle class. All that changed upon her parents divorce when she was 13. Her mother had to scrape to support
three children. Susan helped at home and bagged groceries for a few dollars an hour, but school was her
salvation.
I knew I was different, she says. I was pulled out of regular classes since I was in fourth grade and put into
special classes. Principals, teachers, and her mother encouraged her to apply to some of Californias top public
colleges, including Berkeley and UC San Diego. Her mother expected her to stay in San Diego, but to her surprise
she was accepted at Berkeley, the best school.
She was smart and lucky. While many of her girlfriends stayed in Chula Vista, she was headed to Northern
California and, she dreamed, law school. She rst knew she wanted to be a lawyer when a Latina attorney gave a
speech at her high school. There was this Latina woman. She looked like I could be her. She really was a turning
point.
Berkeley was a second turning point.
Santana was enrolled in a weeklong bridge program to help prepare disadvantaged minorities. A lot of it was
mentoring and setting up study groups, she says, which helped her maneuver around Berkeley. But she got
pressure from militant Chicano students to join their protests. When she refused, they questioned her. Was I
poor? Did I come from the barrio? They doubted she was Mexican enough.
I didnt grow up with wealth, she says, but that wasnt my thing. What do you join at a huge university? I joined
a sorority.
She pledged Alpha Gamma Delta, a mainly Anglo group that had approached her: It was the rst time that I
learned about the different classes, and that was another turning pointfor the rst time, I was involved in elite
circles. I even learned etiquette, on which side of the table to put the forks and the spoons.
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She spent her junior year in Madrid, studying Spanish literature and political science and traveling through
Europe. The girl from Chula Vista had transformed herself.
After Berkeley, she worked as a bilingual teacher in San Diego for two years and applied to law schoolsUCLA,
San Diego, Berkeley, Michigan. Berkeley waitlisted her, and she chose UCLA. She was 24 and could not have
imagined the changes in her lifeand the successthe next 20 years would bring.
Bert and I are lobbying in the halls of Congress, we are helping manage McLeans Little League teams, and we
are mentoring the next generation of young people, she says. We are a new breed of Americans.
Santanas bravura has nothing over her friend Cristina Antelo, a spirited, smooth-talking lawyer who, at 36, has
already spent four years navigating the halls of the House and Senate for one of Washingtons most inuential
lobbying and public-affairs rms, the Podesta Group. Founded by brothers John and Tony Podesta, the rm has
close ties to the Clinton and Obama administrations and can hire just about anyone it wants.
Landing the lobbying job was a coup in a skyrocketing career that started at Goldman Sachs, where she was an
investment banker, and DLA Piper, the giant law rm where she represented clients targeted by congressional
investigations as well as litigation, tax, and trademark issues.
Antelo strides in high heels across the Podesta Groups white, modernist ofces. Trim and swathed in a black
sheath, she apologizes for being minutes late, offers coffee and water, takes a seat in a stark, glassed-in
conference room, and launches into the story of her ascent from Texas to Washington.
Born in Dallas, shes the only child of a middle-class Cuban couple who met at a ve-and-dime and divorced when
she was two. She and her mother, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when Antelo was nine, lived in
Cedar Hill, a predominantly African-American and Hispanic town near Dallas. Antelo was a gifted student and, in
the seventh grade, was asked to participate in a student talent search. She took the SATs and scored high enough
to gain the attention of an organization called A Better Chance, which places minority students in top collegeprep schools. She was offered a full scholarship at the Brooks School, a boarding school in North Andover,
Massachusetts.
They were including airfare to and from breaks, money for laundry, money for foodthey basically paid for
everything, Antelo says. When she started her sophomore year, I was wearing fuchsia and green, and I had big
hair. I didnt have a winter coat, and everyone at Brooks wore gray and hunter green, very conservative. Here I
was, wild and colorful with my big hair. I didnt t in at all.
The school had few minority students, and she joined a support group. In hindsight, that was to my
disadvantage, she says. I started school with a group of friends who were people of color. We thought, The
white kids dont like us and So-and-so is really racist, and that closed my mind. It took me a while to get over
this.
Three years later, in her senior year, Antelo was a prefect, working with the student body and the faculty. There
was a huge transformation for me, she says.
She learned to use chopsticks, went surng in New Hampshire in freezing water, and decided she wanted to be
involved in politics. So she applied to Georgetown, got scholarship money, packed her bags, and became a Hoya.
After college, she took a full-time job at Goldman Sachs. She transferred to the Los Angeles ofce in the early
Page 8 of 12
12/24/15, 11:48 AM
2000s.
There I had my epiphany, she says.
One day on the trading oor while talking to a client on the phone, she noticed the news ash that Elian
Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who had been living in Miami with relatives, was being returned to his father in Havana.
I wanted to pay attention to that. I wanted to think about politics and policy issues, she says, and not be looking
up prices for some rich guy.
Antelo quit Goldman, applied to law school at George Washington University, and returned to DC. She dove into
politics, did a legal fellowship in the Senate with the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee, and was put
on a Latino-outreach team, the sort of job that has launched several Latino careers here. Soon she had a bigger
job, with DLA Piper, in its governmental-affairs division. She was one of only three Hispanics, all CubanAmericans.
I left in 2010, Antelo says. In Washington, the economy had hit law rms very hard. I never felt my job was at
stake, but it became a very depressing place to be. They froze pay, they wouldnt pay bonuses, they tried to cut
peoples pay. I am not one of those lawyers who can only be a lawyer, so I started to look on the Hill, and I found
the best lobby shop and came to the Podesta Group.
Today she makes more than a quarter of a million dollars a year and is married to a Ukrainian-Polish TV gameshow director she met in Los Angeles. They have a two-year-old daughter named Havana and live in the up-andcoming District neighborhood of Bloomingdale. Its all nearly perfect. But theres an incident from her school
days that stays with her.
I didnt really understand it at the time, Antelo recalls. There was a Caucasian student who carved the word
spic on his desk, and we had a school meeting about it. I had never heard the word before. I just assumed it was
bad. Now, she says, raising her voice, talking rapidly, I am a spic. I own the word. I wont allow someone else to
ascribe to it a negative connotation. We are the most hard-working group of people Ive encountered to date. We
work two jobs, three jobs, do whatever to survive. If I needed a job, I would have no shame cleaning other
peoples houses. Thats how I was raised.
Later, responding to a question about Latino inuence, Antelo says, We need more Latino lobbyists. We need
more Latino representatives in Congress. Im doing what I can to make it happen. Latinos have to be taken
seriously. Latinos have to hold serious positions. She makes it a point to introduce her clients to Hispanic
members of Congress and to bring Latinos into the pipeline, and she strikes back at anyone who suggests that
Latinos have as many differences as similarities. In my world in Washington, there are many similarities: hard
work, strong values, accomplishments across the board. We have the same goal.
Slowly as it may seem to Cristina Antelo, Latinos are making their presence known in and out of government.
Their numbers are inching up in key positions in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in federal agencies.
At the intersection of the public and private sectors, there are established players such as the political strategist
and commentator Maria Cardona, a respected voice on health care, gun control, immigration, and other issues;
Janet Murgua, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza; and Lorena Chambers, head of Chambers
Page 9 of 12
12/24/15, 11:48 AM
Lopez Strategies, the only Latinaand one of only two womento have produced television commercials for a
presidential campaign.
Direct and effusive, with the self-condence of a veteran of many struggles, Chambers makes it clear shes 100
percent Latina despite her surname, which came from an English ancestor who settled in Mexico. Were meeting
for the rst time, checking place cards and shaking hands across a long, white-clothed table at the star-powered
Women in the World dinner at Lincoln Center in New York. Chambers is seated across from me, and I can see
right away that shes a bundle of excitement, anticipating her own appearance the next day on a panel before an
audience of 2,000 women.
The following morning, shes onstage with Eva Longoria, talking about Latina power. Chambers gets off to a
rousing start with an off-the-cuff remark that the nomination of Hillary Clinton for President in 2016 would turn
even Texas into a blue state. She gets a huge round of applause. Longoria, who is far more serious than the vapid
Gaby Solis she played in Desperate Housewives, reveals that she didnt speak any Spanish until she had to learn it
for a role, even though she grew up near the Texas border and is a ninth-generation Mexican-American.
Chambers, with Longoria nodding in agreement, makes the sharpest comment, saying that immigration isnt a
big issue for her, that it doesnt affect her personally, but that she supports all Latinos and immigration reform.
Weeks later, over dinner at the rowhouse she and her husband, Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, have renovated in
Georgetown, she elaborates. She says that anti-immigration arguments are insulting, especially the slurs against
immigrants who are in the country illegally. Even when the jokes and smears arent directed at afuent Latinos
like her, she says, it offends me when people insult Latinosany Latino.
Chambers has every reason to be sensitive. She brought herself up from a middle-class Los Angeles
neighborhood to UCLA and the University of Michigan, where she received a masters degree in history and
feminist theory. She boasts, deantly, about her Chicano background and Mexican ancestry and doesnt miss a
chance to dene herself as a Latina. She uses her background in her work for pro-Obama groups like People for
the American Way and Priorities USA, creating Spanish-language advertising in battleground states.
But shes not entirely happy with the marketing strategy. With new generations of Latinos who prefer to speak
English and who know little or no Spanish, she wants to broaden English-language media campaigns targeting
Hispanics.
Her husband, an ambassador-at-large and senior adviser to the Secretary of State, coordinates federal programs
in the global ght against modern-day slavery, traveling the world and managing foreign-assistance programs of
approximately $30 million dollars annually. He was appointed by President Obama in 2009 and served under
Hillary Clinton. A framed photograph of CdeBaca and Clinton, signed by her, rests on the exquisite mantelpiece
in their living room.
The ambassador, who is a handy cookhe prepared our salmon dinnerand a connoisseur of ne tequilas, has a
law degree from Michigan and a bachelors from Iowa State University, where both of his parents taught. But the
true family calling is cattle ranching, a 450-year tradition dating back to whats now New Mexico, where his family
has had a long history of public service. He followed in those steps when he applied to the Department of Justice
honors program and was accepted straight out of law school.
One of Washingtons power couples, Chambers and CdeBaca are familiar faces in the busy whirl of the capitals
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12/24/15, 11:48 AM
diplomatic circuit, hosting intimate dinners for ten at their home and on occasion throwing a blowout party, as
they did last Christmas for 75 of their closest friends. With a combined 38 years in Washington, they have
hundreds of friends, acquaintances, and contacts, and in a city where power and politics often dene peoples
worth, they have made it.
This article appears in the December 2013 issue of Washingtonian.
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Our Time: Success Stories of Washingtonians of Latino and Hispanic Descent | Washingtonian

BRIDE & GROOM |

Our Time: Success Stories of Washingtonians of Latino and

Andres W. Lopez: Hispanics gave Barack Obama 71 percent of their vote

Cristina Antelo: The lobbyistthe child of a Cuban couple who divorced

I loved chopping and cutting and servingcould do it for

Manuel Iguina and Andrs Lpez personify a dening moment,

Lorena Chambers: The media and ad executive wants to broaden

Conicts over identity run deep.

Manuel Iguina: The owner of the Latin American restaurant Mio is an

Like many other Latinos, Santana, a lobbyist who is a graduate of

Washingtons Latino population is among the nations most

come if you want to have inuence and have an impact.

learning corporate America.

This article appears in the December 2013 issue of Washingtonian.

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