New York's Latino politicians return to socialism's roots

In the early 1900s, Puerto Rican cigar makers in New York didn't just organize for better wages. They organized a political movement. Figures like Jesús Colón and Bernardo Vega understood that economic justice and racial justice were inseparable — and they built a socialist politics around that insight.

They weren't alone. Historian Jeffrey Hoffnung-Garskof calls the Puerto Rican and Cuban migrants who preceded them "migrant revolutionaries." These workers fought for fair labor practices, fair wages, and dignity. Their politics was intentionally coalitional, rooted in what we now call Afro-Latinidad. For decades, this became the foundation of Latino political organizing in the city.

Then something quiet happened. That tradition faded. Latino politics moved in other directions.

Now it's returning.

The legacy takes shape again

In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a House seat from New York, running as a democratic socialist. She was Puerto Rican. She centered economic justice and racial equity. In many ways, she was echoing the playbook of a century before.

Since then, a cohort of Latina socialist leaders has risen through New York politics. Julia Salazar in the state Senate. Tiffany Cabán and Jessica González-Rojas in the state Assembly. Kristen Gonzalez in the City Council. Now Councilmember Alexa Avilés, also Puerto Rican and also a socialist, is exploring a run for Congress.

What's striking isn't just that these leaders exist. It's the pattern. They're not scattered anomalies. They're part of a visible trend — a reconnection to the political DNA that shaped Latino organizing in New York a century ago.

They're running on issues that would feel familiar to those early cigar makers: workers' rights, economic inequality, racial justice. They're building coalitions across communities. They're naming socialism as their framework, not hiding it.

The question now isn't whether this is a coincidence. It's whether this moment — this return to the city's own radical roots — will deepen. Will another Puerto Rican socialist woman win a House seat and continue the story that started in the factories and tenements of early 20th-century New York.