Julio Vasquez:
Bringing the future into focus for Latinos

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Julio Vazquez has a vision for the future of Rochester’s Latino community.
He sees well-educated individuals running bilingual, successful businesses on the city’s north side, with North Clinton Avenue transformed into a cultural locus much like Park Avenue or Monroe Avenue.
As president and CEO of the Ibero-American Action League Inc., Vazquez is working to transform that vision into reality.
“We have been working on this for a long time, and we have begun to see improvements,” Vazquez says. “But it’s still a long-term project.”
There are successful businesses along North Clinton Avenue now, and the merchants–with the help of Ibero-American –now are organized. The city has committed to building a community center at the corner of High Falls Boulevard and North Clinton Avenue, and the subsidized housing project on the corner is being renovated.
What’s more, the old St. Michael’s School is being converted to apartments for senior citizens. And a summer festival is planned.
Ibero-American–through its Ibero-American Development Corp. subsidiary–is developing a 16,000-square-foot family-services center to house most of its programs, as well as directing several housing projects.
The most visible project is Edison Place, a joint venture with the city and First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Rochester. When completed in 1998, the subdivision will boast 25 new homes and an eight-unit apartment building for senior citizens.
Ibero-American also works with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, through the city and state, to renovate approximately six homes a year and sell them to first-time home owners.
Another subsidiary, Ibero-American Investors Corp., helps new businesses. Its core programs–including a day-care center, a senior citizens’ center, referrals and counseling, educational programs and advocacy–promote self-sufficiency in the Latino community, Vazquez says.
These programs are a natural evolution from Ibero-American’s early years of grassroots organizing and protests, he says. When the league was formed in 1968, the Rochester City School District offered no bilingual education, and discrimination against Latinos by the police department and other entities was open and rampant.
Vazquez, 50, experienced that discrimination firsthand. The oldest of 13 children, he came to Rochester from the Puerto Rican mountains when he was 13 years old. From the language to the culture to the gray, dark skies and buildings, life was drastically different here, and Vazquez says from the time he stepped off the plane he wanted to go back to Puerto Rico.
School officials persuaded his parents to place Vazquez in a special-education program because of his language barrier. He was put in a school-to-work high school program far different from those operating today. Upon graduation, he learned he had the equivalent of an eighth-grade education.
“The experience was so humiliating,” Vazquez recalls. “I became a very angry young man.”
However, thanks to some intervening adults over those years, Vazquez stayed clear of trouble.
“What kept me out of trouble was getting involved, and the fact that I knew however hard it was, I could go home to a very nurturing environment,” he says.
Vazquez worked from the time he was 14 years old, first picking vegetables in the summer and then in a restaurant. He also became one of the best featherweight weightlifters in the area.
When times got tough, he daydreamed about Puerto Rico, and thought about how he would hurt his parents or set a bad example for his brothers and sisters if he took the wrong path.
At age 19, he got married. Frustration gnawed at Vazquez because he did not have a good grasp of either English or Spanish. However, the priest who married him convinced him he had potential and encouraged him to get involved in community affairs.
With continued encouragement from leaders in the Puerto Rican community, Vazquez started to study for his general- equivalency diploma. He was hired by the fledgling Ibero-American in 1968.
But a year later, continually frustrated with his life and the fact he could not pass the GED, Vazquez and his wife, Maria, decided to take their two young children (he later had one more) and return to Puerto Rico.
There, he passed the GED and soon after became assistant director of the youth-services office in San Juan and enrolled in a college. Two-and-a- half years later, he decided to move back to Rochester after realizing that his lack of English skills was what had held him back in the States.
“I felt that I had abandoned the challenge in my life, and in our family, my father always said that’s not acceptable,” Vazquez says. “I had to conquer the language and the culture.”
He again worked for Ibero-American in the 1970s and joined some of the larger protests against the police department and school district, including a sit- in in the superintendent’s office. Ibero- American sued the school district and forced the introduction of bilingual programs.
Relations between the Latino community and local government officials gradually improved, due in large part to Ibero-American’s advocacy efforts. Meanwhile, Vazquez gradually moved up the ranks at the agency, becoming its assistant executive director in 1981.
At the same time, Vazquez continued his education, taking classes at Monroe Community College and then getting his bachelor’s degree in community organization and management from SUNY Empire State College.
In 1984, Vazquez decided he needed another change. He opened a successful corner market.
“I was very pleased, and by this time, I had gotten so much confidence, I didn’t think I could fail at anything,” he recalls.
Vazquez opened a Super Duper grocery store on Hudson Avenue–and the venture failed.
After Vazquez closed the store and took his losses, he did some soul searching and decided to become a teacher. He enrolled at SUNY College at Brockport and earned a master’s degree in education.
In 1991, he started teaching Spanish and bilingual arts at East High School.
Vazquez enjoyed teaching, but when his current post at Ibero-American became open in 1993, he decided to apply and returned to the organization he helped mold.
One of Vazquez’s top goals as Ibero-American president is to promote and foster education. A sound education, he says, is a necessary component of improving living conditions for the local Latino community, 60 percent of whom are working poor, he says.
Yet academics is not always encouraged, he says.
“In our community there is a sense, especially among young people, that being a scholar is not cool, and we wanted to change that,” he says.
Vazquez set goals of increasing the Spanish Scholarship Endowment Fund–managed for Ibero-American by the Rochester Area Foundation. He also wanted to recognize academic achievement; this school year, the league started a scholars program for high school students.
Vazquez also has continued a tradition of promoting community involvement among the 80-some Ibero-American staff members, adding to the roster the Greater Rochester Chapter of the American RedCross’ mentoring program.
Another goal is to make the agency a clearinghouse of information about the area’s Latino community. The problem, he says, is a lack of detailed, methodically compiled information.
Vazquez wants the agency to partner with an area university or college to conduct studies, especially on housing, employment and economic issues.
Few goals are more important to Vazquez than to help Ibero-American become self-sufficient–and help the community in the process.
Funding always has been difficult for the agency, which has a $3.5 million annual operating budget. However, in the last few years, like other non-profits, the agency has been pinched.
Vazquez is constantly looking for business ventures that might solve the agency’s financial problems. He and his staff have not found a perfect fit so far, but it might be a property-management or construction company because of the success of the development corporation.
With all of the agency’s programs and successes, Vazquez says, the community at large is finally starting to look at Ibero-American with respect.
“People are beginning to look at the agency and say this is a very well-run, responsible agency,” he says. “People were still asking the question, even a few years ago, after all these years.”
Joseph Calabrese, president of the United Way of Greater Rochester Inc., says the non-profit community has a “great deal of confidence” in Vazquez’s leadership. Recognizing Vazquez’s efforts, the United Way named him Executive Director of the Year for 1996.
“Julio has an entrepreneurial spirit that he fosters in his community,” Calabrese says. “His agency has the pulse of the community.
“Our community is in need of affordable housing, and they’re there. Our community is in need of economic development, and the agency is there.”
Ibero-American staffers also give Vazquez a lot of the credit for the respect the agency has earned.
“We think very highly of him,” says Gladys Santiago, the agency’s senior vice president and a Rochester City Council member.
Santiago says Vazquez’s life experiences temper his idealism.
“Instead of being overly ambitious, he is just focused,” she says, calling him a bulldog who possesses sensitivity and excellent mediation skills.
Santiago also says he is a leader who helps staffers find their own strengths–something Vazquez says he strives to do.
“I just get out of the way and cheer when they’re accomplishing things and help break (down) some walls when there are some barriers,” he says.
Vazquez’s community involvement extends beyond Ibero-American. He is on the board of 13 non-profit organizations, ranging from the National Puerto Rican Coalition to the Greater Rochester Health System Inc.’s Continuing Care Network Inc. to the Legal Aid Society of Rochester, New York.
Concerned that he is spreading himself too thin, Vazquez is trying to determine which of those non-profits need his talent the most.
He admits that he is a workaholic, taking a break during the week only to exercise and spend time with his wife and family, which has grown with his children’s spouses and five grandchildren.
On days off, he and his wife split their time between their home in the city and a cabin in the Finger Lakes area. His wife is an urban dweller, while he would spend all his time boating and hiking if he could, Vazquez says.
He also is an avid reader–having three to four books open at any given time–and a self-described news junkie. He reads all the newspapers and magazines he can get his hands on in the evening after taking a brisk walk or bicycle ride.
When he sees a relevant article, Vazquez clips it and puts it in a box by his desk at work–his own library of research materials when he writes a speech or article.
Vazquez says he feels a calling of advocacy for the Latino community. On his office wall are a poem by Jose de Diego called “En La Brecha”–or “In the Struggle”–and the revolutionary version of the Puerto Rican national anthem.
“Since the beginning of this agency, we’ve realized that providing services and doing what the job descriptions call for is not enough,” Vazquez says. “Do what needs to be done to be successful, but provide another 25 percent, if you could, to the cause.”