WTOP celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month this Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, with stories spotlighting the contributions, culture and accomplishments of Hispanic communities across the D.C. region.
If Jackie Reyes-Yanes could talk to her younger self, newly arrived in D.C. from El Salvador, she would tell Little Jackie, who didn’t speak any English: “This is the best city in the world if you want to become somebody. I wouldn’t have these opportunities back home.”
Now, 34 years later, she’s the director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs, the outreach arm of city hall, overseeing a dozen community affairs offices.
Reyes-Yanes fell into politics. She started as a single mother of three, advocating for better schools. From there, she was hired to work as a liaison to Ward 1 — which has a large Hispanic population — under then D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and his administration from 2007 to 2011.
Despite going into politics to fix education, she said she soon became a point person for the Latino community, who would come to her with issues that weren’t being addressed.
“When COVID hit, it was an eye opener,” she said.
She was the director of Latino Affairs under Mayor Muriel Bowser when the pandemic broke out. When the first Latino person died, he didn’t get into the ambulance because he lacked documentation, Reyes-Yanes said.
“And the mayor said, ‘We have a problem,'” she said.
Soon after, Reyes-Yanes’s office began working round the clock on education and health campaigns and helping Latinos with rental and housing assistance through the pandemic’s economic upheaval.
While things have greatly improved for the Latino community in D.C. since her arrival in 1990 — when her lack of English was treated like a disability at school — Reyes-Yanes said more work needs to be done. Some of the major issues that needs to be addressed are housing, immigration, jobs, schools and integrating newcomers into the city.
With around 80,000 Hispanic people living in D.C., Reyes-Yanes said the community is the backbone of the city and vital to its economy.
“If you go into a restaurant, go into the kitchen. Who’s cooking?” she said. “If you see the landscaping, who are the people doing the landscaping? If you see a construction company, and you go outside, who’s doing the construction?”
Coming to this country young also meant Reyes-Yanes was never put into a cultural box. She was open to embracing different communities.
“I love Ethiopian food. I love Mexican food,” she said, “I love culture, and I love to learn.”
Now, as director of community affairs, she oversees education campaigns in multiple languages, packaging the mayor’s policies in culturally sensitive and easy to understand ways for various communities.
“I just want to make sure that everybody who wants to prosper in Washington, D.C., they have the ways how to do it,” she said.
She’s the first person from the Latino community to ever be appointed to that role.
She told WTOP that the sensitivity forged growing up in a vulnerable population is a responsibility she now carries to help all vulnerable populations, serving as a bridge between the mayor and the diverse mosaic that is the city.
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