Our northern neighbors. The very name conjures up an amazing history. Omaha, Nebraska, named for the Omaha tribe that once called it home, is the state’s largest city and home to a number of some of the most prosperous companies in the nation.
Omaha, despite its landlocked geography, is home to four Fortune 500 companies, including Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, a multi-national conglomerate with an estimated value of $354 billion. It ranks number four on the list.
Omaha is also a city that has invested in arts and culture. Its museums rank among the Midwest’s finest with the Durham Museum, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Strategic Air Command Museum. Smaller and more quaint stops include El Museo Latino and the Great Plains Black History Museum.
It was also once the home of some of both recent and contemporary history’s best known names. Civil Rights icon Malcolm X (then Little), actors Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Gabrielle Union, President Gerald Ford and Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson. It is also home to Creighton University known as a “gateway to the West,” Omaha was once one of America’s top livestock markets and meat processing centers. While both industries still remain important spokes in the city’s economy, 21st Century Omaha has come a long way.
Its downtown, like so many cities across the nation, has undergone a dramatic evolution over the last fifty years. But along with its sparkling new skyline, it still retains the charm that made it one of the Midwest’s cultural and economic centers. Some of its streets still have the same brick surfaces they’ve had for decades.
The city’s charm remains and each year it plays host to what may be its biggest cultural and economic event of the year, The Men’s College World Series. The 2023 MCWS is estimated to have been a $115 million shot in the arm to the city. It is also responsible for as many as 22,000 jobs and during its annual June run, sells more than 72,000 hotel rooms. It’s as big as the Omaha sky.
But Omaha has another side that people who’ve not visited may not even know about. Omaha is not just an outpost for ‘big red’ Husker football, fall’s only game in town. It is a city with a fabric woven in many hues.
Omaha has always had a Latino population, many early arrivals, in fact, worked in the livestock and meatpacking industries that put the city on the map. Both industries continue to play important roles in the city and region’s economies.
Today, fifteen percent of the city’s 485,000 residents or 72,000, identify as Latino. It is, not unlike so much of the country, also the city’s fastest growing demographic.
But, said Jose Flores, Communications Director for Nebraska’s Democratic Party, Latinos are often invisible at both city hall and county government, as well. For the MCWS, for example, Flores said there was minimal outreach to the Latino community for either input or significant participation. The event, Flores said, was once in the heart of South Omaha, a part of the city where much of the Latino population today lives and where there is vibrant Latino commerce.
South Omaha’s 24th Street is well known for Latino-run shops and businesses. “It was in our backyard,” he said. The old ballpark, Rosenblatt Stadium, has since been razed and today serves as parking lots for Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium.
“We’re everywhere in the service industry,” Flores said as he drove recently to Grand Island for a party event. But, not so much, he said, in city government or even in the city’s Chamber of Commerce. On the Chamber’s website, there appears only one person out of 42 with a Hispanic surname.
In preparation for this story, the Chamber of Commerce, while responsive, referred me to Latino individuals and organizations not part of the formal Omaha Chamber.
A veteran reporter who has written about the city for decades agreed to speak on the record but asked their name not be used. They said there are smaller communities outside Omaha who have Latino representation in city and county government but Omaha and Douglas County, where the city sits, is almost devoid of a Latino presence.
“Douglas County government has Roger Garcia—a councilman who was appointed to that seat after his predecessor died. He was the first Latino on the county board.” The reporter, an Omaha native, said it almost feels “to be an almost deliberate exclusion in city government posts.”
Omaha, the reporter who has long covered city and county governments, said the city has “had the opportunity to appoint a Latino to fill the city council seat that represents the greatest concentration of Latinos, but did not do so.” There have been, the veteran journalist said, a number of qualified candidates for filling vacancies but to date none has been appointed. The mayor’s office, the source said, is similarly bare with only one Latino serving as liaison to the community. There is also no Latino currently serving in the Mayor’s cabinet, the reporter said.
Anna Hernandez, a native Omahan and former staffer for former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, who works actively on Latino issues and serves on a number of boards, also laments the city’s, county’s and Chamber’s lack of effort to incorporate Latinos into the fabric.
Hernandez, a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Omaha, said there is plenty of Latino talent, who like her, are college graduates who bring with them a wealth of talent and potential. But they either leave for other places, she said, or find jobs in a more inviting private sector.
The MCWS was once again a success despite several days with temperatures hovering at ninety degrees or higher. There was also an early constant blustery wind players were forced to contend with for at least the first few days.
In attending, the games seemed to take on more a NASCAR-like complexion with seven of the eight teams (North Carolina, North Carolina State, Florida, Florida State, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia) hailing from southern states. Texas A&M was the exception.
But despite the weather, the games were packed and souvenir hawkers, who seemed to be occupying any spot outside Charles Schwab Stadium, were cranking out sales with almost reckless abandon. For fans, the prices were seemingly no object, with tee shirts going for $50 and hats $10 cheaper.
Scalpers, the only group reflecting real diversity, also did a brisk business with many flying in from cities across the country to make a buck. Unlike MCWS souvenir vendors, with scalpers you could actually negotiate a price. Fifty-dollar tickets could be had for half price and you could attend with great seats directly under an Omaha sun.
Don’t be fooled, Nebraska and Omaha are amazing and so much more than silly jokes about corn, or as nearly 80,000 Omahans call it, maize.
