36 Hours in Latino New York City.

Cuchifritos, a Puerto Rican-focused restaurant in El Barrio, or Spanish Harlem. 

Credit: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The city’s Latino influences can be found throughout the cultural scene, from museums and street art to restaurants and night life.

Once mostly defined by Puerto Ricans, Latino New York City has grown to more than 2.4 million residents with roots all over Latin America, the largest such population of any American city. Both native and foreign-born, Latinos are part of the city’s DNA — they account for 29 percent of the overall population and for more than half in the Bronx. Spanish speakers keep coming from countries like the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Ecuador, refreshing communities with their own cultural imprint and street-life vibe, in neighborhoods like East Harlem and Washington Heights in Manhattan, and Jackson Heights in Queens.

As the city’s population swells, though, there are worries about a housing crunch that is bringing higher rents, gentrification and changing demographics to ethnic enclaves where old-timers fear dilution and displacement. For now, even sought-after East Harlem — where the Puerto Rican migration to New York after World War II spearheaded a thriving Latino presence that renamed the area El Barrio, or Spanish Harlem — is still going strong. Just follow Tito Puente Way and other road tributes to Latino notables in a tour of murals and mosaic art, cultural institutions and a restaurant scene that is as likely to include Puerto Rican mofongo as Mexican horchata.

By Mireya Navarro.

Full story at NY Times.