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Author Archives: Sergio C. Muñoz

Sergio C. Muñoz is a Mexican banker living in Floral Park, CA. He is the owner of Intelatin, LLC. His work has been published on PBS and in ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America, Studio 360 and México ¿Cómo Vamos? He can be reached at smunoz(@)intelatin(dot)com
Posted inOpinion

COMMENTARY: On Prosperity, Featuring Tessie Rios

by Sergio C. Muñoz

As I was driving through one day on the way to buy chicharrón carnudo at the Sahuayo Market on Pomona street in Santa Ana, California, I saw a street sign for a community crop exchange. I stopped to buy some calabazas and began talking with one of the volunteers, Tessie Rios. I asked her if she lived in the area and she told me that she was on the board of the neighborhood association.
I felt like I had found a needle in the Mexican haystack to uncover a Puerto Rican homeowner in Floral Park. One of the nicest areas of Santa Ana, called Floral Park, is mostly white. Still, the former mayor of Santa Ana, Miguel Pulido, lives there, and so does Congressman Lou Correa.
Around 76% of the Santa Ana population is Latino, according to the U.S. Census. Many of them hail from Sahuayo, Michoacán, México, and the two cities have a sister city agreement.
We sat in a nearby park and Rios told me her life story. Homeownership wasn’t an ambition to generate wealth, rather it was a story of survival and a search for stability caused by the diaspora. Rios lived an intense and traumatic childhood being shuffled in and out of Puerto Rico from birth until the age of 40. That’s when she made the purchase of her forever home and finally pivoted from insecurity to security.

Posted inOpinion

COLUMN: On Prosperity: Featuring Lyanne Alfaro

by Sergio C. Muñoz

Lyanne Alfaro founded her own company, Moneda Moves, to share stories about money and culture to empower people to create generational wealth. She’s also a Developer Relations Program Manager at Google, overseeing content strategy for developer stories across social platforms. She is an educated Latina, employed at a Fortune 100, fully engaged in “solopreneurship.” She seeks to bring her career closer to home to focus not just on professional growth but on personal growth as she works with her parents on their joint financial future. 

Posted inOpinion

COLUMN: On Prosperity,Featuring Ariela Nerubay

by Sergio C. Muñoz

I always knew that part of my American dream included home ownership as being the daughter of an architect, I grew up going to his “obras” and seeing the foundation with rubble grow and convert into magnificent structures. My dad always said one must invest in “Books and Bricks,”meaning, focus on education and invest in homeownership to succeed. He was right. Once in America, I worked hard being an immigrant who did not know anyone and did not speak English well. I went to school, completed two postgraduate degrees and eventually my MBA. I purchased my first condo at age 30 with the guidance of my Latina friends and a wonderful realtor who taught me what I know now. That was my first step of many that followed to get me where I am today.

Posted inOpinion

COLUMN: On Prosperity featuring Lauren Fernandez

by Sergio C. Muñoz

I have deeply always had a need for a place. I think that ties back directly to being a Cuban American and not being able to visit Cuba. I have the understanding that my father and his family were displaced and we moved around a lot for his career, so it took 18 tries before we found home. For me, that was not just a connection to home ownership and prosperity but really a need to have a place and to set down roots. We needed to have roots over having prosperity. Ultimately, when we did put down roots and my father had arrived at a successful career and it reflected our values and our aesthetic, it did become a sign of prosperity.

Posted inOpinion

On Prosperity: A new CALÓ NEWS column series on Latinos and personal wealth

by Sergio C. Muñoz

In 2022, only 8% of homebuyers in the U.S. were Latino barely up from 6% in 2003, according to the National Association of Realtors. That means in 20 years there has been little progress.
In 2019, in California the Latino homeownership rate was 44.1%, still 19.2 points below that of white households, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Latinos certainly have buying power. We are 19% of the population and have more than $2 trillion in buying power, according to Claritas.