Happy Hispanic Heritage Month!

Charles

It's that time of year again! We haul out the decorations, start addressing cards to loved ones, plan get-togethers...Yes, it's Hispanic Heritage Month , one of my favorite times of the year.

These past couple years here at GBH, we've reflected on Salvadoran heritage, famous customers and a memorable team member. We got a well-timed visit from a norteño band. Hispanic business has certainly a part of Wells Fargo's success. Latino customers transact business, and Latino team members provide customer service.

Wells Fargo's Express network moved from east to Golden West via Panama.  Wells Fargo had agents in Panama to assist pioneers in their journey to the Gold Rush. In January 1853, Henry Wells traveled by sea to San Francisco, to assess the business.

From Panama, he wrote, "I am alive & kicking but awful sore & some tired. I have found our Agents the very best men on the entire route — men of the highest standards & great energy."

In North America, Overland stagecoaches rolled through territories that had been northernmost Mexico only a few years earlier. Colorado House was opened in Old Town San Diego in 1852 and housed the Wells Fargo Express office. Jose Guadalupe Estudillo, scion of an old Californio  family, became Wells Fargo Agent in 1870.

In Wells Fargo's early years, gold and other important business were carried by side-wheel steamships from the Columbia River basin to points in Latin America. The steamers called at Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan and Acapulco, where Wells Fargo agents served the growing Pacific Coast communities.

Wells Fargo established a Mexican subsidiary in 1860, Wells Fargo y Compañía Express, S.A. (Sociedad Mexicana). Offices were opened in grocery and department stores, hotels, drug stores and real estate offices.

Wells Fargo's business in Mexico (pdf) grew with the expansion of railroads in the last half of the 19th century. Wells Fargo provided rapid delivery and was the only U.S. express company offering direct service. By the turn of the century, la Compañía had over 300 offices, and fully ninety-eight percent of employees were Mexican.

Wells Fargo's first General Agent in El Salvador was J.C. Ybarra (pdf) in 1913. He oversaw thirteen agents and their offices, five messengers and seven other workers. Ybarra was an eyewitness to Wells Fargo's role in the economic stability of that era. He wrote that he and his staff had the "honor of being employees of a Company which has enlarged, in the commercial history of the New World, the era of progress and prosperity." In Cuba, (pdf) Wells Fargo had regularly scheduled business via steamships since the late 1800s. Wells Fargo handled money orders and traveler's checks for Cubans and tourists, and expanded steamship services to various destinations from the island.

We all personally celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month because we Historians are keenly aware that Hispanics have been a critical part of Wells Fargo's presence since the very beginning.