Baltimore’s Latino businesses, pummeled by the pandemic, are bouncing back

Edith Esquivel remembers driving home and trying to stay hopeful on the day she closed La Nueva Esperanza last year – the same day Governor Hogan announced the first stay-at-home order. Surely the shutdown was temporary, she thought. Soon the event-planning business she had operated for six years in Highlandtown, serving primarily Latino families, would reopen. But it would be months before she could restart the business – and even then, she took a huge hit in the absence of large-scale events and celebrations.