Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent the days after the midterm elections in San Juan, where New York’s Democrats gathered for the annual SOMOS conference and where he met with activists and the Puerto Rican band Chuwi. The trip followed months of outreach to Latino New Yorkers at home, including a Spanish-language City Hall WhatsApp channel.

Mamdani Took City Hall to WhatsApp With El Chisme Oficial de NYC

On July 7, the mayor’s office launched El Chisme Oficial de NYC. This WhatsApp channel delivers city news, immigration information, and transit alerts to subscribers in Spanish, according to a City Hall press release. The channel also shares behind-the-scenes images from events around the city and the occasional voice note from Mamdani and other city leaders. At the same time, City Hall relaunched its Spanish-language Instagram account, @nycgob, so followers no longer have to track a dozen agency accounts to find updates.

“Every New Yorker deserves to know what their city is doing for them in the language they speak at home,” Mamdani said in the release. “Spanish-speaking New Yorkers are on WhatsApp and Instagram every day, so that is where City Hall should be, too.”

Latino Groups Have Taken Notice of the Mayor’s Plans and Appointments

Before taking office, Mamdani named Dr. Helen Arteaga Landaverde, then the CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst in Queens, as his deputy mayor for health and human services, PoliticsNY reported in December 2025. The Hispanic Federation said her appointment “sends an important message to Latino and immigrant communities across the city.”

In September, his administration released the city’s first citywide racial equity plan, which sets 2034 goals to reduce unemployment among Black, Latino, and Asian American New Yorkers relative to 2026 rates and address racial disparities in rent burden and homelessness, according to the mayor’s office. The mayor’s office noted that the burden of the city’s cost of living falls hardest on Black and Latino households.

In October, Mamdani joined about 60 community partners at the Hispanic Federation’s New York office for a conversation on immigration enforcement, affordability, health care access, and education, according to the organization, which said the event closed out Hispanic Heritage Month. “New York would not be the great city it is today without Latino New Yorkers,” Mamdani said there.

In San Juan, Mamdani Returned to a Conference New York Mayors Rarely Skip

The SOMOS conference, held in Puerto Rico every year after Election Day, turned 40 this year, and New York City’s mayor traditionally attends. Mamdani went last year, days after winning the election. This time he arrived 10 months into his term, as one of the Democrats celebrating a midterm sweep. “Two years ago, this looked like a funeral,” outgoing Rep. Nydia Velázquez told The City Reporter at the conference’s opening reception, referring to President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection. “And tonight, we are celebrating.”

On Friday, Nov. 6, Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul met with local community leaders and nonprofits in San Juan, according to the Associated Press. “What we heard today was the fact that so often what’s described as a natural crisis here in Puerto Rico is in fact a political crisis, one that is the result of political choices,” Mamdani said. Hochul described the past two years as an abandonment of the federal government’s commitment to the island and said she hoped to keep bringing resources for “resiliency, energy projects, building up the grid, as well as healthcare being restored, nutrition programs.”

Both leaders attended the announcement of a $280,000 partnership between the Hispanic Federation and the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, El Nuevo Día reported. The money will add water storage at 10 resiliency hubs run by communities around the island, and some of the hubs will also receive rainwater collection, kitchen upgrades, and solar panels with batteries. “We have to start working with the leadership to make sure that the Puerto Rico agenda is not forgotten,” Frankie Miranda, the federation’s president and CEO, told the AP.

Mamdani Took On ICE and Gentrification While on the Island

Today, nearly 600,000 Puerto Ricans live in New York City. “What I’ve heard from Puerto Rican New Yorkers is a concern about displacement and gentrification, not only in the neighborhoods that they’ve helped to build in New York City, but also right here in Puerto Rico,” Mamdani said.

At a press conference with Puerto Rican leaders from New York and the island, including Puerto Rican Independence Party secretary general Juan Dalmau and Sen. María de Lourdes Santiago, Mamdani criticized amendments to Puerto Rico Senate Bill 1062, which he said would allow ICE into the island’s schools, El Nuevo Día reported. He also met with groups opposing Esencia, a $2 billion luxury development planned for Cabo Rojo, which he said would consume 1.2 million gallons of water a day in a community facing a severe drought, according to a statement circulated by the organization La Brega y Fuerza. The project’s developers have said they are working extensively with the surrounding community, environmental experts, and regulators on a plan that is sensitive to the region’s environment, the newspaper reported.

Chuwi Asked Zohran Mamdani How He Stays Connected to People

Before those meetings, Mamdani sat down with Chuwi, a band made up of three siblings, Wester, Willy, and Lorén, and their best friend Adrián. The band toured as the opening act for Bad Bunny after appearing on his album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” Rolling Stone reported. Willy asked the mayor how he had managed to carry out policies other mayors could not. “When you get elected you get disconnected,” Mamdani answered, describing how the trappings of office can wall leaders off from their constituents, and how he rides his bike around the city to stay in touch. He also praised the band’s activism. “When you’re not at a desk, it’s easier to tell the truth,” he said.

Mamdani, who once rapped under the name Mr. Cardamom, joked about his own early gigs. “I was the opener to the opener to the opener,” he told the band, according to Rolling Stone.

Afterward, the band pushed back on anyone who might say the mayor of New York has no business weighing in on the island’s affairs. “My counterargument is that we’re a colony of the United States, and New York is — and has always been — extremely important in Puerto Rico. We’re linked,” Wester told Rolling Stone.

Tags: Mamdani, Puerto Rico