Family and friends remember Josefina "Doña Fefa" Rosario in interviews with Journal reporter Kevin G. Andrade on Dec. 20, 2018, the day of her funeral. She was widely known as the “Mother of the Latino Community,” after opening a bodega, Fefa’s Market, on Broad Street in 1959 with her husband, Tony. Rosario moved to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic — to New York in 1949. By the next decade, she had opened what has come to be recognized by many as the first bodega catering to Latino communities in Rhode Island.
(Some conversation is in Spanish)