The Latino immigrants who make the Kentucky Derby tick
Walking among the green-roofed stables of America’s most fabled horse racing track – Louisville’s Churchill Downs in Kentucky - chaplain Joseph Del Rosario greets the men and women washing prized thoroughbreds after their morning workouts with a warm “¿Cómo estás?”
Making his way past piles of hay and curious horses poking their heads out of stalls, he walks to a security gate at the edge of the track where he reads a daily devotional over the PA system twice – once in English and once in Spanish.
During the racing season, there are about 1,000 workers who groom, exercise and take care of Churchill Downs’s swift-footed competitors in the area referred to as the “Backside” of the track. It is hard and potentially dangerous work that begins hours before the sun rises up above the track’s iconic twin spires.
About 600 workers live on the
