Thread: The Big Apple’s Mexican Face

The Big Apple’s Mexican Face
By PALOMA DALLAS

Red-and-white-striped Puerto Rican flags still wave over El Barrio, hanging from windowsills, fluttering from car antennas, and painted on brick walls.


But the neighborhood is changing. In the last ten years, Mexican grocery stores, barbershops, and restaurants have cropped up along 116th Street, the main throughway of East Harlem. Red-white-and-green Mexican flags now adorn the famously Puerto Rican neighborhood.


Tortillas, mole, salsa chipotl, and other Mexican products are common fare on the shelves of corner bodegas.

“Give us five more years and we will declare this Mexican territory,” says Francisco Morales, a native of the Mexican state of Tabasco and owner of Olmeca, a restaurant that opened six months ago on 116th Street.


The burgeoning Mexican community is not limited to East Harlem; its growing presence can be felt across the city. While Mexicans have long been the largest Hispanic group in the rest of the United States, they have had a small, discreet presence in New York City, at least until recently.

Now, the population is growing by leaps and bounds, tripling in the last ten years after more than doubling in size between 1980 and 1990. The reasons for the boom are varied, but observers cite everything from a prosperous economy to a less politically charged environment in the Northeast to simple word-of-mouth.

Morales came to New York in 1986 because he had a friend who was working in the city. He was 18 and wanted to get to know the United States, and New York had an international allure. He crossed the border, intending to stay only a few years, but serendipitously arrived in time to receive amnesty under a 1986 immigration law, and he has stayed ever since.

“New York is a prosperous city, one of perseverance,” Morales observes. After his first job washing dishes, he moved on to driving a taxi, and was finally able to open his own restaurant this year.
Just three months ago, Manuel Cano, 27, his uncle and cousin all came to New York by the same route to work in construction. They joined Cano’s 49-year-old father, a brother-in-law, and another relative. The six live together in a two-bedroom apartment in El Barrio, where they split the $900-a-month rent.



Right now in Los Angeles there is hardly any work, there is too much competition in the construction industry. We just had two Mexican friends who came here [from Los Angeles] because they were starving to death over there,” Cano says. This stay is his second time in New York. The first time, he was here for about three years, long enough to save up money to build a house for his wife and three kids in San Martín de Texmelucán, in the state of Puebla. His hometown is a city of 121,000 that already has a sizeable representation in New York City.

Just the other day, Cano’s cousin, Alejandro Téllez, ran into a friend from home he had not seen in eight years. The two bumped into each other at a Mexican deli on 116th Street. A few days later, the cousins met another friend from home who was working at the same construction site as they were. “It’s crazy!” Téllez says.

But in fact, Puebla residents, or poblanos, make up more than half the Mexican population in New York. Analysts are unclear exactly why the phenomenon began, but since the mid-1980s and 1990s, poblanos have been coming in record numbers. Before them, a small influx of Mexicans from the Yucatán Peninsula came in the 1920s, and others from Jalisco and Michoacán came in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the population began to take off in the 1980s with the arrival of poblanos and others from the Mixteca region, which includes parts of Puebla, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, and is home to some two-thirds of the Mexican community in New York.




As with most immigration trends, both push and pull factors were involved. The whole Mixteca region, including Puebla, was one of the areas most severely affected by the financial crisis of the 1980s and by the subsequent 1994 devaluation of the peso, says Robert Smith, a Barnard College professor who specializes in Mexican immigration trends in the United States.

If this was the push factor for people to emigrate to the United States, then the booming New York economy and its perception as a region amenable to immigrants was the pull.

“Anti-immigration policies, specifically in California, in regard to questions of health and education, caused many to come to other states and cities that were friendlier to immigrants,” says Salvador Beltrán del Río, the Mexican consul general in New York.

Mexicans in New York City number 187,000, according to the 2000 Census, making them the city’s third-largest Hispanic group after Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. If the population continues to grow at this rate, more than half a million Mexicans will be living in New York City by 2010. Puerto Ricans, who have long enjoyed the most sizeable Hispanic representation in the city, totaled some 789,000 in the last census, down 12 percent since 1990.

“New York City represents the American dream for many immigrants, and in California there are so many Mexicans that there is more competition for jobs,” said Juan Cáceres, founder of CECOMEX, a Mexican community-based organization that began organizing Cinco de Mayo and Independence Day festivals in 1996.

Although census figures show record growth in the Mexican community, some community leaders say the numbers are too low. The actual count is probably twice as high, according to Joel Magallán, the executive director of Association Tepeyac, which works with undocumented Mexicans in New York. He blamed poor planning by census officials, who did not adequately reach out to the Spanish-speaking community, but also fear among undocumented immigrants as the primary factors in the undercount.




Because the largest influx of Mexicans came after the 1986 amnesty, few have had opportunities to legalize their status, and as many as 70 to 80 percent are estimated to be undocumented, according to the Mexican Consulate.

“There might be ten, twelve, fifteen people living in the same apartment, and there is confusion over whether immigration or housing authorities are going to use this information,” Magallán explains. He says that, even among those who filled out the census, few probably responded truthfully about how many people were living at that address.




Public officials are taking notice, though. Between 40,000 and 50,000 people attended the annual Cinco de Mayo festival this year, Cáceres notes, including New York Governor George E. Pataki, who made a debut appearance.

The commercial growth is also hard to ignore. El Barrio has one of the largest concentrations of Mexican-owned businesses in the city, says Cáceres, who estimated that 77 such businesses were operating in the neighborhood alone. Among them is the Azteca barbershop and a video store specializing in Mexican movies, including a collection of Cantinflas films. Other Mexican businesses have sprung up in all of the city’s five boroughs and across the tri-state area.

When he first arrived in 1986, Morales remembers having to travel to the Bronx in search of tortillas and other Mexican food. But now he says Mexican products can be found everywhere. Of course, competition is steeper, but this does not deter him from bringing his own flavor of Mexico into Olmeca, named after the pre-Columbian indigenous group native to Tabasco.

“I wanted a name representative of the area where I am from, and a place that was very authentic,” says Morales, who has decorated the tables with toothpick holders in the shape of tiny Olmecan heads. He still works as a cab driver to stay afloat.

“Many of us professionals are struggling,” he says, but he remains optimistic. “As long as one is alive and well, the rest is profit.”

http://www.hispaniconline.com/res&res/p ... xican.html

“Give us five more years and we will declare this Mexican territory,” says Francisco Morales, a native of the Mexican state of Tabasco and owner of Olmeca, a restaurant that opened six months ago on 116th Street.

don't ya just love our president?

I go into Manhattan for physical therapy. Pass many consulates with the MEX CONSULATE a disgrace. There's always a mass of dirty people hanging on the street waiting to get in. I was originally shocked at the type of people, how they acted and what a large number of them were congragating. Garbage {more than usual} on the street, etc.

“Anti-immigration policies, specifically in California, in regard to questions of health and education, caused many to come to other states and cities that were friendlier to immigrants,” says Salvador Beltrán del Río, the Mexican consul general in New York.

The author of this article "PALOMA DALLAS" got this quote wrong. California does not have anti-immigration policies. Only illegal immigration policies.

Right now in Los Angeles there is hardly any work, there is too much competition in the construction industry. We just had two Mexican friends who came here [from Los Angeles] because they were starving to death over there,” Cano says.

“New York City represents the American dream for many immigrants, and in California there are so many Mexicans that there is more competition for jobs,” said Juan Cáceres, founder of CECOMEX, a Mexican community-based organization that began organizing Cinco de Mayo and Independence Day festivals in 1996.

These two quotes concern me the most. Illegals are going to saturate the job market until there will not be enough jobs to go around for even our own legal citizens. Wages will then plummet as the competition for jobs increase.