When the Aztec Eagle Began to Soar Over Bridgeport: Part 2 – The New Guys in NY
When the Aztec Eagle Began to Soar Over Bridgeport: Part 2 – The New Guys in NY
By Abraham Lima
This is Part 2 of a 5 Part Series at the Bridgeport History Center:
The tri-color flag of Mexico, the green red and white. In the middle stands an eagle on a cactus with a snake, the legacy of this eagle, the eagle the Aztecs saw in the middle of the lake with artificial islands they would build soon surrounding the spot. A sign of Huichilopochtli the war god. On it was built Mexico Tenochtitlán- or as we say today in English, Mexico City.
This eagle soars over 2,000 miles away, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, resides the largest Mexican population, both largest foreign born and Mexican descendant population, of any city in New England, ahead of Boston and New Haven.
- Part 1 “En El Principio, Los Mojados en USA” and “What are Tortillas?”
- Part 2 – “The New Guys in New York”
- Part 3 “Men of Maplewood”
- Part 4 – “Miles y Miles Mas (Thousands and Thousands More)”,
- Part 5 – “History of the Future” and “The Eagle Soars”
For Part 1 click below: https://bportlibrary.org/hc/hispanic-populations-and-culture/when-the-aztec-eagle-began-her-soar-over-bridgeport-part-1/
This segment, which contains chapter 2, while on the topic of Mexicans in Bridgeport, will cover with some detail the start of Mexican migration to the places in the region where many Mexicans in Greater Bridgeport had started off and the context of Bridgeport’s Mexicans within the region’s Mexican population. Little had been found on the city’s Mexicans who were in the city up until the late 1980s. Evidence of any amount of Mexicans was added here. By 1980, in the census, 175 people in Bridgeport were born in Mexico, but where they were from, what their names were, where they came first, and where they worked is very had to track. A few were found in records.
In Part 3 and so forth, the groups and places highlighted here will grant context needed to understand the Bridgeport modern Mexican community’s origins.
New England is the region farthest from the Mexican border in all of the lower 48 states in the USA. Above is a map of the North American landmass showing a land route between South Central Mexico and New England. Source for base maps is Wikimedia Commons, edited by Abraham Lima. Sources: 2020 Census
- The New Guys in New York and the Spread From Big Apple to Park City (1943*-1990)
How did Bridgeport’s Mexican community arise? It came about with 4 separate chance incidents.
Let us briefly go 60 miles southwest from Bridgeport to Manhattan Island. Around the same time the Puerto Ricans were mass migrating to the northeast, in July 1943, Don (ie, Mr.) Pedro Simon and his cousin Fermin were driven by land to New York City from Mexico City by David Montesinos, an Italian-American New Yorker they encountered who vacationed every year in Mexico City, as told in Robert C. Smith’s 2006 book “Mexican New Yorkers”.
Pedro and Fermin Simon were originally from a rural town in the Mixteca region (made up of southwestern Puebla, northeast Guerrero and northern Oaxaca) the State of Puebla. In the book, the town is referred to by the pseudonym Tucuani. As said in a 1998 New York Times article, the town is Chinantla, Puebla. Migration to the United States from that region started in the bracero program to the southwestern US fields. The two brothers were trying to bribe (the typical method) to get Bracero contracts in strawberry fields in Texas while living in Mexico City but had failed. In New York City, Montesinos housed them in a Times Square hotel and got them jobs in two days mopping floors at a restaurant. It was D-Day when the brothers agreed to stay for good, rather than go to Texas.
A few years later, in either 1950 or 1952 (sources contradict), Maurilia Arriaga from Chinantla’s neighbor village, Piaxtla, had migrated to New York to work as the cook for a retired American diplomat, as she had been recommended by her former boss, Mexican actress Maria Felix. Miss Maurilia was what she was nicknamed, and she brought some of her nephews, nieces and friends to New York City.
These 2 events started a migration chain; a few men from these 2 towns in Southwestern Puebla would follow to New York City flying in with tourist visas with the idea to stay and work, their relatives would follow. In the mid-1960s, more people from Chinantla, Piaxtla, and from the neighboring towns (towns like Tulcingo, Acatlan de Osorio, Tehuitzingo, or Izucar de Matamoros) would follow and joined them, this time including women, attracted by higher wages and electric conveniences previously unimaginable to them coming from places not yet electrified. With many working in restaurants and textile factories in the 1960s, the weekly wages for these migrants ranged from $50-80 USD ($420-$670 in 2023), much more than back home, causing more migration from these towns.
Two years later, in 1954, a city councilman in New Rochelle, New York (in Westchester County) George Vergara, and his wife Allys, visited Mexico City. As Catholics, they visited Sacred Heart Basilica and told the priest they wanted to hire a butler. Antonio Valencia, an ex-seminary student had overheard. Antonio was from a poor family in tiny Cotija, Michoacan, (near the border with the state of Jalisco), and his family later moved to Quitupan, Jalisco nearby. He overheard and agreed to live with them in New Rochelle as a butler. He brought his 6 siblings over in 1955. In 1956, with Mrs, Vergera’s sponsorship, invited 2 brothers from Quitupan in Jalisco to New Rochelle.
They brought friends and relatives from Quitupan and nearby Cotija and Jiquilpan in Michoacan, and they’d bring theirs, eventually totaling hundreds of people. To quote the April 5th 1998 front page special report of the Port Chester Daily Item “They, in turn, brought dozens more friends and relatives from the farming village of Quitupan and neighboring hamlets that border the states of Jalisco and Michoacan in central Mexico. Since then, thousands of Mexicans from the same area have set up tight-knit communities in Mamaroneck, Port Chester, and Mount Vernon.”
Verega had become mayor, and Valencia would look out for the Mexican community and became known by them as the padrino or “godfather” helping them get employment based on their families needs, housing, aiding in court cases, etc. The Mexicans settled in the West To quote a New York Times article from 1992. “Unlike other parts of the New York region where Mexicans come mainly from the Puebla region… in New Rochelle most Mexicans are from the tight cluster of towns in the central-western region where Mr. Valencia grew up.”
In 1954, the same year Antonio Valencia came to New Rochelle, Guillermo Carmona and his Dominican bride, Rhina Ligia Carmona, settled in Bridgeport on Iranistan Ave. Mr. Carmona was born in 1921 in Tepeaca, Puebla, 8 miles east from the state capital of Puebla City. At age 5 or 6 his family moved to San Pedro Cholula just outside Puebla City in central Puebla, 86 miles north of tiny Chinantla. The son of an indigenous Nahuatl-speaking Mexican woman and a white Mexican man, he had an 8th grade education, which was higher than average in 1950s Mexico. He, his friends Heriberto Amaros and another man remembered only by their his daughter, Maria, as “El Gato” (the cat) moved to Bridgeport from New York City. Carmona later moved to Stratford with his wife and two sons, and in 1963 had a daughter, Maria.
Maria recalls “My dad and mom (a Dominican) moved to Bridgeport in July 1954. They went to Bridgeport because my dad had finally found the type of work he had wanted to find when he first arrived in the U.S. The place was Stanley Works (a steel mill). My father had worked at a foundry in his hometown of Cholula, Puebla and, so, he was a skilled laborer. It took him about 8 years to find that work after living in New York City and working all kinds of jobs, learning English, figuring out how to make his way.” Heriberto also worked at Stanley Works. As a child, Maria would ask her father Guillermo why he came so far from the border and he kept the reason simple and fun. “At first, he told me he decided to go to New York because he had loved listening to music on his shortwave radio. He used to hear shows transmitted from New York. My dad loved jazz music, and he told me that he wanted to go to New York because he was young, single, and wanted to hear jazz played by the great musicians of that time.” When Maria learned about the Bracero program in high school “I asked my dad about his reason for coming again. He told me he did come during that time, but didn’t apply to be a Bracero. He said he knew he had skills and didn’t want to work in the fields. He also told me that he thought life for Mexicans in California and the Southwest would be difficult based on what he had heard from some people. He figured that if he went further north, he’d be less likely to be treated as badly.” As an adult, her father told more details about the circumstances behind why left Cholula. “He told me that there had been threats on his life because he had been the president of the local steelworkers’ union at the foundry, and he refused to accept bribes from management. If he took them, he would have been expected to stop asking for certain improvements and just do management’s bidding. He really didn’t want to leave and had resisted for almost a year. When his brother’s life was also threatened, he left to please my grandmother who was very concerned for their safety.”
Maria explained why her father and uncle decided to head to northeastern United States, “El Gato was their friend, and his uncle was a merchant marine. The uncle had been telling El Gato and the men in their family that there was a “big world” outside of Cholula and a lot of work in New York. He said the border was not hard to cross and they should come work there. El Gato told my dad that if he wanted to leave the country, his uncle could probably help him settle in New York. Well, to make a long story short, El Gato decided to join my dad and my uncle, and their friend, Heriberto Amaros, decided to join them.”
“My parents were very Catholic and were surprised that there was no Spanish-language Catholic mass in Bridgeport when they arrived. So, they got together with a few Spanish-speaking [mostly Puerto Rican]friends that they came to know and after a few years succeeded in getting the Diocese of Bridgeport to establish a “mission church” Nuestra Señora de la Divina Providencia” at St. Peter’s Church on Colorado Ave. This became like a home to many Spanish-speaking Catholics in the area. Up to their last years, they would remember the priest who supported their efforts, Monsignor Campagnone. My mom told me how the Diocese resisted establishing a new church catering to Spanish speakers. How someone – I think Monsignor – had suggested proposing it as a “mission,” which proved acceptable. My mom said there were about five or seven couples who committed themselves to growing the community, kind of like “founding families.” Not long after that, Monsignor recommended my mother to work at Catholic Charities in Bridgeport because the needs of the Spanish-speaking Catholic community became apparent, and my mom had secretarial skills and she was fully bilingual.” Mrs. Carmona worked at Nestle in Connecticut, where the Swiss company had its headquarters for the Americas region, and then for General Electric in Manhattan, Fairfield, and Bridgeport.
Maria recalls that “growing up in Stratford, I felt a little different sometimes. Most people equated Latinos with Puerto Rican and Cuban. People often assumed I was one of the two, and only other Latinos knew I was neither. At least I had my Dominican cousins in town with me. Don’t get me wrong, I had friends, but I was very aware that our ways, our food, our manner of being was different from most of my friends. About the only thing our families had in common was being Catholic. But my parents were friendly people, and I know they felt a part of the community. And EVERYONE LOVED MY DAD!!!! He coached baseball, and to this day I hear from people who remember what a great coach he was and also what a great fan he was of the teams my older brother and they played on. He treated kids differently. He assumed they were capable and had patience while they developed skills. And, he stood up to parents when they got a little too critical of their kids. One of his favorite stories was about how he coached one particular team to a championship after rejecting ongoing sideline coaching from one parent. After that, parents didn’t criticize his coaching decisions anymore.”
“Stanley Works eventually became Carpenter Steel, a major employer in Bridgeport. My dad later found work at a manufacturing plant called Thermtrol and then co-owned and supervised a factory himself [Valcan, Inc on Bruce Ave in Stratford near the rail overpass]”.
“I will say that our house was often home for my Mexican relatives who would eventually move to the U.S., but few remained in CT. Most went to NYC or New Jersey.” In terms of her father’s relatives. “My dad’s two other younger brothers came to the U.S. too, and by 1960, the four Carmona men were all in the U.S. My uncles all lived in the same apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and they all worked in the hotel industry. One of my uncles eventually became the Banquet Manager at the Waldorf Astoria! All three of my uncles went back to Mexico to find wives and those women moved to the U.S. too. My dad also sponsored a couple of my Mexican cousins from Cholula to come live in the U.S.. Most ended up settling in New York or New Jersey for a time before moving to other places like Atlanta, Seattle and Las Vegas. Two of my aunts actually lived in New York and Bridgeport for a couple of years in the early days (in the 50s). One helped take care of my brother while my mom worked. She got her green card at that time (it was so easy to get them back then) and then she moved back to Mexico. The other worked in New York and lived with my uncles, got her green card, and moved back to Mexico. After my grandmother died in 1980, my two aunts moved back to the U.S., and my Tia Chela lived with us in Stratford for quite a while.”
In Mexico’s 1920 census, 55% of Puebla’s population was “pure indigenous”, 40% were “indigenous mixed with white”, and 6% said they were “white”. Puebla then was the second most pure indigenous Mexican state both by population and percentage, after Oaxaca (69% pure indigenous). In Puebla, 28% of the total population spoke an indigenous language in 1920.
Maria recalls “My dad spoke a little Nahuatl but not much. But, my brother Carlos figured out that our Tia Chela spoke a lot of it and that she used to speak it a lot with our grandmother.”
“There were not many Mexicans in Connecticut when I was growing up in the late 60s and early 70’s. In fact, my dad and his Mexican friends would say they were it. If you can believe them, then there were four other Mexican families in all of Connecticut in the late 60s/early 70s!” Maria said these were the families of two friends in Bridgeport, another friend in Wallingford, and El Gato, who Maria could not remember much about except his name. The Quezada family of Wallingford was made up of José Quezada from Michoacan, his Spaniard wife “Mary” and their daughters. The two friends in Bridgeport were José Solis who was also from Mexico and married to an American woman and Heriberto Amaros, who had married a Portuguese immigrant, Natalia, and had a son. According to
Carmona recalls that “Every summer for years all the Mexican families got together for a pig roast. I remember our doing one in Beardsley Park one year! Yes, they allowed that back then. Another memory is of the beautiful Indian Wells State Park. We did a few there. And the men would go to a farm to pick out and slaughter a pig! My dad, El Gato and Heriberto all played the guitar and I have very fond memories of hearing these men sing old-style Mexican trio during the evenings of those all afternoon and into the evening pig roasts.”
To get Mexican or Dominican food items “My parents would go to New York City to buy certain food products, but another important way they got food was when family members packed stuff in their luggage when they traveled to Mexico. I had three uncles living in New York and, later, three of their first cousins, and among all of them and my dad, someone was always heading back to Cholula every year, so they brought back what they could. Also, my dad always had what we called his “farm” in our backyard. It was really a garden where in the summer he grew different chiles, tomatoes, and tomatillos for his famous salsa. He’d share his “harvest” with others and even freeze salsa for eating later in the year.”
In Bridgeport, 24 Mexicans were counted in the 1970 census. Of the 24 Mexican origin people in Bridgeport, 7 were born in Mexico, 17 born in the US with at least 1 Mexican parent. 645 people in Connecticut were of Mexican origin, of which 54 lived in the Bridgeport area (aka; Stratford, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Shelton, Trumbull). Comparatively, by 1972, 15% of Bridgeport’s population, about 25,000, were of Puerto Rican origin, centered around East Main Street. The Immigration Act of 1965 set a limit on Mexican legal immigration, and in 1976, a 20,000 people a year limit for Mexico and all Western Hemisphere countries was enacted. The Bracero workers program ended in 1964, which led to illegal immigration to fill the same jobs by employers.
By 1970, 7,364 Mexicans and Mexican-Americans lived in New York City. Most Poblanos settled in tenements together in dilapidated parts of New York City’s 5 boroughs and Micoacanos and Jaliscienses in New Rochelle. Money sent back by these migrants went in part to finance dams, schools, etc in their respective regions, like bringing portable water to Chinantla as well as its first elementary and high school, or various schools in northwestern Michoacán and southwestern Jalisco. In New York, factory owners would help Mexicans get temporary work permits. Single Mexican men often married Puerto Ricans.
“In Port Chester and New Rochelle, it’s mostly people from Michoacán” according to Alejandro (Alex) Lima, a landscaper and Bridgeport resident since 2005, raised in Tehuixtla, Puebla, a village within Chinantla’s municipality. He was at a government “internado” or boarding school in Cholula, Puebla on a scholarship when he sent for his parents to the US. He arrived in Port Chester, New York to work in 1968 as a teenager, where his parents and 2 sisters were already, married a Puerto Rican and worked dishwashing in the Bronx and in local factories before starting landscaping around Greenwich. He’s also done iron foundry labor in Los Angeles where relatives lived, paper factory work in Stamford, hospital cleaning in White Plains, etc. By then, he had relatives on Market St in Passaic, in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Newburgh, NY. A friend from primary school had already bought a house on Liberty Street in Newburgh 2 years before Alex arrived, while his sister lived in that same city in Monroe St.
According to Alex, in 1968, there were “only 3 Mexican families in Port Chester then, the Fernandez’s, the Carrera’s [his mother’s relatives]and mine, the Lima’s”, all from his town of Tehuixtla, Puebla. When Alex arrived, his father Jasinto already worked in landscaping with Italian-Americans. He had previously been a seasonal bracero in California when Alex was a child, though illiterate he learned literacy and math in night school when he made foreman of a sugarcane and coffee plantation in Acatlan, Veracruz. His mother Eulalia, born in Piaxtla, cleaned offices, homes and worked at a textile factory. There were no Mexican items, “tortillas weren’t known over here”. Mexican items would not be part of his daily diet again until he remarried his current wife, a Mexican, in 2001. Alex had to pick up Italian from his bosses and co-workers before English. “New Haven, Port Chester also had a lot of industry. But where there was most was Bridgeport. You could leave one job and have a new one the next day” he said in Spanish. “That’s where they made all the munitions for the Vietnam War!”
“I still remember the Remington armory in Bridgeport.” In the late 1970s at a bar he made a friend who worked at Remington Arms “in Bridgeport. That famous factory where they made all the weapons”
“And your friend, was he Puerto Rican, was he Mexican?”
“Mexican” he said “What state?”
“I don’t remember… He was a single man. Well he was alone, but then they [migrants tend to] bring family. Later on he said “Then later he left, I don’t know what happened. I think la migra [the I.N.S.]came and took him. Immigration was all over in those days”. Forging work permits was commonplace, said Alex.
| “In Connecticut, Mexicans began to appear during the 1940s and 1960s, attached by family ties and work in the factories and mills at the height of these industries.” From “Latinos in a Changing Society” Chap. 3 “The Si Se Puede Newcomers” by Marta Montero-Siebirth (2007) |
The Bridgeport Post reported in 1975 that “Robert D Mooney, assistant district director for investigation said, in reference to the Bridgeport area, “there is a heavy concentration of illegal aliens down there. We find them all along the coastal industrial area from Stamford to New Haven and up to Derby”. But most of those illegal immigrants were not Mexicans. “The illegals come mostly from Caribbean and South American countries. Some of Greek or Polish nationality come to visit relatives and stay for work. And some Chinese illegals immigrants are picked up each year, officials said”. Meanwhile in Port Chester, by 1974, illegal Mexican migrants found work in J.J. Casone’s bakery. Alex said“Look at Casone’s bakery. At 7am they [the INS]came in, because there were 3 shifts… and they came early in the morning. And everyone was half asleep because they were working all night. The majority were from Michoacán, purely Michoacános worked in Casone’s. Purely Mexicans, from Puebla there were also but more from Michoacán.” The Port Chester Daily News stated the INS “rounded up 18 illegal Mexicans in Port Chester in December and 13 Mexicans and an Argentine in Larchmont earlier this week” in January 1974, more are mentioned in the newspaper later in the 1970s and 80s. The reporter spoke with 7 workers at the bakery, from Abadiano, Michoacán (10 mi from Jiquilpan, 15 mi from Quitupan, see last map) living on Grace Church St. about their lives.
That same year, 1974, in Bridgeport (7 towns to the east), state records show that Mexico City-born Manuel Reyes Filio, born 1930, was already living at 1853 Stratford Ave in the East End and had married Maria in Bridgeport soon after. Also living in the East End by 1974 was Carlos Ramirez-Ramirez at 1417 Stratford Ave along with his wife Lilia Ramirez. Social security claim index records stated he was born in Puruagua, Guanajuato in 1938. By 1984 he lived at 301 Arctic St on the East Side.
Guillermo Mora, born 1955 in Mexico City, was in Connecticut since at least 1976, and married Gloria Beltran in Bridgeport in 1980. Born 1940, Manuel Valentin lived in Bridgeport by 1982, where he married Julia Vargas. His birthplace was listed simply as “Mexico”. These men worked at the American Fabrics Company, a textile factory on Connecticut Avenue in the city’s East End. Manuel Reyes, Carlos Ramirez and Manuel Valentin were listed as “machine operators” and Guillermo Mora as a “knitter” at American Fabrics on their state death certificates later and on the US Cities Directory Indexes. Guillermo Mora died at age 29 in 1984.
Lillian Cotto, of Puerto Rican and German heritage, born in the late 1930s, has lived in Bridgeport her whole life. “Yes there were quite a few!… Mexicans started coming to Bridgeport in the 1970s. They worked in restaurants, as dishwashers, as waiters… They came to feed their families in Mexico, in Texas. They spoke good English. They started asking for better jobs. They would go to Texas, and if they didn’t like Texas they would go all over the United States.”
Dr Bassett, a children’s psychiatrist in Bridgeport, said that “My first recollection of Mexicans in Bridgeport, it has to be in the 70s or 80s”. She was in the University of Bridgeport. “You know where there were more, there were more in West Haven. They worked hospital work, and construction, a lot in construction. I know because a lot of them worked with my father” who was a contractor and French-Canadian immigrant from Quebec who settled in Bridgeport. Bassett said in school “most of long classmates spoke Spanish” since there was a large Puerto Rican community, but the few Mexicans she had met were in west haven “but they didn’t start off in west haven” therefore she said that there must have been some in Bridgeport.
On the last day of July, 1974, farm workers union organizer and Mexican-American activist Cesar Chavez spoke at a news conference in the University of Bridgeport to garner support for the grape and lettuce boycott and spoke on Gallo Wines illegally hiring illegal migrants and contracts with teamsters to suppress the farmworkers union. He attended a conference at St Ann School where Cesar Batalla, the local Puerto Rican activist, called for the boycott of the grapes and lettuce and said the teamsters agreed to allow for unionization. Chavez joined supporters gathered picketing at a Pathmark on Main Street in the North End (a Price Rite as of 2024) as they sold Delano grapes. He was received at St Mary’s Parish on Pembroke St on the East Side by the local Puerto Rican community, with the Bridgeport Labor Council President, the local priest, and a representative of Mayor Panuzio speaking. Chavez spoke in Spanish and English on the challenges of organizing Puerto Rican tobacco farmworkers in north-central Connecticut.
By the mid 1970s a Mexican opened a restaurant 3 towns to the south of Bridgeport in Norwalk “The locale was yet-to-be yuppified Washington Street in South Norwalk, Conn. A jolly, rotund woman whom everybody called Mama Vicky had opened a restaurant called Acapulco. Even though she was fresh from her hometown of Matamoros, Mexico, [Izúcar de Matamoros in Puebla, north of Tehuitzingo: see map at beginning] Mama Vicky preferred the resort the name gave her place.” said Connecticut Post writer Charles Walsh in a 1994 guest column for Thomson News Service.
A recession in 1974 hurt people like Cholula, Puebla-born Guillermo Carmona. Maria remembers that“when the recession of the 1970s hit, things went south. So he found work at a couple of jobs – bus driver, cleaning a bank – to earn income. Eventually he was hired by General Electric to work at its Corporate Headquarters in Fairfield.” where his wife worked.
In the late 1970s, when Maria Carmona was in highschool, a new Mexican family, the Jassos, moved to Stratford. “that was so exciting…to have MEXICANS right in my hometown. By then, my older brothers were in college, so the Jasso kids were like my “little brothers” until I left for college too in 1981” she said that “My mom and dad became like their sponsors, explaining how things got done in the U.S., etc. Like my dad, Mr. and Mrs. Jasso spoke little English when they arrived, but my dad encouraged them to learn, for their kids’ sake. (My dad came to the U.S. as a full grown adult and spoke no English. He learned as he lived, but eventually took classes at night school after we moved to Stratford.)”
A Bridgeport Post article from June 14, 1977, mentions a “Mexican American association of Greater Bridgeport” along with various other groups as sponsors for the food segment of the International Folk Festival held that year in Fairfield University by the International Institute of Connecticut (as of 2024 the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants), the Bridgeport organization providing services to migrants and refugees in Bridgeport. The event was to display different cuisines, dance, song, dress, artisan crafts, traditions, and other forms of cultural display for the different groups participating.
By 1980, the census had counted 322 Mexicans in Bridgeport, up from just 24 in 1970. It was second in Connecticut behind New Haven’s 491 Mexicans. In New Haven, were Chicano students from the southwestern and western United States (Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, etc) studying at Yale. MECHA, a Yale Mexican American advocacy organization, was founded there in 1969. Of the 322 Mexicans counted in Bridgeport, 125 were born in Mexico.
Mia was a union organizer for the UE (United Electrical Workers) in the 1970s and 1980s. She “worked with many Spanish speakers” from various nations. She recalls “UE represented workers in what was then known as the electrical manufacturing industry. At places like GE and Westinghouse, in addition to Singer sewing machines in Bridgeport… Based upon memory and observation, most of the workers of Mexican heritage in the ’70’s were not recent immigrants (1st and 2nd generation) Many of the other Spanish speaking immigrants were recent immigrants.”
There were only 627 Mexican born people counted in the entire state of Connecticut in 1980.
Migration to New York by word of mouth pushed north of Chinantla, Piaxtla, Tehuizingo, or Matamoros. One such place which began large scale migration was Xoyotla, Puebla (spelled here as Xoyotla). “Their native tongue is an Indian dialect called mexicano [another word for Nahuatl]. They speak Spanish with a distante lilt and English hardly at all. Sixty miles north of Piaxtla and dramatically poorer, Zoyotla is just one of the many villages in the state of Puebla that feeds the New York labor market… The flow from Zoyotla began 10 years ago [in 1978]when Luis Vargas, encouraged by friends from a nearby village, arrived in Brooklyn… Today about 200 men and an increasing number of teenage girls from Zoyotla are living in Brooklyn, Queens and northern New Jersey ” reported Newsday in November 1988. Half of the children born in the town die, the article states. “The village’s tranquil facade belies the malnutrition, illness and desperation of its residents… its Indian peasants rely on rain-fed cultivation of corn, literacy is rare, and about 20 percent of the children don’t attend school because their parents can’t afford it”. Xoyotla is “nearby Atlixco” a city not far from Puebla City and Cholula. According to “Tres circuitos migratorios Puebla-Estados Unidos”, the people from this town were already able to get to New York by the connections with friends from the Atlixco Valley and Ocoyucan municipality who were already in New York City.
In Bridgeport, Fernando Casiano also arrived from a town near Atlixco in 1980, La Trinidad Tepango. He arrived on Marcy Ave, Brooklyn, and in terms of people from Atlixco then “Eh, few. But there were already a few.” Asked “when the people from Atlixco began to arrive [to New York]?” He said “well if I’m not mistaken, we [Atlixco migrants] came from the Atlixco area around ‘77. Some arrived in ‘77, ‘78, like that. And it may be that they have come here before but I didn’t know them.”
Casiano went to New York specifically because “And as you said, I wouldn’t call her a “pollero” I tell you, the person who helped us get through, well, she was from Atlixco. And she already had a relative here in New York, I think she had one or two relatives. So she would send them, and the relative here would help them find an apartment, find work, and that’s where it all began. I also have a brother in California, but I didn’t stay there, I came here.”
His nephew Rufino Flores was invited by a friend to Bridgeport by the late 1980s working at restaurants in Fairfield. 12 years later, Rufino and Fernando would go on to open the first 2 Mexican businesses in Bridgeport.
1982 saw the start of Latin America’s Década Perdida, or lost decade. Interest rates went up, much of the world hit a recession in 1981, from the many loans Mexico and Latin American countries took out could no longer be paid back. Oil prices went up, leading to drops in Mexican oil exports. The peso inflated from 20 pesos equaling a US dollar to 70 per dollar in one year. In August, Mexican president Lopez Portillo addressed the legislature and broke into tears, begging forgiveness from Mexico’s poor on camera. The late 1980s saw the explosion of the Mexican population, almost all from the Mixteca (southwestern) region of Puebla in the New York area.
Affected by the crisis and foreign maize were peasants from the Atlixco Valley in Central Puebla near Puebla City (60 miles north of Chinantla and the Mixteca), also subsistence farmers. Since Valley was new to US migration, some farmers used coyotes (smugglers) mainly from the southwest region that guided them to New York City, who then brought more, aiding a migration chain from the central Puebla region to New York, mainly from the Atlixco valley. “I passed a few from Atlixco, a few from San Pedro…now it’s a chain… a chain that cannot be stopped” said one such coyote. The Mexican population in New York City was 21,623 in the 1980 census.
1980 marked the first decade Mexicans became the largest immigrant group in the United States, surpassing Italians. According to a 1985 New York Times article, Italian Americans were the largest ethnic group in Bridgeport, with a large Black and Hispanic (mostly Puerto Rican) population , and a “growing number of Asians and Latin Americans”.
Taco Loco opened as a truck in 1982 on Main Street and Fairfield Ave in downtown Bridgeport and is considered to be the first taco truck in Connecticut. It was opened by a Peruvian (not a Mexican) immigrant, Miguel Tomasio, (among the first Peruvians in Bridgeport). He opened a restaurant with the same name in a three-decker building along Fairfield Avenue in Black Rock in 1989. He told CT Post in a 2012 article on Taco Loco, “Mexican food was not very popular in this area,” Tomasio said. “It didn’t take off for a while and it took us three years to get going.”
Over in New York City, Mexicans became a vital part in the construction and food/restaurant industry replacing mainly Greeks, Koreans, by then mostly self-employed, as cheap labor. Greek restaurants sought Mexican workers in the 1990s. Mexican storefronts and food trucks opened.
They spread outwards from the city into New Jersey. By this time, Poblanos had settled in the former industrial city of Passaic, NJ by 1980. The Associated Press in 2017 on Puebla-origin Mexicans in Passaic.
The origin of the Puebla-Passaic connection goes back about 30 years, when some “poblanos,” a name for people from Puebla, started working at local factories, including the nearby Marcal paper factory in Elmwood Park, local business owners.
Mexicans arrived in the 1970s for factory work.“Passaic is a second Puebla, many immigrants from Piaxtla, Chinantla, and Atlixco live here” said bodega owner Jesus Delago ” to El Diario NY in 2014.
They went north and south, such as those from San Vicente Boquerón just north of Acatlan de Osorio clustered in Newburgh, NY, or the area around Tehuitzingo to both Newburgh as well as Yonkers, NY.
In Bridgeport there were relatively few instead. Maria Carmona recalls that “I remember first noticing more Mexicans in Bridgeport/Stratford after I graduated from college and was living in New York. I’d ride the train to Bridgeport and just notice little things…a face, hear someone speaking Spanish with a Mexican accent. That was in the late 80s/early 90s, and the Poblanos had already arrived in big numbers in Manhattan. We used to say that we were “spreading out” into Bridgeport.
Closer to Bridgeport, Mexicans settled along with Peruvians and Guatamalens in Port Chester, New York, joining the Hispanic population of Cubans who fled Castro in the 1960s and worked in factories.
“I know you lived in Port Chester, but would you happen to know when Mexicans settled in Bridgeport?” Since he didn’t live in Bridgeport then, only passed through it on the way to work in New Haven, he “doesn’t know anything about” the topic. For Port Chester “There were few Mexicans at first, but later they ended up populating the town. They came because there was a lot of work in Port Chester, a lot of factories”. In the 1980s as the factories closed, Latin Americans began to reach critical numbers, arriving for jobs in restaurants and landscaping in wealthy Rye, Mamaroneck and Greenwich.
Asking Alex “when did you first start seeing Mexicans in New York?”, he said “around 1984”.
Alex Lima said “In Stamford there are people who arrived in the 80s and before, they have bodegas, businesses. like Don Tomas, who owns bodegas in Bridgeport, New Haven, Norwalk and Stamford”, such as the “Los Luceros” grocery or corner stores in Stamford. They’re “from Tehuitzingo, Puebla”.
“I had friends from Michoacan that lived there” on Ely Ave between Mulvoy St and Lexington Ave in South Norwalk. “They lived all on top of each other. All Michoacanos”. They were single working men who lived together to save rent. “There lived 28 in one apartment” That was in “Like in the 80s, the 90s, yes the nineties… Don Lupe’s uncle lived there; that man had been there [on Ely Ave] since ’75”. He couldn’t recall anyone from Mexico he knew in Bridgeport at that time.
Jose Sanchez, since 2007 from Bridgeport’s North End, said he arrived in Port Chester in 1988 from Almilinga, Veracruz, a village near the border with southeast Puebla. His cousin was there already, invited by a friend from Nezahualcóyotl outside Mexico City. There was- it was a store, Rigo’s was called it was on main st, I don’t remember the- [he said it was a taqueria with a grocery store in back]El Fondo it was called… Barranca’s in front, they sold rice,soap, cotton. On Westchester Ave was Las Luisas, they are from Puebla, the others are from Michoacán and Jalisco.” Alex said Barranca’s was located on Main St near 9 S Main St, which he said was the first, and Rigo’s on Poningo Street. Sanchez said when he arrived the Mexican businesses “were there already. When my cousin arrived in ‘85 they were already there too.” In Bridgeport, there were still no Mexican businesses in 1988.
In around the year 1986, then 18-year old Guadalupe (Lupe) Lucero Flores, her siblings and their mother, Gloria Flores Huerta, moved to Bridgeport from The Bronx. They were from Tulcingo de Valle, Puebla (in the Mixteca, 2 municipalities to the west of Chinantla, where the first 2 Poblanos to New York came from) and settled in The Bronx in the early 1980s. Lupe’s sister-in law, Lizzeth Vivaldo, a representative at the Institute for Refugees and Immigrants on Park Ave, asked her mother in law and explained that “They moved initially because Lupe got a job at “Pancho Villa Restaurant” located in Westport and the commute was complicated, especially in the winter season. The Lucero-Flores family “looked at Bridgeport as the place where they could live, because the rents were cheaper than NY and more spacious, they liked the tranquil life of the suburbs out of the chaos of the Bronx. Their first residence was in Pequannock St, and they lived mainly in the South End of the city” near the University of Bridgeport.
As Roman Catholics, as most Mexicans are, they found “not many, but some” Mexican families in town via the Roman Catholic church.“According to Jose Lucero (Lupe’s brother), when they came, there were other Mexican families living already in Bridgeport, Celia Lucero and Cirino Lucero both from La Independencia, Puebla [part of Tecomatlan municipality, right between Tulcingo municipality and the municipalities of Chinantla and Piaxtla], who lived in Washington Ave., and worked in a restaurant “Onion Alley” in Westport, and there was a woman from Chihuahua and another one from Jalisco, but he doesn’t remember their names. The job at Pancho Villa was a recommendation from acquaintances, Aristeo Garcia and Rafaela Vallina, from La Independencia, Puebla, and Acaxtlahuacán, Puebla [the town next over from Tulcingo, 12 miles to the west]respectively. They lived in Park Ave. And to their knowledge, these were the only Mexican families living in Bridgeport at that time”.
Later on, Lupe’s family’s distant relatives “cousins, aunts and uncles slowly started moving too to Bridgeport from El Bronx, NY and started building a Mexican community [in Bridgeport]” Lupe “remembers that there were no Mexican stores at that time, and they had to travel to New York to buy tortillas and Mexican products since it was hard to find in Connecticut.”
Gloria Lucero, Lupe’s mother herself recalled that she arrived in New York in 1981 from Tulcingo. Gloria’s siblings, Socorro and Rafaela, were already in New York. “They worked in a clothing factory” and so did Guadalupe when she arrived. “A friend of my daughter” arrived in Connecticut first and got a job at Pancho Villa Restaurant in Westport. She came to the state “because she got a better job here.” She invited her daughter Lupe and soon after Gloria and her other children arrived in Bridgeport. Then later came Gloria’s siblings “and after 4 years of being here they came to live here [in Bridgeport].”
Gloria and her family lived on Pequonnock St, then on Washington Ave. They moved to Cottage St near I-95 and Park Ave by the mid 1990s. One of her various siblings, who all ended up in Bridgeport, settled on “Manhattan St near St. Vincent’s Hospital”
Gloria Lucero said that when they arrived “There were no Mexican stores.” After “4-5 years” living in Bridgeport “I started selling Mexican products by truck here… before there was a store on 160-61st St [in The Bronx] with all Mexican food… I came to sell tortillas [other products]… There was no green chili, green tomato… There was not even maza [corn dough]to make tortillas, I sold Mexican products by the truckload.” Gloria said that “During the week I was going to work at the restaurant. On the weekends we would go buy merchandise in New York”… She did this because there were no Mexican products. “We ate just sandwiches, chicken, turkey… There was no Mexican food. When there were finally Mexican stores [in Bridgeport], I stopped selling.” She sold the products “to my siblings, who were already here.”
The Mexican businesses would open in the 1990s “There was also Taco Loco by St Vincent’s [Hospital]. It was a small taqueria, before they moved to Fairfield Ave.”
Taco Loco original location on Main St, Mexican-inspired restaurant by Peruvian immigrant
Source
Gloria said in New York City “There was more immigration there [INS], they persecuted them [illegal or undocumented immigrants] a lot, they’d even grabbed them on the train. [The workers] came out running from the factories. They trained us to hide when they came. To hide under our clothes” if the INS were to come into the textile factory where they worked in New York City. “Not so here, on the contrary, here they wanted workers. When immigration arrived at the restaurant they told us” and would be told to hide, “they also punished the owners. The owners didn’t want all their workers to be taken away.”
She said that “They [her relatives]liked it [Bridgeport]. It was calmer, New York had a lot of violence… Well we didn’t know [if there was violence], we’d just got up, go to work and come back from work at night to sleep. “My children, [she lists the 6 names of her children] would fall asleep on the train, at 3 in the morning” coming back from work in Westport. They “went to the train station waiting until one, two, three o’clock at night because there was no transportation [compared to New York]. Because the train didn’t come every so often, they had to wait until 3 o’clock and from there they walked home at 3 in the morning and nothing ever happened to them thank God.”
Asked how they got along with other Hispanics “There were a lot of Puerto Ricans here. Well, as we were not problematic. We got along well with all our neighbors. That’s because I always taught my children that no matter if their Dominican, Puerto Ricans [she listed other ethnic groups]… [something related to the Virgin Mary but was not heard well]we’re all people.”
A 1987 New York Times article titled “For Successful Lace Maker, a Threat” is the earliest mention found by the writer of this article on Mexicans as a group being listed as part of Bridgeport’s ethnic population. It was a story of the Bridgeport-based American Fabrics Company on its success but struggling to afford to stay in the northeastern United States and dealing with a shortage of skilled laborers.
“We have machinery just standing idle,” Mr. Ostrover said. ”We can’t find knitters for these machines.” The company employs 500 to 600 people in its Bridgeport operation and has plants in New Jersey, Rhode Island and Mississippi employing another 250. In Bridgeport, Mr. Ostrover said, “employees represent a cross section of the city – black, Cambodian, Greek, Italian, Laotian, Mexican, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, Thai and Vietnamese. The shop is unionized except for office and supervisory staff,” he said.
The American Fabrics Company on Connecticut Avenue closed its Bridgeport factory and relocated all of its operations to the southern US by 1992. Bridgeport’s deindustrialization was slower, but by the 1980s, Bridgeport saw the closure of factories by companies such as the Westinghouse-owned Bryant Electric, Jenkins, Hubbell, General Electric, and others.
Mexican workers at American Fabrics, such as Manuel Reyes Filio, who by then lived at 160 6th St in the East End near the factory, died in 1991 and Manuel Valentine who had his address listed as 206 Park Ave, died in 1992. By 1987, Luis Cuevas, who according to his obituary was a landscaper and cook, was living in Connecticut. He and his wife were born in the State of Jalisco and lived in Bridgeport.
Anne Gebelien, an Associate Director of the University of Connecticut’s El Institutio (The Institute of Latino/a, Caribbean and Latin American Studies), “when exactly and exactly when in the late 20th Century did Mexican migration to Connecticut take off, more specifically (and this is the tricky part), to Bridgeport? What chains of migration were established from certain towns or regions to here?” via email, she responded that
It is my understanding based on conversations I have had with Mexican migrants in the New Haven area that many came from Puebla and Tlaxcala in the second half of the 1980s, and this is when we first start seeing large numbers of people establishing themselves in the state. Chain migration from the same families and towns is the principal form of migration that Mexicans have participated in, and folks also have come from Jalisco, Michoacan, Morelos and Oaxaca. In other words, most come from the most populated states in the temperate and mountainous zone of Mexico, and fewer from the desert north or tropical coastal south/southeast.
As southwest Puebla borders Guerrero and Oaxaca, central Puebla borders the state of Tlaxcala to the north. Migration from southern Tlaxcala villages just bordering the northern end of the Atlixco Valley and Puebla City region in central Puebla to New York City began. A few of those migrants set out from New York to New Haven, Connecticut, where they settled in the 1980s, leading to chain migration from those small Tlaxacla towns on the Puebla border. On the 2023 program of the events for “Sisterhood Day” (“Dia de La Hermandad”) between the City of New Haven and the State of Tlaxcala, the preface reads (originally in Spanish):
“In 20th Century Mexico, after participating in the Bracero program for many years, a part of the Tlaxcalan population began to migrate… eventually, to the United States. But it is at the end of the 80s, according to some of the pioneer families, that families from Zacualpan and Zacatelco [2 towns near each other, 3 and 6 towns away respectively from the border with Puebla City] arrived in the Northeast… in New Haven… for new work and family prospects… common destinations, such as California and the southern United States in those years had become hostile territory for migrants, and the East Coast was perceived as being hospitable and tolerant. By the 1990s, migrants from San Francisco Tetlanohcan, San Luis Teolochalco, La Magdalena Tlatelulco, Nativitas and other municipalities in the south of the state arrived in New Haven and mainly integrated as part of the service and construction industry.”
Gloria Flores Huerta recalls that when she arrived, after roughly 4 years in Bridgeport, the Mexicans she met at church in Bridgeport would be from “Puebla, Guerrero and Oaxaca”.
As stated before, when first asking Mr. Alex Lima if “in Port Chester they’re mostly Poblanos, no?”, he responded “no, from Michoacán. There are Poblanos, but more from Michoacán.”
He continued “in Bridgeport, it’s more people from Oaxaca. Not many Poblanos.”
Villa de Zaachila, Oaxaca today is a city of 30,000, south of Oaxaca City, the state capital. Zaachilla was the capital of the Zapotec Empire, with a Mixtec alliance repelling the Aztecs, and later Zaachila became an Aztec tributary state and the emperor married an Aztec. The child, the last Zapotec emperor, converted to Catholicism in 1521 under the Spanish. In the 1980 Mexican census, Zaachila was a city of 9,654 people.
Miguel Angel Mendoza, today a painter in New Haven, is from Zaachila and arrived in Bridgeport in 1988. Asked“Would you know why there are so many Zaachileños here? [people from the town of Villa de Zaachila, Oaxaca]. And what brought them to Bridgeport specifically? Was it because of family, was it for a job?”
Mendoza responded “The people from Zaachilla first began to arrive in Poughkeepsie”.
The story the migrants tell says the owner of Athena Diner, which was a Greek-owned diner in Southport, was in Poughkeepsie to visit family who also had a diner. “He was surprised by the way the [Zaachileño] workers worked, and asked them to get him workers.” Unknown to Mendoza if they were employed at the previous diner or elsewhere, 4 came and at first lived in the Southport diner. The owner found them apartments in Bridgeport and daily sent a taxi to pick and drop them off from work.
Those 4 brought more people from their town of Zaachila, and when he arrived in 1988 from Zaachila to Bridgeport to where his dad was by 1988. “we were about 15 Zaachileños, and I came because my father was working here too... the first person who came to Poughkeepsie from Zaachila, Oaxaca was a defunct man who I knew as Tito Diego, owner of Garibaldi restaurant on Park Ave in Bridgeport, and that many of the Zaachileña population and those [Zaachileños] who live in Bridgeport are unaware [of] and who was the one who made my Zaachileña people have a different way of life and opportunities.”
For better details, he said “Ask Everaldo from El Mexicanito”
Evaraldo Garica when asked, said that “the Zaachilenos began to arrive here, they began to arrive here in Bridgeport in ’88, ’89, and they gave them work. Because the Zaachileños and everyone went to Poughkeepsie, an owner of a restaurant there bought [a diner]here at Exit 19… before it was Athena Diner. So he came, they bought that restaurant, and people were brought there from Poughkeepsie, they were brought to live here. The first Zaachileños brought over to work at Athens Diner, he said that “from Poughkeepsie, the one who bought it [the diner] brought people, I can tell you and assure you that – in fact it was a family, it was a family with a last name uhh, Cuache-Mendoza.”
The migration chain to from the Central Valleys region of Oaxaca to Poughkeepsie, New York started when a young Zapotec, Santiago Adolfo from the town of San Agustín Yatareni in the Four Central Valleys region of Oaxaca (described as a place “where workers earned $6 to $20 a day” – NY Times) in 1980 arrived in New York City. After a few years, he moved upstate to Poughkeepsie. He told his friends throughout the central valley there was work in Poughkeepsie. This created a chain with “increasing immigration from Oaxacan villages- La Cienega, San Agustin Yatareni, and Zaachila” (in the 4 Central Valleys region) according to “New Ethnic Landscapes: Place Making in Urban America.”, which is Chapter 3 of Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America, by Brian J. Godfrey.
| To most Americans, Poughkeepsie may be a city with a funny name… But to people around Oaxaca it might as well be El Dorado.” “The Poughkeepsie Journal sent a team to Oaxaca to study the community whose presence has transformed Poughkeepsie. They discovered an astonishingly intimate connection. Villagers knew the name of a Poughkeepsie diner” -“Detective’s Kindness Helps Awaken City” – NY Times. |
A different source says the following. “The president of Cienega explained how Poughkeepsie, located 90 minutes north of New York City, became Little Oaxaca. He said that around 1980 three cousins who had emigrated from Oaxaca were working at a New York City restaurant when the owner decided to sell that location and open a new diner in Poughkeepsie. The cousins accepted the owner’s invitation to relocate with him, and the move served as the impetus of the Oaxaca-Poughkeepsie connection” said Tatyana Kleyn in her 2022 book “Living, Learning and Languaging Across Borders”.
Evaraldo Garcia said that “Among the first was Alberto.” referring to Alberto Diego in terms of people specifically from Villa de Zaachila who settled in Poughkeepsie where people from nearby towns like La Cienega and San Agustin Yarenti were settling in the 1980s. “In fact, the one who helped us come here [to the United States], was Alberto.”
According to the Garibaldi restaurant website, “Alberto [Tito] Diego and Luisa Diego… migrated in the early 1980s from Mexico.” His son, who works at Guelaguetza Govery, said “he [Alberto] was young, probably 16”. He had migrated to Poughkeepsie from Oaxaca to support his father.
“I came in 1988. There I arrived in Poughkeepsie, New York. I arrived here in Bridgeport in ’93”.
“And what brought you to Bridgeport, to the city of Bridgeport?”
Everaldo responded “The business brought me to Bridgeport, we were selling [Mexican products] and here we came to sell, house to house”
Evaraldo’s son, Omar Garcia, born in Bridgeport in 1992, said “My parents arrived in 1990 but in Poughkeepsie…he wanted to open a store but he had friends in Poughkeepsie and didn’t want to compete with them, so he passed by over here and he sold from his car…. he would go to houses to sell, they would tell him “aquí hay paisanos, aquí hay paisanos” [“here are the countrymen”] all the way to Massachusetts”.
In terms of where Mexicans lived when Everaldo Garcia arrived in Bridgeport. “Ah, most of them lived, there was a house. 320 Maplewood”. This was the address where the first group of Zaachileño workers at Athena Diner resided in Bridgeport after living in the diner itself.
Asked “What other parts of Bridgeport did Mexicans live in?”
There was a house near La Poblanita [which opened later]. That one was full. There were [Mexicans] on Howard Avenue, East Main. That’s where there were most [in those 3 areas].
“What part of East Main?” Garcia said “Oh, almost, almost East Main and Boston Avenue.”
Today a painter, New Haven artist Miguel Angel Mendoza recalled his migration experience in a 2022 article by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. The article stated that:
“Mendoza first came to the U.S. in 1988 to support his family. He was 21. He had planned to teach elementary school math but Villa de Zaachila, the town where he was living with his parents, had other plans. He chose survival. He landed first in Bridgeport, Conn. It was difficult: Mendoza said he experienced the culture shock of American food, education and racism. Back then, he did not speak English. In the grocery store or shopping for clothes, he was treated differently than other customers. “There was a time when I asked someone for help in Spanish, and they pretended they didn’t understand me,” Mendoza said. “They turned around and spoke Spanish to their friends, ignoring me.”
When originally reached out about the origins of the Bridgeport Mexican community, he stated,
“In reality I don’t know about the origins of the [Mexican] population in Bridgeport. I only remember in the year 1988 when I arrived in the country and precisely arrived in Bridgeport, the population was very small…I can’t give you a stat, maybe 400 or less, the majority mostly men and in the 1990s the population grew considerably, there started to be [Mexican] women and later children [in Bridgeport]. The great majority at the time were from Puebla and Oaxaca. Today [in Bridgeport] we find [people] from Guerrero, Michoacan, Veracruz, and other states.”
I responded that “according to the 1990 census, there were 599 people of Mexican origin in Bridgeport.”, Mendoza said that “It is an approximate figure… the census is the most approximate [count]… Many people were afraid to get themselves counted.”
Rufino Flores, from La Trinidad Tepango, a tiny village outside Atlixco, Puebla, settled in Bridgeport by 1989. Rufino Flores came to Bridgeport because “He too was invited by a friend. That there was a job here” according to his uncle Fernando Casiano, and worked in restaurants in Fairfield. Of La Trinidad Tepango’s 475 households in the Mexican 1980 census, 260 of them had dirt floors, 44 households had cars, 23 had fridges, and 2 had telephones.
With the passage of NAFTA in 1992, the removal of tariffs meant cheap maize from the United States flooded Mexico, hurting rural Mexican maize subsistence farmers, leading to more mass migration. Anti Immigration sentiment ran high in California and Texas, so migrants looked east, using the connections already formed in Puebla and bordering states to move into the region.
By 1990 tens of thousands of Southwestern (Mixteca) and Atlixco Valley Poblanos, joined by Guerrernses (people from the bordering state of Guerrero) from “La Montaña”, were in New York City. Communities were established in Elmhurst and Corona in Queens, Sunset Park, Bushwick and all in between in Brooklyn, a small part of East Harlem in Manhattan along 2nd Ave and 16th st, Mott Haven in the South Bronx and in Belmont, The Bronx’s Italian section. Outside the 5 boroughs, Poblanos had by then formed communities in Southwest Yonkers, along Ferris Avenue in White Plains, Passaic and surrounding areas of New Jersey, southwest area of Newburgh.
| “Specifically, in East Harlem, the majority of the new immigrants are Mexicans from the rural states of Puebla and Guerrero. The poverty of their natal villages makes them a highly disciplined, inexperienced workforce capable of fulfilling the enormous needs that well paying… [post industrial era]executives have for personal service, housekeeping, office cleaning, delivery personnel, boutique attendants, restaurant workers. Furthermore, their impoverished rural backgrounds where running water and electricity are considered luxury make them tolerant of the crushing public service breakdown endemic to U.S. inner cities.”
– In Search of Respect, Selling Crack in El Barrio, 1996 |
In terms of local death records, in 1991, Ferrer Cazares Garcia died while in Bridgeport according to the death index, but lived at 53 WALL St in Norwalk. He was according to social deceit claims index records, listed as being born in “Puebla, Mexico” and was living in the state since at very least 1988 when he appeared first on records in his social security index after death,
Fernando Casiano, remembers that in those days,
“The famous street was Maplewood. Those areas were well known to the Mexican.”
PREVIEW OF NEXT ARTICLE:
“When the Aztec Eagle Began Her Soar Over Bridgeport: Part 3 – Men of Maplewood”
In the year 1990, there were no Mexican-run businesses in Bridgeport, no restaurants or grocery stores…
Mexican businesses opened in town starting in the early 1990s, all clustering on one intersection…
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Retrieved from https://usa.ipums.org/usa/resources/voliii/pubdocs/1990/cp1/cp-1-8.pdf
“Ancestry Multimap.” Cinyc Maps. Last modified September 23, 2023. https://cinycmaps.com/index.php/ancestry-2013-17/ancestry-multimap
