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Sunday, May 04, 2008
DAYTON — Step through the door at La Favorita on East Third Street or La Michoacana on Troy Street or one of the half dozen other such groceries in the area and you step out of the English-speaking world. Where you might expect to see doughnuts there are pastry cases packed with conchas, a Mexican sweet roll. The televisions and radios are tuned to Spanish-language news and entertainment. And instead of signs offering money orders, the signs offer "envios de dinero" services to customers wanting to send money to relatives using international money transfers.
"Money transfers, we do a lot of that," said Luis "Israel" Ruiz, director of operations for the six-store Michoacana Mexican Market chain in Ohio. "Cuba, Hondurus, Mexico ... depending on where our customers come from, we transfer money all over."
Luis Ruiz, director of operations at La Michoacana Market No. 5, straightens produce at the Mexican grocery on Troy Street in Dayton.According to 2006 U.S. Census estimates, there were 8,756 Hispanic residents in Montgomery County and only 2,107 in the city of Dayton.
From April 2000 to July 2007, the Hispanic population increased by 66,632 in Ohio. Hispanics still only count for 2.5 percent of the state population.
"Stores like Meijer, they don't stock the stuff Spanish people want," said Jesus Sotelo, who runs La Favorita Supermercado with his wife Adrianna. "Plus we speak Spanish here; our customers feel more comfortable with that."
Sotelo, Ruiz and others say being comfortable has gotten more difficult for Spanish-speaking people in the area lately, particularly for the significant percentage of Spanish-speaking people living here without legal status. They said that for at least the last six months, local police have been applying pressure that has driven many undocumented workers away.
Jan Lepore-Jentleson, executive director of East End Community Service Corp., said her agency provides social services to a large Hispanic population that has settled primarily in East Dayton.
She agreed that the area has gone through a period where police seemed to be aggressively looking for reasons to stop and question Hispanic residents, and that has led to arrests and deportations.
But Lepore-Jentleson said local social service agencies and Dayton police officials have been meeting and are developing policies she hopes will relieve some of the pressure.
