(The video version of this story is available in this post or on Youtube.)

As the Mexican community lays down roots in South Philadelphia, an old neighborhood takes on a new image. (Photo by Ben Bradlow)

by Ben Bradlow, WHYY Online

South Philadelphia has long been known as a home to its hundred year old Italian immigrant community. But as Mexican immigration has increased over the last ten years, new family life and customs are beginning to flourish in the storied area of the city.

Peter Bloom, director of Juntos / Casa de los Soles, the main community organization for Mexicans in the city, said that what started out as a migration of primarily single men is changing.

“We started the organization around six years ago. I think at that time it was still sort of dicey in terms of if people were going to stay or going to go, in terms of they were going to settle or not. When you talk to people, almost everybody would say, ‘I’m not here to settle.’ And even still when you talk to people they’re not here to settle, but the amount of time they’re going to be here is much longer. Now it’s ‘I’m going to stay here until my kids finish high school.’ And their kids are only five years old. So that’s going to be another thirteen years. I think that started happening about four years ago,” said Bloom.

At a dress shop that he opened three months ago on the key Mexican shopping avenue of South 9th Street, Max de la Cruz hopes to cater to this burgeoning family life.

“There are lot of different ways of dressing that we have to celebrate quinceañeras, sweet 16, 18th birthdays,” said de la Cruz.

“There are dresses for 15th birthdays, for baptisms - people that are having a baptism. For kids that are having a third birthday, people make a big party, they buy the suit, like a suit for someone of three years of age. For the kids, they also want to make them look good, so sometimes people buy a very small suit like this. But there’s a lot of variety of dress in the community. It’s much more than the 15th birthday. There are many, many varieties.”

De la Cruz owns another dress store in Norristown, home to a more established suburban Mexican community, where he has lived for the past nine years. The changes to the community in South Philadelphia encouraged de la Cruz to open up a store here as well.

“The community has grown a lot. Before it was a lot of men who were coming. There were many men. But then they started bringing more women, their wives. Sometimes people come with their children or they have children once they’re here,” he said.

“The majority of the Mexicans have two, three children when they come. It’s changed a lot because there are a lot more children being born here in Philadelphia.”

The fact of increased family life is not only encouraging more permanence within this mostly undocumented community, but it is also providing business opportunities for entrepreneurs like de la Cruz. His dress shop is frequented by those shopping for clothes to wear at celebrations marking key life cycle events in Mexican family life: baptisms, quinceañeras, and weddings.

“A lot of stuff here comes from Mexico,” he said. “A lot of stuff like candles for baptisms. In Christmas, people were looking for suits for their kids that you can’t really find anywhere else. I allow them to find this stuff. It allows people to bring their customs here so they don’t forget their home, Mexico.”

This desire to remain connected to Mexico led Maximino Sandoval, known to friends as Charo Negro, to start an organization that is now working to facilitate the import of goods from his home town of San Mateo Ozulco in the central Mexican province of Puebla.

“Many people come for one year or two years and they don’t think past that. And then one day your family is here and you can’t really move anymore. Because the children go to school and you have to focus on their education,” said Sandoval. “But I’m not just established here for myself. I’m here working for my people in Puebla where I’m from.”

At Taqueria de Puebla, restaurant owner Silvester Torres offers up homestyle food for immigrants from Puebla who now live in Philadelphia.

“It’s a traditional style of food. It’s something that you sell in Mexico and the majority of the people how come here are used to this kind of food. It is a very typical kind of food for Mexicans,” he said.

As the community has grown in the last decade and begun to lay down family roots, while maintaining ties to Puebla, Torres has done brisk business. But a faltering economy has changed things.

“The majority of our clientele are laborers and they’re experiencing cuts in work hours and days, so they’re not making enough money to spend money and eat here,” he said.

Community organizer Bloom said this effect has been apparent to people in the Mexican community for some time.

“The recession has been going on actually for quite a while. It’s become more public recently for the rest of us, but we have been talking to people about it for over a year at this point,” said Bloom.

“Most of the people here live on sort of the edge of the economy and they’re really vulnerable to any sort of shift in the economy, up or down. So when it goes up there’s a lot more jobs, when it goes down it’s just kind of wholesale devastation.”

Domenic Vitiello, an urban planning professor at University of Pennsylvania and co-author of a report released in November by the Brookings Institution about Philadelphia’s Mexican immigrant population, warned that some forms of Mexican-owned businesses may be in for trouble in the current economic climate.

“The dress stores, the music stores, the sporting goods stores - I suspect that those will have a harder time in economic times like these. Yet the majority of stores remain the stores that sell all kinds of things that people tend to need, like tortillas and also phone cards, which I expect people will continue to buy,” he said.

As business owners like de la Cruz work to appeal to the changing nature of Mexican life in Philadelphia, a struggling economy continues to challenge their financial prospects. In the process, Mexican cultural life in South Philadelphia is also being downsized.

“The people are unemployed. The majority of Mexicans and other customers are working working less, they don’t get enough hours,” de la Cruz said. “I am affected because they don’t come to buy my goods. There aren’t parties, there aren’t celebrations. During Christmas we didn’t sell what we needed to. So, we’re waiting for the economy to improve in the future so that there’s work for everyone.”

Still, Maximino Sandoval said that the growing number of immigrants here with families have no choice but to wait out these tough times.

“There are people like me who have to stay here because of our children. It’s not even about living well or eating well. It’s about our children. For their education and their school. So we have to tolerate the conditions here.”