On a Saturday evening, when most small businesses are closing down, La Cuscatleca, a small grocery store in Southwest Detroit, is a hive of activity.
Customers bustle in and out with takeout orders while others browse shelves filled with products from Central America. Behind the counter, store owner Doña Laura Vasquez stands next to a steamer filled with tamales wrapped in a banana leaf, her hair in a bun and an apron around her waist.
Vasquez, a long-time neighborhood resident, treats customers like extended family. La Cuscatleca is more than just a store; It’s a gathering place for Central American immigrants – and she is their connection to home.
“I’ve been here for 15 years, I used to sell food from my house, now people come here to eat and to ask about jobs,” Vasquez said.
Vasquez knows many of her patrons by name and asks about their day or their family, creating a sense of community and belonging where people come to shop and connect with others.
Here, customers can wire money to their families and buy hard-to-find ointments, canned food, and candy from back home, homemade specialty bread, and blue and white soccer jerseys from La Selecta, El Salvador’s national soccer team.
In the back of the store is a small restaurant where the scent of pupusas sizzling on the grill fills the air, and beach towels with scenes of El Salvador hang as decoration.
Near the kitchen, workers and customers discuss El Salvador’s recent reelection of Nayib Bukele, the controversial president accused of dismantling democratic institutions and of mass human rights abuses for his crackdown on gangs that once terrorized the country.
“Lo amo!” “I love him,” says Anna, the cook. “He’s been able to do what several presidents before him could not, get the gangs under control.”
In the corner booth is Neto Grande, who is originally from El Salvador. He and his wife Nataly and their newborn baby drove 45 minutes to La Cuscatleca. They make the trip from Waterford a few times a year to eat and load up on groceries.
“Other than my family, this is the only restaurant that serves this kind of food,” Grande said. “We also come to buy things from my country that can only be found here.”
Eighteen-year-old Luis Adolfo Hernandez arrived from Honduras two years ago. He found a job roofing and feels lucky he can send money back home. Hernandez misses his family but says he feels like he’s back home when he visits the store.
“They speak Spanish here, and I can send packages, shop, and get food. Hernandez said. “They make my favorite dish, pollo con tajadas.”
Journey to business ownership
Doña Laura Vasquez arrived in Detroit in 1984. She left when El Salvador was at the height of its 12-year civil war when violence between the right-wing government and leftist guerillas terrorized the country. The brutality was marked by the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the murder of four Maryknoll Sisters, which caused international outrage.
Vasquez made her way to Mexico, and from there to Texas, then New York, and finally to Michigan. Months after arriving here, Vasquez fell into a deep depression. She had made the agonizing decision to leave her three little girls behind in El Salvador until she got established in the U.S. and could send for them. She couldn’t bear being without them and worried all the time.
She said her late husband, Fidel Angel Trejo, noticed that she brightened up when she cooked and encouraged her to continue. Vasquez began making tamales, a time-consuming traditional food that kept her busy and her mind occupied for hours.
“I found a cooler that had wheels,” Vasquez said. “I would walk to Clark Park with my cooler full of food and sell tamales made of pork and chicken.”
Her husband worked at a meatpacking plant in Eastern Market. His coworkers asked if Vasquez would cook for them. Cooking kept her busy and took her mind off worrying about her daughters.
She started out making food for five of his coworkers, but before she knew it, she was cooking for more than 50 people, including catering orders.
The kitchen took over her life. “I would wake up at noon and cook until five or six in the morning,” Vasquez said.
But the long hours paid off. She was making money, which she invested into La Cuscatleca, her tienda at 6343 Michigan Avenue, where Central American immigrants have become part of the neighborhood. It also allowed her to reunite with her daughters and bring them to Detroit.
Vasquez says La Cuscatleca has gotten much busier in the past two years.
“There are a lot more people from El Salvador and Honduras and Guatemala coming,” Vasquez said. “I know, because of sales, the merchandise moves faster.”
Vasquez used to travel to El Salvador every other month to buy products. But now, she says, she sometimes needs to go back monthly to meet demand.
“By mid-month, I’m already low on merchandise; I run out of cheese, cream, and medicine,” Vasquez said.
A changing neighborhood
La Cuscatleca is a microcosm of what’s to come.
For decades, Mexicans have been the dominant immigrant group in Southwest Detroit, but as Mexicans move further south to Allen Park, Lincoln Park, and Melvindale, Central Americans from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are moving in.
In addition, Central American grocery stores and restaurants, such as Pupuseria y Restaurant Salvadoreño and El Catracho, which serve Central American cuisine, have dotted the landscape, taking space in a community saturated with Mexican restaurants and businesses.
The City of Detroit said it does not have data on the total number of migrants who have arrived, but signs of an influx are everywhere.
Walking distance from La Cuscatleca is St. Hedwig a church that was once a religious center for the Polish community in the early 20th Century. Then, for decades, Mexicans filled the pews. Now, according to St. Hedwig’s, their congregation is more than 60% Guatemalan.
Social service agencies have also noticed a rise in Central American immigrants. About six months ago, Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, a Southwest Detroit nonprofit, began working with recent immigrant arrivals who had walked in off the street looking for help.
“We’ve had families from Honduras, and we’ve heard more anecdotes from people in the community that are receiving more Central Americans, particularly Hondureños and some from Guatemala even,” said Raúl Echavaria, director of Community Organizing & Advocacy at Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation (DHDC).
As immigrants continue to arrive from Central America and make their way to Detroit, they will be looking for a community.
“I will be here to take care of my customers,” Vasquez said. They feel safe here.”