Every Saturday, from late June to Labor Day, hundreds gather at Riverside Park in New Bedford. Kids are on the playground, teens are playing soccer, and families are walking from tent to tent looking at the different wares from local vendors. At the end of the line you can hear the sound of food sizzling on the grill.
[ambient sound of vendors and patrons at the Patio de Comidas]
This is El Patio de Comidas, an outdoor food series in the North End, celebrating the cuisine of Latin America that culminates Labor Day weekend with the Festival Tipico de Guatemala. One of the organizers is Corinne Williams, executive director of the Community Economic Development Center in New Bedford. This past Saturday, I sat down with her next to some of the food stands, enjoying the delicious aromas of carne asada and taquitos.
“We had run the Guatemalan festival for a couple of years,” Williams said. “The Festival Tipico de Guatemala was an annual event that we held at Riverside Park. But during the pandemic, there was an opportunity to do a little bit more and to support some more of our vendors that were always interested in starting up a food-based business, and so we were already in that area, kind of supporting small businesses and small small ventures, and helped to put the pieces together by being able to purchase some equipment, do some training and serve safe and get all the pieces together so somebody could start as a food vendor on Saturdays here at Riverside Park.
Many of the people walking around wore clothing in the beloved colors of Guatemala, the azul y blanco, the blue and white of the country’s flag. I asked Corinne about how many people within the city’s large Guatemalan community still held onto their traditions and heritage.
“There is a strong sense of heritage and a strong sense of maintaining the tradition,” Williams said. “And just like any other immigrant group that maybe starts off early on just struggling to just get ahead as their kids start to grow, they don’t want to lose those traditions. So the food, the culture, the entertainment, the language even, is a big element of the community here to maintain that heritage and that tradition. A lot of the community – the Guatemalan community in New Bedford – speak a Mayan language. So maintaining the K’iche’ language has been really important to many of the families that we work with to maintain that heritage as well.
[Music starts playing]
Speaking of traditions, a group of eight dancers begin performing a few feet away. They’re outfits are a patchwork of sequined sections with bright yellows, greens, blues, and reds. Golden tassels vibrate as they dance. All of them are wearing masks. There’s one of a tiger, one of a monkey, and another of a bull. The others are wearing masks of human faces, which represent the Spaniards, the white colonists who brought their strange ways, including bull fighting, to the new world. I go over and meet Pedro Lucas, the man who organizes the dance.
“So we’re representing the cultural dancing from Guatemala,” Lucas said. “We call it ‘baile del torito.’ So if you see here one and two torito, that means, you know, two bulls. This dance is traditional from Guatemala, many years ago. So we don’t want to miss this dance. So we’re gonna keep going. So all these guys in here, they’re all young people, so they like the idea of keeping going with the culture, and that’s what we are now.”
I come back to Corinne. She’s going to introduce us to one of the original vendors who got a lot of help early on from the Community Economic Development Center.
“Estela de la Cruz, who has been sort of an anchor of our patio de comidas,” Williams said. “She’s been here as one of our vendors for a number of years already, and she’s been working her way up into, kind of taking the next steps from being a vendor to buying a food truck and to kind of really establish her business in a more permanent way.
Estela takes a break from cooking and walks over to our table. She tells us that it was about 20 years ago when she landed in New Bedford. Her brother was already living here, working at one of the seafood processing plants.
“He gave me the opportunity to come here,” de la Cruz said. “I was happy I heard United States, right? I was happy and excited. I was fifteen when I came.”
“Me dió la oportunidad venir acá verdad, y yo contento escuché que United States, verdad? Yo contento y me animé. Tenía quince años cuando venía.”
Estela said that it was rough at first, being in a new country. But work got her through it, and the weather – at first – helped as well. You see, she arrived in the fall just as things got nice.
“At first I felt sad, leaving behind my family, my mother, and everything,” de la Cruz said. “But then there was work. I started work and time passed. Then, after a month, two months, I quickly got used to it. And when I arrived, summer was starting. So that’s what helped me a lot, because the weather was nice and everything – the American dream, nice weather. And I didn’t realize, because my country is tropical. And then when winter started I saw the difference.”
“Primero me sentí algo triste verdad, por familia, todo eso, porque estaba mi madre y todo. Pero después era el trabajo. Empecé a trabajar y pasaba los días. Ya después al mes, dos meses y ya me ahé rápidamente, y como llegué empezando el verano. So eso es lo que me ayudó bastante porque la temperatura estaba buena y todo – el sueño Americano, buena temperatura. Y no me di cuenta, verdad, porque mi país es tropical también, entonces. Y después cuando empezó el invierno vi la diferencia.”
Estela worked at the seafood processing plant for more than a decade before eventually choosing to sell food at places like the festival or at the park. This was something she had done as a child back in Guatemala.
“When I was young my mother would always send me to sell tamales and chuchitos,” de la Cruz said. “It was cultural food. The first day I was here I was sad, but since then I’ve loved it. I always loved to sell, so when I arrived in this country I saw the process and the people, coworkers. So I saw that there was a need for the culture here. My family supported me, to make tamales, and chuchitos. I started to sell chuchitos.”
“Cuando era una niña mi mamá siempre me mandaba a vender este tamales, chuchitos, era una comida cultural. Entonces me encantaba del – el primer día me dió pena verdad, pero de ahí me encantaba … siempre me gusta vender, me gusta ofrecer, entonces. Y ahí en cuando llegué en este país, vi el proceso y vi la gente, compañeros de trabajo, entonces vi que necesitaba como algo de cultura aquí, verdad. Y mi familia me apoyaban para hacer tamales, también los chuchitos. Empecé a vender chuchitos.”
Estela expects to have her food truck ready in a few weeks. She even plans to sell her tacos at the seafood processing plant where she once worked. Our engagement reporter Paul C. Kelly Campos was with me this Saturday. And we both decided we had to try these tacos.
[Paul places an order for tacos]
We had two tacos de res asado on handmade cornmeal tortillas. We sat down with our tacos, a couple bottles of Jarritos and enjoyed ourselves. Paul got seconds. The last Patio de Comidas of this summer takes place Saturday, Aug. 24 at Riverside Park in New Bedford’s North End, and it coincides with the Festival Tipico de Guatemala. Festivities start at 11 a.m. and run through 6 p.m. The family-friendly event will have everything you can usually find at the Patios, but with more vendors, dances, activities for kids, and musical performances by local and regional artists, including DJ Lorenzo, Manuel Torres, and Los Champincitos.
Find more information about the Festival Tipico de Guatemala at facebook.com/LoveTheAve.
