DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

 

Sunset Park

 

There were several guiding questions for this project: Is the growing number of Mexican immigrants responsible for the visual landscape change in this neighborhood? How and why is this change taking place? My personal interest in this change is two-pronged. I was born and raised in Mexico City with the ancestral beliefs of a religious society, as was the Mexican society of that time.  And, I have been living in my adopted home, the Sunset Park area, for the past seven years.

 

One group of people who moved to the Sunset Park area in Brooklyn, New York, in great numbers is the Mexicans.  In Sunset Park the percentage of immigrants from Mexico grew a staggering 300 percent in a ten-year period between 1990 to 2000 (Arreola 2005). Given this rapid rate of change, this case study explores the kind of ways in which the growing numbers of Mexican immigrants are changing the visual streetscape in the area as well as the effects this immigration has had on the community.

 

According to Census 2000 data, in the area described as PUMA5 04012 in all 39 census tracks, corresponding of what the Department of City Planning describes as Brooklyn Community District 7 (CD7), Sunset Park and comparing the data to the rough Census estimate 2006-2008, we can conclude that the Mexican population grew 100%, closing the gap with the Puerto Rican community, once the largest number of Hispanic population in the area. According to the 2000 Census, Mexicans were at 10, 096, while Puerto Ricans were at 27, 954. By the rough Census estimates from 2006-2008 Mexicans immigrants have grown to 21, 353. Puerto Ricans, decreased their prescence at 23, 580.

 

 

 

 

 Source: Census American Fact Finder Public Use Microdata Area. PUMA5 04012

 


 


The impact this Mexican migration has had on the neighborhood is very clear. What the Mexican immigrants have religiously worshiped for centuries, is not only the Christian image promoted by the Catholic Church, but also the icon that lies beneath. As Mexican immigrants move to Sunset Park, they show this ancestral tradition in the use of the icon of Tonantzin-Guadalupe in part in the businesses hanging the icon on the walls of their establishments. These business owners are the “domestic entrepreneurs” within this transforming “ethnic enclave” (Alba, Logan and Zhang 2002: 303).

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. El Comal Restaurant at Fifth Avenue and 47th Street.

 

The Mexican immigrants not only bring with them this icon, but also their food, which is mostly based on corn, from tamales to corn on the cob, to the Mexico City street snack known as esquites, that has caught the attention of the food critics in such magazines as New York.   In its June 25 2007 issue, the magazine featured in an article, “The Concrete Elite: New York’s 20 Best Food Carts,” the “Esquites Man,” who is in fact based in Sunset Park.

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. Luisa and her Husband Luis Fernando, preparing esquites at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 54th Street.

 

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. Luisa and her Husband Luis Fernando, preparing another Mexico city street favorite snack, chicharron preparado.


 

Literally translated, esquites means toasted corn, but more commonly refers to the irresistible Mexico City street snack of corn kernels sautéed in butter and lard or vegetable oil and flavored with fresh epazote, the pungent herb whose name roughly translated means dirty skunk. “A quick scoop or two of esquites from a five-gallon Igloo thermos, a wooden spoonful of Hellmann’s scraped off onto the side of your cup like a cocktail twist, a sprinkling of sharp cotija cheese, a dusting of cayenne, a squirt of fresh lime juice, and, for $2, you’re on your way” (Patronite and Raisfeld   2007).

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. Esquites.


One of the issues of living in the slum, which causes people to immigrate, is the lack of economic opportunity and the hopelessness it engenders.  Coming to the U.S. provides economic opportunities.  The self-employed street vendors provide an example of “domestic entrepreneurs” creating social networks in an effort to economically succeed and adapt to American society. This domestic entrepreneurship sometimes starts from a red shopping cart transformed into a family business providing employment to the immigrant community to which they cater (Guarnizo, Haller and Portes 2002).


© 2009, Marco Castro. Luisa and her Husband Luis Fernando, preparing esquites at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 54th Street.

 

Other domestic entrepreneurs take a more traditional route. Immigrants with special skills “and are well connected may be more inclined to pursue upward mobility through salaried employment” (Guarnizo et. al. 2002: 293), as in the case of butchers that prepare special meat cuts Mexican Style: cecina, suadero, chorizo and pastor in meat markets such as the Public Meat Market on Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street.

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. Carlos, organizing the window at the

Public Meat Market on Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street.

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. Sergio, preparing the Mexican style meat known as cesina at the

Public Meat Market on Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street.

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. Ricardo, at the front of the main fridge

at the Public Meat Market on Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street.

 

Domestic entrepreneurs ventured into the bakery and restaurant businesses; more than twenty have had appeared on the commercial corridor of Fifth Avenue in the Sunset Park area of study, according to the 5th Avenue Business Improvement District. It is in these businesses where the icon of Tonantzin-Guadalupe has a prominent placement; also the color of the Mexican flag can be seen on several awnings along the avenue.

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. View of Fifth Avenue shops.

 

 

It is not a coincidence that the Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District Annual Fair is held every September, the month Mexicans celebrate the Mexican independence from Spain. The growing political importance of this annual street fair in Sunset Park to New York politicians has attracted the mayor of the city, who walked several blocks of the neighborhood in full swing campaign on September 13th 2009.  He went on and won the third term as a Mayor of the city.

 

© 2009, Marco Castro. My son Atl Castro Asmussen walking with Mayor Bloomberg

on Fifth Avenue and Fifty Fourth Street.

 

Several ancestral traditions take place in the area. Organizations such as BAC Brooklyn Arts Council have become promoters of the Day of the Dead, ofrenda, at the Brooklyn Public Library Sunset Park branch.  Several bakeries stock their shelves with traditional sugar skulls and bake the traditional Day of the Dead bread so the Mexican community can prepare the offering to family and friends who have passed away.  This tradition goes back to long before the arrival of the Spaniards to Mexico-Tenochtitlan. One “ethnic enterprise catering to the immigrant community as transnational entrepreneurs” (Guarnizo, Haller and Portes 2002) is that of the Lopez family, who travel back and forth to Mexico City to bring all the necessary elements for the traditional pre-Hispanic celebration of the Day of the Dead for the first days of November; The Don Paco Lopez Panaderia (bakery) is located at 47th Street and Fourth Avenue.

 

© 2009, Marco Castro.Don Paco Lopez Panaderia (bakery).


 

© 2009, Marco Castro.Don Paco Lopez Panaderia (bakery).

 


© 2009, Marco Castro.Don Paco Lopez Panaderia (bakery), Day of the Dead ofrenda

at the site.

 

On May 11, 2008, a late carnival celebration from immigrants from Tlaxcala, Mexico took place at Sunset Park. This celebration typically is held three days before Ash Wednesday, back in their hometown, as they travel, the celebration was held here a couple months later. It is noted for its Huehues dances (Huehues is a Nahuatl term that means the Elders, those who possess the knowledge), which are performed by Los Charros from Santa Catarina Yomitla, Ayometla, Tlaxcala. The charros portray a fight between the Good and the Evil that is believed to walk around within us. They fight these bad ghosts with the help of the Thunder God, which appears in the form of a whip.  As the dancers hit each other a cracker at the end of the whip explodes at each contact. As the images show, the use of the icon of Tonantzin-Guadalupe is widely used in their customs.

 

© 2009, Marco Castro.Carnival Huehues dancers.


 

© 2009, Marco Castro.Carnival Huehues dancers.



 

© 2009, Marco Castro.Carnival Huehues dancers.


 

© 2009, Marco Castro.Carnival Huehues dancers fighting bad ghosts with the help of the Thunder God, which appears in the form of a whip.


 

Every year, wherever there is a Mexican, December 12th marks the veneration of Tonantzin-Guadalupe as an ancestral religious society, we still dress our children as Juan Diego to commemorate the miraculous apparition of Tonantzin-Cihuacoatl on the hill of Tepeyac in 1531 in the brown skinned Virgin Mary. Now this icon is known as the Emperatriz de las Americas, Empress of the Americas, as her image is celebrated in almost every country on this continent. A peregrination takes place every year in a way to remember the pre-Hispanic peregrinations to the hill of Tepeyac.


 

© 2004/2009, Marco Castro. My children Atl and Meztli Castro Asmussen as

Juan Diego at age two commemorating the 'apparition' of Tonatzin-Cihuacoatl.

 


 

© 2008/2009, Marco Castro. My children Atl and Meztli Castro Asmussen as

Juan Diego at age six commemorating the 'apparition' of Tonatzin-Cihuacoatl.

 

 

 

© 2008/2009, Marco Castro. As every year a peregrination takes place

commemorating the 'apparition' of Tonatzin-Cihuacoatl.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.