[LINK] "U.S. immigration crackdown brings gangs, California cuisine to Yucatan"
The News-Observer featured an interesting article by one Tim Johnson examining the consequences of large-scale migration from Mexico's Yucatán peninsula to the United States (specifically to the San Francisco area). All sorts of things have been brought back: money, crime networks, cultural influences.
Wander into Cafe Rex in Oxkutzcab, Mexico, deep in the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula, and some odd things pop out on the menu. For one, there’s red curry and other Thai food. It might seem like a culinary aberration, but it isn’t.
Across town at the Limba Restaurant, the menu carries an assortment of dishes from Thailand, created by a chef who spent a decade in kitchens in San Francisco, where Asian food is prevalent.
“I was chief cook in three Thai restaurants,” said Eduardo Dzib Vargas, listing venues on Potrero Hill, the Embarcadero district and Ghirardelli Square. Back in his hometown, he’s broadened the menu at Limba beyond Thai. “I modified it because there are five or six restaurants with Thai food.”
Like towns across southern Mexico and Central America, migration has changed the face of Oxkutzcab (pronounced OHSH-kootz-CAHB), which lies a three-hour drive south of Merida, Yucatan’s state capital. The ethnic Mayan town has sent thousands of migrants to the San Francisco Bay Area, most of them to work in the food service industry.
[. . .]
The great migrant wave from the state of Yucatan to the United States occurred later than in other parts of Mexico and Central America.
“Between 2000 and 2005, the migration to the U.S. shot up between 400 and 500 percent,” said Angel Basto Blanco, the deputy director of migrant affairs at Indemaya, a state-run agency that assists native Maya.
Some 70,000 Yucatecans reside in the Bay Area, Basto said, with smaller concentrations in and around Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. Many speak mainly Mayan, and only passable Spanish.
Wander into Cafe Rex in Oxkutzcab, Mexico, deep in the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula, and some odd things pop out on the menu. For one, there’s red curry and other Thai food. It might seem like a culinary aberration, but it isn’t.
Across town at the Limba Restaurant, the menu carries an assortment of dishes from Thailand, created by a chef who spent a decade in kitchens in San Francisco, where Asian food is prevalent.
“I was chief cook in three Thai restaurants,” said Eduardo Dzib Vargas, listing venues on Potrero Hill, the Embarcadero district and Ghirardelli Square. Back in his hometown, he’s broadened the menu at Limba beyond Thai. “I modified it because there are five or six restaurants with Thai food.”
Like towns across southern Mexico and Central America, migration has changed the face of Oxkutzcab (pronounced OHSH-kootz-CAHB), which lies a three-hour drive south of Merida, Yucatan’s state capital. The ethnic Mayan town has sent thousands of migrants to the San Francisco Bay Area, most of them to work in the food service industry.
[. . .]
The great migrant wave from the state of Yucatan to the United States occurred later than in other parts of Mexico and Central America.
“Between 2000 and 2005, the migration to the U.S. shot up between 400 and 500 percent,” said Angel Basto Blanco, the deputy director of migrant affairs at Indemaya, a state-run agency that assists native Maya.
Some 70,000 Yucatecans reside in the Bay Area, Basto said, with smaller concentrations in and around Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. Many speak mainly Mayan, and only passable Spanish.