Mercado feels like home for many Hispanics
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
On a recent day at her Mercado de la Raza, Martha Sanchez was focused on putting up a green flier advertising free and low-cost government healthcare for children.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
Sanchez opened the store six years ago and patterned it after the little neighborhood markets she grew up with back home in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where customers could catch up on the latest gossip as well as get important information and advice.
Martha Sanchez patterns her store after the neighborhood markets she grew up with.
Sanchez's plan worked. Today Mercado de la Raza is the only Hispanic market of its kind on O'ahu and, perhaps more importantly, a critical crossroad for Hawai'i's Hispanics, said Jose Villa, publisher and editor of the online newspaper Hawaii Hispanic News and the co-host of a radio show with the same name.
No government or social service agency keeps a better check on the pulse of O'ahu's 58,000 Hispanics than Sanchez's 700-square-foot market, or mercado, on Beretania Street, Villa said.
"Martha has greater contact with a greater segment of the community than probably anybody else," Villa said. "She's trusted in the community and everybody knows her."
The other day, state health officials called Sanchez asking if she could distribute pamphlets on the agency's Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC. Customers frequently come in asking Sanchez to interpret immigration documents, seek referrals for domestic violence or ask her advice on what to do about traffic citations.
Some even call her Dona Martha, a term of respect in Hispanic culture, Villa said.
"Back home in many of the Hispanic neighborhoods ... the neighborhood mercado is like a community center," he said. "Martha has brought the old-style, neighborhood mercado to Hawai'i. That's where a lot of social interaction is done. Shopping there is almost like a byproduct."
Immigrants may come in to buy the spices, tortilla dough, serrano chilis and canned goods they can't find anywhere else in Hawai'i, said Nancy Ortiz, who co-founded the 4-year-old Hispanic Center of Hawaii — or Centro Espano de Hawaii — with Sanchez.
They return because they find everything from notices about blood drives to advice on finding a lawyer to notices on Hawai'i concerts featuring Latin pop stars.
"Life in Hawai'i would be very different for our people without Martha," Ortiz said.
Sanchez, 48, came to Hawai'i 27 years ago on vacation and met her future husband, a local boy, on her first day.
The marriage didn't last, but Sanchez did. She opened her market on Beretania Street, across the street from Wong's Drapery and two doors down from an Asian grocery store.
The food comes from all over the Latin world — Belize, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico — so Sanchez can't stock just one brand of food. Her customers are so particular that they can taste the difference between Peruvian and Venezuelan corn meal, Sanchez said.
James Palmer arrived just three months ago from Jamaica, via Miami, and immediately felt at home at Mercado de la Raza. He got a job as a chef at the All-Star Cafe and Restaurant and soon came to depend on Sanchez for his recipes.
He swept into the store recently to buy seven bags of red beans and two cases of jerk seasoning for his restaurant's jerk chicken and jerk lamb.
"Somebody told me the only place you can find good jerk seasoning is through her," Palmer said in an accent salted with a Caribbean flair. "Ever since, I fall in love with her."
Palmer then peeled off a pair of $100 bills. But his account totaled $269.92.
So Sanchez repaid Palmer's compliment with the old-style practice of the back-home mercado.
"Just pay me what you can now," Sanchez said. "You can owe me the rest."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
