[RP TownTalk] Post article today on Riverdale Park's Mexican community

[ABragg7393 at aol.com]

I wonder, when did we (Riverdale Park)  annex that strip off Edmonston  
Road.  As far as I know that is not Riverdale Park, but Edmonston.  Am  I 
wrong, or is the reporter guilty of not doing his/her research, yet  again?>
 
 
In a message dated 5/3/2009 6:21:34 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
dwightrholmes at gmail.com writes:

Impact  Resonates With Mexican Enclave in Md.

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington  Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 3,  2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/02/AR2009050202
108.html

Turn  onto a quiet side street called Edmonston Road in the Prince
George's  County town of Riverdale Park and you could almost be  in
Mexico.

Shopkeepers have festooned the slightly shabby brick  bungalows lining
the street with exuberant signs painted in the red, green  and white of
Mexico's flag. The Discocentro Mexicano offers cowboy boots  from
northern Mexico alongside racks of CDs by Mexican bands. At the  San
Jose Grocery, three-foot statues of Catholic saints are stacked  above
the produce aisle.

And perhaps nowhere in the Washington  region has the impact of the
swine flu originating in Mexico reverberated  with greater force this
week than along this half-mile stretch.

At  Comunicar Travel and Tax Services, in a small house painted
electric blue  and decorated with posters of airplanes, requests from
Mexican immigrants  seeking to book summer trips home have nearly
ceased over the past several  days. Instead, the agency's two travel
consultants have been fielding calls  from clients who already bought
tickets and want to postpone their flights  without incurring fees.

"This is the time of year when we sell families  their summer travel
packages," said the agency's manager, Ruddy Hernandez,  standing with a
worried look in the empty office one recent morning. "If  this
continues much longer it will be a big problem."

Branching out  to other customers is not an easy option, Hernandez
said. Although many of  the region's estimated 47,000 Mexican
immigrants are scattered among other,  larger immigrant communities,
Riverdale Park has emerged over the past two  decades as a rare Mexican
enclave. So almost all of Comunicar's clients are  Mexican immigrants.

At least one business does appear to be booming  along Edmonston Road:
the sale of phone cards to Mexicans anxious to check  on relatives back
home.

"Aha, aha. ¿Y como esta la niña?" -- "And  how's the little girl?" --
Fernando Andrades, 25, a welder on a lunch  break, shouted tensely into
his cellphone on a recent afternoon. He was  standing in the parking
lot of Discocentro, where he'd just bought a $25  phone card so he
could call his brother in Mexico's Tabasco  state.

Andrades's expression relaxed. "My brother says his daughter is  fine,"
he said, flipping the phone shut.

But the sense of relief  came at a price. "Normally I spend about $50
to call my relatives twice a  week," said Andrades as he walked into
the Sirenita Mexican Restaurant next  door. "Now I'm spending $100 a
week to call them daily."

Still,  compared with Jesus Joel, 40, one of the prep cooks at the
restaurant,  Andrades seemed almost neglectful of his family: Joel said
he was calling  his wife and three children in Mexico City about four
times a day. "It's so  hard to be away from them at a time like this,"
said Joel as he chopped  beef for a fajita.

Although Joel's family remains healthy, he said  there were other
reasons for concern. "My son works at a bank, and they've  closed it,
so he's missing a lot of work, and my daughters are missing  their
classes at school," he said. "Also, they tell me that there's been  a
run on the shops, so there's a shortage of everything --  vegetables,
medicine and worst of all, face masks. Just imagine. My wife  hasn't
been able to find face masks!"

Elizabeth Mejia, 36, the cook,  clucked her tongue sympathetically.

"This is all we talk about these  days," she said with a grim smile.

A few blocks down, the conversation  in the kitchen of El Taco Azteca
was even more alarming.

"I just  heard my little niece has that flu," Mariella Jacome, 23, told
Rosalba  Vazquez, 31, as the waitresses piled takeout food into
Styrofoam  containers.

"Really?" said Vazquez, her eyes widening.

Jacome's  9-month-old niece lives in Guatemala, where there have been
no official  reports of swine flu infections. But she was certain that
was the  diagnosis.

"She's been sick for 15 days and in the hospital for eight  days,"
Jacome said. "At first they thought it was asthma. Now they know  it's
that flu. . . . But thank God she's doing better. They've just  taken
her off the oxygen."

Like others on Edmonston Road, Jacome and  Vazquez also worried that it
was only a matter of time before swine flu  reached Riverdale Park,
given how many Mexican immigrants live  there.

A few in town have started looking for face masks. Andrades,  the
welder, is one of about two dozen people who spent $30 to get a  flu
vaccination this week at a private clinic that mostly serves  Mexican
immigrants -- even though the medical assistant there said  she
repeatedly warns patients that the vaccine does not protect  against
swine flu.

However, most denizens of the street seemed to  adopt the fatalistic
view of Jacome and Vazquez.

"You never know  when the virus will reach you. So there's nothing to
do," Jacome said with  a resigned sigh.

"Yes. Nothing but to wait," Vazquez  agreed.
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