Paul Bass Photo
Look out, New York — Puerto Rican bread from Ferry Street is headed your way.
Martha Mera (pictured) is bringing it there, crossing another border — or bringing it home, in a sense.
Mera used to live in New York City, on an immigrant journey that began in her native Ecuador and has ended up in New Haven.
It has been a successful journey. Mera didn’t know it would turn out that way when she clutched her six-month-old baby to her and darted along a San Diego highway at 1 a.m. 19 years ago. She hoped it would turn out that way. That’s why she took the chance.
The chance paid off, with the help of fresh bread.
Mera, who’s 53, grew up in the Oriente region of Ecuador. She studied to be a secretary, then got married and had a child.
“It wasn’t good in Ecuador. We wanted to have a better life,” she recalled in an interview at WNHH radio’s studio. She and her husband decided to try to make in the U.S.
Her husband Edwin left first, got established in New York. They put together $16,000 in savings and loans to pay a courier so Mera and the baby could follow, six months later.
Mera boarded a plane to Panama with her baby, then traveled by bus to Mexico, to the border. Her courier told her that the border guards changed stations at 1 a.m., so she and her son would have to make a run for it.
“We had to run fast as we can because the cars were so fast,” she recalled. She doesn’t recall feeling frightened: “My mind was: I had to do it, whatever I had to do.”
They made it, and were taken to a house for a day, then put on a plane to New York, where she reunited with Edwin.
There, she took care of the baby while Edwin worked long hours as a waiter. “He worked all the time,” Mera recalled.
They sent some money home to Ecuador for safekeeping. They bought a house, and thought about the future.
They had relatives in New Haven, which was welcoming immigrants, especially a growing Ecuadorean community. Mera’s family visited and, in 2007, weighed a move here. She and her husband wanted to go into business for themselves. So they sold their New York home (which had appreciated; this was right before the real estate bust), purchased a home near Route 80 in East Haven. They also bought a business at 523 Ferry St. (pictured) in New Haven’s Fair Haven neighborhood: Panaderia y Reposteria Pan del Cielo 2. (The “2” refers to two other outlets in other cities from the original business.)
By this time Mera had a second, 14-year-old son, and she had a 2‑year-old daughter.
“The first years were hard. We had to work a lot, like 10, 12 hours a day,” she said. “I had to wait until my bigger child came from the high school [at 2 p.m.]. Then I had to go to work” until 10 p.m. Edwin began work at 5 a.m.
The bakery grew. When Mera’s daughter got old enough to spend all day in school, Mera decided to try to make it grow more — by learning how to sell the bread not just on Ferry Street, but at other stores.
The bakery sells two kinds of bread: an Ecuadorean bread (at left) with egg and feta cheese (the most similar kind to the “queso fresco” found in Ecuador); and longer Puerto Rican-style loaves (above).
Mera began with the Ecuadorean bread. She approached one local store specializing in Ecuadorean goods. The merchant directed her to another Ecuadorean store in the area, which directed her to another customer.
But it was the Puerto Rican breads that sold more. Around 2012 she began driving around all day to stores in New Haven, West Haven, and now Hamden. The bakery’s workforce grew to 10 employees, some of whom turned out 500 pounds of Puerto Rican breads to deliver to stores each day and another 200 pounds of Ecuadorean breads to deliver twice a week (in addition to the loaves still sold at the Ferry Street store).
Jobana Maldonado
Like other immigrant merchants in New Haven, Mera received help from Jobana Maldonado (pictured) of the Spanish American Merchants Association in learning how to grow the business. Maldonado and Mera this past month celebrated two milestones: Mera broke into Shop-Rite in West Haven. (Next goal in town: Wal-Mart.) And Maldonado helped Mera submit paperwork and gain approval from the state of New York to start selling her bread there.
“I’m so excited about that. I have to thank Jobana,” Mera said.
“My dream is to expand it more. I want to put another bakery in New York, maybe two or three more.”
In Ecuador she didn’t dream as big, she said. The U.S. has changed her.
And it has given her children professional opportunities they wouldn’t have had there, she said. Her oldest son has a career in graphic design and web design, the second son in music. (Her daughter’s still in school.)
“I can do,” Mera said, “whatever I want to do” here.
Click on the sound file above (starting at 32:00) to hear the interview, or find the episode in iTunes or any podcast app under “WNHH Community Radio.”
WNHH’s “Open For Business” series on WNHH-FM and in the Independent is made possible in part through support from Frontier Communications.
