{"id":37555,"date":"2019-11-20T18:17:45","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T23:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=37555"},"modified":"2022-07-14T17:00:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T21:00:08","slug":"queso-without-borders-aisles-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/queso-without-borders-aisles-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Queso Without Borders: Aisles of Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Illustration by Sonic Yonix<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

S<\/span>tatesville, North Carolina is the definition of \u201csmall town America.\u201d Spanning just over 24 square miles, outsiders would never consider the Iredell County seat a melting pot\u2014but the dairy aisles of its modest markets tell a different story. Latinos make up the largest ethnic minority in the country, and the American South has the fastest growing Latino population of any region in the United States. North Carolina routinely ranks as a state with record-breaking Latino growth. For years, its food processing and manufacturing industries have drawn newly-arrived immigrants looking for work. Small towns like Statesville are impressively diverse, with communities from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Nicaragua. <\/p>\n

Right downtown, across from the Statesville courthouse, you\u2019ll find El Reposo, a Colombian eatery and grocery store. Set in a cramped trailer, space is limited\u2014but a cooler is packed to the brim with a diverse mix of cheeses. There are fat rounds of crumbly queso fresco and bags of ubiquitous grated cotija\u2014a salty, aged cheese that is Mexico\u2019s answer to parmesan\u2014alongside bricks of queso duro viejo, a hard, aged cheese from Nicaragua with a salty bite.<\/p>\n

As the demographics have shifted, so have the markets. Look closer in the cheese case at El Reposo, and you\u2019ll now find cuajada, a soft, milky fresh cheese from El Salvador. The number of asylum seekers worldwide from Northern Triangle countries\u2014El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala\u2014increased five-fold between 2012 and 2015. Many of them are seeking asylum after fleeing areas rife with gang violence, drug trafficking, and corruption in the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n

On the outskirts of Statesville, you\u2019ll find Tienda Y Tortilleria Teresita. Launched as a small Mexican market and tortilleria in 2015, the spot offers cheeses made in-house like queso fresco and queso Oaxaca, Mexico\u2019s semi-hard melting cheese, often used in quesadillas. The market has expanded over time to offer products from Central America and South America.<\/p>\n

Teresita\u2019s dairy section is a study in underappreciated Latin American cheeses: There\u2019s the salty and stinky queso de cincho from Mexico; multiple brands of queso de freir, a semi-firm cheese that can be griddled or fried like halloumi; grated and powdered cotija; fresh, milky cheeses from Honduras; queso seco for Colombian arepas; El Salvador\u2019s queso arrocero, aged for more than 60 days and queso poroso, a soft cheese with a pockmarked appearance. The list goes on and on, reflecting the diverse needs of Statesville\u2019s ever-growing immigrant community.<\/p>\n

Along with these rural marketplaces, North Carolina\u2019s major cities, including Charlotte, Greensboro, Durham, and Winston-Salem, are also sites for the Latino-owned grocery store chain Compare. First launched in New York in the 1980s by Eligio Pe\u00f1a, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Compare\u2019s stores have a veritable wall of Latin American cheeses, reflecting the store\u2019s surrounding immigrant communities, whether they\u2019re using the cheeses to make chile rellenos, pupusas, or baleada.<\/p>\n

Throughout my four years in North Carolina, I\u2019ve rarely seen white Americans in the aisles of these grocery stores, and it\u2019s a shame. Immigrant-owned businesses have the power to open entirely new culinary worlds in American kitchens. And digging into an unfamiliar dairy case is more than a culinary adventure: It\u2019s a way to get to know your neighbors.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Statesville, North Carolina, is just one of many US towns that has plenty of immigrant-made cheeses from Latin American traditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26354,11],"tags":[21332,21330,6828,21329,1003,17310,21320,14933,21260,21327,2402,21319,21318,3462,21331,21321,21325,21322,21323,1161,21326,21324,21317,21328,21305],"coauthors":[21316],"class_list":["post-37555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","category-travel","tag-baleada","tag-chile-rellenos","tag-colombia","tag-compare","tag-cotija","tag-cuajada","tag-el-reposo","tag-el-salvador","tag-guatemala","tag-honduras","tag-mexico","tag-nicaragua","tag-north-caroline","tag-oaxaca","tag-pupusas","tag-quesadillas","tag-queso-arrocero","tag-queso-de-cincho","tag-queso-de-freir","tag-queso-fresco","tag-queso-poroso","tag-queso-seco","tag-statesville","tag-tienda-y-tortilleria-teresita","tag-venezuela"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nQueso 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