The Port City now has an authentic taste of Latin America, right in the heart of uptown.

The Latin Market, located at 79 Prince Edward Street, across from the Giant Tiger, opened on January 14. It’s run by Karina Rodriguez, a newcomer to Saint John who moved here from Mexico, via Ontario, a year and a half ago.

Rodriguez says she got the idea for the market when she was having trouble finding authentic ingredients and products from Mexico.

Jenny Celly is a Moncton realtor, originally from Colombia, who helped Rodriguez and her family find a home when they moved to the Saint John region for work. Rodriguez enlisted Celly as there are very few Spanish-speaking realtors in New Brunswick. Since then, she’s continued her friendship with Rodriguez. Celly provided the interpretation from Rodriguez’s native Spanish, for this interview.

“She missed that comfort from home, being able to cook those home-made meals, especially for her kids,” Celly relates. “That’s when she started looking into opening up a place that would offer [those products] for everybody else that she knew was in the same spot.”

Rodriguez posts a recipe of the day on the Latin Market’s Facebook page to inspire her customers and has the ingredients ready to go at the store.

Celly says Rodriguez has tried to “get a little bit of everything” to stock the market’s shelves.

“It’s products from all over Latin America,” she says. “There’s Latin American baking products for things like tamales and arepas, spices, sauces, cookies, soft drinks, fried beans, there’s also fresh cheese products that are …made the way that they were made back home. There’s frozen foods like empanadas. They got chocolate, and also coffee from Colombia, but even places like Cuba.”

The mix of products from countries across Central and South America, and the Caribbean, has made the store a great place for the community to cross paths.

“A lot of people have been exchanging numbers because it’s nice to see other members of the Latin American community, especially [since] a lot of them are newcomers,” Celly relates. “It’s not a meeting place [with tables], but definitely people are, when they go in there and they see other people, they start chatting and I think connections are happening.”

The market has also turned into a hub for locals who are interested in Latin food and want to try new things.

“She’s super happy because she’s received a lot of support from the local community and neighbours around the store,” Celly says of Rodriguez.  “They go [and say]: ‘the last time we tried this sauce, it was delicious. We want to try this one out now.’ So there’s a lot of non-Latin American people going out to try the products.”

Celly says the Latin American diaspora in southern New Brunswick is getting bigger.

“It’s definitely growing. We have been seeing a lot of people coming from Latin America,” she says. “The top countries right now would be Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. We’re getting people from all over Latin America, but those would be the three countries that are really starting to show a big community in southern New Brunswick.”

Ana Santana from Hola Atlantic, an immigrant-led settlement organization that works mostly with newcomers from South and Central America, agrees.

She says more than 1,000 immigrants from these regions have come to New Brunswick and registered with Hola over the last year, and that she expects that number to double in 2023.

“Food, it’s a very big part of our culture. It’s the central piece, the glue, that keeps all the families together. So it’s important to find the ingredients to make the unique dishes from our countries,” Santana says.

“I arrived in 2015 and when I first came to New Brunswick it was incredibly challenging to find ingredients to prepare our traditional foods. But we find that that is changing, and it’s changing because of the needs of the newcomers from all over.”

The market also provides an order business via WhatsApp, and does deliveries across much of the province, and even as far as Amherst, Nova Scotia and beyond.

The Latin Market is open every day, 9 am – 8 pm Monday to Saturday and 9 am – 7 pm on Sunday and accepts cash, credit, debit, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

When asked what’s the biggest difference between her home in Mexico and Saint John, Celly reports that Rodriguez says “Canada, New Brunswick offers that peacefulness and stability. For her that is priceless.”

Alex Graham is a reporter for Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.