Introducing Cinco to Celebrate, a series spotlighting five Mexican-owned businesses in NYC

I’ve been working in media for a few years now and every single year around this time, I get bombarded by emails from large corporations promoting their Cinco de Mayo deals. Often, their subject lines make me wince: Whether it’s because they completely butcher the spelling of a Spanish word or because it’s evident that the only time they acknowledge Mexican culture is when they can make a quick coin off of it.

But it’s not just businesses: “Cinco de drinko” is a larger cultural issue that accepts the flattening of Mexican culture into a series of margarita deals.

If you couldn’t tell yet, yes, I do take all of it personally. What people can’t always tell from my name or what I look like is that I’m half Mexican and was born and raised in Mexico City. I didn’t grow up celebrating Cinco de Mayo—it’s really only celebrated by people from Puebla—but I do have a deep love and protectiveness over where I’m from. And with more than 337,000 Mexicans living in New York, there’s no excuse to not support authentic Mexican businesses in 2024.

We're about to make finding those authentic Mexican businesses very easy.

Don't worry, though: We're about to make finding those authentic Mexican businesses very easy. This year, we wanted to highlight the people who serve as pillars of their communities and give them their flowers. For the next five days, we’ll highlight five Mexican-owned businesses that range from an East Harlem family-run restaurant with some of the best cemitas in town, to a series of pop-ups by a stylist who is bringing Mexico City’s hottest new designers to New York. Our criteria for our choices was that each business we highlighted had to be Mexican-owned and have already built up a reputation within their communities. I’m super excited to introduce you to them, mostly because I've already loved them for years and am confident that you will, too. 

Although this package only scratches the surface of what Mexicans in New York are creating right now, my hope is that this will begin to provide a more expansive vision of how diverse our community actually is. I'm hoping that you’ll get just as hooked on these businesses as we have and continue to enjoy them far beyond May.