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- A Hidden Community
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- Liz Jones
It's easy to lump together all Mexican immigrants. But not all Mexicans moving to the Seattle area share a common culture or even a common language. The indigenous Purepecha are one such group emerging in our midst. We start with a look at how this group of people settled here and what parts of their unique culture survived the journey north.
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Piece Description
It's easy to lump together all Mexican immigrants. But not all Mexicans moving to the Seattle area share a common culture or even a common language. The indigenous Purepecha are one such group emerging in our midst. We start with a look at how this group of people settled here and what parts of their unique culture survived the journey north.
Broadcast History
Aired locally on KUOW Public Radio.
Transcript
(Background ambi: women talking, movement.)
In a suburb about 10 miles south of Seattle, young Purepecha women stroll out of their look-alike apartments. They pull bright, handwoven shawls across their petite shoulders. Some carry sleeping babies, swaddled papoose-style against their mother’s back.
(Ambi: bring up women talking Purepecha, bus in background)
As they wait for the noon school bus, the dozen or so women chit-chat in their first language, Purepecha. The sing-song Indian dialect sounds nothing like Spanish.
(Ambi: bring up a few seconds of Purepecha)
A threat of snow hovers in the air, and I joke with a woman named Maria-Jesusa about her ‘winter shoes’.
Just like a few other women, she’s wearing strappy, open-toe sandals…and no socks, I point out. They all laugh.
(Ambi: women laughing.)
“These is how we wear them at home”, she tells me.
But unlike home, some w...
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:First it was just one family. Now, a village within the city quietly grows in Seattle’s suburbs. Its inhabitants are indigenous Purepecha (poor-EH-peh-cha) immigrants from the remote hill-towns of central Mexico. Their traditional culture is fading in parts of Mexico, but reappearing here…as the Seattle area becomes a top destination for this group of migrants. In a weeklong series of reports, KUOW’s Liz Jones explores this new community emerging in our midst. We start today with a look at what parts of their unique culture survived the journey north.
OUTRO:Tomorrow, in part two of this series ‘A Village Away from Home’, we’ll follow a migrant worker from rural Mexico to the shores of the Duwamish.
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