I am the owner of Las Milpas LLC, a Mexican restaurant and Latino grocery store in Baraboo.
Ana Cecilia Torres Pozada | Baraboo, WI
My day starts at 6:30, getting my daughter to school and heading to my store. In the afternoon I pick her up, we eat dinner together, and then I go back to the store until 9pm. I run around all day, but I love it. We started in a small room, now we are 7,300 square feet. We also have food trucks now. When I see a customer, I make sure to welcome them and help them find what they need. Some of us have known each other for many years now. It’s so important to me to give back to the community who has supported me along the way.
I grew up in a little town in Peru called Laredo. When I was 19 I came to Baraboo on a J1 visa for an internship at Perry Judds printing factory. This internship seemed like an opportunity to get to know American culture and to improve my English. That first Christmas in 2006 without my family was difficult. Back home it was summer time, when my family and I would be outside celebrating the holidays, enjoying neighbors, sharing food and music all night. There’s a special fruitcake – a panettone – we eat during the holidays. I remember carrying mine into the airport, because you couldn’t find it here then.
I thought I’d practice my English full time at the factory, but most of the employees were Mexican or Honduran or Guatemalan. They were Latinos like me but from other cultures. They eat different foods, speak differently, and have different traditions. Getting to know them was how I first got involved with my Latino community in Baraboo. I made a lot of good friends and also met the Mexican man who would become my husband.
My first spring and summer in Baraboo – Oh, my! It was so beautiful with all the flowers and the trees starting to grow leaves. Seeing Devil’s Lake I thought, ‘This must be heaven because it’s so beautiful everywhere. This is the place where I would love to raise my family.’
I’ve gotten love from Baraboo since the first day. I always had a little business on my side, to help me out with my expenses. I used to sell cosmetics. My mother always said that I could sell anything, even a blank sheet of paper.
At the end of 2010, I told my husband that I wanted to open a Latino foods store. We started Las Milpas from nothing. I asked the owner of a little place next to a glass shop for a one-year lease. He was the best landlord I ever had. My very first customer bought a box of tortillas and dried chiles. Sometimes we wouldn’t have any customers for an hour and a half. That was a tough year, but the Latino community supported us. They asked for more products and certain brands from their home countries. I learned how Nicaraguans eat, how Puerto Ricans cook, the different meats, rice, tortillas. After a year we moved to a bigger space for meat and bakery counters.
There was one day early on when we drove our open trailer to Chicago to buy tortillas. It was drizzling and windy. We’d loaded 50 boxes of fresh tortillas at the factory. Each box contains 40 packages. We were on our way to the Peruvian wholesaler when half of the soggy boxes spilled onto a street downtown. We started running around crazy to pick them up. People were yelling, ‘What are you doing? Get out of the way!’ One guy stopped to help us, and eventually we got everything packed up. That taught me to check the weather in Chicago and to get a cargo van.
Eventually customers asked why we didn’t make tacos and margaritas. I’d learned a lot about Mexican cuisine through my husband’s family and friends. I love how his Mexican food has similarities to my cuisine but is also very different, so we create fusion dishes. I love how we mix our own traditions with others in this country.
My husband and I bought a building and opened the restaurant in 2017. My mother moved to Baraboo from Peru when my older daughter was born. I couldn’t operate my business without her raising my girls, and she keeps our traditions and language alive in them. A teacher told me recently that my daughter had helped read a bilingual book to the class. They watched her like a ‘rock star’ because she could translate the whole book. I was so proud of her. But one day she came home so sad because a friend made fun of the food from Las Milpas that I’d sent in her school lunch. She told me not to send it again. It hurt to hear she didn’t want to take our food. I don’t want my girls to lose their roots. I want them to be proud of who we are.
I have adopted American traditions for my daughters, because they were born here. I want them to have the best of both worlds. I wonder what choices they will make as they grow up here. We will teach them our Latino cultures, and we’ll respect their American experience. My daughters are my inspiration, and I want them to know they can do even better things than I’ve done.
We’d already opened Las Milpas when the prom photo went around the world. One of my friend’s sons was in that picture, but he wasn't making that sign. He said, he thought it was kind of a joke but he didn't know if he should go along with the group or keep his hand down.
Baraboo was looking for answers. We’ve all been in high school. You feel pressure from friends. There was a lot of confusion about what to do, what to think, what to say after that picture. It had a big impact on everyone. Parents were asked to go to meetings, and they were interviewing students at the school. They wanted to go deep and see what really happened. You can learn from the good things and you can learn and grow even more from the bad things. I think one big thing this community learned is that we have to pay more attention to what the kids are doing, what they are hearing, what they are sharing on social media. We have to listen to them. We have to spend time with them.
One of the translators at the high school is a regular customer. She told me that Las Milpas is a place where people who aren’t Hispanic get to know our cultures. In the beginning I didn’t see the impact that my business would have in the larger community. I believe many Latinos come to my place because they feel at home. They taste our food and it makes them think about their childhood, and remember their family back home. That’s the most important part of my business, when people say, ‘Oh, this pozole tastes just like my grandma’s.’ That just makes my day.
Through Marcy Hufaker and Maday Delgado, who is a longtime customer and friends, I got involved with the Baraboo Acts Coalition. They were bringing people together to create positive change after the photo situation. One idea was to host a cultural event called Celebrate Sauk at Las Milpas. At the beginning I thought, ‘OK, people of different cultures will come together and share and let’s see how it goes.’ It grew and grew. I would contribute food, and I knew customers who would love to put on a dance performance. I knew someone who owned a Thai food truck. There would be Hawaiian, Lithuanian, and Ho-Chunk dances and rituals. All of these pieces were coming together. It felt great to be working with these powerful, interesting, beautiful, energetic women. I learned so much from each participant about how to express your ideas and develop a process professionally. We have different personalities, cultures, and religions but what we have in common is we know we can get together, work hard, and find a way to just make it happen.
Over 200 people attended Celebrate Sauk. We served Mexican and Peruvian food from our food truck, but we wanted to go beyond food and margaritas that are familiar. We wanted to bring people face-to-face with other parts of our cultures. My mother created a raffle we call a tómbala. There was a table with prizes from our store – produce, foods and souvenirs from different countries. When someone won a prize, we would discuss the cultural background, like ‘This beverage is from Puerto Rico, this is how you serve it’ or ‘This is a religious candle from Mexico that a believer would place on her home altar.’ Everyone was having fun and dancing and learning. At the end of the day there was a Ho-Chunk presentation that was just so powerful. When they started to play the drums, people who live behind our business were drawn out to come participate. As they were dancing, they shared what the performance meant, so we could all understand the meaning better.
Celebrate Sauk was the first diversity event like this in Baraboo. I think people were surprised that here in this little town we have so many different cultures. We plan to keep going with these types of events and involve more and more people. Events like Celebrate Sauk make me feel like I’m contributing in a bigger way. I’m helping bring not just my own culture, but a lot of traditions forward so we can share all that we have. We Latinos are here to get involved in the community and contribute to the economy. This world changes fast, and we all have to be able to adapt and learn to be tolerant. If we all stay united, we can be all stronger.
Ana’s story was produced by Jynelle Gracia and is part of the Baraboo Acts Coalition series, which formed in 2018 when Baraboo became an international controversy after a photo circulated depicting several young people giving the Nazi salute. You can learn more about the Baraboo Acts Coalition here and Las Milpas here.
Photo 1: Members of the Celebrate Sauk planning team; Photos 2-4: Participants at the Celebrate Sauk event; Photo 5: Students speaking at a Baraboo Acts Coalition event.
The Holocaust Education and Resource Center created a free tool for “building reliable, respectful and rigorous lessons on the Holocaust. Check out this link to find lessons.
The Wisconsin Humanities ‘Immigrant Journeys project is a collection of stories featuring Wisconsin residents from south of the border. Check out this link to find the stories and to see a timeline of Wisconsin immigrants.
