Untitled by joie de vivre
Mattawa is surrounded, for miles, by apple orchards. Originally, migrants would come to orchards just to pick; but these days, there are more specialty apples which take long-term tending, and the migrants are more likely to be resident year-round.
Because so many migrants have settled locally, Mattawa’s residents are nearly all from Mexico. If you go to the supermarket it feels like you’re in a grocery in Mexico, just from the products that are there and the brand names of the items that you see on the shelves.
I went to the Mattawa Saturday market. It really was like a mini-vacation to Mexico. Unlike here, in Western Washington, where it was cloudy and soggy for the weekend, it was dry and blazingly hot in Mattawa. The open-air market was both staffed and entirely attended by Latinos. The items for sale – ranging from a t-shirt with an image of a luridly bleeding Jesus, to tortilla presses – were all from Mexican culture. I enjoyed browsing the stalls.
I wouldn’t make a special trip to Eastern Washington just to go to Mattawa, but it’s certainly worth the half mile off of the highway to go to the market and look around.
over 3 years ago
