New Jersey city has Mexican flavor of the state of Puebla

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

PASSAIC, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey city has become a home to thousands of Mexican immigrants from the state of Puebla who moved to the U.S. in search of a better life.

Mexican taquerias, bakeries and dress shops are spread throughout downtown, and Passaic (puh-SAY’-ihk) is also home to some of the main distributors of Mexican food in the Northeast.

Ana Flores is the director of the office the government of Puebla set up in Passaic five years ago. She says more than 60 percent of the city’s roughly 22,000 Mexican natives are from Puebla.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie visited Puebla on a trip to Mexico in 2014, in part because 37 percent of the 232,000 first- and second-generation Mexican-Americans who live in New Jersey trace their roots to that Mexican state.