Ray Lozano and I pile into his white 2016 Jeep Cherokee as we set out on a tour of Mexicantown, a historically Mexican and Mexican American enclave in the city of Detroit. “Pardon the mess,” he says. “We spilled some salsa on the passenger seat.” Given the setting, it seems perfectly appropriate for our drive.

The mustachioed, youthful-looking 77-year-old is the executive director of Mexicantown Community Development Corporation (also known as MexicantownCDC), an organization dedicated to preserving Latino arts, businesses, and culture in Southwest Detroit. His group leases space to a local nonprofit, a city-run career center, and state offices, and hosts cultural and community events. It also oversees MexicantownCDC Galería, an art gallery featuring local artists, and a new cafe slated to open this fall. An inscription emblazoned above the cafe’s doors reads: “Necesito un café que esté tan fuerte que haga despertar a mis antepasados”/“I would like a cup of coffee so strong that it wakes up my ancestors.”

Beyond, the twin spires of the Basilica of Ste. Anne de Detroit, a Gothic Revival–style structure dating to 1887, tower over the neighborhood. The parish itself was founded in 1701, making it the second-oldest continuously operating Catholic parish in the United States. Just to its west sits the busy Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit with Canada. Ironically, when Canadians arrive in the U.S. by car, the first neighborhood they encounter features a slice of Mexico.

We soon hit the community’s eastern edge, and here things change. Quickly. On the north side of Bagley is a newly constructed four-story black-brick apartment building. Rents for market-rate units start at $1,495 for a studio or $1,795 for a one-bedroom. There’s also a sushi restaurant and a stylish bar. We’re right by Mexicantown’s border with Corktown, historically home to Detroit’s Irish immigrant community. Once known for its plethora of Irish pubs and bars, after decades of development and gentrification, the neighborhood now boasts some of the city’s trendiest restaurants.

And then there’s Michigan Central Station. A couple blocks north of Bagley, hulking over Corktown, the 1913 landmark was known as Detroit’s Ellis Island for its role in welcoming thousands of immigrants who arrived via train. The station had been shuttered since 1988, but the Ford Motor Company is investing nearly $1 billion to transform the 18-story Beaux-Arts structure and other nearby buildings into a technology hub. As many as 2,500 Ford workers are expected to labor here, as well as thousands of workers from other companies. Some will undoubtedly want to buy or rent homes in the area—and will also desire amenities to go with them.

This is a pivotal time for Mexicantown, says Lozano. “A lot of people have taken the train station as a symbol,” he says. “Someone described it as the ‘phoenix rising.’” Many view it as a sign of rebirth for the community. In any case, he says, “there is major change going on.”

In addition to the new high-tech center, another bridge from Canada will open next year a couple miles west of the Ambassador Bridge. Also, the Joe Louis Greenway, a 27.5-mile-long biking/walking path, is planned to run through the community. As development pressure overflows from Corktown, rents and property values are going up in Mexicantown.

“This is a beautiful community, and I would love to move back, but I just can’t afford it,” says Maria Lerma, who grew up in Mexicantown and works at Tamaleria Nuevo Leon, a business her grandparents started in 1957. Today she lives 15 minutes away in East Dearborn, paying around $1,000 a month for a two-bedroom townhome. Many of her friends have moved further away, to suburban communities in the Downriver region, where the cost of living is lower.

Lerma says she has noticed a lot of new customers coming into the tamaleria recently, which is good for business but disconcerting at the same time. “It’s good, but we also care about the community. I get it; we’re supposed to change and grow. But we want to keep our identity and preserve the culture.”

It’s a fear that city council member Gabriela Santiago-Romero hears frequently from her constituents in Southwest Detroit.

“We’re feeling excited but weary,” says Santiago-Romero, who recently purchased her first home in the neighborhood. “There is pride in seeing the investments that come to our business corridors [but we also feel] the pressures of the cost of doing business and living here. For some, it’s too much, so some folks leave.”

A recent check on real estate website Zillow found a renovated single-family house near the heart of Mexicantown listed for $240,000. Records show that same house sold in 2021 for $70,000.

In an effort to help keep rents affordable, the Southwest Detroit Business Association (SDBA), a community development organization that helps preserve and promote the area, oversaw a pilot program in 2017 that provided grants to landlords interested in rehabbing vacant second floors above storefronts into housing. Twelve units were renovated in 2018. The pilot has since evolved into an official program, and another 24 units will be developed this year with monies from the American Rescue Plan Act.

SDBA, an affiliate member of the National Trust program Main Street America, is also co-developing La Joya Gardens, a $24 million, four-story, mixed-use project under construction on a block of West Vernor that had been vacant for over a decade. Starting in 2018, SDBA held community meetings where locals voiced their suggestions for the project. When it opens this year, La Joya (which means “the jewel” in Spanish) will offer affordable housing (rents starting at $505 monthly) for 42 of its 53 units; a community space containing a cafe; an accelerator program for new businesses needing short-term leases to help them get off the ground; and, eventually, a restaurant.

It’s just the kind of addition that Laura Chavez-Wazeerud-Din, president and CEO of SDBA, thinks the neighborhood needs.

While there are a few different explanations for how the label “Mexicantown” began, some say that in the 1980s, the now-defunct Hispanic Business Alliance came up with the name to promote the community’s many local businesses. When Ray Lozano was growing up, the neighborhood was alternatively known as La Colonia Mexicana (the Mexican Colony) or simply El Barrio (the neighborhood).

Like many Mexican immigrants who first arrived in Michigan in the 1910s and ’20s, Lozano’s grandfather was fleeing the Mexican Revolution, which had disrupted the country’s economy. Some from Mexico migrated to the state to work on farms. Others came to toil at the growing automotive plants that sprung up in and around Southwest Detroit.

“Southwest Detroit is [known as] the neighborhood that built the car,” says Maria Elena Rodriguez, Lozano’s predecessor at MexicantownCDC and author of a book about the neighborhood. Henry Ford’s promise to pay workers $5 per day attracted immigrants from all over the world, and Southwest Detroit’s population reflected that. “It was like the United Nations,” says Rodriguez.

Lozano remembers growing up with families from Hungary, Poland, and Armenia. He says he still recalls the tunes of the Lithuanian songs he learned in grade school.

Other waves of migrants arrived from Puerto Rico in the mid-20th century, and again from Mexico in the 1950s, ’70s, and ’90s. Today, Southwest Detroit remains diverse. In recent years, a growing number of immigrants have come from Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela.

The air smells of tortillas cooking at La Michoacana, one of Michigan’s first tortilla factories, started by Rafael and Concha Gutierrez in the early 1940s. Their descendants, including Mexican Village’s Connie Azofeifa, are still involved in the business. Nearby, Latin music blares from a speaker outside of El Popo Market, where you can buy everything from seasoned dried grasshoppers (a Mexican treat) to graphic T-shirts.

Lozano points out a colorful mural depicting artist Frida Kahlo on a building across the street. Mexicantown boasts dozens of murals; one of the oldest dates to about 1979. Subject matter ranges from agricultural scenes to a Cinco de Mayo parade to famous Mexican actors and singers.

“For a community that for a long time felt like their voice was not heard, art has always been the medium through which Latinos speak,” says Chavez-Wazeerud-Din. “That’s how we express ourselves. Whether it’s the pain, the pride, or political events, it’s through our art the community has spoken.”

To help recognize and preserve the neighborhood’s cultural and architectural heritage, Detroit City Council’s Historic Designation Advisory Board recently used an Underrepresented Communities Grant from the federal Historic Preservation Fund to survey Latino history in Detroit. The group is preparing a nomination for Mexicantown’s commercial corridors to be listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.

Janese Chapman, director of the advisory board, says the effort is long overdue. “We have to be inclusive in how we define our history,” she says. “The people who built these buildings are the DNA of the community itself. Their DNA, their stories, are just as much a part of Detroit, of America, as any other.”

She also hopes business owners who operate out of these buildings could eventually take advantage of state and federal historic tax credits for improvements, rather than selling out to national chains. “You don’t need a Taco Bell in Mexicantown,” she says.

As we head back to Lozano’s office, crowds are flowing into the park in front of Michigan Central Station. It just so happens that tonight—June 6—is its dedication. Twenty thousand people are expected to attend a celebratory concert featuring a slate of Michigan’s musical royalty, among them Diana Ross, rappers Eminem and Big Sean, and former White Stripes frontman Jack White, who grew up in Southwest Detroit.