Nearly twenty years ago, 38-year-old Belmont Cragin resident Erika Espinosa moved from Mexico City to the United States. Then, in 2020, while businesses around the world were closing because of the pandemic, Espinosa decided to open Colores Mexicanos, a handcrafted gift company located at 605 Michigan Avenue, which works directly with more than 50 artisans living throughout Mexico.
How did you come up with the idea of creating this business?
“During the pandemic, we lived through a difficult time, but I sell Mexican crafts, and we had a garage sale with face masks, all handmade. And that was when the boom began, our idea of bringing a little bit of Mexico to the United States.”
What was it like starting a business during the pandemic?
“It was complicated, we were very happy to be able to collaborate with Mexican artisans because if things were difficult here, the situation was much more complicated there.”
What was your motivation for opening this business, especially during a pandemic?
“Mainly the fact that I love everything handmade. I have always been a big fan of all crafts. Coming here to the United States, you realize that we don’t have many genuine handmade things; many crafts that are made in China, so they are really copies of handmade things. This motivated me and my partners to be able to really bring things from Mexico.”
How does your adolescence in Mexico relate to your business?
“It is very important for me to have grown up in Mexico and then to immigrate to the United States and realize the value of my culture in another country, as seen by other people who are not Mexican. Thanks to that, having lived in Mexico and knowing everything firsthand, this allows me to bring the most valuable part of it to another place where it can be shown.”
What is your dream for your company in 5 years?
“In the future I would like to see our store in some other state in the United States, an important place like New York to bring the cultural experience of Mexico to other states.”
Jacob Morlock is a third-year Journalism and International Studies major and Portuguese minor at Northwestern University. He is originally from Buffalo NY. His interests include language acquisition, social justice, cross-cultural communication and sport.
Publisher’s Notes: This story, among others, was produced by undergraduate students in the bilingual reporting class at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media & Integrated Marketing Communications.
Led by Prof. Mei-Ling Hopgood, the class aims to help journalism students practice sensitive and ethical engagement and reporting with multicultural communities in Spanish and English. Students visited the Illinois Chamber of Commerce Business Expo at Navy Pier last fall and interviewed local business owners.