One year ago, MAHUBE-OTWA hired a Latino community engagement coordinator to bridge connections with Latino communities for improved service delivery and partnership.
Armando Mendez was hired for that role. His office is based in Detroit Lakes, one of MAHUBE-OTWA’s five locations.
“Of course, there’s one in Park Rapids. I come there every Wednesday, helping with the Head Start program,” he said.
Contributed/Armando Mendez
According to MAHUBE-OTWA, 4% of its clients in 2022 identified as Hispanic, Latino or of Spanish origin.
Mendez is seeing more and more of the Latino community move to northern Minnesota.
“In Park Rapids, we have a lot of people from Guatemala. A lot of the parents work at the potato factory, but a lot of them have little kids and they put them in Head Start,” Mendez explained. “They do need help with translations. They do need help with communicating what their needs are.”
Mendez concentrates his time in Park Rapids and Fergus Falls, but also serves Mahnomen and Wadena. There are smaller populations of Latinos in Long Prairie and Perham, he noted.
Mainly, it’s jobs that are attracting them to the area, he said, particularly production line and factory work.
“Things they can see that they are part of something that’s being built,” Mendez said. “Once they get here, the thing about Latino families is that we stick together. I’m talking about you can have your grandpa, grandma, great-grandpa, great-grandma living with you. That happens a lot. You have little kids. Everybody spends time together. It’s a big community.”
Beyond translating, Mendez said he’s also been communicating with local businesses and organizations over the past year.
He helped organize this weekend’s Día de los Muertos block party, for example, in cooperation with the Giiwedinong Treaty Rights & Cultural Museum.
Many organizations want to help the general public, Mendez said, but they don’t have access to the Latino community.
“My goal is to make people aware that there is a need and also try to help fulfill those needs,” he said.
Constantly networking, Mendez said if you need an immigration lawyer, he will send you to Legal Services of Minnesota. If you need help with the electric bill this month, Mendez can connect you with MAHUBE-OTWA staff.
“Little things like that. Just communicating with each other. Just working in a big network,” he said.
Mendez was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico, a population of about 6 million.
“About an hour-and–a-half driving from Monterrey to the border of Laredo, Texas,” he said.
Being one of the largest cities in Mexico, Mendez said it’s popular with tourists. Including surrounding suburbs, he said the population jumps to 16 million people.
In 2004, when he was 25, Mendez applied for a tourist visa to the U.S. and was approved.
When asked what brought him to Minnesota, Mendez joked, “I like to call it brain damage.”
“I travel a lot. I’m married to an American citizen. We have lived here in the States, Peru, Colombia, Brazil. We moved for a couple years to New Zealand.”
Mendez was previously based in Alabama – until Hurricane Katrina. Jobs became scarce, he explained, and then a good friend invited the couple to Fergus Falls.
Mendez and his family have lived in Minnesota since 2015.
For more information about the Latino community outreach program as well as resources like podcasts, videos and websites, visit
mahube.org/Latinx-Community
. Mendez can be reached at 218-739-3011, ext. 329.