For more than two decades, downtown Hillsboro’s M&M Marketplace has been a cultural hub and gathering place for the city’s burgeoning Latino community. Founded in 2000 by visionary Jaime Miranda and his sister, M&M has 60-plus vendors who sell everything from clothing, shoes, jewelry, videos, music, household goods, auto services, and food. 

“Every immigrant has a beautiful story,” Miranda says. “Sometimes they don’t know they can share it because we come here to work, and sometimes it’s hard to integrate into the system. The market has allowed people to come and share their music, dance, food, and art with the community.”

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OREGON CULTURAL HUBS: An occasional series

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The market also provides arts and culture programming, sports, access to community services, and more. M&M’s biggest arts event, the annual summer El Sol Festival, happens on three weekends this summer. ArtsWatch’s Joe Cantrell was on hand for the first; the second is this weekend (July 13-14), and the third happens August 10-11.

As Cantrell’s photos show, like its parent marketplace, the festival is increasingly reflecting the rapidly broadening cultural richness of Oregon’s most culturally diverse community.

Gathering Place

Spurred by his father’s desire to start a family business, Miranda, then a college student, and his sister founded M&M in a disused industrial warehouse in 2000, with a dozen vendors, to fill a community need for Hillsboro’s burgeoning Latino community. Miranda, who’d come to Oregon from Mexico as a child, says a large proportion of those families arrived between 20 and 40 years ago, when the job market, such as nurseries, allowed migrant farm workers to settle in the city year-round rather than following seasonal harvesting work as before, “following the strawberries,” he says. As the community grew larger and more stable, the demand for services, cultural and otherwise, surged too. Organizations emerged to fill those needs. 

But as Miranda asked around about possible new business opportunities, he kept hearing a common community complaint: few immigrant and other Latino entrepreneurs — many with skills, education, and experience from their native countries — could afford the start-up expenses needed to open their own separate shops.   

To fill that need, Miranda’s family created M&M as a weekend market to provide a central, shared location for local vendors and service providers — jewelers, watch and computer repair, photography, car and clothing repair, connections to health and legal services, translation, money exchange, and more. Now comprising four buildings plus an indoor sports facility, the space is a major business incubator, flexible enough to allow family operations to move into larger shops as they grow, to test-run a concept before investing in their own space. M&M has also connected potential vendors to classes for new entrepreneurs. Several of the businesses it’s incubated have gone on to open their own downtown locations. You can see and hear Miranda discuss this collaborative meeting place in this Facebook video.

The city of Hillsboro provided a major boost to M&M in 2019 when it included the marketplace in Washington County’s first Cultural Arts District. Perhaps conscious of the role that arts development has sometimes been accused of playing in inner-city gentrification, the city designated three “cultural hubs” to anchor an inclusive district: Main Street and its surrounding avenues, Shute Park and the 10^th avenue (“Calle Diez,” home to many Latino businesses), and M&M Marketplace.

“Our activities do bring a lot of people downtown on weekends,” Miranda says. “There’s a connection where people realize that we’re a gathering place for the community. It’s been a great relationship with the city. It’s an honor for us to be considered part of the arts district.” 

The designation brings various forms of in-kind support. One concrete benefit: the district and the city’s Public Art Program invested in a gorgeous, colorful mural painted by Portland artist Li Tie on M&M’s Walnut Street facade. Titled Together We Have a Bright Future, the mural portrays, appropriately for its location next to 20 M&M food vendors, people coming together around a shared meal, surrounded by Hillsboro’s agricultural areas, a flute player and dancing couple next to a depiction of Mayan god Kukulkan, and arranged in a classical Chinese pattern. 

The artist and subject were chosen with bilingual input from hundreds of community stakeholders. Commissioned by the City of Hillsboro, in partnership with M&M Marketplace and Hillsboro Arts & Culture Council, the mural’s installation was celebrated in October 2023 with live music and food from M&M vendors.

The pandemic nearly sank the market, but Miranda managed to tap funds from government agencies and nonprofits, and do a lot of juggling of scarce funds, to keep it and many of the small businesses it serves afloat. The city of Hillsboro helped out in numerous ways, as did organizations such as Mercy Corps.

“[City officials] were really out there knocking on people’s doors, trying to get the word out” about loans, grants and other opportunities for the area’s Latino businesses, Miranda says, even helping them with applications.  

“The community needed it, and we became that center,” Miranda says. “I saw the resilience of the community coming together.”

The vendors, too, pitched in and made adjustments to get through the crisis. Now new businesses are filling most of the slots of those that had to close.

Beyond Business

Miranda cheerfully admits that he also uses the market, and especially its youth and adult soccer leagues and indoor soccer facility, as an educational enticement. 

“People like to go where there’s fun, like sports,” he explains, “and then we can point them to educational opportunities” by collaborating with community organizations to set up informational tables at events, sponsor workshops, and open the market to groups that provide useful information and connections for a diverse community. “Sports has been successful at getting our community together,” he says. “Soccer is a well-known sport around the world. It pulls people together from different cultures, not just Latinos. It lets us connect with the parents and get involved with the kids. It helps kids become self-confident and then focus on school.” 

Wandering the warren of crowded stalls — so reminiscent of similar mercados I remember from my San Antonio childhood — reveals a winding wonderland of clothing and other textiles, boots, hats, luminarias, foods and spices, toys and several restaurants and food carts offering regional specialities from across Mexico and Central America. Piped in cumbias and ranchero music echo throughout the space. Signs on the front entrance offer art lessons for kids.

Left: Fruteria la flor. Right: Rosa’s Curros. Photos courtesy M&M Marketplace.

Occasional indoor performances might include mariachi music, dances, wrestling, kid-friendly clown and costume shows, and much more. M&M generates plenty of art besides what’s onstage at El Sol. 

“Our main focus here has been to create opportunities for entrepreneurs where they can feel proud of their heritage and background,, Miranda says. “But we’ve also been doing cultural events for many years to capture those traditions and promoting pride” among the members of Hillsboro’s various communities. 

For example, El Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations during Hispanic Heritage Month feature colorful artists designed altars and Aztec dances. As part of a collaboration with the estimable Depave nonprofit last year, artists created decorative panels for the newly greened spaces. 

For the past three years, M&M has hosted a Diwali Bazaar for the city’s vibrant Indian-American community. When the opportunity arose, Miranda wondered whether the marketplace was the right spot for an Indian-American Festival of Lights celebration. 

“I decided, I keep talking about how M&M adds this multicultural aspect to Hillsboro, and now, here’s my chance to walk the talk” by inviting in an entirely different culture, he said.  He found a common cultural element: the marigold flower, a cherished symbol in both Latino Day of the Dead celebrations and South Asian cultures. The building’s mural  wound up incorporating a drawing of it on as a symbol of unity from diverse cultures. 

The bazaar included South Asian clothes, jewelry, decor, food, and more from local BIPOC vendors, and of course plenty of attendees were munching on Mexican food from M&M vendors — cultural interaction in action. The bazaar’s third edition will return to M&M’s futsal building this year. And Miranda invites other groups to use the marketplace’s outdoor stage for summer performances. 

In 2018, M&M co-sponsored yet another arts event: the Frida Kahlo Project, in partnership with Hillsboro Arts & Culture Council and the weekly summer outdoor market in which the city closes off a few blocks of Main Street and adjacent avenues to provide booths for local food, farm, and craft vendors. “Our goal was to bring the community together and bring more Latinos downtown to Tuesday Market,” Miranda remembers. “It was amazing!” 

Every Tuesday, local artists worked on ten, 3-by-3-foot panel paintings combining landscapes and people of Oregon and Mexico. Each panel started with a stencil of Kahlo, the iconic 20^th century Mexican painter, which the artists then enhanced and interpreted in their own ways. After a fall celebration including food and live music, the panels were installed on the front and inside the marketplace. 

 The enthusiastic response showed Miranda that Hillsboro’s Latino community craved opportunities to gather around arts and culture.

The Sun Rises over Everyone

So when Hillsboro’s Cultural Arts District Manager Bridie Harrington asked him how M&M could be involved in the district, Miranda had some ideas. 

“I’m always looking for ways to bring the community together so that we can embrace each other and everybody feels welcome and included,” he explains. “How about if we did a festival where everyone was included, and where we learned from all the cultures in Hillsboro — music, dance, food, artists in the community? Let’s do an event where we celebrate the diversity of the community that’s living here, in a place they feel comfortable.”

Children are a welcome part of El Sol Festival, in the crowd and onstage. Photos: Joe Cantrell

Miranda was responding to how Hillsboro had changed since he co-founded M&M. “There wasn’t a lot of diversity in Hillsboro in 2000,” he recalls. “Over the years, that has changed. There’s a lot of diversity within the diversity, within the Latino community,” with immigrants from throughout Latin America. “Now our community is more settled, more comfortable, with more representation. M&M is primarily Latino, but our community is changing.”

It sure is. According to the US Census, just over half of Hillsboro’s 100,000-plus denizens now identify as white/non-Latino, while almost a quarter are Latino, and 16 percent Asian, Black, Pacific Islander, or Native American. One in five were born outside the US, and almost a third speak a language other than English at home. Miranda wanted M&M to reflect that social evolution.

“M&M is a multicultural market, and now Hillsboro is a truly multicultural city,” he explains. “But what about the refugees coming from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, families from India coming to work for Intel and Nike? I discovered a huge community of Pacific Islanders was here because [Forest Grove’s] Pacific University has a history of recruiting from there. My eyes were opening to the fact that we have more diversity than just Latinos here. El Sol was formed along those lines. How can we come together and share our traditions?”

M&M collaborated with city staff on a proposal to co-sponsor an inclusive festival that would use the arts to knit a diversifying community together. The name came from the idea that “the sun comes out for everybody regardless of where you come from in the world,” he says. 

Then came the pandemic, and both the city and M&M quickly shifted focus to surviving the shutdowns and associated turmoil. The city applied for grants under President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. With support and consultation from M&M, city staff submitted the ARPA funding proposal for the El Sol Festival.

“Jaime had the idea for a multicultural art and dance festival,” Harrington remembers. “His vision is for M&M to be a home for everyone to feel connection and pride in their cultures. When ARPA funding included opportunities to support small businesses, this aligned with M&M’s goals to uplift local entrepreneurs. The City offers annual programming like the Walters Performance Series and Pix in the Park with artist and community input. However, El Sol is completely driven by Jaime’s artistic vision. He programmed all the artists. Sometimes our role is to say that the community has a fantastic vision and idea, so where can we bring resources to help?”

El Sol offered the added benefit of helping people connect with M&M Marketplace. “People didn’t realize they were a five- or ten-minute walk from Main Street,” Harrington says. “The festival provided an opportunity for businesses to welcome new customers and vendors, and to honor the fact that M&M has been strengthening our community for over 20 years.”

That first festival, held across eight Saturdays in summer 2022, offered everything from indigenous Latin American folk dancers to bands representing many Latino cultures to Chinese dragon and lion dancers. It drew hundreds of attendees,.Miranda also found that a festival that long conflicted with too many other events, limiting the number of performers available. 

Last year’s festival reduced the number of performances to six, and moved it later in the day to improve attendance. Three of the events drew packed crowds, while the others lagged. Bigger groups requiring longer set-up times found that by the time they were ready to play, too little time remained in their hour-long sets to really get going. “If you did it later,” big band members told him, “then we can play longer and get people to dance.”

Accordingly, this summer, Miranda tweaked the formula again, offering the festival on one weekend each month, carefully avoiding other major events like July 4 celebrations and downtown’s big La Strada di Pastelli Chalk Art Festival. Now, the Saturday shows operate more like a night market, with fewer performers offering longer sets than before. The Sunday afternoon performances generally feature smaller groups that require less set-up time and therefore have faster transitions between shorter sets. He’s also welcomed other groups to use M&M’s outdoor stage for summer performances. 

Miranda sees more changes ahead. “My goal is to grow this event to at least 1,000 people per day,” he says. “Now we have six vendors. We have room for 30. For us to grow it, we need to find other sources of income. I want to see if we can get more businesses or organizations representing other cultures involved, invite them to be part of it, to come and support us. Working together, we can always improve.”

The shows so far have drawn between 250 and 500 attendees per day, and the diversity in age and other demographic categories is about as wide as I’ve seen in an Oregon event.  So is the diversity of performers, with 19 different performances representing a wide variety of cultural arts from across the globe: Andean to Indian, Polynesian and Peruvian, Hawaiian, Chinese and Brazilian, Cuban and Mexican, trailing only the Salem World Beat Festival and other much more established Oregon celebrations. The performances are a delight, as Cantrell’s photos show. But El Sol isn’t just about entertainment — it’s about community. 

“It’s important for our community to be embraced,” Miranda says. “We have community members who need places where they feel welcome. If they come to the marketplace and feel like, ‘I’m at home,’ that’s what I want for the El Sol Festival.” 

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The third annual El Sol Festival continues this weekend (July 13-14) and August 10-11 at M&M Marketplace, 346 SW Walnut St., Hillsboro.