In A Tiny Nebraska Town, The Taco Plate Sells Well...It's Miles From Mexico, But Old Mexico Can Still Be Found Here...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

CRETE, Nebraska - On a warmish Wednesday just after noon, Gladys Lopez walks about her small Mexican restaurant on Main Street, watching customers that on this day includes six Hispanic guys in soiled blue jeans and workshirts. It's not as busy as it used to be, but, then, Lopez acknowledges that many Hspanics have left town in recent months. As with other American communities, Hispanics without proper immigration documents are packing and moving out ahead of stricter law enforcement.

The Lopez family has been in Crete for a few years. The restaurant bearing her name has been in business about that long. It stands not far from a store up the quiet street selling Hispanic-themed goods. It isn't that rare, perhaps because 28 percent of the town's 6,290 residents are Hispanics, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Czech-Americans and some of German-descent are in the majority.

Most Americans know Nebraska as a magnet for Hispanic undocumented immigrants looking for work,  especially if they'll do the hard work required by the state's many meatpacking plants. Indeed, those same plants occasionally are raided by agents for the federal government. But Hispanics remain. They are more visible here than they are in, say, Galveston, Texas.

A drive up and down local streets yields a neat rolling landscape of aging buildings home to traditional mom & pop stores and businesses. Aging houses from another time dot the community, some occupied and some vacant. The elderly are as common a sight as are the older American cars that move across town. There are three motels, two not exactly attractive. Crete is roughly 20 miles southwest of Lincoln, home of the University of Nebraska. Here, tiny Doane College (1,700 students) offers a 4-year college degree and some Master's programs. There are not as many fast-food outlets as one sees even in towns of this size in Texas or New Mexico or Arizona.

One Burger King does business here. There is one Dairy Queen and one Pizza Hut. Sit-down restaurants number only eight, including Gladys' place.

Still, it's a slow life one finds quickly. Police info says Crete has not had a murder in 10 years. Burglaries are the problem, as are DWIs. Rapes number between 2 and 5 yearly, according to city statistics. If outward appearances are any indicator, well, Crete is your typical Mayberry, RFD. Gomer works at the corner gas station. Andy Griffith is the sheriff and Opie is the kid kicking a can down by the railroad tracks.

The mood is tranquil. Work on an aging bridge across the Blue River creates some noise, as do the many trucks moving into and out of the grain silos that serves as Crete's tallest structures. It's June, the beginning of the local Summer scorch when the worst temperatures approach the 100-degree range.

At Gladys Lopez's cafe - it seats 32 - in downtown Crete, tasty beef tacos sit well with a weary traveler after the long drive into town. It features the basic plates of traditional enchiladas and burritos, and nontraditional huaraches and pupusas you'd find in most cities and towns of the American Southwest.

I ask her why she stays and she tells me her mother lives here, as do a few relatives. She comes from the Mexican state of Michoacan.

"It's a beautiful part of Mexico," I tell her, knowing it.

"Y aqui tan caliente," she replies with a smile.

Lincoln is up the road and another world awaits. There, the news is that a massive fire destroyed the school district's administrative offices. Elsewhere, life throws its ceaseless monsoon of social issues at everybody, mostly in the form of angst-filled political rains. And that's okay.

Here, we'll sit a spell inside cafes of the sort America rarely celebrates...

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