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ORAL HISTORY

Zhenia Martinez

Las Delicias

Zhenia Martinez is co-founder of Las Delicias, a Latino panaderia (bakery) on Charlotte’s Central Avenue. Her parents came from Mexico to Columbia, South Carolina in 1985 when she was eleven, gaining citizenship under President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty. A government bureaucrat in Mexico, Mr. Martinez went to work in a restaurant, then moved into construction where an accident disabled him. He stocked a van with Mexican groceries and drove to small towns to sell to newly arrived Latinos. Seeing the need for a Mexican bakery in Charlotte, he and wife Margarita apprenticed to a baker back in Mexico, then in 1997 opened Las Delicias. When Mr. Martinez retired in 2011, Zhenia Martinez took up the work. The 2008 Recession pushed her partner, Colombian-born Manolo Betancur, to seek new markets. He loaded his car with baked goods and delivered to dozens of tiendas throughout western North Carolina and southwestern Virginia.