2 Police Forces, 1 Connected Community

When Ecuadorian activist Dixon Jimenez helped deliver 400 protest tacos to East Haven mayor’s office, he and fellow advocates crossed the border to do so. When East Haven’s Ecuadorian immigrants want to pray or play soccer, they cross the border back into New Haven.

On paper, New Haven and East Haven are separated by a bright town line. The line marks two quite distinct overall municipalities.

The boundary blurs when it comes to the municipalities’ burgeoning Ecuadorian populations. The storm of controversy that has ripped through East Haven in the past days and weeks has revealed that nuanced relationship. The emergence of a new immigrant community, it seems, doesn’t always conform to rigid traditional borders.

In some ways, the two towns share one unified contiguous fast-growing community of Ecuadorian immigrants; the border often seems not to exist. Ecuadorians go from New Haven to East Haven to shop. They come to New Haven to worship at St. Rose of Lima church in Fair Haven or to play soccer in New Haven’s Ecuadorian soccer league. When it came time to press East Haven Latino business owners’ and shoppers’ and neighbors’ complaints about police harassment, a church and a law clinic based in New Haven brought the cause. And many of those East Haveners had deep ties to that church.

In other ways, the town border is a clear dividing line. The majority of East Haven’s Ecuadorians came there directly from the neighboring provinces of Morona-Santiago and Azuay. Most New Haven Ecuadorians hail from elsewhere in the country, including a contingent from the town of Puerto Quito.

Both local populations are growing fast. An after-school cultural education program started. A big annual parade courses through downtown streets, as festive and iconic as the St. Patrick’s Day, Columbus Day or Freddie Fixer Parades for the longer-established Irish-American, Italian-American and African-American communities. Meanwhile, in East Haven, Ecuadorians have been a prime force behind the rocketing of the local Latino population from 1 to 10 percent of the overall town in just a few years.

An estimated 3,000 Ecuadorians live in New Haven, 800 – 1,000 in East Haven, according to Raul Erazo of the consulate — which opened in New Haven in 2008.

Most distinctly, the border marks the dividing line between two types of policing, two sets of expectations for Latinos walking or driving in the towns. As New Haven has taken up a pro-immigrant mantle and become a ​“sanctuary city,” East Haven is wracked with racial scandal after a federal probe found that cops there have for years been targeting, harassing, brutalizing, and falsely arresting Latinos and lying about it.

While New Haven’s Mayor John DeStefano instituted an immigrant-friendly ID-card program and ordered New Haven cops not to ask anyone about his or her immigration status, East Haven’s Mayor Joe Maturo, in the face of his officers’ arrest and a continuing federal probe, said he might help Latinos in his town by eating tacos. (He later apologized for the statement.)

It was that comment that led to the delivery of 400 protest tacos to Maturo’s office on Jan. 26. Carrying a tray of tacos was Jimenez, an activist in New Haven’s Ecuadorian community. He’s one of several Latinos who this week shared their varied perspectives on the New Haven/East Haven split.

“There is no division” between the Ecuadorian communities in the two towns, Jimenez said.

While New Haven has more Ecuadorian people than East Haven, East Haven has more Ecuadorian businesses than New Haven does, Jiminez said. Many people go to East Haven to send packages or money home to Ecuador, he said. But many other activities take place in New Haven, he said.

“The only difference is the authorities and the police,” said Jimenez.

New Haven has an active Ecuadorian soccer league with several teams from East Haven, said Elio Cruz, part of the leadership of Virgen del Cisne, the New Haven Ecuadorian organization. Like Jimenez, he’s from Puerto Quito.

People are attracted to East Haven because the streets are safer — apart from the police — than New Haven, Cruz said. That comparison has prompted some people to move over the border, in both directions.

That’s true of Edith Sanchez, a 34-year-old Peruvian woman who initially settled in East Haven, then was driven to Fair Haven by police harassment, she said. Just a couple of months ago, she moved back to East Haven, where she said she feels safer from crime. Since the federal investigation became more public, she and others have noticed a ramping down of police harassment.

Pedro Gutierrez, the owner of Guti’z bakery on Main Street in East Haven, sold his home in Long Island and moved to East Haven four years ago after visiting his son there and seeing the opportunity for a business.

Gutierrez is from Sucúa originally, in the province of Morona-Santiago. Marcia Chacon, who owns My Country Store on Main Street with her husband Wilfredo Matute, is from the neighboring province of Azuay. She came to the area 17 years ago because of family connections. For 12 years, she and her husband have had their store in East Haven.

Chacon said she feels no division between the East Haven and New Haven Ecuadorian communities. They’re joined together by St. Rose of Lima Church, the center of the larger community, she said.

Not everyone agreed that the church is the center. Luis Rodriguez, owner of Los Amigos grocery store, said he doesn’t attend St. Rose. He said he’s trying to organize Latino business owners in East Haven to meet with the mayor — a first sign that the institutional Ecuadorian base that rests predominantly in New Haven may migrate in part to East Haven now, too.

On Thursday, Rodriquez stopped by to discuss the plan with Esdras Marin, the 28-year-old owner of La Bamba restaurant, across Main Street from Los Amigos.

Marin said he came to East Haven directly from Ecuador nine years ago because of a family connection. His clientele is more than just Ecuadorian, he said. Customers are from Puerto Rico, Argentina and other parts of Latin America he said.

Latinos from East Haven go in the evenings to dance in New Haven where they know they won’t be harassed by the police, he said.

As Marin spoke on Thursday afternoon, his restaurant was empty. He said it would fill up later in the evening with people from surrounding towns, but only those who have their papers in order, he said. East Haven cops have frightened the rest off, he said.

Speaking of cross-border visitors, Rodriguez said one group he doesn’t like seeing is New Haven activists who organize marches. It’s better to maintain public order and show that Latinos are good people through everyday actions, he said.