The Language of Business

care offered at educational workshops.

“It’s a whole ecosystem of resources geared more towards the people in the Southside who otherwise wouldn’t know how to start,” Streeper says.

Medina says these are especially beneficial to Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs, who often have family-run businesses.

“In our culture, if you start a business, it’s more than likely going to involve everyone in the family,” he says. “I appreciate that [Camacho and Streeper] have taken into consideration the fact that when you have seminars like this, sometimes it’s the matriarch of the family who’s the entrepreneur because the dad is busy working construction, and she needs the childcare.”

Camacho added that women made up 100% of attendees to one of the most recent workshops. That tracks with data from the National Women’s Business Council, which indicates there are over 2 million Latinaowned businesses in the US—a sector that has grown by 87% since 2007.

Streeper remembers how overwhelming it felt when first transitioning into an entrepreneurial role. She moved from Los Angeles to Santa Fe in 2016 and worked in marketing in both places, but once the pandemic hit and events stopped, her focus shifted to art.

Streeper does embroidery and beading, making earrings and necklaces. She and glass artist Mara Saxer decided to go to Albuquerque to sell all the art they had made during the pandemic. Given Streeper’s background in events and Saxer’s lengthy background in art, they were ready to put a much-needed Santa Fe spin on it, Streeper says.

“Here it’s a little hard to become part of the markets in Santa Fe, and there aren’t that many for people who are just starting,” she says. “We said, ‘Why don’t we just start something here and do a test to see if people show up?’”

In 2021, the pair founded ArtWalk Santa Fe, an outdoor arts and crafts market for artists of all experience levels and backgrounds to sell products and gain exposure. The organization will hold their second annual Rufina Block Party 4-8 pm Aug. 12 at and around Paseo Pottery, located at 1278 Calle de Comercio.

In addition to her art, Streeper also uses her language skills to do translation work, and she established an LLC for a translation business. But as a native of Mexico with Spanish as her primary language, she didn’t find many bilingual resources to explain the process thoroughly.

“I didn’t even know where to start, so I looked on the web for classes on how you start a business,” Streeper says. “It’s already hard enough to figure out how to be a business when you speak, or sort of speak, English, and

I never saw a lot of information in Spanish or directed towards me at all.”

Dixon says more Spanish-first initiative ideas are brewing, such as an entrepreneurial educational program specifically designed for Spanish-speaking and immi- grant business owners. In addition to this, Camacho notes the city’s Office of Economic Development is drafting an economic development plan for Santa Fe’s immigrant populations with the help of a data project from the American Immigration Council.

The plan, Camacho says, should be finished this winter and will address barriers for immigrants entering the entrepreneurial space and the workforce. The city hopes the strategy will create more high-paying jobs for immigrants and subsequently help solve employee scarcity.

“For us, it’s important to create highwage jobs for people to be able to live in Santa Fe, and I think that we can from the point of view of workforce development,” Camacho tells SFR. “In economic development, we have a lot of tourism, and just as we saw in the pandemic, you don’t have as much resilience if you don’t have a diverse economy.”

She says the city started the process of translating into Spanish applications such as special events licensing and legislation including the Homemade Food Act, which allows individuals to prepare certain low-risk food items in their residence and sell them directly to consumers without a permit.

Gretel Barrita, member of the community-based and immigrant-led organization Somos Un Pueblo Unido, which promotes worker and racial justice, underscores the need for many different types of resources, not only translations.

“There are times where you have to fill out forms that you don’t understand, even sometimes when the words are written in Spanish, in order to fill out an application for a license or permit, and you end up asking yourself, ‘What is this? What do I have to put here?’” Barrita tells SFR. “It’s a hard road.”

With so many initiatives and translations still in the works, Medina is thankful for his position today. He hopes the educational series and additional resource will help others get there too. He highlighted the value of moving “beyond inclusivity.”

“People do need that help to be included, but it’s easy to just stay in that step, but then you’re never really given the agency,” he says. “I’m hoping that with this initiative that we started with the city, it helps those businesses get to the point where they can call their accountant and say, ‘Hey, I need another LLC.’”

Read or share this story in Spanish at sfreporter.com/espanol.

FERIA SOUTHSIDE

4-7 pm, Thursday, Aug. 27 Fraternal Order of Police 3300 Calle Maria Luisa santafechamber.com/feria

MUSIC FRI/11

HIP-HOPPY BIRTHDAY

Hip-hop trailblazers The Pharcyde might have come up in the same general late ‘80s-early ‘90s Los Angeles milieu that birthed N.W.A, Snoop Dogg (aka Snoop Doggy Dogg, of course) and much of the original Death Row Records crew. But Pharcyde’s jazz-drizzled sound is about as far from gangsta rap as you can get—falling more in line with sonic descendants such as Flying Lotus and Aesop Rock. The pioneering group heads to Santa Fe this week to perform at the free Raashan Ahmad-hosted 50th anniversary celebration of hip-hop through the Lensic360 nonprofit imprint. The event also promises a fashion show, live screenprinting and vendors—and with five full hours of beats and bars on the lineup, you don’t wanna let this one go passin’ you by. Stick around the Railyard following the show to find out where the afterparty’s going down, too (Spoiler: it’s at Opuntia). (Siena Sofia Bergt)

The Pharcyde: 5 pm Friday, Aug. 11. Free Santa Fe Railyard Plaza, 1612 Alcaldesa St., Lensic360.org

ART OPENING FRI/11

Wander Woman

Calling to mind that old Tolkien saying about wanderers, Texas-based artist Leticia Herrera recreates the nigh-unexplainable allure of wandering in her upcoming Walkers exhibit at Canyon Road’s Thornwood Gallery. Herrera’s new series of oil paintings focuses on the movement of those in search of freedom and unity and was reportedly inspired by her own emigration to the US from Mexico City in 2007. In all of the paintings, Herrera puts families of impasto figures into motion, on their way to some vague destination and often emerging from some darkness and toward a mysterious source of light. It seems likely you’ll feel a little wanderlust of your own just looking at them. (Noah Hale)

Leticia Herrera: Walkers Opening: 3-6 pm Friday, August 11. Free Thornwood Gallery, 555 Canyon Road, (505) 428-0279

EVENT MON/14

TONIGHT WE’RE GOING TO PARTY LIKE IT’S 1990-SOMETHING

Though some folks of a certain age around the SFR offices are baffled by literally any romanticized notions of the ’90s, it’s hard to deny the weird and brazen pop culture beats of the decade that birthed such bangers as the grunge movement, Saved by the Bell (keep your ’80s-born Miss Bliss feelings to yourselves, SBTB purists!), Hypercolor and Pogs. So don your sweetest Body Glove tee, DC shoes and Jnco jeans for the ’90s ONLY Music Video Dance Party at La Reina bar within the El Rey Court. We’re told this throwback jam should have plenty of Spice Girls, Selena and Shania on tap, and you just know someone’s gonna play “Black Hole Sun” or, like, “Heart Shaped Box” or something. Is it the decade we miss, or is it our very youth? Do not ask for whom the boy band tolls—it tolls for thee. (ADV)

‘90s ONLY Music Video Dance Party: 7:30 pm Monday, Aug. 14. Free. La Reina, 1862 Cerrillos Road, (505) 982-1931

MUSIC SAT/12