El Charro Café in Tucson is the oldest Mexican restaurant in the U.S. that’s still run by the same family that founded it. Established in 1922 by Monica Flin, it serves Sonoran Mexican cuisine from its original 1896 family home downtown. The restaurant, often credited as the birthplace of the chimichanga, is part of why Tucson became the first U.S. city designated a UNESCO City of Gastronomy. But, to me, El Charro tells a story that’s bigger than food. It’s an example of the centuries of cultural exchange in the desert Southwest and the preservation of Latine — and, specifically, Mexican and Sonoran — community and traditions across generations.
Tucson — or Cuk Ṣon as the O’odham peoples call it — is one of the oldest inhabited areas in the country, with human history in the region stretching back more than 4,000 years. Early Indigenous communities developed sophisticated irrigation canals and agricultural systems along the Santa Cruz River. So when Spanish imperialists arrived in the 1600s, they encountered established Indigenous communities, including the O’odham peoples and Apache groups fighting to defend their land and autonomy. Still, Spain erected the Presidio San Agustín del Tucsón in 1775, forcibly incorporating the region into the colonial province of New Spain. When Mexico later gained independence from Spain in 1821, Tucson became part of the Mexican state of Occidente and later Sonora. Then, through the Gadsden Purchase in 1854 — when the U.S. bought southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico — Tucson, a city far older than the U.S. itself, became part of the country.
It’s a history many Tucsonans know intimately, one they understand neither started nor ended with Spanish colonization or American expansion.
Walking through “The Old Pueblo” during a Visit Tucson press trip, I saw that history everywhere. It showed up in the thick, colorful adobe walls of historic homes, Spanish street names, and the Sonoran food traditions. It appeared in murals depicting the city’s vaquero and rodeo culture and at El Tiradito, a more than 140-year-old grotto that began as a folk healing site and has since become a place where people light candles for migrants who died crossing the border or whose lives were lost to state violence.
I felt it in the heritage crops — tepary beans, corn, squash, and fruit trees — growing at Mission Garden, a living agricultural museum that represents the people who have lived in the Sonoran Desert for thousands of years. And I tasted it in The Chinese Chorizo Project, which uses food and art to preserve the intertwined histories of Mexican and Chinese Tucsonans, whose shared presence shaped many of the city’s neighborhood grocery stores and restaurants for generations.
In Tucson, I found an overwhelmingly Latine community that knows its past and is fighting like hell to preserve its future amid rising gentrification, aggressive immigration enforcement, and climate change. From restaurants and art galleries to wellness spaces and accessories brands, these are some of the beautiful Latine-owned businesses preserving, creating, and serving the community in Tucson.
Located in the heart of South Tucson, Galeria Mitotera is one of the city’s most important community-centered art spaces. Founded in 2018 by artists and (the sweetest!) partners Mel Dominguez and Melissa Brown-Dominguez, this queer, Chicanx-owned space functions as a gallery, shop, and community gathering site. As its name “Mitotera” — which translates to someone who’s loud, playful, disruptive, or makes a scene — suggests, it’s a safe space for people and art that have been deemed too much. It often exhibits work by local queer, Indigenous, and Black artists and hosts youth programs, mutual aid drives, workshops, and borderlands storytelling events rooted in community care and cultural preservation.
Yolia Botanica is a site for reconnection — to yourself, to your community, to your spirituality, to the land, and to your roots. The Sonora, Mexico-born Guadalupe “Lupita” Tineo founded the botánica and spiritual shop to preserve and support Mexican curanderismo, herbalism, and community care. The gorgeous shop is filled with ethically sourced ritual and herbal products like candles, oils, crystals, altar tools, floral bundles using desert plants, books, and artwork. What you won’t find are white sage and palo santo, as Lupita intentionally resists the over-harvesting and commercialization of sacred plants. Instead, she centers alternatives rooted in regional desert traditions and Mexican folk healing. Beyond retail, Yolia Botanica hosts workshops, crafting gatherings, healing events, and fundraising events for immigrant and community-based mutual aid efforts.
Barista Del Barrio is a Tucson staple. Starting in 2017 as a small coffee cart run by Flavia Briones, a single mother, it’s now a brick-and-mortar café in Barrio Hollywood that she runs with her children. And she does need that support. Any given morning, there’s a line of regulars eager for their early pick-me-up that stretches across the street. Breakfast burritos come packed with Sonoran-inspired flavors like machaca, chorizo, green chile, and red chile, while coffee drinks are also connected to region and culture with horchata and dulce de leche lattes.
Founded by María José Cortés in 2020, Di Luna Candles + Goods is a Latina-owned candle studio, gift shop, and community space. María hand-pours soy candles, bath salts, diffusers, and room sprays in scents that range from desert-inspired blends like desert rain, cactus flower, and lily rain, to nostalgic cultural treats like horchata and cafecito. She also curates goods from other small, women-owned, and local artisans and small businesses. But like many other Latine-owned shops in Tucson, it’s more than retail. Di Luna Candles + Goods is a community hub, hosting workshops, night markets, tarot readings, and more.
Lori Martinez opened Bruja in 2023. Since then, the metaphysical and earth-medicine shop has become a go-to in Tucson for people interested in earth-based spirituality, intention-setting, and ritual work. Working with small makers in Arizona and Mexico, Bruja carries candles, oils, soaps, bath blends, crystals, incense, teas, and manifestation kits, among many other goods. With a mission to preserve local land-based traditions and practices, Bruja also hosts workshops, events, and educational programming around ritual practice, meditation, and intention-setting.
The Chinese Chorizo Project is one of the most powerful community-rooted storytelling and food history projects in Tucson. While not Latine-owned, the project — founded and led by Tucson-based chef, artist, and cultural organizer Feng-Feng Yeh — is preserving and expanding cross-cultural Asian and Latine histories in the city. Through the Chinese chorizo, a dish that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through collaboration between Chinese immigrants and Mexican communities in Tucson, she is keeping this shared history alive through an annual chorizo festival as well as art installation projects that explore Chinese immigrant grocery stores, Mexican restaurants, and the mutual aid systems and cultural convergence that shaped the lives of these groups in the borderlands.
Desierto Designs is a Latina-owned, Tucson-based handmade jewelry and lifestyle brand. Created by designer Rebecca Diaz in 2024, Desierto Designs produces handmade polymer clay jewelry, candles, ceramic-style home goods, and small gifts and accessories. Most known for her statement earrings, Diaz’s work blends cultural memory and desert aesthetics. Some pieces, like Barro & Marigolds, are a nod to Mexican culture; others, like the floral cactus dangles, reflect local desert flora; and others, like her Chinga La Migra pair, critique state violence and xenophobia.
Tucson Roller Collective is a roller skate community founded in 2024 by Susan Barnett, Hanan Khatoun, and Joycee Quevedo. The goal was to create a binational skate community for skaters on both sides of the Mexico-Arizona border, but it has evolved into an organization that uses skate culture to support kids and adults in Tucson through education and companionship.
Tito & Pep is the place for contemporary Sonoran cuisine. Chef and owner John Martinez, a Tucson native, opened the stunning restaurant in 2018, and twice has been named a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Southwest. His restaurant incorporates Indigenous desert ingredients, like mesquite and chiltepin peppers, as well as Sonoran Mexican food traditions, like wood-fire cooking, to create dishes that preserve desert culture and cuisine. While there, I had the vegan posole verde, and I’ve been craving it ever since.
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