Betting on a dream

There's a low-rise storefront at the bustling, scruffy corner of Moody and High streets. It's the sort of building in the sort of place you might commute past for years and never notice. About a decade ago, Francisco Mendez started to dream about it.

He was just a teenager. It had been only a year since he'd snuck across the border from Mexico. And in those early days, he'd focused mostly on surviving and learning English. He remembers walking and rollerblading past Moody and High streets ''practicing saying, over and over, 'How you doing? How you doing?' People answered! Everybody answered me! And I thought, 'Hey, this works!' " He remembers, too, looking in at Hanlon's, a family-owned shoe store that had occupied the corner for nearly a century.

Several years later, Mendez had mastered English and become a legal resident. He also held fast to his youthful dream of transforming an ordinary building into something that would be, in roughly equal parts, Mexican and American. If you move the camera back for a wide shot, Mendez's dream -- to reinvent one building on one small street in one small city -- might look small. But it is part of a cultural transformation that's been years in the making, not merely in Waltham but across the state.

By 2004, the Hanlons had closed their store and Mendez looked on with frustration as a health food restaurant moved in. For seven years he'd been scraping out a living driving a tow truck. With four children to support, he had no money to rent the building himself. But he made a point of walking by the new So Cal Restaurant a lot. Business seemed slower there than in the Indian buffets and pizzerias nearby. He also noted a demographic fact that gave him hope. Latinos didn't go near the place.

''That's why I knew we had a shot. I got my courage up," Mendez remembers. That was last fall. He was 27. ''Maybe this was my only chance. I walked in and just told my plan to the guy running the place."

Mendez's suggestion to So Cal's owner, Noel Christopher, was simple and bold: Let me and my family transform your failing enterprise into a taqueria, which would feature the wildly popular burrito and other more authentic Mexican dishes. Appetites for Mexican food, Mendez assured Christopher, cut across all cultures and classes. And this was especially true, Mendez said, of the Americanized burrito. Steamed flour tortillas lined with mild cheese, stuffed with and folded around spiced meats, beans, and rice had proven a winner for Boston's popular (and, by the way, Japanese-American-owned) Anna's Taqueria chain.

''I told him what I believe is true," Mendez recalls. ''I said, 'Look around you, man.' Latinos are the future. I can get them -- and all kinds of other people -- in here. Trust me. This is how we'll do it.' "

Never mind that Mendez had little money to invest in such a venture. What he did have, besides pluck, was experience and the right connections. His parents had run a popular taqueria in Mexico City. He and 10 brothers and sisters had grown up cooking. Mendez promised to put the call out to his family, including his mother and father back in Mexico, a brother in Waltham, and another in Michigan, who'd all help out.

''I thought, 'Well, here's a guy with a lot of drive, plenty of confidence, and a lot of energy,' " Christopher remembers. ''I mean, a whole lot of energy."

Gregariousness, charm, and infectious enthusiasm had won Mendez plenty of allies over the years. Even some of the people whose cars he'd towed had ended up fast and lasting friends. If he walks up Moody Street, the main drag, Mendez's acquaintances -- Latino, white, black, and Asian -- honk car horns, yell out to him, run across the street, and embrace him.

''He seemed to have a personality for this," Christopher says. ''And I thought maybe the concept could work."

In late winter, Christopher abandoned a notion he'd had of reopening as an Italian restaurant. He made Mendez his partner. The move constituted Mendez's first lucky break, and it gave Christopher a chance to recoup some of his losses. In March, Mendez taped a handwritten sign to the window: ''Hungry Coyote Restaurant: Mexico City, 1977 -- Waltham, Massachusetts, 2006." Mendez's brother Tonio, the principal cook, moved to Waltham. His parents flew in from Mexico City with visas allowing them to stay until fall.

''I used to come by here, hanging out with my friends, and see in my mind what this could be. I knew it could be something great," Mendez says, sitting inside the building he'd fixated on for years. ''It is amazing. It is amazing that we are here."

When Mendez says ''we," he's talking about more than his extended family. Of course, he hopes to prosper and pull his family from the edge of poverty. But he also sees his bold claim on one of Waltham's most visible commercial corners as an announcement about the permanence of the suburban Latino community, which includes, more than ever before, immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

''We need to let people know that we're not going anywhere. We're here to stay," Mendez said to friends and relatives as they walked, American flags in hand, up Moody Street and joined the May 1 pro-immigrant rally on Waltham Common. ''We have to have a voice now, make our mark."

The Latino reinvigoration of America's public spaces, a familiar story in California and Texas, is a newer phenomenon here. Latinos are increasingly a force with the rising numbers, the growing buying power and, if Mendez is any indication, the determination to remake many main streets.

''In my dream there will be a line of people here," Mendez says, lifting and moving tables days before the Hungry Coyote opened. ''There will be a Mexican person. Then a Puerto Rican person. Then a white person and then a black person and on and on. That's the way it should be in America. Anyway, that's the way I would like it to be here."

The white populations in Massachusetts and Waltham are slowly shrinking while their Latino populations are growing. In keeping with these demographic shifts, the number of Latino-owned businesses in Massachusetts is multiplying.

Cultural diversity is nothing new to Moody Street. Indian and Asian restaurants hit up against Guatemalan and Colombian-owned shops. A Peruvian-owned pizzeria sells slices for $1.35 but also offers homemade empanadas -- a Latin American pastry wrapped around meat, cheese, or sweets. Steps away, a swanky bistro sells $28 entrees to well-heeled crowds. Across from Mendez's Hungry Coyote, an African craft store offers beads and wall hangings.

Clearly, then, Latinos won't determine the future flavor of Waltham's public spaces alone. But it seems unlikely that whites alone ever will again. Recently, an Italian cafe closed up, quickly replaced by an Asian fusion restaurant. Just across the street, an American barbecue cut back the size of its operation. A Central American restaurant soon claimed the new space.

A few days before Hungry Coyote's scheduled opening, Mendez and his friends and relatives scrubbed down tables, mopped the floor, and shopped for supplies. They dusted framed family photographs of Mendez's sisters, brothers, and parents cooking, eating, riding ponies, and making First Communion back in Mexico. A 22-year-old local Mexican artist, Ricardo Gonzalez, put the last touches on a six-foot mural of the 15th century poet-king, Nezahualcoyotl (Hungry Coyote), who ruled what is now the Mexican state of Texcoco.

But then the walk-in freezer broke, costing a day and $500 borrowed from friends. Then the computer, which runs the cash register software, crashed. That cost more time and another borrowed $600. The next rent payment loomed. Five thousand dollars' worth of food sat in a freezer, waiting.

''I look in the mirror and I think I don't look happy," Mendez tells a friend sitting in one of the 55 empty seats in his clean but unopened restaurant. ''I look nervous, and that isn't like me."

But Mendez has also been a witness to Waltham's cultural fusions and gaps. And his 10 years of ''looking around and paying attention" bolster his confidence. Back in the early 1990s, Mendez's uncle had opened a small Mexican restaurant on nearby Charles Street. In its first years, non-Latinos rarely ate there. Nowadays, English-speaking customers dominate the lunch hour. Just as important, Mendez says, his Latino acquaintances complain that they don't feel welcome at, or simply can't afford, most Moody Street restaurants. The Hungry Coyote, Mendez believes, will draw that hugely underserved and ever-expanding population.

On the first Thursday in May, at lunchtime, the Hungry Coyote finally opened. The lines swelled, often to a dozen people. The newly trained cashier grew jittery. Two harried burrito makers improvised a chaotic yet workable assembly line.

Marcos Molineros, a childhood friend of Mendez from Mexico, scooped beans and carnitas -- braised pork cooked with orange, cumin, and cilantro -- onto a tortilla. Molineros forgot whether his customer wanted salsa. So he had to ask a second time.

''Slow down and listen to the customer," Mendez, working the cash register, jokingly told Molineros. He spoke in English for the customer's benefit. ''Listen so that it can be perfect."

''It looks perfect," the customer answered.

''It is perfect," Molineros said, grinning, handing over the plate of food.

At lunch and then for three hours at dinner, tables stayed full. The homey scents of spiced meat, cilantro, and cheese filled the air. Spanish and English mingled. And as Mendez had predicted, white office workers, suburban families, and students from Brandeis University lined up for burritos and tacos alongside Latino workers and families from Waltham and beyond.

Ten hours after opening, at 11 p.m., Mendez locked the doors, cranked up the volume on some Mexican dance music, and counted earnings that amounted to a little more than he'd expected. His mother and father, visibly tired, sweating and smiling, finally sat down. Gonzalez, the mural artist turned dishwasher, soaped and rinsed stacks of plates.

''OK. We did it," Mendez told friends and relatives washing down tables and sweeping the floor. ''All we have to do now is get up every day and do it again."

Susan Eaton's most recent book, "The Children in Room E4," is due out in

January. She is currently working on a book about Latino immigrants, set in

Waltham.