Meet Owner Juan Gonzalez – The local owner taking Skagit County by Storm

• Owners Juan and Elsa Gonzalez – and their son Alex.
• Founded five years ago in 2014
• They employ 25 Mount Vernon locals… and growing!
• Hospitality and Grocery industry
• Juan chose Mount Vernon because there was a market for his business, and because he loves the unique culture, friends, and family that only Mount Vernon can offer.

Juan Gonzalez jokes that he opened his store, La Bodega Latina, on Portland’s Congress Street eight years ago because he was tired of driving to Massachusetts to buy rice, beans and plantains, the foods that remind him of his native Dominican Republic. Along the way, though, the store became far more than an ethnic grocery or a convenience store. Today, La Bodega Latina is a de facto community center, neighborhood hangout and, recently, a civil rights watchdog center. “We have become not only a grocery store,” Gonzalez says as he stacks cans of jalapeno peppers on the shelves. “Because of the image we send out, we have been forced to be the go-to man” when issues come up that affect Portland’s immigrant community. “We are the voice of people who don’t have a voice.”

Gonzalez’s voice was heard by the larger community most prominently back in January, when federal immigration officials swept through Portland social service agencies and businesses that cater to immigrants, arresting 10 people for being in the United States illegally. The sweep drew a swift and angry response from local officials, who questioned the agents’ decision to target minority-owned businesses and social service agencies. “The way it was conducted was totally inappropriate,” Gonzalez says. “There was no warning. They picked people out by the color of their skin, and that’s just wrong.”