Filling A Faraway Niche

One of the last places it's happened has been this northern tip of New England. In 1990, Maine had the second-smallest percentage of Hispanic residents of any state, just 0.6 percent. Down East's Washington County -- a place where even people from neighboring towns were considered "from away" -- had only 0.4 percent.

But then change came in the blueberry barrens, where in the early 1990s Latinos started showing up to "rake" the berries from their bushes. They eventually came to dominate crews once filled with local whites and members of nearby Indian tribes.

The first large group of permanent Hispanic residents settled here around 1997, to work in a local factory that processes sea cucumbers -- tubular cousins of the starfish whose meat is prized in Asia.

Drusilla Ray, president of the processing company, said she initially thought the factory would employ Maine natives. But, she said, the work "was dirty. It was cold. It was wet. It was repetitive. It was smelly. It was -- how many adjectives are there? It was everything that was not appealing."

There were few local takers for the work, which involves slicing the creatures open and then scraping their insides out with a metal blade, so she hired Hispanic blueberry rakers. There are now 86 immigrant workers at the plant, all of them in the United States legally, according to Perez-Febles.

For the new year-round residents, life in Maine took some getting used to. Although the Spanish language has words for "moose" and "blueberry," Perez-Febles said, the immigrants often didn't know them. He also had to explain the need to layer clothes in the bitter winter and the local taste for sweetened canned beans.

"They started adding salt to them," Perez-Febles said of the immigrants. "They cannot take New England baked beans and turn them into Mexican refried beans. It just doesn't work."

There was also some real friction with longtime residents in the first years, including a shoving match at the local elementary school. After that, the school put students through workshops on tolerance and genealogy, tracing everybody's roots.

The town also organized potluck suppers for adults, with immigrants and natives bringing home-cooked food, on the theory that "most people get along pretty good when there's food, anyway," said Lewis Pinkham, who is town manager and police chief in Milbridge.

So far, the town's approach seems to have worked. In an area where young people had been steadily departing for bigger cities, Milbridge natives say they're glad somebody's keeping the school open -- 17 of the 106 students are now Hispanic -- and buying something at local markets.

"It's refreshing to see people stay," Pinkham said.

Indeed, the economic impact that the immigrants have here is visible in the Mexican Store, up the road in Harrington, which sells a huge variety of hot sauces, hats emblazoned with the names of Mexican states and a whole lot of warm blankets. It can also be seen in just about every aisle of the BaySide supermarket in Milbridge's tiny downtown.

"There's like a whole Goya line of food that we brought in," said owner and operator Leola Carter, mentioning the Hispanic-foods company whose logo now appears here on products including seasonings and tamarind-flavored soda. "Never heard of it" before, Carter said, looking at one orangy-brown bottle of the soda on a low shelf.

Immigrants, for their part, say they feel safe in this unlocked-doors town.

"Distance is not important," said Gustavo Ortiz, 39, from the faraway Mexican state of Michoacan, one recent night over a dinner of chicken mole at his family's trailer home near Ray's factory. "What's important is to be happy wherever you are."

This placid coexistence in Milbridge has held in recent weeks, even as other shared American towns have been roiled by anger over current immigration policies. It might just be that this is Down East, where people don't get excited about anything.

Or maybe, state Rep. Edward R. Dugay (D) said, it is because people in this distant spot think they know something the rest of the country doesn't.

"People have just figured it out here," Dugay said. "It works here, maybe."