On Morris Avenue in Elizabeth, the morning begins with the smell of pan de yucca pulled hot from the oven, the radio behind the counter tuned to a Cali station, and a queue of regulars ordering coffee in Spanish. The Colombians in Elizabeth, New Jersey have made this stretch of a four-hundred-year-old port city feel, for a few blocks, like the streets of Antioquia and the Valle del Cauca. It is one of the densest Colombian communities anywhere in the United States, and almost nobody outside New Jersey has heard of it.
The Place
Elizabeth was founded in 1664 as Elizabethtown, the first English-speaking settlement in New Jersey and, for a time, the colony’s first capital. It grew on industry and on shipping, anchored by the Singer sewing machine works and, later, by the container cranes of the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal, one of the busiest seaports on the east coast.
The city sits just south of Newark Liberty International Airport, hemmed by the New Jersey Turnpike and the Goethals Bridge to Staten Island. It is the fourth largest city in New Jersey, with a population of 137,298 at the 2020 census and rising past 142,000 since.
Within that working city, Elizabeth has long been a town of arrivals. Nearly half its residents were born outside the United States, and roughly two thirds are Hispanic. The Colombians settled their own quarter inside it, along Morris and Elmora Avenues in the western part of the city.
How It Became Colombian
A scattered start, 1960s and 1970s
Colombians began arriving in Elizabeth in the late 1960s, with the numbers climbing sharply through the 1970s. The first arrivals did not cluster. Researchers at Rutgers describe an early Colombian Elizabeth as “a community without propinquity,” families scattered across the city’s rented apartments and three-family houses, without a centre to gather around.
They came for the same reasons earlier immigrants had come to Elizabeth: factory work, port work, and the cheap older housing stock left behind by Germans and Italians moving to the suburbs. The city’s industrial economy still had jobs for people willing to take them, and rents were lower than in Newark or across the Hudson in New York. The pattern echoed other New Jersey mill towns reshaped by Latin American arrivals, from the Dominicans of Paterson to the Peruvians who built their own corner of that city.
The bakery that became a consulate, 1979
The turning point arrived with bread. In 1979, Teresa and Ricky Rojas moved from Cali to Elizabeth with three small children, one of them only nine months old. In Colombia they had lived comfortably. Teresa had been a vice president at a coffee distributor, and Ricky had taught toxicology at the Universidad del Valle.
In Elizabeth they opened Don Ricky’s Bakery on Morris Avenue, the first Colombian-owned business on the street. Their signature was pan de yucca, a savoury bread made with queso blanco. Yucca flour was almost impossible to source at first, so Ricky drove to the Latin bakeries of Jackson Heights in Queens and had his English-speaking siblings track down importers.
The bakery became something larger than a shop. As Colombian migration to Elizabeth surged in the late 1980s and 1990s, newcomers without housing or work came to Don Ricky’s for help. The Rojas family likened it to a consulate, a place where you could find your feet. Pan de yucca drew customers from across New Jersey and New York City, and the little counter on Morris Avenue seeded a whole commercial street.
The marketplace consolidates, 1980s and 1990s
By the 1980s the scattered community had a heart. A Colombian marketplace grew up along Morris and Elmora Avenues: bakeries, travel agencies, remittance offices, barbershops and restaurants. This was a deliberate choice, set apart from the older Cuban business district on Elizabeth Avenue, where Cubans and Puerto Ricans had arrived first. The same instinct shaped Cuban North Jersey just up the road in West New York, where an exile community built its own commercial spine.
Institutions followed the businesses. The Colombian American Lions Club was founded in 1981, and a Colombian American Alliance took shape to represent the community’s interests. Each July, the Colombian Independence Festival, marking the twentieth of July, drew tens of thousands to Elizabeth for music, food and dancing.
By the 2000 census, Colombians had become the third largest Latino group in Elizabeth, after Cubans and Puerto Ricans. The community had grown from a handful of factory families into a self-sustaining commercial district, with its own bakeries, its own newspapers in shop windows, and its own festival on the calendar.
From district to designation
What had been an informal marketplace eventually won official recognition. The stretch of Morris Avenue is now formally the Colombian District, supported through New Jersey’s Neighborhood Preservation Program, which channelled a five-year state grant from the Department of Community Affairs into the corridor. It is widely known simply as Little Colombia, the largest Colombian commercial district in the state.
The Landmarks
Don Ricky Colombian Bakery, 315 Morris Avenue. The bakery the Rojas family opened in 1979, the first Colombian business on the avenue and the anchor of everything that followed. Generations of Elizabeth Colombians have bought their pan de yucca and pandebono here, and it still runs as a family business decades on.
Mi Colombia Bakery, 140 Elmora Avenue. Half bakery and half full sit-down restaurant, with separate kitchens for each, on the Elmora Avenue end of the district. Fresh Colombian bread on one side, a la carte plates and Colombian coffee on the other, a one-stop version of the corner panaderia.
La Cantera Restaurant, 301 Morris Avenue. A Colombian kitchen sitting almost directly across from Don Ricky’s, in the thick of the Morris Avenue strip. It is the kind of neighbourhood restaurant where the bandeja paisa and grilled meats anchor the menu and the weekend tables fill with families.
Noches de Colombia, 545 Bayway Avenue. A family-owned restaurant serving traditional Colombian food, one of the most reviewed Colombian spots in the city and part of a small group that has carried the Elizabeth name to other New Jersey towns.
El Parador Rojo, 582 Morris Avenue. A restaurant near the far end of the Morris Avenue district, listed by the city’s own visitor office among the Colombian dining staples that give the avenue its identity. It marks roughly where Little Colombia thins back into the rest of Elizabeth.
Rancho Mateo Colombian Steakhouse, Elizabeth. A Colombian steakhouse at the head of the Morris Avenue district, grilling Colombian cuts and parrillada, and successful enough to open further locations in North Bergen and in Miami, the other great Colombian capital of the United States.
The Colombian Independence Festival, Morris Avenue and venues across Elizabeth. Every July the streets fill with the yellow, blue and red of the Colombian flag for the independence celebration on the twentieth. The festival has run for years, drawing crowds from across the region for vallenato, cumbia and the food of half a dozen Colombian regions.
Where They Came From
Elizabeth’s Colombians are not from one place. The community draws above all from two of Colombia’s most distinct regions: the Valle del Cauca around Cali in the southwest, and Antioquia around Medellin in the northwest.
The two regions cook differently, and the difference shows on the avenue. Valle cooking leans on the foods of the Pacific southwest, while paisa cooking from Antioquia gives the district its bandeja paisa, the towering plate of beans, rice, plantain, chicharron and egg that anchors so many menus. The Rojas family who started it all came from Cali, in the Valle. Colombians from these same departments have built communities far beyond New Jersey, from the Colombians of Jackson Heights in Queens to the suburban enclaves of Doral and Weston in South Florida.
People left Colombia through decades that were rarely easy at home: economic strain, and through the 1980s and 1990s the violence of the cartel years and the long internal conflict. Chains formed quickly. One family settled, found work and a flat, and called for cousins and neighbours from the same departments, which is how a few square blocks of Elizabeth came to hold so many people from Cali and Medellin.
Elizabeth Today
Elizabeth is now home to the largest Colombian population of any city in New Jersey, with more than 15,000 Colombian residents, roughly a tenth of the whole city. That share is extraordinary set against the statewide figure of around one and a half percent, and it makes Little Colombia on Morris Avenue one of the most concentrated Colombian places in the country.
The district is busy and visibly Colombian. The bakeries that began with Don Ricky’s now number in the dozens, and the restaurants, money-transfer offices and boutiques run the length of Morris Avenue. State recognition through the Neighborhood Preservation Program has brought money for facades and streetscape, a sign that the city sees the corridor as an asset rather than an accident.
It is not frozen in nostalgia. Younger Colombian Americans, born in Elizabeth, move between the avenue and the wider city, and newer arrivals from Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America share the same streets. The Cuban district on Elizabeth Avenue still exists a short way off, a reminder that this is a layered immigrant city, the way nearby Passaic still carries the imprint of its Hungarians. But on Morris Avenue, in the smell of yucca bread and the colours of the July festival, the Colombians have built something that holds.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do Colombians live in Elizabeth, New Jersey?
The Colombians in Elizabeth, New Jersey are concentrated along Morris and Elmora Avenues in the western part of the city, an area now formally recognised as the Colombian District and known as Little Colombia. The strip is lined with Colombian bakeries, restaurants, travel agencies and shops.
How many Colombians live in Elizabeth, NJ?
Elizabeth has more than 15,000 Colombian residents, the largest Colombian population of any city in New Jersey. They make up roughly ten percent of the city’s population, an unusually high share given that Colombians are only about one and a half percent of New Jersey overall.
When did Colombians settle in Elizabeth?
Colombians began arriving in the late 1960s, with the community growing rapidly through the 1970s and surging again in the late 1980s and 1990s. By the 2000 census they were the third largest Latino group in Elizabeth, after Cubans and Puerto Ricans.
What is Little Colombia in Elizabeth?
Little Colombia is the Colombian District along Morris Avenue, the commercial and cultural heart of the Colombians in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It is supported through New Jersey’s Neighborhood Preservation Program and is the largest Colombian business district in the state.
What is the oldest Colombian business in Elizabeth?
Don Ricky Colombian Bakery, at 315 Morris Avenue, was the first Colombian-owned business on the street. Teresa and Ricky Rojas opened it in 1979 after moving from Cali, and its pan de yucca became a draw for Colombians across New Jersey and New York.
When is the Colombian festival in Elizabeth?
The Colombian Independence Festival takes place each July around the twentieth, Colombia’s independence day. The streets fill with the yellow, blue and red of the flag, with music, food and dancing drawing crowds from across the region.
If your family’s story passed through Elizabeth, or any of the places Colombians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the bakeries of Cali and the kitchens of Medellin to a counter on Morris Avenue, to wherever you are now.