Non-Latinos Mine Southland's Mexican Market

Vendors sold T-shirts with images of revolutionary Emiliano Zapata and his latter-day namesake, the Zapatista Revolutionary Army. Food stands hustled tacos and churros, sugary fried dough. The crowd cheered as an announcer called out the names of Mexican states.

As the sun set, the classic norteno band Los Cadetes de Linares took the stage and played "Palomita Blanca."

On that Orange County street corner, everything was cien por ciento Mexicano -- 100% Mexican. Everything, that is, but the man staging the event.

Ted Holcomb doesn't speak Spanish. He has never been to Mexico. Yet he has learned to put on carnivals across Southern California that mirror the annual festivals that Mexican villages hold to honor their patron saints.

"I have a closet full of [Spanish] books and tapes," Holcomb said. "I just don't have time to study them."

Over the last decade, Holcomb has carved a sizable business niche by offering an echo of home to tens of thousands of Mexican immigrants.

He is not alone.

The buying power of Southern California's 5 million or so Spanish-speakers, most of whom are Mexican, is measured in the billions of dollars. But most of the largest enterprises selling cherished parts of Mexican culture are owned by Koreans, Lebanese, Iranians, Israelis and nonimmigrant English speakers, people who have built their own American dream on Mexican immigrant dollars.

"You have these clever entrepreneurs who have seen an opening and they've really gone after it," said Waldo Lopez, a business consultant to the Tomas Rivera Policy Center at USC.

Among the more notable examples:

* El Gallo Giro, a seven-restaurant chain that resembles a typical Mexican taqueria, selling birria, atole, pozole and beef tongue tacos, is owned by Charles Bonaparte, a Frenchman.

* La Curacao, the largest Southern California department store aimed entirely at Latino immigrants, is owned by Jerry and Ron Azarkman, brothers who came to the United States from Israel in the early 1970s. They started out selling electronics door to door in immigrant neighborhoods.

La Curacao also holds the West Coast franchise for Pollo Campero, a wildly popular Guatemalan fried-chicken chain that is the reason that Guatemala is one of the few countries in the world with no Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants.