When Dominicans need to ship items such as food, clothing, refrigerators, and even cars to the Dominican Republic, they turn to Mudanzas La Nacional, at 95 Bloomfield Ave. in Newark.
Ivonne Vasquez and her husband founded Mudanzas La Nacional in 2004 and live six blocks away from their business. This small shipping office, which delivers door-to-door packages to the Dominican Republic, helps its customers stay closer to the families they left behind in their native country.
“I don’t have much competition around here and every business has its clientele,” Ivonne said. Ivonne loves the fact that she is her own boss and has a very flexible schedule. Their company logo includes the phrase, “experience and punctuality make the difference.”
While she takes orders over the phone or in person, there’s merengue music playing in the background. She also manages to look for receipts while she chats on the phone with her friends which are in the Dominican Republic. Things get hectic for Ivonne during the summer season and Christmas time.
Ivonne likes the area where her office is located but does not like living close to a commercial area because it is noisy. However, the area is convenient because there are many businesses such as bakeries, restaurants, bodegas, hair salons and other stores where Ivonne stops by before she heads home after a long day. Even though she has not noticed any gang activity around the area because she is in the office most of the day, she is comforted by knowing that police vigilance has improved.
Bloomfield Avenue has proven to be a reliable place to do business for Ivonne because there is a large percentage of Dominicans living in that area. She thinks that people from Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador and Puerto Rico living in the area all interact with one another. When choosing friends, she said, she is not concerned whether people are Dominican.
“In five years I see this area changing because most the cost of living keeps rising and I don’t think that the Latino immigration will increase because there are no jobs,” Ivonne said. A lot of Latinos rent in the area, she said. But as rents keep rising people will find other affordable places, and that can allow other people of different ethnic groups to move in.
Saida Alvarenga is a Rutgers-Newark student with a major in social work and a minor in journalism. This report is one of an occasional series on Bloomfield Avenue in Newark. Posted April 2008.
