Rosa Porto (September 19, 1930 – December 13, 2019) was a Cuban-American baker and businesswoman, founder of Porto's Bakery & Café chain of restaurants in
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...
.
Early life
Porto was born in
Manzanillo, Cuba
Manzanillo is a municipality and city in the Granma Province of Cuba. By population, it is the 14th-largest Cuban city and the most populated one not being a provincial seat.
Geography
It is a port city in the Granma Province in eastern Cuba on t ...
. Her mother was born in Spain, and taught Porto to cook and bake. During the early years of the
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in co ...
, her husband cut sugar cane in a labor camp, and Rosa baked for neighbors to support her family. Her baking business in Manzanillo was informal, and illegal. “Whenever the secret police would come to raid the house, we already knew they were coming and the neighbors would take the equipment we had to the backyard, so they never caught her,” her daughter recounted in a 2017 interview.
Career
The Portos were allowed to leave Cuba in 1971. They moved to Los Angeles, where she sold her Cuban-style cakes and other foods from home, while her husband worked as a janitor. The couple used a small loan to open a bakery in
Silver Lake
Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...
in 1976. Their next, larger location was in
Glendale in 1982, and offered an expanded menu. Porto's Bakery & Cafe locations grew to include shops currently operating in
Burbank,
Downey Downey may refer to:
People
* Downey (surname)
*Robert Downey Jr.
Places
* Downey, California, US
* Downey, Idaho, US
* Downey, Iowa, US
Businesses
* W. & D. Downey, photographic studio
* Downey Studios, created out of a former Boeing plant
Sch ...
,
Buena Park
Buena Park (''Buena'', Spanish for "Good") is a city in Orange County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census its population was 84,034. It is the location of several tourist attractions, namely Knott's Berry Farm. It is about 12 m ...
,
West Covina
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...
and
Northridge, with a seventh site scheduled to open at the Downtown Disney District at the Disneyland Resort in
Anaheim. Porto's was especially popular with Cuban immigrants, but had a much wider clientele.
Rosa Porto retired from baking in the 1990s; her children and grandchildren continue to run the business, now with over a thousand employees. In 2019, ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'' referred to Porto's as "the most beloved bakery in all of Los Angeles."
Personal life
Rosa and Raúl Porto married in Cuba in 1955. They had three children, Beatriz (Betty), Raul Jr. and Margarita. Rosa Porto died in 2019, aged 89.
[Ortiz, Maria]
"Muere Rosa Porto, la fundadora de Porto’s Bakery y Café en Los Ángeles"
''La opinion" (December 15, 2019). (in Spanish)''
References
External links
Porto's Bakery: A Family Legacy(official website).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Porto, Rosa
1930 births
2019 deaths
Bakers
Cuban-American cuisine
People from Manzanillo, Cuba
Cuban women in business
Cuban businesspeople