When Samuel Facundo came to Henrico County 20 years ago, he could not find a place to buy tortillas, a staple food from his native country, Mexico. “We used to go to Woodbridge [where some friends lived] to buy tortillas,“ the 52-year-old said. Two years ago, Facundo and his brother bought Tortilleria San Luis, a tortilla and taco business on Quioccasin Road in western Henrico. Facundo’s wife, Catalina, runs the business.

Growing up, Adelson Escobar was taken to the soccer fields in Chesterfield County nearly every Sunday.
His two younger brothers and older sister came along to watch their father play, while their mother mingled with relatives and friends and enthusiastically cheered.

Milciades M. Cedano Jr. recalls his father once asking him why he was washing dishes when there was a woman in the house to do it. Cedano, who is of Dominican heritage, said machismo - an attitude of male superiority - makes some men in his culture feel they must dominate women. That attitude sometimes fuels domestic violence, said Cedano, speaking Wednesday at a community forum in Henrico County on domestic violence in the Latino community.

As a child, Meg Medina’s days were awash with stories oceans away from the likes of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.“ “My grandmother . . . she rolled cigars as a young woman [in Cuba], and she still smoked as an old lady,“ Medina said of her grandmother, who had given up cigars, but not the habit of smoking, by the time she became Medina’s after-school sitter.