These days, one of the main signs of Paterson’s Peruvianness is a portion of Market Street lined with Peruvian-owned restaurants, hair salons, bakeries, and travel agencies. According to local newspapers, in 2009, Peruvians owned half of the city’s 2,800 Hispanic-owned businesses, including 45 restaurants. Even many stores that don’t “look Peruvian” or fly the rojiblanca—the red and white Peruvian flag—have Peruvian owners.

Some of the first Peruvians to emigrate to the United States came as laborers during the California Gold Rush in 1849. Since the 1950s, a new wave of working-class Peruvians emigrated to the U.S., and mainly settled in New Jersey and California to do factory jobs. Then, in the 1980s, the terrorist groups Sendero Luminoso (which translates to “Shining Path”) and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement wreaked havoc throughout Peru. The two decades that followed saw massive migrations, human-rights violations at the hands of military forces, and more than 70,000 deaths or disappearances.

In the ‘50s, many Peruvian emigrants ended up in Paterson, drawn to “Silk City”—a nickname earned from years producing textiles—by the industrial jobs that attracted a wave of European emigrants before them. When those factory jobs started to dwindle, in the ‘80s, many Peruvians shifted to entrepreneurship, creating a microcosm, through shops and restaurants, of their home country. Some now call this section of town “Little Lima.”

After Callegari arrived in Paterson looking for a job in textiles, he brought his family to the city, and within two years, they were able to buy a house. He later opened up his own auto shop, and often hired some newcomers from Peru to work there.

Over papas rellenas at Panchito’s, one of the first restaurants started by a Peruvian on Market Street, Callegari and his godson, Roberto Acosta, talked about Paterson’s Peruvian Parade, an annual event that Callegari started with his friends to honor the city’s connections to Peru. This group, which helped make Paterson the unofficial capital of the Peruvian diaspora, pooled their money and solicited donations from other members of the community to make the parade a reality in 1986. Now, every July, tens of thousands of people come to celebrate at the Passaic County Peruvian Day Parade, which passes through Market Street.

“The parade awoke the conscience of that we need to be doing as a community,” Callegari says. “It made us hope that the next generation had as much patriotism and the children of Peruvians could make Peru proud.” After the parade’s success, the Peruvian embassy opened a consulate in Paterson. It now serves the more than 75,000 Peruvians living in the state of New Jersey.