M&M Marketplace

Strings of papel picado hang over a food area inside M&M Marketplace at 346 SW Walnut Street in Hillsboro, a few blocks from Main Street. Outside, the Walnut Street facade carries a mural by the Portland artist Li Tie, Together We Have a Bright Future. It shows people gathered around a shared meal, with Hillsboro’s farmland behind them, a flute player, a dancing couple, and the Mayan god Kukulkan, all arranged in a classical Chinese pattern. Oregon ArtsWatch noted in 2024 that the mural stands beside some 20 of the market’s food vendors. A drawing of a marigold is worked into it. Miranda chose the flower because it is honored both in Day of the Dead observances and in South Asian cultures.

The market keeps weekend hours, from Friday afternoon through Sunday evening. ArtsWatch in 2024 described its interior as a warren of crowded stalls selling clothing and other textiles, boots, hats, luminarias, foods and spices, and toys. Several restaurants and food carts there serve regional dishes from across Mexico and Central America, and cumbias and ranchero music are piped through the buildings. By then the market occupied four buildings plus an indoor sports facility. The name, as The Oregonian reported in 2012, stands for Multinational Market.

Pupusas, barbacoa, and a muffler shop

The marketplace’s directory gives a fair inventory of a visit. Among the food stalls are Pupuseria Gladis, Mariscos Culichi, Antojitos y Panaderia La Oaxaqueña, Pollos A La Leña “Los Gallitos,” Carnitas Estilo Michoacán El Tony, Las Tres Barbacoa, and Tacos El Rey. For sweets there are Rosas Churros, Neveria La Luz, Nieve Casera Villegas, and Michi’s Sweets & Boba. La Chorrasca Roasted Corn, a kettle-corn stand called El Puestito Jimenez, and Fruteria La Flor round out the list. My Happy Place, a bar inside the market, advertises micheladas made with “su chilito, su limoncito.”

The other stalls run from the practical to the ceremonial:

• Cars: Mel’s Autorepair, El Mofles, and Plascencia Tires.
• Hair and beauty: Hilda’s Salon and Kimberly’s Beauty.
• Religious goods: Los Tres Toros.
• Western wear: El Potrillo Ropa Vaquera and Rascabuches Hats.
• Jewelry: five jewelers, Joyería Lázaro among them.
• Electronics and karaoke: Karaocanta and Accesorios y Kareokes Mikey’s.
• Parties: Patzy’s Jumpers rents bounce houses, and Butterfly Accesorios XVs and Bodas sells party goods.

A reviewer in July 2026 also found a barbershop. The count of businesses depends on who is counting. The market’s Facebook page says more than 60, KPTV put it at over 70 in 2025, and the marketplace’s own history page says eighty.

Hillsboro Futsal, the indoor soccer venue, opened in 2008 and now runs leagues for all ages and genders. Jaime Miranda, the founder, has said the games serve another purpose. “People like to go where there’s fun, like sports,” he told ArtsWatch, “and then we can point them to educational opportunities.” Community organizations set up information tables at market events and hold workshops there.

A calendar of fiestas

The market keeps a year-round calendar. It begins with Día de los Reyes Magos in January and runs through a Quinceañera Expo, Día del Niño, Mother’s and Father’s Day celebrations, and a back-to-school event. The 2026 El Sol Festival was held July 18–19.

The 2026 Mexican Independence Day celebration filled the weekend of September 12 and 13. On Saturday the program included Grupo Jaranero Flor de Jazmín, Danza Azteca, a DJ, and Chavita Aguilar in a homage to Juan Gabriel. On Sunday it brought Tamborazo Sauceño, Carlos Rey, billed as “El Fantasma de Salem,” Grupo Andino Ecos del Sur, and La Flor de Chiapas. Los Matachines y el torito danced on both days.

The rest of the 2026 calendar, as posted:

• October 23: a Trunk OR Treat.
• October 31: a free party from 2 to 6 p.m. for the market’s 26th anniversary, with live music, dance performances, art, raffles, and anniversary cake.
• October 31 and November 1: Día de los Muertos. ArtsWatch reported that past editions featured artist-designed altars and Aztec dances.
• November 21: Tamal Fest.
• December 12, 13, 19, and 20: Posada Navideña.

Some events reach beyond the Latino community. By 2024 the market had hosted a Diwali Bazaar for three years for Hillsboro’s Indian American community, with South Asian clothing, jewelry, and food, held in the futsal building. “I keep talking about how M&M adds this multicultural aspect to Hillsboro,” Miranda said, “and now, here’s my chance to walk the talk.”

El Sol grew from the same idea. Miranda proposed a festival drawing on all of Hillsboro’s cultures. City staff won funding for it under the American Rescue Plan, and the first edition ran across eight Saturdays in summer 2022. The name, Miranda said, came from the idea that “the sun comes out for everybody regardless of where you come from in the world.”

Matches, chewing gum, and a shallow river

Miranda was born in 1974 in rural Chihuahua, in La Sierra Tarahumara according to The Immigrant Story. As a small child he moved with his family to Mexico City. There he sold matches and chewing gum on the streets and went with his mother when she sold quesadillas on corners. “I guess at the age of 9 or 10 you become an adult,” he told The Immigrant Story in 2018.

His father went north first, then returned for the rest of the family. Jaime stayed behind because there was not enough money to pay a smuggler for everyone. He spent a year with his mother’s relatives on a farm in Chihuahua, which he later called the best year of his youth. He had heard that people drowned crossing the Colorado River, so he learned to swim before his father came back for him. When they crossed, the water reached only his ankles. “It was disappointing,” he said. “I thought it was gonna be more exciting.”

The Oregon Historical Society holds the recording of that 2018 interview. Its catalog dates his arrival to the end of 1985 and mentions a stretch in California working in the fields with his family. The family settled in Hillsboro because a friend there reported ample work. Miranda later explained to ArtsWatch why so many families had put down roots in the town. Year-round jobs, in nurseries for example, let migrant workers stop “following the strawberries.”

The sources disagree about where Miranda studied education. The historical society says the University of Oregon, from 1994 to 2000, and The Immigrant Story says Oregon State. In the same years his parents kept stands at flea markets in Portland and Beaverton, and he grew up going to such markets with them.

Ten vendors and $12,000

The family considered opening a Latino grocery in Hillsboro but decided the area already had too many. They settled instead on a swap meet, which The Oregonian in 2003 defined as a tianguis: a weekend flea market where vendors sell mostly new goods. ArtsWatch adds that the idea was spurred by Miranda’s father’s wish for a family business. Miranda also kept hearing that immigrant entrepreneurs could not afford the start-up costs of a separate shop.

Accounts of the opening differ in their numbers.

• The Oregonian (2003): Miranda, then 26, joined his sister Hayde and their parents to raise $12,000. They rented 7,000 square feet in a former warehouse and brought in 10 vendors met on their flea market rounds.
• ArtsWatch: a dozen vendors.
• The marketplace’s own history: twenty businesses in October 2000, and forty within three months.

By late 2003 the business, then called M & M Swap Meet, filled 22,500 square feet and had agreements with more than 50 vendors. The Oregonian described “a dull gray cinderblock warehouse” at Bailey Avenue and Walnut Street, next to Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2666. Inside, mariachi music mixed with spoken Spanish and the smell of tacos. Booths sold spicy candy, jewelry, lingerie, rosaries, and multicolored Jesus wall clocks, and a tub of used steel sockets went for $2 apiece. Fathers played pool while children crowded a makeshift arcade. An older man sat alone at the counter over a bowl of menudo.

Cecilia Giron sold 40 herbs and spices from Oaxaca, and her six-month-old son slept among the goods. “I like to preserve my culture,” she said. Maria Aguilar of Cornelius came every weekend for a $3 cup of shredded mango, beets, cucumber, and jicama in lime juice and chili. “It’s like being back in Mexico,” said Jose Gaytan, a regular customer.

Miranda had left school to run the market full time. Marketing had been the hardest part. “We didn’t know how to reach the Latino community,” he said, and he turned to a city and chamber program for new entrepreneurs. The market had turned a profit only in the year before that 2003 article. “For two years, we were struggling and could hardly keep up with the bills,” he said. “But we are doing great now.”

A mural, a district, and a near loss

In 2012 The Oregonian counted 55 vendors and about 2,000 shoppers each weekend. One of the original vendors, Angel Chavez, had opened Deportes Chavez on Walnut Street to reach customers who could not come on weekends, but he kept his stall at the market. Around 2004, while volunteering with the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce, Miranda had proposed a yearly celebration of the city’s Latino community. It became the Latino Cultural Festival, and by 2014 he was running its futsal tournament. “Latino culture is now accepted,” he said that year. “It took a long time to attain.”

In 2018 the market co-sponsored the Frida Kahlo Project at the city’s Tuesday Market. Each week local artists worked on ten 3-by-3-foot panels, each starting from a stencil of Kahlo. The finished panels were installed on the front of the marketplace and inside it. In 2019 the city made M&M one of three cultural hubs anchoring Washington County’s first Cultural Arts District. That designation led to the Li Tie mural, whose artist and subject were chosen with bilingual input from hundreds of residents. Its installation was celebrated in October 2023 with live music and food from the market’s vendors.

The pandemic nearly closed the market. Miranda drew on funds from government agencies and nonprofits, Mercy Corps among them, to keep the market and many of its businesses going. By 2025 he and his sister, Hayde Martinez, were co-owners, and they were still teaching business classes to new vendors. “The community needed it,” Miranda said of those years, “and we became that center.”