One of the new businesses to recently open along Broad Street, in Central Falls, is Diamond Cuts, a barber shop owned by 24-year-old Javier Vega, left, giving a buzz cut to Wally Cante, while Joey Diaz works on another client, Kyle Reynolds.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Sandor Bodo

CENTRAL FALLS — To see where some of the newest Latin-American and Hispanic-owned businesses are putting down roots, take Exit 30 off Route 95 into Central Falls and make your way to Broad Street.

Then head north toward Cumberland.

On both sides of the street, in a radius of no more than five city blocks, a dozen new businesses have opened in the past year, all owned by recent immigrants.

A former Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant reopened late last month as Fiesta Meat and Deli, a meat market serving cuts favored by most Latin Americans.

There’s a barber shop owned by a 24-year-old Puerto Rican immigrant. There is also a Dominican restaurant, a Colombian restaurant, and a Mexican taqueria.

The latest? Two boutiques specializing in the vaquera, or cowboy, fashions popular in rural Mexico and Central America that opened this year.

What unites the varied operations is that they all seek to cater to the tastes of the city’s increasingly diversified Latino population.

Also, these new owners have made the distinct choice to open up on Broad Street, a commercial throughway that is away from Dexter Street, a hub of mom-and-pop Latino businesses, in order to capitalize on an underserved section of the city.

“Business is growing because the number of Hispanic people is growing,” Jose Islas, co-owner of El Rodeo, one of two new vaquero-style boot and hat stores on Broad Street, said in Spanish. “Hispanic people are now realizing their own businesses. It’s good for the community. It’s good for everybody.”

Central Falls, the square-mile city with a population of more than 18,900, has one of the largest Latino and immigrant populations in the state. In the late 1970s, many Latinos were recruited from their countries to work in the once numerous textile factories in the city. New waves of immigrants from other Latin American countries continue to flock here, drawn by relatives and friends who came earlier.At Curiosidades El Rey, Mexican-native Cecilia Rodriguez sells boots — exotic skins and rugged construction worker-style — ten-gallon hats, Latino music, jewelry, and perfume.

The store, which opened on March 16, is uncharacteristically high end, selling authentic Seiko and Bulova watches, boots and designer cowboy hats priced as high as $500.

Rodriguez is a seasoned store owner, having owned her own jewelry and perfume store in Houston, Texas, before moving to Central Falls six years ago with her husband, a construction worker.

She said she opened the store after noticing that construction workers living in the city lacked quality work boots.

“These are the two most used brands of work boots in Mexico and Texas,” Rodriguez said, pointing to a wall lined with worker boots of the Mexican brands Toro and Cebu. “Not many places have the quality of boot that can be used in different types of work.”

But Rodriguez and her business experience are unique among the new owners on Broad Street. Many are first-time entrepreneurs who have taken loans from family and friends, or put their life savings into their dream.

Until 2005, Islas worked in area factories and self-service laundries. A native of Hidalgo, Mexico, he says his family left Mexico in 1995 to seek a better life, and landed in Central Falls.

Islas opened El Rodeo in January. “By saving money all those years,” Islas said, he accumulated “$25,000 to rent out the space, buy merchandise, and furnish the store.”

The business is actually an extension of Las Americas, a Latino grocery store next door owned by his wife and her family.

“We had been selling this type of clothes next door,” said Islas. “Then we decided to set it apart in order to better attend to customers.”

Maria Velez is the Dominican Republic-born owner of City Outlet Discount, a recently opened store across the street from El Rodeo that sells low-cost clothes, DVDs and household items.

Velez and her family have lived in Central Falls for more than 14 years. She spent years babysitting, cleaning houses, and selling vinyl, latex, and construction gloves from the back of a truck in Dorchester, Mass.

The challenge for many of the new business owners is the start-up costs, said Velez, herself a first-time shop owner with little saved income. She said she relied on credit cards and family loans to get the business going.

“Most people don’t have sufficient money to open a business,” Velez said. “They use loans, credit cards, get help from their family. You sacrifice many things to open up a business.”

Javier Vega, a 24-year-old native of Puerto Rico, had cut his teeth working at Uppercut, a barber shop on Dexter Street, for three years before striking out on his own in October.

The Central Falls High School graduate opened Diamond Cuts, a unisex barbershop specializing in children’s haircuts, with a loan from a friend.

“I wanted to work for me,” Vega said. “So when I heard of the opportunity to get this space, I took it.”

Prospective and current small-business owners have a local resource in Progreso Latino, which houses a satellite office for Johnson & Wales University’s Rhode Island Small Business Development Center.

Adriana Dawson, the regional director for that office, says the center offers business classes and free consulting in English and Spanish at Progreso Latino, at 626 Broad St., or at the Pawtucket Public Library.

Classes range from two- to three-hour courses on specific topics such as financial and credit management and marketing to an eight-week business-planning workshop, which covers a gamut of business topics, Dawson said.

“We offer soup-to-nuts classes suitable for more experienced business owners to novice entrepreneur,” Dawson said.

But many new business owners admitted they had never thought to look into the organization for help.

“Much of its fear and embarrassment,” Velez said. “We just open the store and whatever happens, happens.”

On a quiet, late Friday afternoon, Rodriguez pensively watched the door at Curiosidades El Rey. Reggaeton music pumped from a boom box behind the counter. The store had been without customers for some hours.

Yet Rodriguez was confident that her boots, hats, music and jewelry would be a hit, even if some of their high prices seemed incongruous with the working-class community.

“We Hispanic people buy what we want,” Rodriguez said. “It doesn’t matter how much it costs. We like good things. If we can’t afford it, then we work … we work for what we want.”

pmarcelo@projo.com