In an interview in Callaloo Ortiz Cofer comments on the cultural background of the poem as well as the collected works:

The book is called The Latin Deli because the centers,
the hearts of the barrios in New Jersey were the
bodegas, which were called delis by some of us. There
were Jewish and Italian delis. So if you sold sandwiches,
well, it was a deli and that was part of our
language. . .[F]ood is important in its nurturing of the
barrio. To my parents their idea of paradise was eating
pasteles (pork meat turnovers). All my stories, I feel,
have political commitment, but in "Corazon's Cafe"
there is a woman fully committed to nurturing the
barrio, to bringing life to it, not by standing on a soap
box, not by becoming a great philosopher, but by
keeping this bodega open. So that the people...