By LYNNETTE CURTIS
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Baker Jaime Lopez loves his life in Las Vegas, where he has lived for more than two decades and has built a successful business.

But a piece of his heart will always remain in his hometown, the small village of Coatlancillo in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

"There are so, so many memories," Lopez said recently during a break from his work at La Mexicana Bakery at Eastern and Stewart avenues. "My parents and the majority of my family still live there."

Lopez says he stays connected to Coatlancillo through his local "hometown association," a term used to describe immigrant groups that band together in the United States based on shared origins.

Thousands of such groups exist nationwide, and are proliferating as global migration increases, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan agency that studies the movement of people worldwide.

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