LOS ANGELES — Chiapas, Mexico, has been in the news lately as one of the launching points for tens of thousands of migrants trying to reach our southern border. 

But here in Los Angeles, a family is trying to recreate the food and culture from their home in Chiapas. 

Migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, China and elsewhere are stranded in Tapachula, one of the main cities in Chiapas.

A new, smaller caravan of about 1,500 migrants started walking north from southern Mexico on Thursday, a week after a larger group that set out on Christmas Eve largely dissolved.

It's been 23 years since Francisco Reyes and his family returned to Mexico, to their hometown in Chiapas, the southernmost region bordering Guatemala.

"We are trying to bring our food and our culture," Reyes said in Spanish.

Reyes and his wife Sofia were police officers in Chiapas, but after moving to Los Angeles and working in someone else's Mexican restaurant, the family decided to open their own: La Cocina de los Reyes, one of only a handful of restaurants specifically catering to Chiapaneca food and culture. Francisco's daughter, Esmeralda, encouraged her parents to open the restaurant.

"Nobody knows we exist," said Esmeralda. "When they hear us talk, our accent or the words we say, they're like, 'Oh, you're Salvadorian. Oh, you're from Guatemala.' Like no. We're Mexican. This is the time to put Chiapas on the map, the way Oaxaca has been put on the map here in LA"

The population of Chiapanecas in Los Angeles is not as large as those from other regions of Mexico. According to the organization Si Paz, 0.5% of Chiapas residents live in the United States, representing 27th place nationally. 

The food of Chiapas stands apart from the rest of Mexico, marked by unique ingredients, like a green herb-like plant called chirpily and a corn-based agua fresca called pozole.

Reyes has big plans for La Cocina de los Reyes in the future.

"I want a replica of a famous kiosk at the main park in Chiapas, where people dance around while eating Chiapaneca food," he said.

And recreate the home in Chiapas that he can't return to.