'Taco trucks on every corner'? That'd really make America great again | John Paul Brammer
'Taco trucks on every corner'? That'd really make America great again
This article is more than 7 years oldJohn Paul BrammerFear of Mexican culture overrunning America runs deep among Trump supporters like Marco Gutiérrez. It makes absolutely no sense
The taco, in both its bowl and its corner truck form, is having a political moment.
On Thursday, Marco Gutiérrez, a Mexican-born founder of the Latinos for Trump group (yikes), said on MSNBC that if Donald Trump loses in November, there would be “taco trucks on every corner”.
I must spell out that he meant this as a negative thing and not, as it might seem on the face of it, a great reason to vote for Hillary.
“My culture is a very dominant culture,” he told a horrified Joy Reid, who was filling in for Chris Hayes. “It is imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Joy Reid said, speaking for all of us. “And I’m afraid to ask.”
The comments earned Gutiérrez rightful mockery on social media. Isn’t an America with a taco truck on every corner the utopia we deserve? To suggest otherwise gives us insight into the depravity of the average Trump supporter.
Joking aside, Gutiérrez is everything the Trump campaign could want in a surrogate. He apparently possesses enough self-loathing to deliver the talking points of white supremacy from a non-white mouth. He reassures Trump supporters that their racist views couldn’t possibly be racist because, see? He agrees with us!
But Gutiérrez, whether he knows it or not, is feeding the dangerous racial anxieties that have plagued America since its inception: the idea that Mexicans and Latinos are lesser, dirty somehow; they are diluting America’s purity, which Trump supporters would call “culture”, but I would call “whiteness”.
In times of economic strife, these anxieties tend to intensify. I’m reminded of the mass deportations of people of Mexican descent in the 30s and 40s when 2 million people, over half of whom were US citizens, were rounded up and forced out of the country.
Today, we have a demagogue whipping white Americans into a frenzy about Mexican immigrants and threatening to send them “home”. The parallels are alarming. It’s sad, because the people who blame their economic struggles on Mexicans really ought to redirect that anger at people like Trump, magnates born with silver spoons in their mouths whose wealth relies on the toil of others.
But it’s also hypocritical. Because the American Dream, if indeed it exists at all, looks very much like that humble corner taco truck. Just ask a Republican.
“My father stood behind a small portable bar in the back of a room for all those years so that I could stand behind this podium in the front of this room,” Marco Rubio said, referencing his Cuban-born father at the kick-off of his presidential campaign. “That journey, from behind that bar to behind this podium, is the essence of the American Dream.”
Rubio isn’t alone in touting his meager beginnings. Ted Cruz, also the son of a Cuban immigrant, said his father “came to Austin penniless, seeking freedom.
“The reason I’m running is simple,” Cruz continued. “He fled oppression once. And you have my word that I’ll fight every day to protect freedom here, so that none of us have to flee oppression a second time.”
This rhetoric isn’t unique to politicians with immigrant families. During the primaries, John Kasich emphasized that his father was a mailman. Indeed, politicians of all stripes love to tout the adversity their parents overcame so that their children could be successful and live comfortably.
And yet, they shame the immigrant parents and families who are trying to do the same for their children today. They actively pursue policies that, had they been applied to their own parents, would have made the privileged lives they live impossible.
Donald Trump is only here because his grandfather emigrated from Germany. It has been frequently pointed out that his wife, Melania, is an immigrant from Slovenia. None of this matters to many Trump supporters, of course, whose worldview is built on white nationalism, but the fact remains: Unless you’re Native American, you came from somewhere else.
Gutiérrez, Trump, and the Republicans who share the view that Mexican immigrants are the cause of America’s decline have turned their backs on the one thing that’s supposed to make America special.
So today, go out and celebrate the corner taco truck. In an America where wealth continues to accumulate at the very top, and where cynicism permeates the political landscape, the taco truck remains a pure expression of hope, a humble affirmation of America itself.
Also, the tacos are probably delicious, and undoubtedly more authentic than the hipster joint with the zigzag taco holders and $12 margaritas.
Buen provecho!
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