When a Dallas pizza chain began accepting Mexican money, its owner received a flood of hate mail. The Times reports on the rise of Hispanic America and the ‘culture war’
THE TIMES: Antonio Swad presses a button on his answerphone. A deep male voice fills his office. “F*** you,” it says slowly and deliberately. “Your attempt to Mexicanise our country is an insult to all of us...I and my buddies in the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and all the other organisations I belong to are going to spread the word and do all we can to f*** you. You have insulted this wonderful country.” Mr Swad, a trim 50-year-old American of Italian-Lebanese descent, merely laughs. He has become used to such abuse since announcing in early January that Pizza Patron, his Dallas-based chain of pizza shops, would accept Mexican pesos. He has been deluged with similar messages from across the US.
“Pizza for pesos” was meant to be nothing more than a promotional stunt to curry favour with the Latinos who are Pizza Patron’s core market, and to soak up the loose change that Mexican workers bring back to the US after Christmas visits home. In fact it provided a new rallying point — and a fresh source of outrage after last year’s row over the Spanish version of The Star-Spangled Banner — for the legions of white Americans who believe that Hispanics are overrunning their country, destroying their culture and threatening their Anglo-Saxon dominance.
At most Swad expected a few paragraphs in the trade press. But after The Dallas Morning News ran a story on his offer one Saturday morning, he found reporters and television trucks beseiging his outlets with their “Aceptamos pesos” signs.
The story made the national news, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Colbert Report. CNN gave it 20 minutes. It was picked up by Rush Limbaugh. “This stuff doesn’t go away,” fumed America’s leading right-wing chat-show host. “It’s just like gay marriage. It’s like illegal immigration...It’ll grow.” Soon abusive e-mails, irate calls and even death threats were pouring in to Pizza Patron’s headquarters. No matter that countless countries around the world accept US dollars, or that the Canadian dollar is accepted along America’s northern border, or that pizza is a foreign import. The sheer hatred of the e-mails — 5,400 at the latest count — was remarkable.
“You’re catering to illegal immigrants and promoting Mexico over the US...damn you to Hell and take your freaking wetback illegals with you when you go!!!!!,” said one. “You absolutely sicken us taxpaying citizens that want these cockroaches OUT OF THIS COUNTRY,” said another. Yanqui doodle dandy by Martin Fletcher
Mark Alexander
1 comment:
If you lived in a border state you could better understand the problem and the anger.(look up La Raza/Azlan) When you go to a local business and have to endure more Spanish than English announcements over the loud speakers, it does tend to annoy you.
Too bad they chose to quote the most inarticulate of the emails. I think this businessman, Mr.Swad, knows exactly what he's doing.
An interesting (to me) aside: The other day I was looking through some very old Scandinavian/American magazines, circa 1920. On the back cover they had a lengthy rant about how Scandianvians were ignored by the Anglo-Saxons ---even though they (the Scandinavians) possessed superior qualities!! I don't think they had a movement to take over parts of the United States though--if they did Minnesota would have belonged to the Swedes and Norwegians.
/can it get more silly than this?
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