Essay 4055

From The New York Times…

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Proposed Ban on Taco Trucks Stirs Animosity in a California Town

By CAROLYN MARSHALL

SALINAS, Calif. — Jose Martínez left Mexico around 1988 and toiled for years in a patchwork of fields here, harvesting berries and lettuce and barely making ends meet.

In 2002, Mr. Martínez took advantage of a city law created to help novice entrepreneurs start businesses related to the city’s largely Hispanic cultural heritage. He bought a taco truck, one of 31 licensed mobile catering vehicles in Salinas, and built it into a modestly profitable operation.

But the City Council, responding to a business group and its most vocal members — the owners of Mexican restaurants — is poised to vote next month on a draft ordinance to ban taco trucks and other catering vehicles from Salinas, a farm town about 120 miles south of San Francisco.

The proposed ordinance, which is still subject to revision, is the latest round in a two-year debate that some say has created a rift in this community, placing poorer Mexicans who are looking to better themselves at odds with longtime residents whose families emigrated years ago.

Salinas is not alone. Taco trucks, cultural icons and social magnets in Mexico, have become a flashpoint in at least a dozen cities in California — including Santa Rosa, 55 miles north of San Francisco, and Gardena, 15 miles south of Los Angeles — and in other states, like Arizona, Oregon and Tennessee.

Restrictions are being debated in the Central Valley towns of Lathrop, Escalon and Lodi. In most cases, brick-and-mortar businesses resent the competition. Many observers say the taco truck issue illuminates far more complex dynamics, from the perils of rapid urban development to hidden resentments toward, and among, Hispanics.

“It’s rarely if ever discussed, but there are obvious racial undertones,” said David LeBeouf, a lawyer for about 100 food vendors here and in several Central Valley cities.

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