Taco Benders Beware!

So the last of the Taco Trucks is barely hanging on in Jefferson Parish. The big solution to post-Katrina “blight” in the suburbs west of New Orleans is to get rid of the taco trucks that have moved in to serve the Mexican and Mexican-American workers who have arrived to do work, and to make money, helping to rebuild during the recovery. These are the folks who came in pretty much before anyone but the true die hards came back. They stood on the street corners surrounding Lee Circle in downtown NOLA and at intersections and vacant lots in the outlying areas as well. The taco guys, like the ubiquitous vendors in California, followed shortly thereafter. Of course… at the time they first arrived you couldn’t find too many “legitimate” places that were actually open. If you wanted to find a grocery store oor a restaurant, well… good luck. Best check the times an dthen subtract about three hours. A number of times I went hungry in those first months after Katrina because I didn’t make it to the store before it closed and I couldn’t afford to eat in the only places that were open. In a grand American tradition, the Taco Trucks found a need and filled it.

In an area where getting any kind of business up and running is a challenge right now, the answer by the Jefferson Parish city council is to outlaw the mobile entrepeneurism of Mexican food vendors, primarily because they remind city council members of Katrina. The good news is that, at least for now, there seems to be a little bit of clarity (dare I say sanity?) on the part of New Orleans politicians. They’ve decided to let the trucks stay for the time being. Perhaps they’re still formulating a plan for a personal benefits program from vendors rather than forcing them out of business. Perhaps someone should consider making Oliver Thomas the Taco Truck Czar for Orleans Parish. That would solve the problem for all concerned and Oliver could raise the money for his fine.

In California (and elsewhere) the trucks represent a market force to be dealt with. They face competition, restrictive health department regulations and the like, but they are at least seen for what they are, a driving economic force and an interesting culinary reality. If there was ever a food enterprise that reflected the American tradition of ambition wedded to necessity it’s the reality of the Taco Truck. In Southern Louisiana, where the bizarre commingling of gastronomic traditions has resulted in some of the most interesting food on the planet, one would expect a certain amount of understanding, cooperation, and even welcome. Instead the businesses are seen as a blight, as a reminder of Katrina (as if without the trucks everything around New Orleans would be sparkly, productive, effective and “normal”) And perhaps that is really the underlying reality of the battle in Jefferson Parish. It’s certainly not for nothing that the trucks were all fine until earlier this year as their more established competition began to return and reopen. Could it be that the trucks represent an imaginative approach to problem solving that the more established and entrenched businesses, citizens, and “city fathers” of the area are just simply not prepared to deal with?

It seems to me that this is the reality of the immigration debate throughout the country. The overarching response tends to be something like “how dare they?” How dare they come in here and work harder than “we” do? How dare they come in here and change the way “we” eat? How dare they come in here and try to do the very same thing that everyone who has ever come to America (which on some level means ALL of us, for even “Native Americans” came from across the Bering Straits) has tried to do?

It’s time we started to recognize – as local citizens, as Americans, as HUMAN BEINGS – that everyone of us, on some level, wants the very same things. We all want that basic trio of elements offered up in The Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We need to start remembering that the best way to get that for oneself is usually to help someone else get it for themselves (I think that’s in The Secret somewhere… I know it’s in the Bible). Like Robert DeNiro, as the crazy mercenary repairman in Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil, comments just before zip lining off into oblivion… “We’re all in it together kid.”

There is no place on the planet where that is more true right now than in New Orleans and the surrounding area. The fact is it’s true about the rest of the country (and world) as well. If we don’t start seeing each other as companions on the journey and assistants to the task we’re going to drive each other into the ground. The battle between taco vendors and “real” restauarants in Jefferson Parish is not that far removed from the battle between Shiites and Sunis in the neighborhoods of Baghdad and the guys (for they are indeed mostly guys) who are making money hand over fist by keeping us all separate and unequal just love it when we bicker. So how about we throw em a curve?

Anybody want a taco?