New Orleans bans taco trucks in apparent racial discrimination
New Orleans banned taco trucks.
[on the road again]
Politicians in suburban Jefferson Parish, who have long turned a blind eye to whites and blacks peddling shrimp out of pickup trucks and snow cones on the street, recently outlawed the rolling Mexican kitchens.
Nearly two years after Katrina brought thousands of Hispanic immigrants to New Orleans in search of reconstruction work, the new arrivals are having a cultural influence that reaches beyond repairing homes and businesses — and that is making some people uncomfortable.
Authentic Mexican food is now widely available at taco trucks and storefront taquerias, adding a contemporary Latin component to a famously mixed-up culinary scene that has always managed to preserve its unique Cajun and Creole flavor, even as much of America has become homogenized.
But the new ethnic eateries are emerging at a time when many traditional New Orleans restaurants are struggling in the face of sagging tourism and a smaller population — one that is more Hispanic than before Katrina. New Orleans now has about 260,000 residents, down from about 460,000. About 50,000 are Hispanic, up from 15,000.
Advocates of reclaiming the old ways see new establishments that do not build upon the city’s reputation, and might not even be permanent, as a barrier to progress. As Oliver Thomas, president of the New Orleans City Council, recently said in an interview with the Times-Picayune,
“How do the tacos help gumbo?”
Thomas wants taco peddlers off the streets, although Mayor C. Ray Nagin has indicated he opposes such a move.
In neighboring Jefferson Parish, the move last month to ban them was swift. The vendors were given 10 days before they would be cited for breaking the new law. It requires any mobile vendor selling cooked food to offer restrooms and washing stations — things a taco truck clearly cannot do.
Jefferson Parish Councilor Louis Congemi, the author of the ban, refused to discuss it. Councilor John Young said the motivation was strengthening zoning standards that have deteriorated since the storm, not racism.
Jefferson Parish leaders also raised fears that taco trucks were unsanitary. But Louisiana health officials who investigated found nothing wrong.
“It’s narrowly drafted, and it’s discriminatory,”
Dr. Vinicio Madrigal, a physician in Jefferson Parish, said of the ban.
Madrigal studied the ordinance and said it clearly is aimed at outlawing taco trucks while permitting other street vendors. He sent an angry letter to the politicians and said he got a call from one who chided him for siding with outsiders.
“I told him, I didn’t know anyone when I got here either,”
said Madrigal, a Costa Rican immigrant.
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