‘This is Hialeah!’ No, it shouldn’t
A former Taco Bell employee made this South Florida city look racist. City leaders should do everything possible to change that picture.
An African-American woman entered a Hialeah Taco Bell recently to get a quesadilla.
What the former Taco Bell employee did afterward may scar an entire community, at least in the short-term.
I say former because the employee, who gave her name as “Lucia” (it’s in quotation marks because it was a fake name), was fired for refusing to serve the woman because she didn’t speak Spanish. That main reason why she wouldn’t serve the woman?
It was Hialeah; and in this city, apparently, “No Habla Espanol” equals no service.
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It isn’t that way, nor should it be that way.
Hialeah is Florida’s sixth-largest municipality, and. according to a 2016 U.S. Census estimate, 96 percent of its residents speak Spanish at home, many of them Cuban descent. This gives the city a distinctive cultural diaspora, and most of the business here is done in Spanish, with English being the second language.
Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with that, but what “Lucia” did on Sept. 13 not only made Taco Bell look bad, but Hialeah as a whole, and it is bringing in an unfortunate question that many city leaders didn’t want to have to answer:
“Is Hialeah a racist city toward non-Spanish speakers?”
It’s sad that this question is being brought to the forefront, but it’s one that city leaders have to combat because the image is the city is seriously at question here.
Although Hialeah is majority-Cuban, it doesn’t mean that it’s a “racist city,” but the actions of “Lucia” may make outsiders think differently. It’ an image that must be combatted instantly, or the haunting legacy of “Lucia” spouting “This is Hialeah” while refusing to serve a non-Spanish speaker, will forever be a huge stain this city doesn’t need.
Despite what “Lucia” thinks, this is not what Hialeah is about.
