Activists in a New York City neighborhood where the “Market of Sweethearts” flourishes have grown heated over a Mexican restaurant’s name that the owners insist is satire.
Despite posturing about inclusion, leftism has continually fractured into a hodgepodge of camps loosely associated by their big tent of mutual disfavor for the traditions and policies of the right. Just like the 2024 presidential election saw Hamas sympathizers at odds with Israel supporting Democrats, locals were not shy about complaining when a new restaurant opened in Queens under the pejorative name, “Whitexicans.”
New this month in the Jackson Heights neighborhood, Colombian-born co-owners Mateo Gomez Bermudez and Manuela have maintained that people are taking the name, most often used in Mexico to describe fairer-skinned locals who are economically and socially well off, “the wrong way.”
Gomez Bermudez contended to the Daily Mail that “the only people hating on the business are the ones who haven’t tried it.”
Among them was Make Queens Safer co-founder Cristina Furlong, who told the Gothamist, “It’s very stressful in America right now to live under the Trump administration and live with such fear that our community is going to be threatened by ICE coming in. It’s just not nice or kind to joke about what some people consider racist terminology.”
As it happens, the neighborhood is where the criminal element of foreign nationals has been allowed to thrive through illegal vending and prostitution in the “Market of Sweethearts” amid the city’s soft-on-crime and sanctuary policies.
Despite social media comments suggesting the restaurant was a “gentrified Taco Bell,” “a dangerous name in today’s culture,” and one stating, “I’m not sure it is racism, but what a stupid name nevertheless,” Gomez Bermudez maintained that reactions were all wrong.
“We choose the name due to the current circumstances that are going on in the country at the moment as a satire of it,” he wrote on Facebook. “We focusing on a restaurant that feels safe inclusive for everyone. No matter your race, your nationality or your status. We are a 100% authentic mexican food combining modern and some new dishes never seen in the neighborhood.”
Speaking with the Gothamist, the co-owner expressed, “Whitexicans, the meaning for us is that everybody belongs here. We don’t care who you are, your sexuality, your gender, your race, or anything.”
“When I see people driving, they start taking pictures. They laugh. Some people ask, ‘Why the name?’ That gives you a little bit of marketing, too,” he added as Mesa pointed to a sign in the entry that reads “All Humans Are Legal” and told the outlet, “Whitexicans is love. Whitexicans is inclusion.”
Despite the intent, some still raged over what was deemed “weak clickbait” with one user making the case, “Whitexican sounds like a restaurant from an SNL sketch. I’m no branding expert but I’m not sure I’d want to stake my investment into a name that could make people think the name is unintentionally offensive, or some reference that is misunderstood in some other way. Just my two pesos.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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