Goya refried pinto beans in a supermarket.
My pantry looks quite different now than it did a few weeks ago. Goya black beans, Goya Goya frijoles, Goya plantains, Goya spices, Goya queso blanco, and Goya Adobo have all been replaced. The gold-wrapped Goya ‘Maria cookies’ that had once been an infallible staple of my childhood spent oscillating between Miami and Ecuador are gone, too.
“Oh look, it’s the sound of me Googling ‘how to make your own Adobo,’” tweeted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on July 9, a few hours after a White House event where Goya Foods’ CEO, Robert Unanue, bestowed praise on President Trump. “We are truly blessed… to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder. That’s what my grandfather did, he came to this country to build, to grow to prosper,” said Unanue following Trump’s signing of the Hispanic Prosperity Initiative, an executive order aiming to increase economic and educational opportunities for Latinx communities in the U.S.
A Blessing for Whom?
Immediately following the event, hashtags like #Goyaway and #BoycottGoya were trending on Twitter, with influential figures such as Broadway’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, politician Julian Castro, chef José Andrés, and Ocasio-Cortez supporting calls for a boycott of the company. United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led network, launched a petition denouncing Unanue for “[aligning] the Goya brand with Trump’s white supremacist agenda.”
Indeed, when Unanue referred to Trump as a ‘blessing,’ many Americans, particularly in Latinx communities such as my own, were left thinking, ‘A blessing for whom?’ Trump is arguably the most anti-immigration president in decades. The Hispanic Prosperity Initiative alone is insufficient to excuse the countless ways that Trump has wrought devastation on Latinx communities.
He began his presidential campaign with his infamous “Build The Wall” rhetoric, all the while maligning Mexican immigrants as “criminals, drug dealers, [and] rapists.” He has repeatedly criticized and insulted prominent Latinx individuals in positions of power. In 2016, he criticized Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge overseeing a Trump University case in San Diego, as inherently biased against him because of his “Mexican heritage.” He has consistently defended his “zero tolerance” immigration policy, one which led to the now-routine separation of asylum-seeking families at the Mexico-U.S. border. He has described countries like El Slavadore as “shithole countries.” He attempted to scrap protections for over 650,000 DACA recipients. His botched coronavirus response has disproportionately affected Latinx and Black communities. The list of the Trump administration’s attacks on Latinx communities is seemingly endless.
Goya’s Failure Towards its Consumers
Goya is a company that profits directly and primarily off of the Latinx diaspora. “The premier source for authentic Latino cuisine, Goya Foods is the largest, Hispanic-owned food company in the United States,” reads Goya’s website. Their products are deeply attached to the experience of Latinx immigrants in the U.S. and can be found in virtually every Latinx kitchen.
For Unanue to praise a president who has consistently harmed Latinx communities, then, feels like a direct betrayal. Goya products have often been lauded for their authenticity to Latinx cuisine, and yet the company’s CEO proved at the White House that perceived authenticity can only go so far. Instead, Goya’s target demographic was cast aside, with Unanue exemplifying that Goya cares more about the benefits that can come from a presidential endorsement — like Trump and Ivanka Trump’s promotional tweets — than about the communities that the corporation is supposed to serve, putting those communities in a difficult position where they must choose to continue purchasing Goya products or make do with the limited amount of Goya alternatives available to Latinx communities living in the U.S. In his comments, Unanue turned his back on the many Latinx individuals who feel unsafe in Trump’s America, showing that Goya cares for Latinx groups only as a means for profit.
Following the boycott, Unanue chose to defend his comments. “One of the most important things we’ve lost in this country is respect for differing opinions. Can I explain why people react that way? No. But you can react in different ways to it. And I choose not to give in,” he said. This argument, however, is one which minimizes the dangers of Trump’s presidency on Latinx communities. The Goya boycott comes not out of an intolerance of mere ‘differing opinions,’ but as a direct manifestation of the threat that the Trump administration poses to Latinx people. A majority (54 percent) of Latinx people believe it has become more difficult to be Latinx in the U.S. in recent years, and two-thirds (67 percent) of the Latinx population in the U.S. believe the Trump administration’s policies have been harmful to Latinx people. For many, myself included, Unanue’s praise of Trump is one which invalidates Latinx communities’ own struggles under an anti-immigrant, anti-Latinx administration. There’s a stinging irony in asking betrayed Latinx communities for respect when the president Unanue praised has not shown respect towards these very same Latinx communities, communities who, to his eyes, are made up of “criminals” and “rapists.”
While there is no guarantee that Unanue’s own intentions in his praise of Trump were malicious, they were, at the very least, painfully tone deaf. In connecting the president’s character to the story of Goya through the comparison with Unanue’s grandfather and the founder of the company, Prudencio Unanue, the CEO sowed distrust and a massive rift between Goya and it’s target demographic. The statements made of Trump were problematic and damaging to the Latinx communities who rely on Goya to feel connected to their culture. Backlash in the form of a boycott, thus, is merited.
The idea that the response to Unanue’s comments is ‘exaggerated’ or that we should be focusing on larger issues rather is one that minimizes the realities of the Latinx experience under Trump. For a company that Latinos value for making them feel like home, a company that has become a staple of the Latin American household to align itself with Trump is deeply painful to many Latinx individuals, myself included. Given our current socio-political climate — one in which hate crimes against Latinx communities are have risen by up to 80% in some states, where immigrant families are ripped apart by ICE’s deportations or kept in detention centers with horrifying conditions, and where the pandemic has made scathingly clear the disparities in health care coverage that Latinx communities suffer — Unanue’s comments are just another betrayal piled onto the backs of Latinx individuals. Because of Goya’s own place at the heart of our communities, the attack in Unanue’s comments is especially damaging.
The calls for boycott response to Unanue’s comments are not about blindly destroying a company nor are they a manifestation of a long-mythologized ‘cancel culture.’ Though right-wing media and Trump supporters alike have claimed the boycotts to be a radical and unjust reaction to Unanue’s praise of Trump — a move to effectively ‘cancel’ Unanue and Goya — such thinking misses the very point that the boycott serves to make: Unanue’s comments were deeply painful to Latinx communities in the U.S., and should thus be addressed and acted upon. To write off and tone police the criticisms against Unanue’s comments as a product of ‘cancel culture’ serves only as an excuse to absolve public figures like Unanue of accountability over the harm caused by their actions. The response is instead about Latinx people taking charge of how they spend their money and who they choose to support in doing so. To see the boycott as meaningless or petty is to miss the power in its symbolism. The Goya boycott is an example of communities voting with their wallet at a time when conscious consumer practices are already experiencing a resurgence as a direct result of the Black Lives Matter movement. It is a matter of Latinx individuals, such as myself, thinking twice before spending their money on black beans or spices from a company that praises an administration that in turn weaponizes harmful rhetoric against them.
Image Credit: Creative Commons // JeepersMedia