Sizing Up Gigante’s Problem

I wouldn’t know a chimichanga from a chile relleno, a frijole from a flauta. I’m as likely to enter a Carmelite nunnery as a Mexican supermarket. If you send me to the store for a jar of salsa, repeat the instructions very, very carefully.

In short, Mexican grocery stores are not on a list of things I need. But as my therapist constantly reminds me, the world doesn’t revolve around me.

And in some Orange County cities--Anaheim comes to mind--a Mexican supermarket makes perfect sense.

That’s what the owners of Gigante USA thought. Gigante is a Mexican supermarket chain that has stores in Southern California but none in Orange County, where Latinos make up 30% of the population. In Anaheim, the figure is pushing 50%.

So far, City Hall has nudged Gigante away from either of two sites the chain had in mind--the latest being the Anaheim Plaza in north Anaheim that the city has worked to revitalize. For the record, the city says it welcomes Gigante, but not in the places the chain wanted. Problem is, the city considered both sites suitable for more well-known Southern California supermarket chains.

We’ve been down this aisle before, haven’t we? One side says ethnicity has nothing to do with it. The other side says ethnicity has everything to do with it.

I’m not in the business of divining people’s innermost thoughts. Maybe Anaheim city officials have some rock-ribbed, ledger-driven analysis that tells them a Mexican supermarket won’t generate the business traffic it wants in the mall where the chain hoped to build.

It could be as simple as that, but I doubt it. I doubt it because it isn’t likely that Gigante would want to open a store where it couldn’t draw customers. Unless they’re run by the dumbest businesspeople around, they’ve done market research that tells them they have a customer base.

If Anaheim believed a Ralphs or Albertsons made sense in the renewed plaza, why not a Gigante?

You’re almost forced to conclude that the city, knowing that Gigante trumpets its Mexican-ness with music and signs in Spanish, would send out the wrong signals. Those signals emanate from the long-running Anglo-Latino cultural battle that seems to be going on, even if many around here live their lives unconcerned about it.

Anaheim has been a particular hotbed of that battle. It is but one of many Orange County cities whose largely white populations have been transformed in the last quarter-century by immigrants from all over. To the extent that people with different cultural habits displace what existed before, it’s naive to say that many Anaheim residents don’t feel they’ve lost some of their culture.

To be fair to the city, I doubt many others in Orange County have as diverse a restaurant row as it does. American, Mexican, Arab, Persian, German ... you name it, Anaheim probably has it.

Yet, the perceived Latino “threat� often seems to bubble up there. From bilingualism in schools to deportation centers in its jail, Anaheim has been a flashpoint for the county’s changing demographics.

Enter Gigante. For all those Anaheim residents convinced Latino immigrants want to take over rather than assimilate, a Mexican grocery store probably represents a frightening step in the evolution.

Today a grocery store, tomorrow a ... what?

I’m as white-bread as they come, and I’ve never understood that fear. Why is a society that embraces Chinatown and Little Saigon somehow convinced that Mexicans and Guatemalans and Hondurans are going to join forces and reconstitute American life?

People fear this despite overwhelming evidence of the Americanism that many Spanish-speaking immigrants ultimately absorb and the fact that Anglos and Latinos work together, play together and marry.

A Gigante problem facing Anaheim?

Nah, more like chiquito.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to [email protected].