Posted on 10/26/2009 1:20:09 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Hotel Owner to Workers: No Spanish!
By MELANIE DABOVICH, AP
TAOS, N.M. (Oct. 26) -- Larry Whitten marched into this northern New Mexico town in late July on a mission: resurrect a failing hotel.
The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they'd be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.
No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.
Whitten's management style had worked for him as he's turned around other distressed hotels he bought in recent years across the country.
The 63-year-old Texan, however, wasn't prepared for what followed.
His rules and his firing of several Hispanic employees angered his employees and many in this liberal enclave of 5,000 residents at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, where the most alternative of lifestyles can find a home and where Spanish language, culture and traditions have a long and revered history.
"I came into this landmine of Anglos versus Spanish versus Mexicans versus Indians versus everybody up here. I'm just doing what I've always done," he says.
Former workers, their relatives and some town residents picketed across the street from the hotel.
"I do feel he's a racist, but he's a racist out of ignorance. He doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong," says protester Juanito Burns Jr., who identified himself as prime minister of an activist group called Los Brown Berets de Nuevo Mexico.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.aol.com ...
http://taosguide.com/businesses/view/164
http://www.paragoninntaos.com/
Wonder how many non-hispanics in that group!
bump for later
I do see an issue about anglicizing names in New Mexico though. Some conservative friends of mine in that state will go by their American parents given names that are in fact Spanish, like Pedro or Marcos. The no Spanish in front of him, and the guests I assume, though is right on.
So what if the workers is named Jesus?
I just love these people who belong to groups called the “brown” this or that, calling other people “racist.”
I can’t say I agree 100% with the gentleman’s tactics.
That said, isn’t that the point of freedom?
He’s free to run his hotel as he sees fit.
His employees are free to abide by his rules or seek employment elsewhere.
The townspeople are free to not stay there if they choose not to.
Once upon a time, before the rise of the perpetual victim and his cheerleading squad, this issue would have been resolved by reward with more business, or punishment with less.
Any analysis of why this hotel failed when neighboring hotels with, presumably, their own Mar-teens didn’t? Whatever else was wrong, maybe this spot, which touts a long standing old fashioned Hispanic charm from yesteryear, wasn’t the best place to try to turn a hotel into a piece of white bread. I hope Whitten figures out how to make lemonade out of this lemon. Maybe bringing in a co-owner who is bilingual to be with him, tell him what is being said, and teach him the language would make sense. Not every single solitary occurrence of Hispanic culture in the US is a pestilence, as long as they are willing to cooperate with English speakers.
Your company will now cater largely to Islamic clientele. You don’t mind losing your English name and taking the name Mohammed, do you? I mean, if you don’t like your company’s management style, you’re just a hyper sensitive clown, right?
Yes and Indian was spoken thousands of years before you came along. What's your point?
I can totally see the ‘no speaking spanish’ with the customers. However, changing Marcos to Mark? That’s just silly. Marteen? Does he have a problem with french speakers too?
He’s certainly free to try to run the hotel that way, but if the cats just won’t herd his way and he gets enough public grief then he may just have to cut his losses.
Taos (as well as many another charming spot in New Mexico, which some people famously do not believe is part of the USA) was Hispanic way before it was cool to be Hispanic. It is arguably an exception to the P.C. rule of reconquista.
Exactly right.
Brown Berets and low riders? Sure...lol..
I do feel he's a racist, protester Juanito Burns Jr., who identified himself as prime minister of an activist group called Los Brown Berets de Nuevo Mexico.
The hotel sits along narrow, two-lane Paseo del Pueblo, where souped-up lowriders cruise past centuries-old adobe buildings.
If people wish to go to all those other hotels, they still can. If they wish for something a bit different, then they can come to this guy’s hotel.
Isn’t that how the market place works?
“A piece of White Breat...” Good grief fella, are you going to adopt La Raza’s vernacular now?
This is the United States. On our local news, the Hispanics have gone to speaking Hispanic names and phrases in as foreign a sounding way as is humanly possible. They are replacing our culture with their own in the public arena.
It really doesn’t add much to the presentation. It’s more distracting than anything. Like it or not, this is the U.S., and Westernized ways of pronouncing Spanish is not evil. It’s normal.
On Mexican soil, they butcher English words too. They should pronounce those words by their own cultural standards. So should we. Martin is the customary way to pronounce Marteen in an English speaking culture. Our culture here in the U.S. is English driven.
It is my experience that when someone is speaking in a another languge within earshot, they are talking about you. You should have seen a former coworker’s face when he realized that my Italian is very close to his Spanish. He then switched to Haitian Creole. It never occured to the idiot that my name is the same in many languages.
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