Hispanic stores closing

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Monday, May 1, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

While several of the Strip's biggest hotels held hands with the biggest union in town last week to tell tens of thousands of employees they could go to work today and support immigration reform, others in town were quietly planning protests.

Fifteen supermarkets serving thousands of Las Vegas Valley residents said they would close their doors today. Stores that send hundreds of thousands of dollars daily in money orders to Mexico and a chain of restaurants said they also would close.

Eleventh-hour meetings of hastily assembled coalitions as well as Spanish-language radio talk show hosts focused on urging hotel workers to stay home, ignore the Culinary Union and "not sell out."

Ferment has been the order of the day, as the national movement by immigrants and their supporters to skip work and not spend money for one day in the year has been sorted out locally.

Response to the suggested boycott has highlighted both the absence of leadership and the unexpected capacity for grass-roots seat-of-the-pants twists and turns in the Hispanic community.

Meanwhile, the valley's estimated 75,000 to 150,000 immigrants who are in the country illegally, as well as the hundreds of thousands of friends and family members of those immigrants, have been bombarded by mixed messages.

On KRLV 1340-AM, Culinary Union President Geoconda Arguello-Kline detailed to Spanish-speaking listeners why it was in the best interest of her union's 60,000 members to come to work, sign a petition in favor of immigration reform and attend a rally on Fremont Street today at 6 p.m.

A Cuban listener who identified himself as Julio called in to show his support for the idea.

"Don't bite the hand of those who are helping you," he said, referring to the public support several casino executives had shown for immigration reform.

Later in the same day, however, Guido Mantilla, host of a show called "Las Vegas al dia" - or "What's Happening in Las Vegas" - exhorted his listeners to ignore the union officials and casino executives.

"Do you think there's a line of people waiting to clean 16 rooms a day?" he asked listeners, referring to the work of housekeepers in Strip hotels.

"On May 1, not one room should be cleaned ... and no one should be served," Mantilla concluded.

Meanwhile, officials from supermarket chains such as Supermercado del Pueblo, with four stores and about 400 employees; Mariana's, with three stores and 450 employees; and King Ranch, with four stores and about 300 employees, all said they would be closing their doors today. The economic impact of those closed doors is difficult to determine.

Javier Barajas, whose family owns part or all of four restaurants and five money order houses in the valley, said he would be doing the same with his businesses - meaning 246 employees would be staying home today.

That would also mean the loss of about $55,000 that would normally be spent in his restaurants, and $210,000 that would be sent to Mexico.

Hernando Amaya, editor at the Spanish-language weekly El Tiempo, said these and other decisions were all occurring in a grass-roots style, with no top-down leadership.

"There's no leader here - it's the people doing this," he said, contrasting the Las Vegas Valley to other cities with longstanding Hispanic populations, such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.

Barajas said his employees had asked him to close his businesses, noting that he couldn't oppose their wishes to support the boycott since he himself was in the shadows of illegal immigration status for five years - until he married a U.S. citizen.

"I couldn't very well discipline them for this," he said.

At the same time, he said he had been in various meetings up to the last minute trying to reclaim a unity many thought had been lost by last week's casino-union announcement.

He said clubs representing natives of different Mexican states as well as officials from other unions were trying to spread the word to Strip employees "by cell phone, fax, talking to people on the street - whatever it takes."

Still, he was not optimistic.

"It's hard to find that unity in Las Vegas with the casinos," he said, invoking the sense of many who think casino employees fear losing their jobs if they take activist stands.

"But I would like to see that (unity) - if we're all together, they can't make us run."