Pizzas por pesos put patrons in a pickle

Monday, Feb. 5, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

Call it pepperoni politics.

Las Vegas just gained its second Pizza Patron store, meaning there now are twice as many places where you can buy a pie with pesos - and debate the merits and meaning of doing so.

The business-savvy or anti-American chain, depending on which side of the peso you look, has already caused a stir in its home state, Texas, after announcing a hands-across-the-borders, it's-all-money-to-us promotion earlier this year.

Until the end of this month, the brand's 66 stores in Texas, Arizona, Colorado, California and Nevada will take your pesos to pay for the $4.99 15-inch pie - about 60 pesos, at last week's exchange rate - or anything else on the menu.

Adriana Alcaraz, manager of the new store at Bonanza and Pecos roads, hasn't received the death threats the idea brought on in Dallas, the chain's headquarters.

But she and owner Lalo Gonzalez have gotten their share of "Go back to Mexico" calls since the new store opened Jan. 25, as well as at the other store on East Owens Avenue.

On a lunch break Wednesday, Bobbi Ferreria was happy to see the new place, in all its pastel glory, mariachis coming from the kitchen. She works across Pecos from the store at the Family Courts and Services Center, a sure source of future customers, with hundreds of families and employees passing through daily and McDonald's the only other nearby choice for eats.

Ferreria also was happy about the price of the pizzas, though she pulled out greenbacks when it came time to pay.

"We're in America, right?" she said. "I'm not being mean or anything but if we go there, what are we going to do? We have to change to their money, right? It's like, if you live here, you learn English."

Then she summed up: "I don't think it's right - but in the beginning I think it's kinda cool."

As she headed out the door, she turned and said, "Adios! That's all I know how to say."

Donald Nance, though, doesn't see anything kinda cool about the pesos on Pecos. Nance directs the Las Vegas chapter of the Minutemen, the group that favors closing U.S. borders.

"People have talked about it at meetings, e-mails fly around," he said.

His position: He's against it.

"I don't like people taking pesos in our community," Nance said. "We have our own money - it's got on it, 'In God We Trust' and that's the money we should be using."

At the same time, he said his organization, with about 600 local members, has "bigger fish to fry."

Alcaraz said she understands people like Nance.

"They must think, 'First there's all these Hispanics, and then they bring their currency. Soon they're going to take over!' " she said.

Then she recalled her own odyssey from Coalima, Mexico, with her husband and now 8-year-old son. She left behind a job selling sports clothes where she earned about $100 a week, a life in which "either we ate or paid rent."

Maria del Carmen Quezada, who had recently returned from three weeks of vacation in Nayarit, Mexico, showed up to order some pizza and chicken wings. She had dollars in hand, but some pesos at home.

She said criticism of the pizza por pesos promotion reminded her of when people were marching in favor of immigration reform last spring and people shouted from the sidewalks, "Go back to Mexico!"

Alfredo Flores, waiting at the counter to order, had crossed the parking lot from his job at McDonald's. He has raised two teenaged sons and bought a house while working under golden arches most of his 13 years in the U.S.

He didn't get the flap about the pesos, either.

"We all absorb American culture," he said. "Our children speak English. We eat American food. What's the point?"

In any case, Alcaraz said it wasn't only Mexicans who were bringing in pesos. One gringa ordered some chicken on the phone and then showed up with 20 pesos, thinking the peso was equal in value to the dollar, she said.

Another, she said, came in with a 2,000-peso bill - which hasn't been in use for several decades.

Nance thought those stories were bunk.

"The only reason somebody would have pesos is they crossed the border illegally," he said.

Whoever has them stashed at home, the pesos have been piling up in the small-but-growing chain's Las Vegas stores, representing about 15 percent of the daily till, Gonzalez said.

The pizza entrepreneur has plans to build eight more stores in the next 2 1/2 years.

"We're just trying to be creative in competing with the rest," he said.