{"id":2043458,"date":"2025-09-23T11:20:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T11:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2043458"},"modified":"2025-09-23T11:20:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T11:20:12","slug":"in-the-world-of-south-park-mexicans-are-cool-while-ice-is-the-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/in-the-world-of-south-park-mexicans-are-cool-while-ice-is-the-joke\/","title":{"rendered":"In the world of ‘South Park,’ Mexicans are cool while ICE is the joke"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week, I was in Colorado to give a speech at the University of Denver about my career covering Mexican food in the United States. My hosts asked where I wanted to dine the night before my talk.<\/p>\n

The choice was obvious, even if it surprised them: Casa Bonita.<\/p>\n

It’s one of the most infamous Mexican restaurants in the country, a sprawling complex in a run-down suburban shopping plaza<\/a> lampooned since its 1974 opening as everything from a Mexican Disneyland to a cultural hate crime for its forever fiesta atmosphere. The place seemingly closed for good during the pandemic, an aging relic in an era when people didn’t need to imagine themselves in Mexico for an evening because Mexicans were now all around them.<\/p>\n

But in 2023, “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone reopened the place because the officially designated Lakewood historical landmark was a childhood favorite of theirs. They spent $40 million to return Casa Bonita to its heyday, down to freshly scrubbed fake palm fronds and restored vintage tilework while vowing to make the food long nicknamed \u201cCasa No-Eat-A\u201d actually edible.<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/b> Commentary: ‘South Park’ season opener puts Trump in bed with Satan and has Paramount on its knees<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m more of a “Simpsons” fan, but I’ve always appreciated “South Park” for consistently arguing throughout its 27-year run that indiscriminately deporting Mexicans is not just morally and economically wrong but foolish.<\/p>\n

This season, Parker and Stone have upped their attacks on anti-Mexican hate by playing its trademark satire mostly straight<\/a>. They’ve depicted Fox News as MAGA sycophants, President Trump as a lawsuit-happy despot and JD Vance as … well, JD Vance. ICE is shown as a department so out of control that it detains Dora the Explorer and so incompetent that they hire the show’s skeletal counselor Mr. Mackey, who quickly gets promoted after helping to raid heaven.<\/p>\n

At a time when Trump’s deportation Leviathan is doing everything possible to cast undocumented immigrants, many of them Mexicans, as the worst of the worst, “South Park” is exposing their lies while its owners are attempting a reclamation project on a long-reviled Mexican restaurant. How could I not pay my respects to Parker and Stone’s combo plate of pro-Mexican PR by making a pilgrimage to Casa Bonita?<\/p>\n

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