Food is inevitably political, and the food of immigrants is even more so, as it gets drawn into debates about who belongs and who doesn’t.

We have got used to a lot in these past few years, but I must say that last week, when Ivanka Trump tweeted a picture of herself promoting Goya black beans, I was quite surprised, to the point I thought it was a fake. It was not. And then her father, president Donald Trump, also posted a picture on Twitter posing with an array of Goya products. The whole matter immediately reached a whole different level.

The legal and ethical aspects of the Trumps supporting a private company (after all, members of the US executive branch they arguably are government employees), have been widely dissected in the media with heated arguments both in favor and against. Some have just dismissed the whole affair as an attempt at distracting from the Trump administration’s disastrous management of COVID-19.

I still think it is interesting stuff, at least from the food studies point of view. For this reason, I will try to focus on the food aspects of the controversy, although it will be impossible to avoid its very political connotations. As I discussed elsewhere, this is definitely not the first time that food comes to the fore in periods of social tensions or during electoral campaigns. However, the recent Goya brouhaha goes well beyond that, connecting ethnic minorities, their culinary traditions, and their cultural representations in the US to president Trump’s public positions about these issues and even to his personal food preferences.

Before trying to make sense of the images themselves, I will provide some context for those in the US who somehow have managed to remain blissfully oblivious of all this ruckus, as well as for those who may be reading this post from outside the US and (luckily for them) don’t have to deal with this kind of theatre on a daily basis. The whole affair started when Bob Unanue, the CEO of Goya Foods, a company specializing in Hispanic products, praised Trump during an event at the White House‘s Rose Garden, telling reporters: “We are all truly blessed … to have a leader like president Trump who is a builder.”

Immediately public figures like performer and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, and member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a boycott of Goya products with the hashtag #goyaway. They denounced the company’s CEO as supporting a US president who has turned the fear of immigrants from the Southern border into a cornerstone of his propaganda, trying to build walls and infamously calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” during his 2016 campaign. The pro-immigrant organization United We Dream, which supports the DACA “dreamers,” also joined the call for boycott. Unanue declared on FoxNews that this reaction was paramount to “suppression of speech.” The United Bodegas of America, an association representing over 4,000 corner store owners in NYC, came out instead in support of Goya, affirming its positive presence in their communities. This quite different positions clearly indicate that the Hispanic community in the US is far from being a monolithic bloc, divided according to place or origin, education, class, and political attitudes. Business people and consumers may not see eye to eye either.

Conservative pundits for like Mike Gonzales of the Heritage Foundation and pro-Trump media immediately condemned the call to action as yet another case of leftist cancel culture and an attack against freedom of speech and free market, all while declaring the boycott a failure. As a matter of fact, Trump supporters counteracted with a #SupportGoya social media campaign, even if I suspect many of them barely knew about the existence of those products until then. However, I was told (I could not verify it myself) that pictures of survivalists proudly showing Goya cans in their stacks for Armageddon surfaced on the internet.

Against this background, Ivanka Trump tweeted a picture in which she smiles to the camera while holding a can of black beans. The tweet also contains Goya’s tagline (both in English and Spanish): “If it’s Goya, it has to be good. Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno.” The composition of the picture, her facial expression, the position of her hands, and her overall body posture seem to follow the template of old school advertisements where female homemakers extolled the virtues of newfangled consumers products that were supposed to make their lives easier. Ivanka offers the same smile, the same apparent pride, and the same default respectable whiteness. While at the time this kind of representations were aspirational, channeling a desire to belong to the middle class, Ivanka is obviously positioned in a completely different  cultural environment (and income bracket). If the Trump campaign were looking for an iconic image to accompany the slogan “Make America Great Again,” this would be it.

The picture can also cause Goya consumers to experience some cognitive dissonance, because it features an item that is a mainstay in many Hispanic families. I wonder if they look at the content of their cupboards differently. Goya’s communication, including its TV commercials in English, clearly point to the Hispanic population as its target market. Which is intriguing, considering that Unanue has at times expressed mixed feelings about his connection with Hispanic culture. He is an outsider to it: his grandfather, who founded the company, was an immigrant from Spain, and started its business selling Mediterranean products, such as Moroccan anchovies.

In a 2008 interview, while declaring “We are the nostalgia… We welcome the immigrants into the country with food,” Unanue conveyed the information that he grew up in a suburban environment, speaking English and eating the food prepared by his Irish mother. Unremarkable but definitely white food. He has often described his family history and the success of the company as a glowing example of the American dream. He is correct in reminding us that the food business has been one of the entryways into American society for newly arrived immigrants. The products themselves cannot be identified with any specific Caribbean, Central or South American culinary tradition, but are rather common and affordable staples that can be used in many different dishes.

Some of these products (adobo, beans, coconut milk, and chocolate wafers) had the honor to appear in the picture that Donald Trump posted in support of the company (and of his daughter’s PR move). He is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office with both his thumbs up, which also gives the picture a weird feel of old-itime adverstising. The composition of the picture and Trump’s wide grin remind us of another picture the then presidential candidate took during the 2016 campaign, where he posed in his Trump Tower office, with Central Park in the background, eating a veggie-less taco bowl with the commentary “Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!”

Both pictures come across as clumsy attempts at ingratiating Hispanic voters and as an enthusiastic promotion of American capitalism. As the social media hivemind immediately noticed, Cinco de Mayo is not actually a federal holiday in Mexico, where few celebrate it outside of the state of Puebla, and taco bowls are not that common in Mexico either. Many found the promotion of his restaurant quite out of place and the “I love Hispanics” declaration especially grating.

Truth to be told, Trump’s food preferences have in themselves been the object of curiosity, praise, and scorn. His passion for fast food, especially burgers, is well known, to the point of offering fast food items during formal events. His former doctor Ronny Jackson revealed that the White House staff hid vegetables into his food so that he could consume a slightly healthier diet.

Trump’s dislike for vegetables also expressed itself during his official visit to India in February 2020. On the occasion of the banquet offered to honor him at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the President of India, the palace chefs came up with a menu that was supposed to please him: Atlantic salmon was served as fish tikkas with cajun spices instead of a garam masala, goat meat replaced Trump’s beloved beef, but it seems the efforts were not particularly appreciated. During the US president’s visit to the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, celebrity chef Suresh Khanna stuffed samosa with broccoli and corn instead of potatoes and peas, causing consternation among Indian gourmets, but apparently neither president Trump nor the First Lady tasted anything from the specially designed vegetarian menu. But I digress…

What is really startling is that the whole Goya controversy, in which the Trumps appeared to celebrate a Hispanic food company as a melting pot fantasy and an example of American entrepreneurship, has developed against the background of the Trump administration efforts at curbing immigration, building walls with Mexico, and creating inhumane detention centers at the border. This situation is particular hard for farm workers, and the many documented and undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America among them, that Trump has identified as “essential workers” during the pandemic without extending sound safety measures to them in order to avoid problems to supply chains. Worse, the thousands of seasonal guest workers holding H-2A temporary visas, whose pay is at times higher than minimum wages in some states, risk to have their income curtailed. And considering the new restrictions that the Trump administration is trying to impose on all sorts of visas, their status is even more insecure, which is likely to increase the number of undocumented workers.

What is the upshot of these admittedly rambling reflections? In conservative politics, ethnic  minorities are to be appreciated as consumers and as potential voters. Their food is worth celebrating if it can generate good business, regardless of who profits from it. However, enjoying ethnic food does not necessarily indicate respect or acceptance of the ethnic communities from which it originates. Food is inevitably political, and the food of immigrants is even more so, as it gets drawn into debates about who belongs and who doesn’t. Politicians don’t hesitate to leverage these tensions, even if that means dealing with accusations of pandering, populism, appropriation, and cultural insensitivity. Despite the risks of food controversies backfiring, politicians still seem to dive into them with glee. They know how intimate and powerful food is. Worth the shot, right?