The Healing Power of ‘Speaking in Taco’

I spend a fair amount of time scrolling the depths of Latinx TikTok, and the subject of tacos is inevitably one of the subgenres that takes up much of my FYP. The first time I noticed Mario Lopez appearing in my feed — Lopez, who I still see as the muscly teen heartthrob who first flashed his sparkly dimples as A.C. Slater on the ’90s hit Saved by the Bell — it wasn’t a dance challenge video with his kids or some sort of SBTB nostalgia, but of him getting down on a plate of tacos from a taco truck in the San Fernando Valley. Is he saying “homes”? Did he just reach for a giant bottle of La Guacamaya Auténtica hot sauce to spice up that plate of tostadas de camarón?

In each of his food videos, Lopez explains to his viewers where he’s visiting and provides a few tips on what to expect. He’s sometimes accompanied by a friend who helps him dig into bountiful plates of birria, mariscos, tacos dorados, and other delicacies. At the end of one video, he hits up Mariscos El Bigoton in Pacoima, a traditionally working-class barrio tucked in the northeast San Fernando Valley — not far from where my family lived for generations — and gives the the seafood truck his own stamp of approval, declaring it “Lopezy Worthy.”

“I’m a big foodie, anyone who knows me knows I love food,” Lopez says, noting that some of his favorite haunts are in the northeast San Fernando Valley: El Bigoton, Birria González, Sabor a la Mexicana, and Mi Lindo Sinaloa. “I love food trucks in particular; there’s a certain charm about them and I’ve tried to give them love when I can. The cool thing about social media is you can peel back the curtain and put yourself out there.”

Lopez joins a growing number of Latinx entertainers who are sharing their love of Mexican food, not only for the delicious content it produces, but to further illustrate the community’s influence on society. Eva Longoria’s CNN series Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico explores the far corners of the cuisine — she also highlights the contributions of one Mexican to the snack world in the 2023 film Flamin’ Hot, which traced the story of Richard Montañez, the (contested) inventor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Danny Trejo’s built a growing LA empire of doughnut and taco shops; John Leguizamo’s NBC Peacock series Leguizamo Does America dives deep into the many ways that Latinxs shape American life, often using a taqueria as the backdrop for his interviews.

While Hollywood continues to fail to invest in Latinos by canceling critically lauded shows like This Fool, Vida, Gentefied, and other groundbreaking series in recent years, these entertainers and others are subverting this disempowerment by using the taco not only as a vehicle for self-expression, but also representation. And I’m here for it.

The appreciation for Lopez’s TikTok posts was immediate, no doubt, with legions of fans thanking him for keeping it real: “Mario went full Vatos Locos on us ,” read one comment, with another noting, “Homie is a real Mexican .” But another interesting thing happened. Over and over again, online commenters began to ask: Wait — is Mario Lopez Mexican? Among the videos that provoked much of the dialogue was one posted on September 26, 2023, earning reactions like:

“I’ve never heard u say ‘foo’ ,” “why did i just find out that mario lopez sounds like all my primos and tios ,” and “My whole life I finally hear his real voice. He sounds like George Lopez lol.”

The chatter — much of which was about Lopez’s proficiency in code-switching, loosely defined as adjusting one’s appearance, speech, behavior, and mannerisms so as to blend in in order to be treated more fairly or access opportunities — eventually made its way to X/Twitter. User lil h (@bigsnugga) summed up much of the discord with this comment, which received 53,000 likes: “ive only heard code switch mario i aint know he was this mexican,” causing Mario Lopez to trend briefly, and prompting him to speak up.

“When I’m around my friends I’ll talk how I normally talk when you’re with your homies. I’m from Chula Vista, so you know, you [have to] keep it real,” Lopez tells me during our conversation, which took place just before the Christmas season. “Everybody has their customer service voice. I can’t be hosting Access Hollywood and be like, ‘Hey, what’s up vato?’ I gotta keep it a little more professional. But when I’m out there with my buddies, or I’m out there eating and just being me then, you know, my guard is down and that’s the real me.”

For me, who grew up with the hum of Saved by the Bell in the background after school, it felt like Lopez was releasing some sort of pent up Corporate Latino energy that only those of us who’ve had to code-switch to get by in our careers can relate to. I learned to master this ability early on in my own career in journalism. If you called me on my office line while working at the Orange County Register during the aughts, I’d go right into my telemarketing voice, very much giving Nina from the 1999 cult hit Office Space; hit me up on my cell, and you’d get “What up foo” Serena. I was often discouraged by my editors from writing about issues impacting the Latino community lest I be accused of activism. So I did much like what Lopez and countless others do: Get in where I fit in, raising my hand at every opportunity, placing my Latinidad not to the side, but not fully embracing my inner northeast SFV out loud in public settings either.

To be clear, even if Lopez’s Mexicaness was news to some, many of us knew he was gente: Lopez was born and raised in the border town of Chula Vista to parents who hail from Sinaloa. But up until he started giving foo vibes last year, we haven’t had many opportunities to see him without the veneer of his polished Access Hollywood look.

Watching Lopez’s TikTok posts, I could only think, Finally. Everything about them feels strangely liberating: from his ability to break down the subtleties of birria, to how he swoons over mariscos — a cornerstone of his family’s native Sinaloan cuisine — to the fact that some of his favorite taco haunts can be found deep in the gente-fied northeast section of the SFV. As a teen living in the sleepy suburb of Mission Hills, a few blocks away from the San Fernando Mission, some of my own favorite memories involved quesadillas stuffed with carne asada, with an Orange Bang to drink, at Que Ricos; seasoned fries from the long-shuttered Jimmy’s Place, among the iconic burger stands of LA County; or pupusas punctuated with curtido and salsa with my Salvadoran high school sweetheart (coincidentally also named Mario) on Van Nuys Boulevard.

These were the types of spaces I was most comfortable in, but as a food writer, I’m often invited into places my younger self never would have imagined she would gain access to. Power dynamics necessitate that I enable that code-switching mechanism in order to mask any insecurities that tend to creep in and present a confident, knowledgeable tastemaker. When I’m off the clock, you’re much more likely to see me in an oversized hoodie, ordering a big ol’ bucket of camarones from the mariscos truck, nourishing my crudo over a soothing bowl of menudo, or capping off a sleepy Sunday by picking up an order of pollo asado from the neighborhood taqueria. Food has a way of activating something inside of us, feelings of home and belonging, which is why I think that Lopez’s videos are so healing for those of us who’ve ever felt the need to snuff out our fire.

For many of us the taco, and more broadly Mexican food, has come to symbolize our identity. As an object that you can taste and feel, it’s much more tangible than one’s identity, which can be switched on or off. It’s not “negotiable” in the same way that Lopez’s identity was “negotiable” to some people. Hollywood may never recognize our LatinXellence, but the taco belongs to us. Y’all are just lucky we can share.

For Lopez, the taqueria experience is a little reminder of that. Even if he can’t make it to his hometown regularly to satisfy his cravings for his favorite neighborhood taco truck, he’s got these markers of culture at his fingertips in the Valley.

“It reminds me of my neighborhood where I grew up in Chula Vista, which is a border town,” Lopez tells me of his affinity for the area. “We get a lot of authentic Mexican food and a lot of family-owned restaurants, or places, whether it’s a truck or what have you. It just kind of makes me feel like I’m back home.”

Since I moved away, I’ve only returned a handful of times, usually to reminisce with old friends. But like Lopez, I’m always on the lookout for my new favorite taquerias — whether in my current city of Detroit, or Chicago, or Orange County, or Houston — spaces that support me in feeling safe to be me.

Like him, I still code-switch when the moment calls for it. I’ve got to cash those checks, too. But at least I know that speaking in taco is a more widely understood language.

Carina Guevara is a freelance illustrator based in Austin, Texas.