Thread: Hotel Owner Tells Hispanic Workers to Change Names

Hotel Owner Tells Hispanic Workers to Change Names

Monday, October 26, 2009 3:25 AM

TAOS, N.M. -- Larry Whitten marched into this northern New Mexico town in late July on a mission: resurrect a failing hotel.

The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they'd be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.

No more Martinez. It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.

Whitten's management style had worked for him as he's turned around other distressed hotels he bought in recent years across the country.

The 63-year-old Texan, however, wasn't prepared for what followed.

His rules and his firing of several Hispanic employees angered his employees and many in this liberal enclave of 5,000 residents at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, where the most alternative of lifestyles can find a home and where Spanish language, culture and traditions have a long and revered history.

"I came into this landmine of Anglos versus Spanish versus Mexicans versus Indians versus everybody up here. I'm just doing what I've always done," he says.

Former workers, their relatives and some town residents picketed across the street from the hotel.

"I do feel he's a racist, but he's a racist out of ignorance. He doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong," says protester Juanito Burns Jr., who identified himself as prime minister of an activist group called Los Brown Berets de Nuevo Mexico.

The Virginia-born Whitten had spent 40 years in the hotel business, turning around more than 20 hotels in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and South Carolina, before moving with his wife to Taos from Abilene, Texas. He had visited Taos before, and liked its beauty. When Whitten saw that the Paragon Inn was up for sale, he jumped at it.

The hotel sits along narrow, two-lane Paseo del Pueblo, where souped-up lowriders radiate a just-waxed gleam in the soft sunshine as they cruise past centuries-old adobe buildings. One recent afternoon, a woman slowly rode her fat-tire bicycle along a cracked sidewalk, oversized purple butterfly wings on her back and a breeze blowing her long, blonde dreadlocks.

The community includes Taos Pueblo, an American Indian dwelling inhabited for over 1,000 years, and an adobe Catholic church made famous in a Georgia O'Keeffe painting.

After he arrived, Whitten met with the employees. He says he immediately noticed that they were hostile to his management style and worried they might start talking about him in Spanish.

"Because of that, I asked the people in my presence to speak only English because I do not understand Spanish," Whitten says. "I've been working 24 years in Texas and we have a lot of Spanish people there. I've never had to ask anyone to speak only English in front of me because I've never had a reason to."

Some employees were fired, Whitten says, because they were hostile and insubordinate. He says they called him "a white (N-word)."

Fired hotel manager Kathy Archuleta says the workers initially tried to adjust to his style. "We had already gone through four or five owners before him, so we knew what to expect," Archuleta says. "I told (the workers) we needed to give him a chance."

Then Whitten told some employees he was changing their Spanish first names. Whitten says it's a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.

"It has nothing to do with racism. I'm not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don't know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything," Whitten says.

Martin Gutierrez, another fired employee, says he felt disrespected when he was told to use the unaccented Martin as his name. He says he told Whitten that Spanish was spoken in New Mexico before English. "He told me he didn't care what I thought because this was his business," Gutierrez says.

"I don't have to change my name and language or heritage," he says. "I'm professional the way I am."

After the firings, the New Mexico chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a national civil rights group, sent Whitten a letter, raising concerns about treatment of Hispanic workers. Whitten says he sent them a letter and posted messages on the hotel marquee, alleging that the group referred to him with a racial slur. LULAC denied the charge.

The messages and comments he made in interviews with local media, including referring to townsfolk as "mountain people" and "potheads who escaped society," further enflamed tensions.

Taos Mayor Darren Cordova says Whitten wasn't doing anything illegal. But he says Whitten failed to better familiarize himself with the town and its culture before deciding to buy the hotel for $2 million. "Taos is so unique that you would not do anything in Taos that you would do elsewhere," he says.

Whitten grew subdued as a two-hour interview with The Associated Press progressed. He said he was sorry for the misunderstanding and insisted he has never been against any culture.

"What kind of fool or idiot or poor businessman would I be to orchestrate this whole crazy thing that's costed me a lot of time, money and aggravation?" Whitten said.

Whitten should have dealt with the situation differently, especially in a majority Hispanic town, said 71-year-old Taos artist Ken O'Neil, while sipping his afternoon coffee on the town's historic plaza.

"To make demands like he did just seems over the top," he says. "Nobody won here. It's not always about winning. Sometimes, it's about what you learn.

http://www.newsmax.com/us/us_trouble_in ... 76831.html

This article was on a local newspaper’s website and caught my eye too. I wrote the following:

He’s the boss and makes the decisions. He could have said never to speak Spanish at work unless talking to customers who didn’t speak English. That’s what I’d do and it is not racist. It just ensures that all employees can understand what’s going on.

In addition to that, I later thought about something else. A lot of times workers are asked to change their names. Have you ever called a tech support number and got someone who is clearly Indian, but their name is “Maryâ€

Welcome to New Mexico!

Dixie

Added to homepage
http://www.alipac.us/article4628.html

"He told me he didn't care what I thought because this was his business," Gutierrez says.

I got a good laugh out of the entire article, but this line summed it all up. They don't like being dictated to, but sure don't hesitate to dictate what they do and don't want...LOL!

Brown Berets de Aztlan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69wFvlZB ... re=related

In my humble opinion the name change went too far. But I do believe that Mr. Whitten had every right to expect his employees to speak English in front of him and at work.

Oh my gosh, imagine that! speaking English! How the manager demand such a thing! Wait, this is not Mexico or a shanty hotel on the Baja peninsula, but an hotel in an American state! Well maybe he should learn Spanish, I see all kinds of commercials on TV for it! "Learn Spanish in 12 easy weeks the natural way!!" About the only Spanish I know is how to order food, from my server in the restaurant when I am in MEXICO.

I live in a foreign country and all my co-workers are bi and tri lingual. When I am around them, they communicate in English. Its disrespectful to speak a foreign language around someone who does not speak the language. We have lost the respect of foreigners in the United States. There is no enforcement to learn English, other then to pass a citizen test, where they know all the questions and answers anyways. Thats the problem, we are getting the trash from other countries. In Europe, Middle East and former CIS states, they learn English in school. (Read most of the rest of the developed nations except those from down south.) Most of the people we get from down south that are illegals are school dropouts or criminals and gang members.