two views of the "Boycott Goya" movement

CNN: Goya Foods boycott takes off after its CEO praises Trump

Here's one big, fat lie from the above-linked article:

Trump began his campaign by criticizing Mexican immigrants for being "rapists" and bringing drugs into the United States. He has spent much of his presidency trying to build a wall along the southern US border and enacted a policy that separated children from parents when they were apprehended at the border.

First: "Mexican immigrants" makes it sound as if Trump were criticizing legal immigrants. The people Trump was criticizing were and are illegal border-crossers, not immigrants. There is nothing legal about what those people have been doing, so gracing them with the term "immigrant" is a flat-out lie. Trump, in that speech, was targeting a very specific demographic, and while we're on the topic, any reference to "Mexicans" is not a reference to race: the term "Mexican" doesn't designate a race, for Mexico, as a country, is racially and ethnically diverse. To think "Mexican" is a racist term is itself a racist way of thinking. Second, Trump isn't "trying to build a wall"—he's actually building it, and he has put up a couple hundred miles already (somewhat misleading source here; an arguably better source is here).* Third, CNN fails to note that Obama's family-separating policies were worse, and that much of the supposed "family separation" on Trump's watch has had to do with removing children from the clutches of child traffickers. CNN is an utterly shameless pile of garbage.

While CNN lies, the Victory Girls speak the truth: #BoycottGoya Fails Spectacularly

Background: Goya is a hugely popular brand known especially for its Latin-themed canned-food products (NB: Goya does more than just Latin food). I've bought plenty of Goya in my time, and it's a brand I implicitly trust—not because the food is awesome, per se, but because it's dependably good. Anyway, the CEO of Goya Foods is Robert Unanue, and he recently went on video and on the record (during a White House visit) to praise President Trump, whom Unanue described as a fellow "builder." Certain prominent Latinos took notice and took offense, and the #BoycottGoya movement was born.

I have no idea how many folks in the Latino community might seriously boycott Goya, but at a guess, the percentage will be low, partly because so many folks rely on Goya as a mainstay, and partly because US Latinos, taken as a group, aren't nearly as leftist as Latinos throughout the rest of the world. The Cuban community in Miami, for example, is as likely to vote Republican as it is to vote Democrat because those good folks know what real communism and socialism look like: they experienced it firsthand, and that's why they got the hell out of Cuba. Many of these Cuban-Americans look with horror at the creeping leftism overtaking so much of American culture, and they will do their utmost to preserve their hard-won (and well-deserved) freedoms. It's hard to see #BoycottGoya succeeding.

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*If you're imagining a hundred-foot-tall, solid wall with machine-gun towers every hundred feet, then you have no idea what the wall currently looks like. Several companies are quietly working on the wall, each building according its own standards and using its own resources (although always in concert with what the president wants). So Trump's border wall isn't a single, unified, standardized thing; it's a patchwork of different styles of barrier. Note, too, that "putting up the wall" entails shoring up barriers that have been in place along the border since before Trump took office. Wherever fencing might be found, for example, better fencing is being put up. It's also important to realize that there are parts of the US-Mexico border where no wall is necessary. In such rough terrain, no plans have been made to build sections of the wall; that would be a waste of money, time, and effort. Trump has quietly done an end-run around Congress (especially the recalcitrant, Democrat-dominated House of Representatives) to get this project started. It is now entirely plausible that the wall will be finished by the end of Trump's second term. If all you read and listen to are mainstream-media sources, you'll have no idea that any of this has been going on right under your nose.