Latino merchants not feeling flu’s bite

A recent national survey found that nearly one in five people has avoided Mexican restaurants and stores in response to the swine flu outbreak.

But a similar polling — albeit unofficial — of Hispanic merchants and leaders shows it’s pretty much business as usual in metro Atlanta.

From Brito Supermarket to the Buford Highway Farmers Market in Doraville, most vendors aren’t seeing a decline in customers.

Julio Penaranda, general manager of the colorful Plaza Fiesta on Buford Highway, thinks there hasn’t been a backlash against Mexicans in part because of the metro community’s diversity. Plus, he said, the virus, also called H1N1, hasn’t affected a huge number of people in the region.

If there has been a backlash, it’s been directed at hog producers and meat markets, even though the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has emphatically stated that eating pork products is safe.

Bill Smith, of Smith-Healy Farms Inc. in Statesboro, said his farm produces about 40,000 hogs a year that are sold to packing plants.

The way demand affects his farm, he said, is through price, which is measured in cents per pound. Since the H1N1 outbreak began, prices have dropped from the mid-50s to the high 30s.

“When the price drops 25 percent in a 10-day period, it makes it extremely difficult,” he said.

Tony Lee, manager of the Buford Highway Farmers Market, says pork sales are down. “On the first day of the flu, we had a customer bring back pork he had bought,” Lee said.

Since then, people have called to find out where the pork comes from. Almost all of it, he said, is American.

“Now I think it’s OK,” Lee said, adding that he believes any furor over pork has eased.

The same problem Lee experienced is taking place at the Brito Supermarket on Buford Highway, which is popular with Hispanics, many of them Mexicans.

Manager Josuë Armenta said customers abandoned pork products as soon as swine flu hit prime-time news.

Speaking in Spanish, Armenta, a native of Guerrero, Mexico, said it could take one to two months for pork sales to rebound, or until customers are sure that nothing will happen if they eat pork.

Despite the slump in pork, the markets appear to be faring well.

On Thursday, around noon, a steady flow of customers poured into the Buford Highway Farmers Market, which offers a mix of Asian, Hispanic and other exotic foods.

Stephanie Mercado-Bradford of Covington was loading her car with groceries. She said the swine flu “wasn’t even an issue” when she and her partner came to the market.

Meanwhile, the swine flu, which made its first significant impact in Mexico, hardly made a dent in metro Atlanta celebrations of Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday often feted in the United States.

Attendance actually rose at a Cinco de Mayo festival downtown Sunday. Sam Terrazas of Viva 105.7 FM said about 50,000 people came to the station’s Fiesta Atlanta this year, about 5,000 more than last year.

René Diaz, who owns Diaz Foods and Lime Taqueria and Tequila Bar in Smyrna, said Cinco de Mayo, which was Tuesday, was the restaurant’s “best night ever.”

The eatery served about 500 customers, he said. He came to eat, but he and his wife ended up hosting and busing tables.

But not everything has gone smoothly for Latinos, particularly Mexicans, since the H1N1 virus outbreak.

Some conservative commenters and bloggers have used the flu as evidence that the United States should get tougher on illegal immigrants.

Conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage told his listeners “illegal aliens are carriers of the new strain of human-swine-avian flu from Mexico.”

Those kinds of comments probably played a part in the results of a recent survey conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health that found that 17 percent of more than 1,000 people questioned have responded to the swine flu outbreak by avoiding Mexican restaurants or stores.

Penaranda, the general manager at Plaza Fiesta, said he has not seen a decrease in business at the shopping center, where about 15 percent of the customers are non-Latino.

The only visible change, he said, is that more merchants, who are largely Latino, have additional hand sanitizer gels.

“The Latino community is a little bit more touchy-feely,” he said. “Whenever we say ‘hi,’ not only do we shake hands but we hug. You don’t see that as much anymore. Everyone is being a little more cautious.

“If people do shake hands, they go ahead and lube up with the gel before and after.”