Earlier this month, Milbet Del Cid used social media to put customers of her Guatemalan restaurant on alert. Soon, she would have to make sure they were vaccinated to let them in.
Almost immediately, the criticism poured in.
“If you’re obligated to ask,” one customer wrote in response, “then we won’t eat there anymore, so there.”
Come Monday, Los Angeles’ vaccine mandate will compel Del Cid to ask people for proof of vaccination. She can either enforce the law and deny some people entry into her restaurant or she can violate it, which Del Cid said she won’t do.
Either way, it won’t be fun.
“If I don’t let customers eat,” she said, “who’s going to lose that business? Me.”
But the stakes are too high for Del Cid to back down: Latinos have been infected and killed by the coronavirus in numbers above most any other group. And most of her customers are Latino.
At her Amalia’s Restaurant on the edge of Koreatown, Del Cid has repeatedly tried to debunk false claims about the vaccine. She said one woman told her it contained a microchip, men have said it caused fertility problems, and some religious customers even tried to link it to the “mark of the beast.”
“People are wrongly informed,” she said. “I’m afraid a lot of Latinos aren’t vaccinated.”
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