Vault Bar in Fayetteville serves a pepper-and-tequila cocktail called the Poblano Escobar, a play on the name of Pablo Escobar. That’s a pun meant to be funny, yes, says Adam Franky, who will graduate from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a master’s degree in political science at the end of the fall semester.
But to the people of Latin America and of Latin American descent, the murdering founder of the Medellin cocaine cartel, which was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 25,000 people, is nothing to joke about.
Franky went to the Vault to try to explain why naming a drink after a Colombian narcoterrorist whose victims included thousands of men, women and children, not to mention the assassination of some 600 police officers, might be offensive to Fayetteville’s Latinx community. He asked that the bar considering a new name for the drink. He had no luck with the bartenders, so he wrote the manager, who said the owners didn’t want to talk to Franky and weren’t going to change the name of the drink.
On Monday, the Times called one of the owners, architect Christopher Baribeau of Modus Studios, to ask why the name couldn’t be changed. Baribeau declined to answer questions, saying he was at his office and not the bar, and that he would get with the other owners to see if they wanted to respond to the Times. Apparently, they did not; no response has been received.
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The Poblano Escobar was invented by a bartender in Los Angeles.
Franky, whose mother was from Colombia, said others at the university are unhappy with the bar’s insensitivity. “Nobody would name a drink after Dylan Roof,” he said. Franky sent this statement to the Times:
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This seemingly innocuous name is much more than just a bad pun. It is one example of a long pattern of a flagrant lack of empathy toward Hispanic Americans in the United States. Jokes about our oppressive history delegitimizes our suffering and undermines the reason why many Hispanic Americans migrated to the United States in the first place. When you whitewash terror in Latin America, it is easy to call migrants “economic opportunists” instead of recognizing them as people in need humanitarian refuge. It is on this foundation of total apathy that anti-immigration policy is constructed in the United States. This is Hispanic discrimination. By naming drinks after Hispanic terrorists who killed thousands of innocent people, the Vault is complicit in the desecration of Hispanic history and the delegitimization of our suffering. The name must change.
UPDATE: Baribeau called tonight to let the Times know the owners had responded. The email, sent yesterday, had gone into spam.
Vault has changed the name to the Poblano Picasso. From Baribeau et al:
Thanks for reaching out. We see how this could be seen as offensive after Mr. Franky first emailed our bar. We have never marketed this drink online prior to, or after his complaint. We changed the cocktail name to Poblano Picasso. We haven’t had a reprint of the menus until this week, as we didn’t have the additional budget for the unforeseen cost of reprints (we have to use single use menus during COVID-19) … all while we are trying to keep our heads above water as a service industry business during a global pandemic.
We would like for you to acknowledge that we are a small, sub-500-square-foot, family-owned bar, creating some of the best cocktails in the state. We believe Mr. Franky’s efforts would be best directed to a more impactful area, such as the many TV shows, movies and books that glorify the Escobars, or really anything else that causes less harassment to our staff while they are trying to do their jobs that, thankfully, we can still employ them to do.
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Bar ignores plea to drop name of terrorist from drink. UPDATE: Name changed - Arkansas Times
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