LAKEWOOD, Colo. — Last week, I was in Colorado to give a speech at the University of Denver about my career covering Mexican food in the United States. My hosts asked where I wanted to dine the night before my talk.

The choice was obvious, even if it surprised them: Casa Bonita.

It's one of the most infamous Mexican restaurants in the country, a sprawling complex in a run-down suburban shopping plaza lampooned since its 1974 opening as everything from a Mexican Disneyland to a cultural hate crime for its forever fiesta atmosphere. The place seemingly closed for good during the pandemic, an aging relic in an era when people didn't need to imagine themselves in Mexico for an evening because Mexicans were now all around them.

But in 2023, "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone reopened the place because the officially designated Lakewood historical landmark was a childhood favorite of theirs. They spent $40 million to return Casa Bonita to its heyday, down to freshly scrubbed fake palm fronds and restored vintage tilework while vowing to make the food long nicknamed "Casa No-Eat-A" actually edible.

I'm more of a "Simpsons" fan, but I've always appreciated "South Park" for consistently arguing throughout its 27-year run that indiscriminately deporting Mexicans is not just morally and economically wrong but foolish.

This season, Parker and Stone have upped their attacks on anti-Mexican hate by playing its trademark satire mostly straight. They've depicted Fox News as MAGA sycophants, President Donald Trump as a lawsuit-happy despot and JD Vance as ... well, JD Vance. ICE is shown as a department so out of control that it detains Dora the Explorer and so incompetent that they hire the show's skeletal counselor Mr. Mackey, who quickly gets promoted after helping to raid heaven.

At a time when Trump's deportation Leviathan is doing everything possible to cast undocumented immigrants, many of them Mexicans, as the worst of the worst, "South Park" is exposing their lies while its owners are attempting a reclamation project on a long-reviled Mexican restaurant. How could I not pay my respects to Parker and Stone's combo plate of pro-Mexican PR by making a pilgrimage to Casa Bonita?

I met my hosts at the restaurant's entrance, made to look like a pueblo plaza complete with a huge water fountain, towering church steeple and a pink exterior better suited for a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol. A line already extended out the door. Reservations are at such a premium at Casa Bonita that we couldn't sneak in an extra person into our party of six.

Casa Bonita can hold more than 2,000 people at one time and it seemed that's how many people stopped by the night I went. Every 10 minutes or so, a gong rang and an announcer proclaimed a new act was set to start — a magic show, a mariachi, a wandering gorilla. Near the exit was a giant statue of Cartman, the "South Park" character long used by Parker and Stone to depict America at its most crass. Here, he's an awestruck kid looking at a table of enchiladas, burritos and tacos. It's a callback to a famous 2003 episode that introduced Casa Bonita to a national audience that couldn't believe such a restaurant actually existed.

The food was OK, alas — a passable brisket burrito, chalky queso, insipid guacamole. When the best thing at a restaurant is its chips, the menu has problems. But as I looked around, I realized that Casa Bonita's food was secondary to the scene. What mattered was that for a couple of hours, everything and anything Mexican was cool.

Diners — white, Black, Latino, Asian, Muslim — cheered as divers twisted and turned off a 30-foot fake waterfall into a small pool every 20 minutes in an homage to Acapulco's famous clavadistas. Patrons laughed at a corny but cute puppet show starring Casa Bonita's dishes, from a chirpy hard-shelled taco to a coquettish sopaipilla. I made my way through a small maze, admired random stalagmites and read a small display about Casa Bonita's history that praised the life story of its head chef, Mexican immigrant Dana Rodriguez, as one of "resilience and determination."

There was nothing patronizing about how Casa Bonita depicted Mexicans — no garish gifts, no mock Spanish. No strolling waiters in ponchos placing sombreros on unsuspecting diners, no fake mustaches. Adults walked around with the same smiles and joie de vivre as kids.

As the quick dinner my hosts and I were supposed to have at Casa Bonita turned into two hours, I thought of another Hollywood rude boy turned amigo of Mexicans: Jimmy Kimmel. His eponymous ABC late-night show was temporarily suspended after he attempted in a monologue to tie the suspected killer of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk to MAGA, sparking threats of retribution from the Trump regime. The Brooklyn native first became famous in the late 1990s with Comedy Central programs such as "The Man Show" and "Crank Yankers," where Latinos were largely depicted as sexpots, drunkards or dimwits.

On "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" its host did the opposite. One of the guest hosts over the summer was Mexican actor and "Andor" star Diego Luna, who spoke forcefully against the ICE raids that terrorized Los Angeles this summer and treated his audience one night to free burritos from Orange County's beloved Burritos La Palma. Joining Luna in the fun was Guillermo Rodriguez, an immigrant from the Mexican state of Zacatecas who started on the show as a parking lot security guard but long ago graduated to Kimmel's hombre on the street.

While wokosos always accused Kimmel of using Rodriguez — better known to fans as simply "Guillermo" — for laughs (conveniently forgetting that the laconic, paunchy sidekick has been an archetype of Latino humor since the days of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza), regular Latinos loved the guy because he's one of us. That's why my social media feed was filled with concern about what would happen to Guillermo if Kimmel were to lose his show for good and why Latinos were especially outraged at ABC benching the two.

If Kimmel could join the "South Park" bros in embracing Mexicans, then any bro can.

After vowing not to buy any souvenirs, I bought a Casa Bonita sticker for my laptop and a shot glass. I could've spent hours more there but my hosts had classes to teach the following day. We stopped by a wishing well, where a worker handed me a token to throw down to an animated genie who promised to grant my desires.

"No more migra," I said, loud enough to draw a weary smile from my hosts.

"Oh. I'm sorry," the genie proclaimed after a short pause. "That's impossible."

Thanks for nothing, 2025. "South Park," save us!

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(Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.)

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