The lovely golden taco image is the work of talented San Antonio artist Regina Morales. Thanks, Regina! 

Oh, Monopoly, the innocuous cardboard Trojan horse that has been delivering the gift of discord and distrust into the hearts of children and adults alike since 1935. Not just a few owe many fond memories to thee: tables vehemently overturned in righteous fury; agonized howls of cruel betrayal; flurries of make-believe bank notes filling the air like the fluttering confetti of war; friendships shattered; families destroyed - all for the simulated thrill of usurping the quality of life from those around you. Unquestionably, the most American of board games.

Now, in that same American spirit, Monopoly is holding an election, allowing the peasantry to vote for their reductionist representation from a kiddie-pool of groomed, pre-selected candidates. With the weight of our civic responsibility squeezing us like a lemon-press of patriotic guilt, we would be remiss not to carefully ponder the ideals our gamepiece must embody. How best do we choose? What makes a miniaturized banal commodity into a champion?

Among the sixty-four knick-knacks, bygones, and contraptions arrayed, the majority either attempt to capture the essence of our identity or are indispensable to our modern way of life. The quintessential trumpet of American jazz. The surfboard of California state of mind. The monster truck of dollar-beer budget sports enthusiasts. The Tyrannosaurus of Utah’s sole contribution to science. The hashtag, the common citizen’s lifeline to visibility and relevance. There’s even a cowboy hat and boot. A thread of thematic commonality emerges: Americana.

How apropos to have trophies of capitalism chasing each other about the board of a game with the chief objective of burying each other in destitute poverty so one may live with the essential dignity of owning the Section 8 housing they so graciously maintain for the losers while converting all remaining residences into hotels!

Curiously, a few of the options make more dubious gladiators in the American Dream of prosperity attrition than others. There’s a penguin. A hare and a Galapagos tortoise - not even an American tortoise, mind you. A stack of thick, big-wordy-looking books. Inexplicably, what appears to be a ceolacanth. Surely there must be more worthy contestants.

My fellow Americans, I submit for your consideration the taco.

Why the taco, you might ask, though I certainly hope you do not. Why not the taco?

From Albaquerque to Albany, who among you have not had their quality of life improved by the humble taco?

Who among you, if presented with a rubber duckie in one hand and a bean and cheese in the other, would choose the rubber duckie?

Who among you has been saved more times by a life-preserver from drowning in water than saved by a taco truck from drowning in alcohol?

Show me the one who yearns for a plate of horse-meat over a plate of carne guisada.

Those who have made more use of a wagon wheel than a tortilla, step forward.

If any have cause to deny the taco before the bunny slipper a chance to take its place among the holy icons of this nation, speak now.

If for no other reason, consider not the taco upon the merits of a food, but upon the merits of a people.

Mexican-Americans are a vital stripe of our citizenry whose contributions have been too long neglected in the national dialogue. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be other ethnocentric ambassadors among the candidates; but then again, theirs isn’t exactly a niche culture - at least 38.5 million self-identify as Mexican-American, and that's only the number that chooses to self-identify. If you want a kolache on the list, feel free to write your own petition.

A vote for a taco is a vote for a people that worked the soils within our borders and laid many of the foundations our nation built itself upon nearly 100 years before the Mayflower hit dirt - not to mention, the taco is just as much the child of their indigenous ancestors that stewarded our land thousands of years before. And in the American south and west, before roads and rails brought a reliable logistic of supply from the east, it was this tradition of cuisine from which the taco emerged that sustained Anglo settlers.

Thus, when it comes to a institutional past-time that encapsulates and dramatizes the 300-year-old American narrative of, if not subjugating your neighbors entirely as an economic conquistador, struggling to eek out an existence underneath one without getting your piece coldly removed from the board and retiring to the bathroom to brood, surely everything our countrymen of the southern persuasion have given of themselves to our national identity deserve representation through a comically generalized and mildly stereotypical die-cast token.

And so it falls to the taco, the symbol of Mexican-America our country so loves to celebrate, even if they don’t want to celebrate the people and culture that birthed it

Besides, who built those little houses and hotels, really? Shouldn’t they share in a piece of that pie?