On March 21, 1962, Glen Bell opened the first Taco Bell restaurant at 7112 Firestone Boulevard in Downey, California, adapting the taco, a traditional Mexican street food, into a standardized fast food product with a limited menu and rapid preparation system. Bell had experimented with Mexican-inspired fast food at earlier restaurants in the San Bernardino area before developing the Taco Bell concept that combined American expectations for speed and consistency with simplified versions of Mexican dishes. The Downey Taco Bell launched a chain that would profoundly shape how non-Mexican Americans understood and consumed Mexican food, raising complex questions about cultural appropriation, culinary authenticity, and the commercialization of ethnic cuisine.

Taco Bell's commercialization of Mexican food became a central concern in Chicano poetry, with poets like Rodolfo Acuña and Lorna Dee Cervantes using the chain as a symbol of cultural co-optation and the commodification of Mexican identity for white American consumption. The gap between authentic Mexican cuisine and Taco Bell's version provided a powerful metaphor in border poetry for the broader experience of cultural appropriation and transformation, a theme that poets from Jimmy Santiago Baca to Juan Felipe Herrera have explored in verses that contrast the richness of traditional foodways with the sterility of their commercial imitations.