Woman confronts man who criticized her for speaking Spanish at Cracker Barrel

The video is starting to make the rounds on social media in El Paso.

Jasmin Nolan and her mother were at the Cracker Barrel on the West Side on Friday. They were having a conversation in Spanish.

Nolan said she was confronted by a man who said “This is America. Speak English.”

Nolan said she and the man started arguing for about five minutes. After that she took out her cell phone and recorded her confrontation with him.

“Why can’t you speak English,” the man said, at the start of the video.

Nolan responded: “Oh I can. I can speak English and Spanish. I’m bilingual and in this country I can speak whatever language I want.”

The video lasts about two and a half minutes. It was posted on Nolan’s personal Facebook page, and has garnered more than 3,000 views.

“At the moment it was very upsetting,” Nolan told ABC-7. “These things happen all over the U.S. but just the fact that it happened here in my hometown — we’re a border city — it’s a very bilingual city. It was just infuriating.”

ABC-7 has chosen not to show the man’s face in the video, because there is no clear way to track him down to get his side of the story.

In the video, the man said he’s an army veteran and points out the fact that he fought for his country. Nolan’s husband is currently deployed in Korea.

“My husband doesn’t speak Spanish. We come from very different cultures. He’s from Wisconsin,” Nolan said. “He was very proud of me for standing up to [the man in the video]. He thought that this man was completely wrong.”

Nolan said that the man was drinking a beer in one of the rocking chairs at the Cracker Barrel.

“You’re not even supposed to be having that open container in here,” Nolan said in the video.

The man responded: “Oh really? Would you prefer me to whip out my medical card and smoke marijuana?”

Nolan tells ABC-7 that after she stopped recording the video, her and her mother decided to leave the restaurant.

ABC-7 reached out to Cracker Barrel about the incident.

We received this statement from Janella Escobar, the director of corporate communications:

We at Cracker Barrel are governed by our mission of Pleasing People. In the spirit of those two simple words, we operate within the ideals of fairness, mutual respect and equal treatment of all people. These ideals are at the core of our corporate culture and evident in our stores. We respect all individuals regardless of who they are or what they believe and we require the same mutual respect amongst our employees, guests and vendors.