‘God Has Never Failed Us’: How A Christian Business Owner Lost Everything For Refusing To Bend The Knee To BLM

Juan-Elias “Juany” Riesco watched his city explode and his family’s empanada restaurant collapse during the summer of 2020, when riots broke out across the nation in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Riesco was 29, and unlike many small-business owners in Chicago, he never bowed to Black Lives Matter. He also never lost his faith.

The second son of immigrant parents, Riesco had helped transform his family’s tiny grocery story on the city’s west side into a popular restaurant. Players for the Chicago Bulls were known to frequent Nini’s Deli for its Cuban-Mexican fusion dishes, inspired by Mexico, where Riesco’s mother, Julie, was born, and his father’s homeland of Cuba.

“We would serve them the same exact way we would serve the single mom who lives down the street,” said Riesco, noting Yelp named Nini’s the highest-rated Restaurant in Chicago and Illinois. The family’s success led to brand deals with Nike and Adidas, glowing praise from local media outlets, and even made Riesco something of a local celebrity who delivered keynote presentations at Apple Store openings.

The restaurant’s runaway success came to a halt in the summer of 2020, he said, when Nini’s was the “only business that didn’t make Black Lives Matter oriented posts within moments of everything happening.” According to The Daily Wire, Riesco said that he was hesitant to endorse the social movement immediately because he was concerned about its tenets not being in line with biblical values.

“I definitely needed some time to pray on it,” He said. “I was getting a lot of pressure to make a post about Black Lives Matter and how I stood with George Floyd and stood against the police. And as a born-again Christian, I do not stand against the police. And I also do not stand arbitrarily for any political movement just because people are telling me to.”

Riesco shared a statement about how valuable all life is, despite the fact that other businesses had posted black squares on their social media accounts days before. “all lives are made in God’s image.” Local social justice activists were furious at the statement and drove his family out, including out of Windy City.

Riesco still had the faith of his Christian parents and the solid stock that his parents passed on to him. Riesco’s father, Jose, immigrated to the United States from communist Cuba after serving a five-year prison sentence for helping his neighbors hide their guns from the Castro regime. He later married Riesco’s mother, who had immigrated to the Chicago area from Mexico alongside her parents and siblings, and the couple earned a living through the small grocery store they managed underneath their apartment.

Jose, Riesco’s older brother, and Jose learned from their father, that communism, which was openly Marxist Black Lives Matter, is a dead end.

“Even before my family was Christian, I had always operated under the principle of ‘better dead than red,’” He said. “Better to be dead than to be a communist.”

Juan and Jose were both troubled teens despite all the lessons learned from their childhood. Both Juan and Jose gravitated to petty crimes and joining the wrong crowd. Juan is open about his past homosexuality. He moved to San Francisco to be with the right crowd. But when his parents threatened to stop supporting him unless he moved back home, and after Jose’s profound religious conversion, things changed for both Riesco boys.

Within months, Riesco was able to, just like his older brother and kneel before Jesus. He was quick to start using biblical principles in every area of his life, including the family’s business.

“I started to apply Christian ethics to our business,” He remembered. “And I believe God honored that because I was seeking Him first, ultimately, and allowing the things that I was learning through the reading of the Bible to influence my workplace. The only reason why we were good servants is because we believe Christ first served us, and so therefore we would gladly and willfully serve our community or whoever came into our business.”

None of that mattered to the mob demanding atonement from Riesco’s family for a killing committed by a Minneapolis police officer who was already under arrest and would later be convicted of murder. The crowd demanded “total submission,” Riesco recalled, “If not in person, then via social media.”

“Many times the people who have these worldviews are insecure in their spiritual identity,” He said. “We know that the Bible says ‘There is no rest for the wicked.’ We know they will never find that rest they’re searching for, no matter how many likes, retweets, or positive and reaffirming comments that they get.”

Beyond the negative comments and threats of death that Riesco received via social media,