NEW YORK (AP) – For more than three decades, immigrant vendors have served up steaming homemade tacos, corn-husk tamales and other spicy fare next to a soccer field in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood.

The big green oval field resounds with the jubilant voices of the players, and the vendor area fills up every weekend with crowds who flock here from all over the Northeast to watch the games and get a homey, good-tasting meal for a couple bucks.

But the vendors now fear that they could lose their space as the result of a change in city food permit policy. In their feisty fashion, New Yorkers have organized a fierce campaign to keep a tiny piece of their big city as is – a colorful hangout at risk of going the way of gentrification in cities across America.

“The awesomeness that is Red Hook soccer tacos is now in peril,” screams the top of a protest blog. “Fight the power! Save the Soccer Tacos!” a foodie Web site proclaims.

At issue is the permit system that governs New York City’s food vendors.The vendors in Red Hook have been operating from May to October under temporary permits that for years were renewed every four weeks.

Earlier this month, New York’s Department of Parks decided the vendors will have to start following the concession regulations in place in other areas. That means they will have to submit formal bids for permanent licenses – as do vendors in other public areas like Central Park, where hot dog stand licenses can cost as much as $300,000.

The Red Hook vendors will be able to keep their permits until Labor Day, the Parks Department said. But after that, the department said, the vendors will have to bid for a permanent license.

The department did not say what prompted the change, but the vendors hope that ongoing talks between the two sides will resolve the impasse.

“This tiny piece of land means a lot to people,” said Cesar Fuentes, executive director of the Food Vendors Committee of Red Hook Park.

Immigrants have kicked soccer balls and taken bites of their native food here since a Guatemalan team started playing in Red Hook in the early 1970s – a ray of hope in a neighborhood then inundated with drugs and gang warfare.

At first, it was a spontaneous gathering with cookouts. Now, many of the vendors rely on the weekend stands as a major source of income, cashing in on the huge number of savvy urbanites flocking to the field for what they insist is the only authentic Latin American food around.

“I’m proud of this. It’s the only way I can make an honest living doing something I love,” said Roberto Lainez, once a farmer in El Salvador who washed dishes and did factory work after arriving in New York with his wife in 1976.

Carefully tending a cauldron of oil sizzling with deep-fried bananas, Lainez’s face radiates satisfaction and a quiet dignity. He’s the patriarch of three generations of his family who all work together by the soccer field on weekends.

The big draw at their stand is the pupusa – a corn-flour ball flattened into a disc stuffed in any of six ways, including cheese, pork and loroco, an edible flower from El Salvador’s sunny valleys.

Each pupusa is griddled for 8 to 10 minutes, until meltingly hot and crisp, with a side of cabbage slaw. At $1.75 apiece, they sell as fast as they’re baked.

The Lainez family also offers the most expensive item on the field – a $9 grilled steak, with any two of a dozen sides, from fried plantains to rice and beans. Roberto Lainez spends all week preparing the food for the weekend, and this is his main source of income, with his family putting in time for free.

“What the city wants is upsetting, because these are low-income families and this is extra income for many of them,” says daughter Janet Lainez, scanning the lineup of vendors.

But the city says the new rules will not doom the Red Hook vendors.

Parks officials emphasize that when the permits are opened up for bidding, the applications will be evaluated on more than dollar amounts, also considering such factors as what kinds of foods are sold, and the track record of the vendors.

As for what happens after Labor Day, Parks Department spokesman Philip Abramson said the department is looking at extending the current agreement that allows for temporary permits.

In the meantime, the situation has drawn the interest of some prominent people. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., whose constituency includes Red Hook, paid a recent visit to the field and declared, “These vendors are a Brooklyn treasure.” Celebrity chefs Aaron Sanchez and Anthony Bourdain have also praised their food.

The dispute also comes amid a huge transformation of the Red Hook neighborhood, a historic stretch of American waterfront. The once-gritty neighborhood is fast becoming chic, with artsy shops and galleries sprouting up in century-old brownstones. A new IKEA furniture store is going up nearby.

Vendor Carmen Rojas hopes a resolution over the permits can be worked out. She serves up empanadas – a semicircular patty with a meaty filling found in many diners, along with a ceviche of shrimp, octopus, squid and whitefish, with fresh lime juice, chopped cilantro, and green and red onion.

After only seven years in America, she calls her spot of the field under an Ecuadorean flag “this little piece of our country.”

As the sky rips open with rain, people huddle at a folding table, a growing water pool weighing down the tarp inches above their heads. Nothing can keep them from enjoying the big chorizo quesadillas just off the griddle served into their hands, topped by $2 worth of freshly-cut mango.

And the downpour can’t stop teams of red-shirted players from South America and yellow-clad youths from Eastern Europe, who keep kicking the ball fiercely across the green field.

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On the Net:

Save Soccer Tacos: http://savesoccertacos.blogspot.com

Department of Parks: http://www.nycgovparks.org

AP-ES-06-19-07 1454EDT