This Hispanic Heritage Month will be celebrated amid growing tension over hate messages toward Hispanics or Latinos in the United States, mainly immigrants.
Hate crimes and discrimination can occur in different ways, some are violent, others are verbal, such as the messages launched by some Republican candidates seeking votes on November 8.
According to civil rights advocates, xenophobic messages can generate a scene of violence and seem like a kind of “permission” to attack Hispanics or Latinoss, as happened in the shooting in El Paso, Texas, in 2019, a year before the end of the government of the former president donald trumpwho described Mexicans as “rapists” and “criminals” during his campaign and promoted severe immigration policies, including acts of coercion against Mexico.
Also in 2019, Kurt Madsen, 53, demanded a pressure washer from some Hispanic construction workers, but being responsible for the equipment, the employees refused, unleashing Madsen’s fury, who took a lawn mower and attacked one of his the workers, while shouting racist and xenophobic phrases.
In an attempt to help him, another worker lunged at Madsen, who knocked him out with a couple of teeth. Two people who were passing by stopped to help and managed to subdue the aggressor while the police arrived. Madsen was sentenced to 540 days in prison for “charges stemming from a hate crime” after a judicial process that ended in April 2022, according to documents from the Department of Justice.
“There is no denying the fact that we face a rise in hate crimes in this country”, recognized the deputy attorney for Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke. “We have seen hate-fueled violence on our streets, in our stores, our schools and our places of worship. These attacks on people based on their race, national origin, religion, gender, or sexual orientation are unacceptable and have no place in our society.”
Deputy Attorney General Clarke’s words were expressed at the Civil Rights Symposium of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of West Virginia, where she also spoke about the different ways in which hate crimes against minorities occur in the United States. including Latinos.
He recalled that his office filed a lawsuit in Texas to stop Senate Bill 1, which affects the rights of black and Latino voters to vote absentee, including preventing them from receiving help when they decide to vote in person.
In Galveston, Texas, redistricting plans that deny Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates were challenged, Clarke said.
He added that in Arizona there was a lawsuit against HB 2492, which imposes numerous illegal restrictions on voter registration.
Other similar lawsuits have occurred in Florida, Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota, he recalled.
According to the latest FBI report, from 2020, 61.8 percent of hate crimes are racially or ethnically motivated.
Latinos are among the main victims, but what the FBI report makes clear is that racial and ethnic divisions are causing attacks from various angles, including against whites, who rank second among the most attacked, after the black people.
About the attackers, the majority are white with almost four times (3,823) with respect to black aggressors and six times that of Hispanics or Latinos. That is to say, the aggressions motivated by racial hatred do not know race or ethnicity, but there is a tendency towards perpetrators.
Immigrant and civil rights advocates warned this week of violent consequences for the “nativist” message and “for hate” of some Republicans, as part of their electoral strategy.
They highlighted how “white nationalist” conspiracies and rhetoric about so-called “replacement” and “invasion” have fueled dangerous situations in the United States.
“On the eve of what I call an open war on migrants and an intentionally distorted immigration narrative, our southern border has been infused with racism and white supremacy,” said Fernando Garcia, executive director of Border Network. for Human Rights. (BNHR), a community coalition working in counties along the Mexican border.
Juanita Monsalve, senior marketing manager and creative director of the United We Dream Action organization, lamented that there are Latino candidates among Republicans who spread this rhetoric, describing, for example, as “extreme right-wing Latinas” to Monica De La Cruz and Mayra Floreswho are running for Congress in Texas.
There are other candidates, such as Blake Masters, a senator from Arizona, who launch campaign messages without hindrance: “We are going to put an end to this invasion”. He won the Republican Party primary election.
“Senate candidates in states with large Latino and immigrant populations are pushing the dangerous ‘Great Replacement Theory,’” Monsalve warned.
For academic Carlos Aguasaco, tenured professor of Latin American cultural studies and director in charge of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at City College of the City University of New York, these types of messages signify a setback in the fight for civil rights.
“Hate speech against migrants and the theory of ‘invasion’ correspond to systems of populist articulation by politicians seeking to distract attention from their own contradictions. By ‘blaming’ the other for all the problems, hegemonic identity is idealized and segregation is presented as a utopia of the past to which failed social groups should return”, he exposes. “This is a great setback in the issue of civil rights, because in the same way it is possible to prohibit the female vote and the right of women to be elected. The implications are serious at all levels.”
Actions against the dissemination of messages of racial or ethnic hatred and against immigrants -who are mostly Latinos- have the President’s Government on alert Joe Biden who, together with civil organizations, promote some actions to try to counteract this problem.
This Thursday, the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month, President Biden will host the United We Stand Summit, an effort for Americans of all races, religions, regions, political affiliations and lifestyles come together to help heal “the soul of our nation,” the White House said.
“Unfortunately, the Latino community, as well as many other minority and religious communities, have been victims of deadly gun violence time and time again,” said Sindy Benavides, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). “As a civil rights and social justice organization, LULAC applauds the White House for bringing this issue to the forefront and recognizing that government must take a leadership role in addressing domestic extremism in all its forms.”
Source: La Opinion
