How The Latinx Community Is Responding To Racism

With David Folkenflik

A roundtable of Latina analysts on the shooting in El Paso, racism and domestic terrorism in America now.

Guests

Alexa Ura, demographics reporter for the Texas Tribune. She covers the intersection of politics and race. (@alexazura)

Esmeralda Bermudez, writes narrative stories about the lives of Latinos for the Los Angeles Times. In 2016, she was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. (@LATBermudez)

Janet Murguía, president and CEO of UnidosUS, the largest national Latinx civil rights and advocacy organization in the country. (@JMurguia_Unidos)

From The Reading List

Los Angeles Times: “For Latinos, El Paso is a devastating new low in a Trump era” — “Working with immigrants for 30 years, Pablo Alvarado has lived through decades of antagonism toward Latinos. It came in political waves that washed over California, Arizona and other states. There was Proposition 187 in the 1990s, the Minuteman protests, ‘America’s toughest sheriff’ Joe Arpaio and his hard-line policing tactics.

“Nothing compares to the reality Latinos are facing today, Alvarado said.

“‘It’s a destructive moment for this country,’ said the executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network. ‘This is the first time when I feel as if our adversaries have declared war against our immigrant community.’

“The massacre of 20 people Saturday by a man who traveled 650 miles to a Walmart in El Paso, reportedly with the intention of shooting ‘as many Mexicans as possible,’ marks what appears to be one of the deadliest hate crimes ever against Latinos.”

The Texas Tribune: “A racist manifesto and a shooter terrorize Hispanics in El Paso and beyond” — “On Sunday night, as the sun dipped behind the blue-hued Franklin Mountains, this grieving border city telegraphed a message.

“The community had been violently knocked down by an act of what federal law enforcement has catalogued as domestic terrorism. As El Pasoans gathered by the thousands a day later over the brown dirt of a baseball diamond and out onto the adjoining football field for a community vigil, they were distraught and shaken.

“But they also spoke words of hope, of defiance in the face of hate and of a determination to write their own manifesto.

“‘One of love, of tenderness, of inclusivity, of generosity, of compassion, of hope, of justice — all that makes El Paso and the borderlands truly great,’ Dylan Corbett, director of the Hope Border Institute, proclaimed in a combination of Spanish and English to cheers from the crowd at Ponder Park, just a few blocks from the site where 20 people were massacred and more than two dozen others were injured at the hands of a white gunman. Two of them died Monday at local hospitals.”

Vox: “Trump described an imaginary ‘invasion’ at the border 2 dozen times in the past year” — “A man drove more than 10 hours to a Walmart in the Texas border city of El Paso Saturday, reportedly intending to kill Latinx people and immigrants. Minutes before he shot dozens of people, a racist, xenophobic manifesto appeared on the 8chan online forum, warning readers of a ‘Hispanic invasion’ of Texas. Federal officials believe the shooter wrote it.

“The language used to describe Mexican Americans and Latinx immigrants was shocking — not just because of the hatred and racism it revealed, but because it was similar to the language repeated by the president of the United States.

“Lawmakers and critics have pointed out that the shooter may have been imitating Trump’s rhetoric about an ‘invasion’ of ‘people’ and ‘illegal immigrants.’ During a recent campaign rally in the Florida panhandle, for example, Trump used the word ‘invasion’ seven times in less than a minute.”

Adam Waller produced this hour for broadcast.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org. [Copyright 2019 NPR]