Latino actors, writers pen ‘letter of solidarity’ amid fears

Actresses America Ferrera and Eva Longoria are leading a group of more than 150 writers, artists and leaders who have written a public “letter of solidarity” to U.S. Latinos after the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, and an immigration raid in Mississippi.

The letter, published Friday in The New York Times and in a handful of Spanish-language newspapers, says the signers stand with U.S. Latinos who may feel “terrified, heartbroken and defeated by the barrage of attacks,” citing the shooting in El Paso, which targeted Hispanics, and another shooting in Gilroy, California. The two attacks killed nearly two dozen Latinos.

A huge immigration raid of Mississippi poultry plants this month that rounded up 680 mostly Latino workers, leaving behind crying children searching for their detained parents, also has unnerved some Hispanics.

“We have been smeared by political rhetoric and murdered in violent hate crimes. We have been separated from our families and have watched our children caged,” the letter said. “But, we will not be broken. We will not be silenced.”

The letter says such “indignities and cruelty” won’t diminish the contributions Latinos have made to the U.S., and it urged Hispanics to keep standing up to bigotry.

Signing the letter were some of the most important Latino figures in entertainment, art, literature and activism, including novelist Sandra Cisneros, Academy Award-winning actress Rita Moreno, civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, singer-actress Jennifer Lopez and Tony Award-winning composer Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The violence has some Hispanics looking over their shoulders, avoiding speaking Spanish in public, and seeking out escape routes amid fears they could be next.

The shootings and the raid come