Latinos on edge after rampages, workplace raids
ALBUQUERQUE — When Michelle Otero arrived at an art show featuring MexicanAmerican women, the first thing she did was scan the room. Two exits. One security guard.
Then she thought to herself: If a shooter bursts in, how do my husband and I get out of here alive?
Otero, who is Mexican American and Albuquerque’s poet laureate, had questioned even attending the crowded event at the National Hispanic Cultural Center a day after 22 people were killed in a shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart.
That shooting and the July 28 attack in Gilroy killed nearly two dozen Latinos. The violence has some Latinos looking over their shoulders, avoiding speaking Spanish in public and seeking out escape routes amid fears they could be next.
A huge immigration raid of Mississippi poultry plants on Thursday that rounded up 680 mostly Latino workers, leaving behind crying children searching for their detained parents, also has unnerved the community.
The events come against the backdrop of racially charged episodes that include thencandidate Donald Trump referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” Trump, as president, referring to migrants coming to the U.S. as “an invasion” and viral videos of white people chastising Latinos for speaking Spanish in public.
“It’s almost like we’re hitting a climax of some kind,” said Jennifer Garcia, a University of New Mexico student originally from Mexico. “Some people, especially our elders, don’t even want to leave the house or speak Spanish.”
Latinos around the country have taken to social media to describe being on edge, worrying that even standing in line outside a food truck or wearing a Mexican national soccer team jersey might make them a target.
Although the motive in the Gilroy shooting is unknown, authorities say the El Paso shooting suspect, who is white, confessed to targeting people of Mexican descent.
Alexandro Jose Gradilla, a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at Cal State Fullerton, said he and his wife, also a professor, “know anyone can look up a class schedule and start shooting.”
“White supremacists don’t see the difference between immigrants to fourthgeneration Latinos,” he said. “They see brown.”