VivirLatino

Excuse me if I have little sympathy for parents at a meeting at Patchogue-Medford High School, where the accused in the racist hate driven murder in the death of Marcelo Lucero, especially one who yelled :

“What are we doing to make sure the media doesn’t grab our kids to be interviewed?” and then many parents screamed and confronted the Newsday reporter–who was escorted out even though she was given permission to attend.

I have little sympathy because these parents and so many others like them were not and still are not screaming the way I and other Latinos have been screaming for years: “What are we doing to make sure that my neighbor, lover, father of my child, tio, hijo, familia and comunidad are not grabbed to be killed.”

Marcelo Lucero’s story, sadly is not a new one. It is one of many instances of hate fueled by anti-immigrant policy and rhetoric coming from both ends of the political spectrum. The fact that Marcelo is another Mannuel Mayi is the reason why I take no issue with calling Marcelo an immigrant, while some Latino blogs have taken issue with that labeling. When Marcelo was targeted for death, the killers didn’t ask to see his papers or engage in conversation to hear if he spoke with an accent. He was tagged a Latino which has been made to equal immigrant which has been made to equal not having the right to exist. It didn’t matter what Latin American country Marcelo came from. It mattered that he was “other”, the way my own children can be othered by the color of their skins and their names.

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