VivirLatino

I was lucky enough to catch blogger Alisa Valdes Rodriguez’s appearance on Anderson Cooper 360 the other night. It’s so great to see bloggers participating in the debate over immigration within the context of mainstream media, which seems to be doing more to divide than unite. Alisa told it like it is with regard to the media’s portrayal of this issue:

…you’ve also got tens of thousands of undocumented Irish in Boston. You’ve got 100,000 Nigerians living in and around Houston. And my point is if this is truly an issue, if immigration is the issue — illegal immigration, you should show a variety of faces. Because the way that the American media are covering the issue right now, it’s becoming an anti-Latino story.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen stories that equate Mexican, illegal, Latino, Hispanic, using those words interchangeably and also using them to mean Spanish speaking. Where in my state of New Mexico, which is a majority Hispanic state, only 14 percent of the people speak Spanish at all.

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