I’m feeling overwhelmed with anger and sadness right now. I am Looking at three separate open tabs on la Mala’putadora with three separate recent acts of violence and hates against Latinos in the U.S. and two of these incidents happened right here in NYC, where we are told that these things aren’t supposed to happen, where immigrants are loved and the melting pot is a warm, friendly hot tub.

One case that just came to my attention is from last year and I’m angered and saddened that I’m only learning of it now but also not surprised. How many people don’t know about Manny Mayi Jr. and that is a 19 year old struggle for justice. What these lives and losses of life also tell us is the way that one hate intersects with all hates, like in the case of Jose Sucuzhanay and how these crimes are connected to immigration “reform”. While organizations argue about how much criminalization is acceptable in order to say “si se hizo” in terms of an CIR bill, people are assaulted and then victimized again by a nation that pays lip service to to the idea of “and justice for all”.

In the early morning of Saturday, July 18, 2009 at the corner of Caton Ave. and Ocean Ave. in Brooklyn, two men attacked Ricardo Muñiz and Carmelo León with a wooden stick and a belt while calling them anti-gay epithets. Ricardo does not speak English so he gave the cops at the 70th precinct a written
testimony of what happened. Despite the fact that the testimony states that the attackers targeted Muñiz and León because of their sexual orientation, the NYPD failed to classify the incident as hate crime and, instead, charged Muñiz and León with assault. Muñiz is an undocumented immigrant. Deportation proceedings have been initiated
against him as a result of these events.