We will be invisible no more…

During rallies/protests in Los Angeles, I read about people who are offended or concerned when Mexican or Central American flags are flown. The action is often perceived as a lack of allegiance to the U.S. Among some Latinos, the concern is that this may draw the wrong attention, and cause further problems for our community. Are we naive to believe that draping ourselves in red, white, and blue will make a difference, and keep this administration from wreaking havoc upon our communities?

My Salvadoran mother avoided above all, being seen or perceived to cause any sort of “problem” by speaking up, even as her own rights were diminished. “Shhhhh!” she’d say. “I don’t want any problems.” What she really meant to say was, “I don’t want to be seen or heard, because I want to be safe.”

Latinos in this country are too often invisible, perceived and/or treated as second-class citizens, and if you doubt this, just look at the ICE raids. Agents are detaining and arresting people indiscriminately, at times solely based on the color of their skin. The truth is now all out in the open.

Latinos are hard-working people, people of faith, who value family above all. We are also numerous, and proud to speak Spanish and uplift the culture of our immigrant parents, which doesn’t sit well with many people who see this as a threat to their image of what “America” ought to be, primarily a white, English-only speaking country. 

The truth is that Latinos have always been in the U.S., we’ve just been largely invisible – often given few racially identifying options in official federal data-gathering systems like the Census. For many years, when I responded to the Census, I found myself confused about my options. While I didn’t identify as white, I also didn’t identify as black, so I’d mark “other.” However, the “other” option felt that my identity was lost in a sea of identities that weren’t my own and would continue to make me invisible. If Latinos don’t “officially” exist, why should the country invest in our education, or any industry be held accountable to providing job opportunities for Latinos?  

The African American actor-comedian, Chris Rock, called Los Angeles the “Mexican Slave State,” in reference to the lack of job opportunities in a White Hollywood industry for Mexicans. “There’s this acceptance that Mexicans are going to take care of white people in L.A. that doesn’t exist anywhere else. I remember I was renting a house in Beverly Park while doing some movie, and you just see all of the Mexican people at 8 o’clock in the morning in a line driving into Beverly Park like it’s General Motors. It’s this weird town,” wrote the actor in an essay published in the Hollywood Reporter in December of 20214. Rock wrote about Mexicans, but he spoke to the experiences of Latinos regardless of their country of origin. 

We carry the flags of our parents and grandparents to remind the U.S. that we are the children of immigrants/ immigrants who are Indigenous to the Americas (including the U.S.) and that we are proud to be in this union — acknowledging our roots, and affording this country with our unique contributions. We will be invisible no more…The carrying of two flags is analogous to the Latino culture’s reverence for its elders and their roots, as well as its loyalty to its home and country.

Author Daniel Peña writes in The Guardian: “What Trump fails to realize is that the bones of Mexican people are the metadata of the land in California and indeed the rest of the country. Our place here is in the food, in the street names, in the name of Los Angeles itself.”

Evelyn Alemán is founder of Our Voice: Communities for Quality Education, a nonprofit organization that helps families access education information and resources.