Fear Mongering of Immigrants Is Alive and Well in Louisiana

Go to LATINO USA'S site at
http://www.latinousa.org/932-2/
to hear the full program and an edited version of this commentary
that began airing across the country on Friday, February 11, 2011.

In the weeks following the Arizona shooting of Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, we heard from both parties about a need for civility in framing political discourse and differences. The hate mongering rhetoric employed by most Republican Tea Party candidates in the 2010 elections was loaded with vitriol, and we kept hearing a cry to “take the country back”. Coming from mostly white conservatives and Christian fundamentalists, I find this phrase disturbing, especially with a multiracial president in the White House whose detractors only see a black man in the highest office.

Rarely is Obama referred to as the multiracial executive chief that he is, and the media plays along with this racially limited depiction of a hybrid president. Unfortunately, this divisive omission echoes one of the biggest fears still lingering in this country, which is the fear of the races mixing. Obama is the scariest representation of this great white fear nestled in the crevices of the old patriarchy, and its so-called Grand Old Party is bearing witness to the overall complexion of the general population change across the country.

We Latinos are becoming a greater factor, and the permanent suntan of most of our people is changing the color spectrum dramatically. Brown is the new black, and it frightens the old guard to the core of their wavering stranglehold on power. As such, its insidiously strategic politicians stoke the fires of xenophobia within its similarly scared base of supporters to take us back to the good ole’ days when their power and abuses of it went unquestioned.

How far back do these folks want to go? Perhaps, they long for the nostalgic 1950s when lynchings of African Americans was a ubiquitous sport in the South, keeping colored folk in a constant state of terror. Latinos and Asians were similarly marginalized, and Texas Rangers had lynching parties of their own with brown Mexican bodies as the strange fruits rotting in the brutal Southwest sun. Across the great land of the free, people of color were not afforded the freedoms exercised by their white counterparts, and we lacked a political voice to challenge the blatant institutionalized racism of those dark times.

In his 2010 re-election campaign, Louisiana’s Republican Senator David Vitter succeeded in taking us back a few decades. His “illegal aliens” attack ad had brown men crossing a ripped up border fence and receiving hefty welfare checks at the expense of white taxpayers. This was pure fabrication because undocumented workers are not eligible to receive such benefits. Just as disturbing was the endorsement Vitter received from the Times-Picayune. The local newspaper recommended voting for a candidate who first painted himself as “Mr. Family Values”, and was caught with his hypocritical pants down in 2007, linked to the notorious DC Madame’s prostitution ring.

That outing prompted a New Orleans Madame who proclaimed Mr. Vitter was a constant client of the Canal Street brothel she ran in 2002. When his opponents brought up the prostitution infidelities, the Senator’s response was that “his God” and the good people of Louisiana had forgiven him. In New Orleans, Latino organizations such as PUENTES and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce had no forgiveness for Vitter’s offensive ad, which criminalized all Latinos with Hispanic looking actors arriving in droves to cheat the state. With the support of prominent leaders from the African American and Vietnamese communities, they organized to have the thirty-second race baiting promo off the air.

It equaled Sharon Angle’s commercial, which pushed fear of “illegals” into the hearts of white Nevada voters, but that state’s Latino electorate flexed its massive muscle, defeating the Tea Party candidate’s gubernatorial ambitions. In Louisiana, Vitter’s hate and fear campaign yielded victorious results. Even in the blue city of New Orleans, the Republican garnered strong support, but I would not be surprised if he is found to have hired undocumented workers to reconstruct his home after the storm, exploiting their labor while criminalizing them simultaneously.

Latino immigrants continue to do much of the reconstruction work in the Crescent City, but they are repeatedly cheated by contractors who exploit their tenuous status and don’t’ pay them. Criminals target them because they are known to carry cash. When they are murdered, their lives mean little to the local police, who corroborate with ICE to deport them. Under local Sheriff Gusman’s watch, dozens of immigrants have literally disappeared after they were picked up. In early February under freezing temperatures in front of his jail, the New Orleans Congress of Day Laborers held a twenty-four hour vigil to protest his brutal practices. They called out the names of Leornardo Ortiz, missing since 2008, Guadalupe Saldibar, missing since 2009, Jesus Contreras since 2010, and a dozen others for whom they held signs with silhouetted dark figures with the year they were disappeared next to their names.

I hope that New Orleanians wake up and smell the café con leche and have the decency to acknowledge the inhumanity that many immigrants have suffered here while rebuilding our city. Gusman, a Democrat, abuses his authority, and Vitter used fear as his re-election platform. Neither have been models of civility. When police officials and politicians engage in direct vilification of a people, they contribute directly to the general mistreatment of those targeted. In a depressed economy, undocumented immigrants are easy scapegoats.

How many believe that they are loosing their jobs to immigrants and are willing to pick up a weapon like the Arizona shooter to release their hatred, the kind of hatred inspired by Vitter’s poisonous campaign and the human rights violations exacted by the local sheriff?

Make art that matters,

José Torres-Tama
ArteFuturo Productions
2426 Saint Claude Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70117
www.torrestama.com
504.232.2968

http://elbigeasyamigoblogger.blogspot.com

NEW ORLEANS FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR
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