You may not know their names but you should.

Both men were killed this year apparent victims of hate crimes against Latinos. Their deaths should be a wake up call to the Latino community the same way Matthew Shepard’s murder in Wyoming in 1998 was to the gay community and the 1955 murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi was a seminal event in sparking the civil rights movement.

Tragically, hate is still alive. Marcelo Lucero was beaten and stabbed to death by a group of drunk white teens in Patchogue, New York, in November. Seven teens, who were reportedly out to “jump a Mexican,” have been charged. One of them, Jeffrey Conroy, a star athlete at the local high school, allegedly dealt the fatal blow by stabbing him in the chest.

Ironically, Lucero was an immigrant from Ecuador not Mexico. Yet hate blinds people to these important distinctions.

In news reports, his family described Lucero as a hard-working, ordinary guy who called his mother several times a week in Ecuador. He had lived in the United States 16 years and settled in this small Long Island town, about 55 miles from Manhattan.

The similarity of these two cases is striking. Ramirez also was beaten to death by a group of white teens, some of them star athletes at the local high school, in Shenandoah, Pa., in July. A retired Philadelphia police officer testified she heard one of the defendants yell, “Tell your (expletive) Mexican friends to get the (expletive) out of Shenandoah or you’ll be (expletive) laying next to him.”

Ramirez was from Mexico and had worked in factories and in the fields. He was engaged to a U.S. citizen and they had two children together.

Whether or not these men were undocumented is irrelevant. The young men who attacked them did not know their immigration status. They didn’t ask to see their “green cards.” All they saw were two brown men walking down the street and their bigotry fueled by alcohol led to these hate crimes.

Nationwide, hate crimes are on the rise. Attacks on Hispanics grew 40 percent from 2003 to 2007, according to FBI statistics.

Anti-immigrant sentiment usually grows during tough economic times as some people are looking for a scapegoat. In today’s world Latino immigrants are at the bottom of social strata.

We have to speak out against these crimes and the hatred. We must hold politicians who would exploit our differences accountable. Those of us who are U.S. citizens have to speak up for those who live in the shadows.

Remember their names. Marcelo Lucero. Luis Ramirez.

The goal of this new website is to give voice to stories by or about Hispanic women. They can be written in the form of a column, commentary, blog or feature story. We are interested in stories or columns on a variety of topics from culture to family, immigration to politics or health care and education.
We have funding to pay a modest stipend to writers who are students. This website was created with a New Media Women Entrepreneurs grant awarded by  J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Media, based at American University, with funding from the McCormick Foundation.
The editor and publisher is Teresa Puente, formerly with the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, and currently on the journalism faculty at Columbia College Chicago. This also is a mentoring project with experienced journalists and writers mentoring the new Latina voices. Our mentors include:
Jessica Alpert, WBUR-FM, Boston
Ofelia Casillas, Chicago Tribune
Laura Castaneda, University of Southern California, Annenberg School of Journalism
Dawn Garcia, Stanford University, John S. Knight Fellowships
Michelle Garcia, Pistolera Productions
Martha Irvine, Associated Press, Chicago
Claudia Melendez, University of Southern California, Institute for Justice in Journalism
Teresa Puente, Columbia College Chicago
Margaret Ramirez, Chicago Tribune
To submit a story, or become a mentor or mentee, please email tpuente@colum.edu

RECONNECTING

By Belen Romero
Columbia College Photojournalism student

I was born in Zamora, Michoacan in 1982. Soon after my mother’s death in the mid 1980’s, my father packed our bags and we migrated north to California, to make a “better life.” I was too young to understand what was going on at the time and it took me many years to realize the value of what I’d lost and the value of what I’d gained.

Up until a few years ago, I had little knowledge of my native land of Mexico. I mean, I’ve always known where I was born, but I had no visuals to give me a better idea and understanding of my cultural background. (That’s odd considering I’m a photographer.) To top it off, I have virtually no photographs of my town, my mother and her side of the family, no photographs of my brother and I when we were young, no photographs of any part of the place I came from. I had no photographs to leave my future children, nothing to remember where I came from.

That changed a few years ago when I made my first trip, alone, into my estranged hometown. I had just turned 20, when I finally had the opportunity to venture into Zamora to see what I’d lost and forgotten. I didn’t know what to expect or what to look for. The first few days were extremely overwhelming. I met family members I’d erased from my memory, including my grandmother (my mother’s mother). The first thing I noticed when I got there was how humble and caring everyone was. Everyone greeted each other in the streets, including myself, the stranger that abandoned the town. I was overwhelmed by how cultural my land is.

The vast richness of culture and heritage came to me as a surprise because I didn’t grow up in a “typical” Mexican household. My father and stepmother were too busy working to make a decent living that following our old customs was not part of our life. Visiting Mexico, alone, uncultured, and inexperienced with my native tongue was a wakeup call for me. I was both angry and sad to have been deprived of my roots for all those years.

I cried the first three days I was in Zamora. I cried of sadness and joy. I was overwhelmed by the humble simplicity of life in Zamora. I was also saddened by the amount of poverty. A part of me felt guilty for living in the United States. The way of life in Zamora is much different than here. There’s less opportunity for most to make a “good living,” but they seem less stressed than in the United States. The majority of people in my hometown make an honest living selling food, housekeeping, tending the rich, working in fields, weaving, and cleaning the streets. I still don’t know enough about my hometown to tell you more. I’m only sharing with you what I saw when I visited in 2005.

One thing that I noticed is that food is sold everywhere in every corner of every street. In fact, every morning that I walked around town, people had their homes open to sell and serve food out of their living rooms. Others just set a table outside and had handmade menus. This would never pass in the United States! What a shame because I think this brings strangers together.

The local plaza was constantly filled with people and street vendors. My favorite part of the plaza was the market. Butchers slaughter and sell fresh meats, and others sell cheese, vegetables and other farm products to locals and restaurants. There are expert weavers and seamstresses that sell handmade clothing everywhere; other handmade items include jewelry, leather boots, and belts.

The entire time I visited Zamora, I realized I grew up cultureless. My family didn’t follow an American or Mexican culture. I would say we were neutral when it came to culture, neither here nor there. Besides the food, we followed no customs. We just lived to work and worked to live.

I still wonder, why hadn’t anyone shared with me the virtues of my land? The time I was there I was welcomed and greeted daily by strangers, but I knew they saw me as a tourist. I couldn’t hide that I was an outsider. I hadn’t been back since I was a child and now as an adult, I am estranged from both sides. I’m not an American; I’m not wise with American history. English is my second language and I struggle with Spanish. I know little about the history of my land. It’s not because my father didn’t want to teach me but because the American culture stresses the importance of assimilating, being and learning to live like an “American.” We are taught daily that this is the only way one can and will succeed.

The point is that visiting my hometown was a wake-up call. I still have a long way to go. I need to educate myself about Mexican history because nobody taught me growing up, not my family or school.
Being a Mexican immigrant in the United States is tough. I’m one of the “lucky ones.” I finished high school and I’m putting myself through college. I learned the value of hard work from my father and for that I thank him. I left home right after I turned 19 and since then I’ve put myself through college. Being able to revisit my hometown was a privilege and an experience I treasure dearly. Since 2001, I have made six trips to Mexico all in great efforts to reconnect with my native land. I will continue to visit Mexico in attempts to regain my Mexican heritage.