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.