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Actresses America Ferrera and Eva Longoria lead a group of more than 150 writers, artists and leaders who wrote a public "solidarity letter" to Latinos after mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, and an immigration raid in Mississippi.
The letter, published Friday in The New York Times and in a handful of Spanish-language newspapers, says the signatories stand alongside American Latinos who might feel "terrified, torn and defeated by the barrage of attacks" , citing the shooting in El Paso, which targeted Hispanics and another shootout in Gilroy, California. Both attacks killed nearly two dozen Latinos.
Actress Eva Longoria will express on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. "So, when Donald Trump calls us criminals and rapists, he insults American families," said Longoria, politically active for a number of years, during his speech to the Democratic convention. "My father is not a criminal or a rapist. In fact, he is a veteran of the United States. "
J. Scott Applewhite / AP
A major immigration raid in Mississippi poultry plants this month, which brought together 680 mainly Latin American workers, leaving behind crying children looking for their detained parents, also confused Hispanics .
"We have been stained by political rhetoric and murdered in violent hate crimes. We were separated from our families and watched our children in cages, "says the letter. "But we will not be broken. We will not be silenced. "
The letter says that such "indignities and cruelties" will in no way diminish Latinos' contributions to the United States, and she urged Hispanics to continue to face fanaticism.
The novelist Sandra Cisneros, award-winning actress Rita Moreno, civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, singer-songwriter Jennifer Lopez and award-winning composer Tony Award signed the letter. Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Some Hispanics look over their shoulder, avoiding speaking Spanish in public and looking for an escape in the midst of fears that they might be next.
The shooting and raiding are part of a context of racist episodes, including the then candidate, Donald Trump, calling Mexican immigrants "rapists"; Trump, as president, referring to migrants arriving in the United States as "an invasion"; and viral videos of whites reproaching Hispanics for speaking Spanish in public.
Longoria told The Associated Press that Ferrera and she had had the idea of the letter after discussing and finding out that they were both sad and depressed after the shooting in El Paso.
"Once we started talking to other people, we discovered that others felt the same," said Longoria. "Instead of suffering on our own, we wanted to unite and tell our community that it was all happening … we are with you and we will fight for you."
Longoria said the letter is not meant to take political sides but to reach out to Americans, whatever their party, to say that Latinos are hurting.
Ferrera told AP that Latinos had recently suffered a number of racist attacks, but the El Paso shootings and the Mississippi raid were "a real loss of consciousness."
"We wanted to do something so that people would know that we will not go to bed and take it," said America. "We will get up and fight."
Mónica Ramírez, a civil rights lawyer and activist who helped organize the letter, termed it a "love letter" and hopes that this will change some hearts.
"We also wanted to make sure people understood that our community is powerful and that we have many allies," said Ramírez. "We do not want other groups to be targeted."
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