Article https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article278276708.html#storylink=cpy
When California’s Central Valley leaders of Mixteco origin learned about the racist comments made by three Latinos on the Los Ángeles City Council regarding the Oaxacan Indigenous community in October 2022, they were not surprised.
After all, those insults against the indigenous are nothing new and are part of a culture of racism and discrimination that goes back centuries. “We have always experienced discrimination and oppression from Latinos themselves,” said Oralia Maceda, program director of El Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño in Spanish in October.
CULTURE OF RACISM
Hugo Morales, co-founder and executive director of Radio Bilingüe, said culturally, discrimination and racism against indigenous people is something that has taken place since colonial times when white people invaded and conquered México and Latin América “instilling their own culture of racism.”
The 74-year-old Morales, who is of Mixteco descent, said after the Spaniards invaded México and Latin América, they wrote a legal code of hierarchy placing pure whites from Spain at the highest order above Blacks and native Americans. “That was literally part of the legal system in colonial times throughout, you know, Latin América that was ruled by Spain, which is most of the Américas,” Morales said. “So, you know, that racism was embedded there.”
The racist, anti-indigenous comments by Los Ángeles City Council President Nury Martínez, along with Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, among others, were caught on audio and leaked near Columbus Day. The holiday is referred by Morales and other indigenous as the “the anniversary of (Christopher) Columbus’ march of colonization and genocide.”
Recently, Columbus Day has increasingly been replaced with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which honors and celebrates the history and culture of indigenous people of the Américas. “We are in the commemoration of 530 years of resistance of our Indigenous communities and we are still experiencing those bad experiences that we have as (Indigenous) communities,” said Maceda, who is of Mixteco origin.
In the leaked audio, councilmembers refer disparagingly to the appearance of immigrants from Oaxaca, calling them ugly, short, and dark-skinned. California is home to about 350,000 Indigenous Oaxacans, who are mainly concentrated in the Central Valley, the southern part of the state and the Monterey area, according to a 2016 study by USC and the Mexican research institute El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. Racism and discrimination can evolve to hate speech and hate crimes. State officials have noted an increase in hate crimes in recent years among all ethnicities and sexual orientation.
The indigenous have been discriminated against because of their language, culture, stature, dress or indigenous features they have. “I think that racism among Mexican mixed bloods is so deep that it doesn’t matter how a person dresses,” said Morales, adding that people find a way to discriminate.
For example, the Monterey County community of Greenfield, where about one in three residents are Oaxacan indigenous migrants, made the news in 2011 when national media reported an “ugly conflict” between long-time Latino residents and Oaxacan newcomers who spoke their own languages, and kept their own customs such as arranged marriages to daughters still in their teens.
Latinos, mostly Mexican Americans, were unhappy with the new immigrants and presented a series of escalating grievances against the Oaxacans to the city council, social media sites and the local newspaper. Elsa Mejía, the first Mixteca elected to a U.S. city council, has endured slurs like those made by Los Ángeles leaders since childhood. “It didn’t stop when I was a child. It happened in social settings as a teenager.
It happened in the workplace and it continues to happen,” Mejía said. At one entry level job, the manager who was Mexican called Mejía “Indita” (Little Indian.) and nobody said anything about it.
Full article https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article278276708.html
