Leaders of the Latino community describe the racist comments led by Nury Martínez, president of the Los Angeles council, as insensitive,
Unacceptable and Inhumane
Latino leaders censored the racist comments Nury Martínez, president of the Los Angeles Council, of councilors Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo and the president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Workers, Ron Herrera.
In leaked audio on Reddit, Martinez is heard hurling all kinds of racial slurs, taunts and derogatory comments.
“There’s nothing you can control… It seems like chang**to,” she says of Councilman Mike Bonin’s adopted son.
He says that Bonin – who is Anglo-Saxon – treated his black son as if he were “an accessory”, “as if he carried a Louis Vuitton bag”.
“Both the Federation of Workers and the rest of the city officials who were not at that meeting [in October 2021] have to urgently discuss this issue and charge them the price for everything they said, so that they learn a lesson and do not repeat it. do,” said Juan José Gutiérrez, executive director of the Los Angeles Immigrant Full Rights Coalition. “He who kills the cow sins as much as he who stops his leg.”
At some point in the conversation revealed by the Los Angeles Times, Martinez also described Bonin as a “little bitch.”
A person close to the office of one of the councilors involved in the scandal told that the private conversation took place in the context of the redistricting of districts and electoral maps of the city.
“They were discussing how to protect their districts so that Latino communities would have resources and economic stability,” the source said.
However, he did not want to comment on the racial issue of Latino councilors against other races.
“The racism and hypocrisy of these supposed progressives in the Council is incredible,” Salvador Sanabria, executive director of El Rescate, told. “They should see themselves in a mirror.”
Sanabria indicated that Nury Martínez, Kevin de León, Gil Cedillo and Ron Herrera should publicly apologize to the entire people of Los Angeles.
“In your elected offices, we are the taxpayers who pay your salaries,” he added. “His teasing is unacceptable and totally disgraceful and reprehensible; what they did has no name or place on the Council…If that is what you think in private, you should know that the government of Los Angeles does not deserve to have any of them.”
The audio of the discussion lasts almost an hour. The Reddit user who uploaded it to the digital platform was suspended, although his identity is unknown until now.
After bad-mouthing Bonin’s son, the conversation turned to the county district attorney.
“Fuck that guy… he’s with the blacks,” Martínez is heard saying about George Gascón.
De León gave the impression that he compared the treatment of Bonin’s black son as if he were an “accessory” similar to the handling of Nury Martínez carrying a Louis Vuitton bag.
The 14th Ward councilman also referred to Mike Bonin (11th Ward) as the “fourth black member” of the council.
“Mike Bonin will never say a peep about Latinos. He will never say a goddamn word about us,” he said.
Councilman De León’s office acknowledged that: “There were comments made in the context of this meeting that are totally inappropriate; and I am sorry to appear to condone and even contribute to certain insensitive comments made about a colleague and his family in private. I have contacted that colleague personally,” was the written statement he sent.
They argued about the meeting that: “That day, I did not meet the expectations we set for our leaders, and I will hold myself to a higher standard.”
The offices of Martínez, Cedillo and Ron Herrera did not respond to an interview request at press time.
Martínez offered an apology through a television channel.
‘Ugly short Oaxacans with dark skin’
In the districting, the group spoke about the Koreatown neighborhood, a District 10 neighborhood represented by suspended former Councilman Mark Riddley Thomas and which is mostly inhabited by Latino residents, including a large population of workers with indigenous roots from Guatemala and Oaxaca, Mexico. .
After questioning whether the small Shatto Place street and Lafayette Park should remain part of that district, Nury Martinez is heard saying, “I see a lot of those dark-skinned shorts.”
To which Gil Cedillo adds: “Pure Oaxacans. Not even like Kevin’s kids.”
“I don’t even know what village they’re from, or how they got here…they’re ugly,” Martínez attacks.
‘Racism to dehumanize’
Gaspar Rivera Salgado, project director at the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, said he was “disappointed” by the recorded conversation of Latino government officials.
“They expressed and showed an ugly face of the racism that exists among them and in the Latino community itself and that has been hidden under the rug for a long time,” the professor told.
“Even [racism against Oaxacans] has occurred within public spaces of conversation within the Hispanic or Latin identity policy and given what these politicians have done and said, we are in serious danger of reproducing the racism and insecurity that we have been dragging along. historically”.
Rivera Salgado stated that the declarations of said Latino politicians about blackness and indigenism “are a clear example of how racism works to dehumanize the other…when they speak of the chang$%#tos, and of “pure Oaxacans”, whom they take as unintelligent or brutish people, and from that moment the power of dehumanizing racism begins at its lowest level against the most vulnerable people whom they do not listen to or want to see.”
On her Twitter account, Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) reacted by saying: “Comments against blackness and indigenous people and the elaboration of political strategies are absolutely unacceptable on the part of the Los Angeles leaders. Yes, we need to grow Latino power and be recognized, but it cannot be done by embracing racist tendencies that have hurt our own people. Sad day in Los Angeles.”
‘Like to throw up’
Juan José Gutiérrez, of the Full Rights of Immigrants Coalition described Nury Martinez’s comments as “clearly racist.”
“When I listened to her, I wanted to vomit because of her insensitivity and the horrible phrases that she manifested before other members of the council [Cedillo and De León],” Gutiérrez said. “There is no doubt that this racist behavior is a slap in the face to the Latino working people of the city of Los Angeles because we do not refer to the African-American community in the racist, insensitive and inhumane way that they did.”
“What they did is reprehensible. How is it possible that Kevin de León, who aspired to be a federal senator and most recent candidate for mayor, could dare to speak so badly about a minority community and have been a comparsa for the president’s clearly racist comments? of the city council? . Also, why didn’t Cedillo say at any time that the comments were insensitive and racist?