Central Americans

People swear by definition it has to be Mexican-American.

And I'm like, I don't see the point in excluding not just Central Americans and South Americans because, again, I am half Chilean, half Mexican, so I kind of get that perspective as well.

But

it's also...

The concept of that idea is saying we have better use of this land than the people that are already there.

Mm-hmm.

That's the same that happened with the U.S. with Native Americans, the Spaniards with Latin America, Portugal with Brazil.

So there's colonialism everywhere.

They're sending rapists, they're sending murderers, they're sending..." Right? He's talking, he's invoking a, an image that is not of Black people.

It's of Mexicans, Hispanics, uh, Latinos more generally, and Central Americans who are kind of traipsing up there.

And I'm just saying, like, that's a little bit different than the pure, um, Black/white racism of o- other eras.

And then when you marry it to, "Canadians are fucking us in trade," and, um-

And that should not be a surprise, but it often is.

The fact that we have within our umbrella of Hispanic and Latino communities are Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, Central Americans, South Americans, and this array of communities that have this culture and traits coming together and in particular language becomes a unifying force beyond obviously the ability to speak English but bringing another language and bring dual language or multiple languages into the fold is something that we can celebrate and that actually allows us to better understand not only each other but others across the world.

For me, I think what we do understand is that the traits that connect us are special, but we believe in an inclusive spirit that connects this Latino community.

In fact, we polled it, Alex.

but you can actually follow the patterns of migration in the United States and you can follow the lung cancer patterns.

So Venezuelans like myself and Cubans tends to be in South Florida, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans tend to be in New York and Massachusetts, Central Americans and Mexicans, Mexican descent tend to be in California and Texas.

And now we're seeing more migration into the Midwest and the South, which is potentially challenging because some of those providers may never have treated a Hispanic patient before.

So heterogeneity is key.

These people can't be white in the same way that Jewish people can be white simply because of the color of their skin.

But they can be part of the racial ruling class in the United States, you know, in that US racial politics is organized around oppressing people of African descent, Black people, and people who have ancestry in Latin America, so Mexican Americans, Central Americans.

Indian people, Indian Americans, Chinese people, Japanese people, have not exactly the same kind of provisional whiteness, but something like that.

They're part of the group until you don't need them anymore, seems to be pretty clearly what Rufo is saying.

Black Caribbeans think they are better than Black Americans.

Ditto for Black Africans, Black South Americans, Central Americans, Black Mexicans, Black Cubans.

They all think they are better than Black Americans because their Black minds have been eaten by the fiction.

The fiction not only consumes, the monster eats.

Yeah.

It's either Mexicans or Central Americans.

That's why I created the Dignity Law.

Um, I have the second-most important Hispanic district in the country.

And so I remember being that young.

I remember seeing my mom do that to Americans when we moved here.

And I remember being like, man, you don't do that here.

That's weird.

So there are, we do have Latino studies, Chicano studies that tend to focus on Mexico, which is great.

But I think when I talk to other people of other diasporas in Latin America, that tends to be a really sore spot, a really a point of tension, because then it erases the other diasporas that exist here.

Because L.A. is home to predominantly Mexicans, but it's home to a lot of Central Americans.

We don't have a lot of Puerto Ricans here, but we have a little bit.