The “Ferguson Moment” for Latinos That Never Was

*This is very much worth the read. I get the feeling that if Farias had written the headline, and not his editors at The New Republic, it would have been very different. I cringed at first, for several reasons. It could be that I’m overly sensitive about Latino culture, history, and politics being measured against some “other” standard: Cesar Chavez is the Latino MLK; William Levy is the Latino Brad Pitt … So the Pasco shooting is a “Latino Ferguson moment?” To his credit, though, Cristian Farias does a very good job of putting the death of Antonio Zambrano in context. We learn a little more about his community, his family and his life with the difficulties in the setting of a long-established immigrant stream. Farias says the Zambrano shooting is a story worth telling on its own. VL

By Cristian Farias, The New Republic

Si nomás traía una piedra.” It was just a rock. That was the immediate reaction of an onlooker, one of several, who captured the last moments of Antonio Zambrano-Montes, an undocumented Mexican worker shot dead by police on February 10 at a busy intersection in Pasco, Washington. Dozens of media outlets picked up on the story and videos of the shooting, sparking some protests, but the killing has not become the “Ferguson moment” that The New York Timesand others claimed.

Stripped of all context and going solely by the YouTube clips, Zambrano-Montes’s death has all the makings of the next outrage. In one video that has gone viral, police are seen engaged in a street scuffle with a man. He throws an object at them, but misses. At least one officer immediately returns gunfire as the man attempts a retreat, arms flailing. Seemingly unscathed, the man crosses the intersection, but he is not runninghe hardly seems to be taking flight. After reaching the sidewalk, he turns to face the officers, his arms still in the air. Unarmed and appearing ready to surrender, police fire several rounds and he collapses.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo courtesy of Tri-City Herald]

Subscribe today!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Must Read