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Deborah Anchondo likes when her nephew plays with his carts at the family\u2019s auto shop in El Paso, Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is innocent, very handsome, a happy child \u2014 a miracle that he was saved,\u201d she said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.<\/p>\n
What she doesn\u2019t like is when, in children\u2019s games, the little boy takes a toy gun and wants to shoot the bad guys.<\/p>\n
The 43-year-old woman\u2019s voice still quivers when she talks about Aug. 3, 2019, the day Andre and Jordan Anchondo, her brother and sister-in-law, were shot to death while protecting their son, who was then only 2 months old, in a racist rampage against Latinos in a Walmart shopping center in El Paso that left 23 people dead and over two dozen injured.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore that, the only thing that had happened to me was that my car stereo was stolen in 1998. Now we are also victims of that resentment, that hatred that completely changed El Paso,\u201d said Anchondo, who helps raise Paul Gilbert, his brother\u2019s son.<\/p>\n
As a family reels from the profound repercussions of the 2019 racist mass shooting, an\u00a0investigation\u00a0by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University found that in 2022 the 10 largest cities in the United States registered an average increase of 22% in hate crimes reported, totaling 1,889 cases.<\/p>\n
\u201c2021 was also a record year. In 2022, hate crimes stabilized, but not everywhere. It did not happen in cities like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago,\u201d Brian Levin, the center’s founding director, said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. <\/p>\n
Los Angeles, the U.S.’s second-largest city, recorded in 2022 the highest number of hate crimes in the country, 609, of which 195 were against Blacks, 98 against the LGBTQI community, 91 against Jews and 88 against Latinos, according to Levin. Chicago, the third-largest city in the U.S., had the biggest increase, with 85% more hate crimes than the year before, followed by Austin, Texas, with a 59% rise.<\/p>\n
According to the upcoming report, which was first provided to Noticias Telemundo ahead of publication, anti-Latino hate crime edged 2.8% higher in 2022 after a 41% increase in the 2021 major city survey.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2021 there was a significant increase in hate crimes against the Latino community.\u00a0They increased in Phoenix, Chicago, New York, Boston, Houston, Austin and Fort Worth,\u201d Levin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing different groups of people in the United States getting involved in conspiracy theories, sometimes anti-Muslim, sometimes anti-African American, and sometimes anti-Latino,\u201d Levin said.<\/p>\n
Patrick Crusius, the man who\u00a0shot and killed\u00a023 people, most of them Latino, in the El Paso attack,\u00a0was sentenced in July to 90 life sentences\u00a0after pleading guilty to federal hate crime charges for one of the worst mass shootings in the country\u2019s recent history.\u00a0He could still receive the death penalty at a state trial for the murders committed during the massacre.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat shooting not only killed my brother and sister-in-law, it also took away my father, Gilberto Anchondo, who died in 2021. He couldn\u2019t stand the pain, he couldn\u2019t sleep, he was always thinking about Andre. He missed him a lot.\u00a0I say he left to join him,\u201d Anchondo said.<\/p>\n
Nationally,\u00a0FBI statistics\u00a0released Oct. 16 show that hate crimes increased 47% from 2019 to 2022. Just over 60% of those crimes are racially motivated, and about 15% are religiously motivated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen a real increase in hate crimes directed against Jews, Black people, and people who identify as Hispanic or Latino. And this impact is being felt directly by people,\u201d explains Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research at Southern Poverty Law Center.<\/p>\n
In 2022, the FBI recorded 11,288 hate crimes, the highest number ever recorded, which broke the record of the previous year (10,840 incidents).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHate crimes have increased fairly steadily over the last eight years. But there are certain groups that have suffered this increase disproportionately, and the Hispanic community is an example,\u201d said Carlos Cuevas, an academic at Northeastern University who has collaborated with\u00a0investigations with the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t feel safe even going out to the store, doing everyday things like taking the kids to school, going to buy food, just walking on the street, you feel like you\u2019re in danger all the time,\u201d said Ivette Xochiyotl Boyzo, activist and researcher at\u00a0La Raza Database Research Project.<\/p>\n
According to the center\u2019s experts, increases in crimes against Latinos were more frequent in cities in the Midwest or East, with drops in the Southwest.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the main things we see are threats, and simple attacks. Those are the most common types of hate crimes against Latinos. But other types of more serious attacks are happening, and we are concerned about this increase,\u201d said Levin, who has investigated these types of crimes for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n
Media reports reflect this rise in attacks against the Hispanic community.\u00a0On Aug. 10, Alan Dale Covington, 55, was convicted of\u00a0a hate crime for attacking three members of a Latino family who ran a tire store in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n
In July, Maryland prosecutors filed hate crime charges against\u00a0a man accused of killing three Hispanic people\u00a0and injuring three others in a dispute over a parking spot.\u00a0A man from the Bronx, New York, was charged with hate crimes in February over allegations that he attacked a 72-year-old Hispanic woman\u00a0and yelled racial insults at her, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s strange because it seems like things are the same as always, but in reality everything changes.\u00a0One lives in fear after the shootings, people are tense and a change in one\u2019s habits is noticeable.\u00a0People are not the same after those crimes,\u201d said Anchondo in El Paso.<\/p>\n
In the last decade, one of the patterns that researchers at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism have detected is that hate crimes against Latinos increase when there is national news involving Hispanic people.\u00a0It happened, for example, when there was extensive media coverage of the migrant caravans traveling north from Central\u00a0America.<\/p>\n
Politicians\u2019 use of bigoted rhetoric around increased border crossings plays a role in these incidents, said Levin.<\/p>\n
Another element that researchers highlight is the proliferation of conspiracy theories that stigmatize minorities and promote hatred of ethnically diverse communities, such as Hispanics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are active anti-immigrant groups that have taken power in many political spheres, and they also repeat false and racist conspiracies that create a culture where hate crimes thrive and happen,\u201d Rivas, from the Southern Poverty Law Center, said.<\/p>\n
The number of hate crimes against Latinos may be higher than what official records show, she said, because police departments do not consistently record people\u2019s racial and ethnic information.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people may not report these crimes, which is why police and local governments should conduct outreach in different languages, such as Spanish, to inform about resources for victims of hate crimes,\u201d Levin said.<\/p>\n
According to Rivas, \u201cmany communities in the United States do not report the numbers of these crimes … We have entire counties that do not report anything.” <\/p>\n
Cuevas, the Northeastern University researcher, said they’ve found people are afraid to call the police if they lack legal immigration documentation, “and that is terrible because these are crimes that go unpunished. We have also noticed that in communities where Hispanic people are more integrated, crime figures are a little lower, and that may be positive in the future.”<\/p>\n
More than four years have passed since the El Paso shooting, and hate crimes in Texas continue to increase, according to data from the state’s Department of Public Safety, which in 2022 recorded 549 incidents, an increase of 6.4% from the previous year.<\/p>\n
“Latino history is absent in public schools and in American discourse, all of which creates a dangerous situation for our community,” said Rep. Joaqu\u00edn Castro, D-Texas. “In Texas, my home state, hate crimes against Latinos have tripled in the last decade, That\u2019s why I believe that stereotypes and erasing our history have real consequences on people\u2019s lives,\u201d said Rep. Joaqu\u00edn Castro, D-Texas. <\/p>\n
Last July, victims of the El Paso shooting were able to confront their killer in court.\u00a0There was Deborah Anchondo, shaking with emotion and flooded with memories of her brother and her sister-in-law. Instead of showering Crusius with insults, she decided to read a letter from her nephew addressed to his dad, her murdered brother.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that you look at me from heaven, and one day I will see you and my mother again,” the letter her nephew wrote said. “I love you very much and thank you for wanting to have me,\u201d she read in court, which made Crusius burst into tears, according to Anchondo.<\/p>\n
Despite the emotional devastation that her brother\u2019s death has meant for her family, Anchondo said they’re fighting to move forward and, above all, to make little Paul happy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI forgave that man, my brother\u2019s murderer. I don\u2019t believe in the death penalty, I feel that it is worse to know that you are going to spend the rest of your life in a cell,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is worse to live every day thinking of what he did, in the lives he ended, in the dreams he ended.” <\/p>\n
Estephany Cano contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n A previous version of this article was first published in Noticias Telemundo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] Deborah Anchondo likes when her nephew plays with his carts at the family\u2019s auto shop in El Paso, Texas.\u00a0 \u201cHe is innocent, very handsome, a happy child \u2014 a miracle that he was saved,\u201d she said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. What she doesn\u2019t like is when, in children\u2019s games, the little boy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}