Maria Carrillo High School students defend skit’s controversial depiction of Latinos
*This relates directly to the brouhaha over the recent Economist “stars-and-chiles” cover. It also points to the various college fraternity partys that have made headlines becasue of their discriminatory nature – UT’s Fiji border patrol party is the most recent.
A group of Latino students at Maria Carrillo High School in Santa Rosa, California, staged a satirical skit where they danced to War’s Low Rider, wearing sarapes, sombreros and shaking maracas. The enire performance was concieved by an undocumented student who wanted to use the dance to illustrate the harshness of immigration enforement – at the end of the skit all the dancers show a “green card” except one, a white student who is apprehended. Other Latino students at the school protested what they saw as a promotion of Mexican stereotypes.
So if there’s a line to promoting stereotypes, where is it? Is it OK for Latinos to satirize stereotypes? What if other Latinos are insulted? I’m truly interested in your opinion. VL
By Martin Espinoza, The Press Democrat
When 18-year-old Jose Ramirez was growing up in Santa Rosa, deportations were an inescapable reality in his immigrant family.
Brought into the country illegally by his parents, the Maria Carrillo High School senior was an “undocumented” from the age of 4 until he was 16.
“I used to see it a lot. I got relatives that got deported and, to me, that was traumatizing,” Ramirez said Wednesday. “But the older I got the more I released my feelings in, like, a comedic way.”
Comedy, satire and political statement. That’s what Ramirez was aiming for when he conceived of a dance performance last week that has raised concerns among some Maria Carrillo students who believe it was insensitive and even racist.
Ramirez said that was not the intent of the performance, which was intended to make a political point about the harshness of immigration enforcement, and how many in the country are oblivious to it.
Click HERE to read the story and see a video of the skit.
[WScreenshot courtesy of YouTube]
