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We are neither a problem nor a novelty

Francisco Miraval

I recently meet a person with a leadership position at a nonprofit in Denver who wanted to talk with me about a new program her organization is about to launch to help Latino (especially young immigrants) to learn business skills.

Red flags began to appear almost immediately after the conversation began. For example, even when the program will focus on Hispanics, no Hispanics were consulted about their potential participation in this program and no research was done about the need for the program.

There was no consultation with Hispanics (either new immigrants or those already in the country for many years) about the reasons why Latinos want to open their own business. In fact, the person I spoke with knew almost nothing about the Hispanic/Latino community.

For that reason, I was not surprised when she said she did not have much information about key issues affecting the Hispanic/Latino community, such as immigration or education. In fact, she did not know the impact of those issues on Hispanics. I am sure I was speaking with a very good person with good intentions, but she was clueless about the community she is trying to serve.

I asked then why she accepted the position and the responsibility of leading a project to help a group of people she knew so little about. Her answer took me by surprise: “Because you are a problem that we need to solve.”

Everything then made perfect sense: if we are seen and treated as “a problem,” then there is no need to know anything about or to talk with us, because the main goal is to find a solution (created by “them”) so “they” can solve the “problem” (us.)

Obviously, it was useless to argue that we are not a problem, because everything I said was immediately incorporated in that paradigm where Latino immigrants are a problem. In fact, my questions and arguments were understood to mean I knew nothing about the Hispanic community and, even worst, that I was ungrateful to those trying to help my community.

It should be obvious that I know what is going on in my community and that I am deeply grateful to anybody helping us. But I cannot and I should not be silent when somebody calls us “a problem.”

We are not “a problem” and therefore we do not need people who do not us to solve “our” problem.

Just a few days later, the same person met with a group of Hispanic/Latino local leaders, with whom she proceeded to take several pictures. Those pictures were not taken to document the event. It was more a photographic safari to see who could be “captured” to be later “exhibited” (probably in an upcoming newsletter.)

We are neither a problem to be solved nor a novelty to be photographed. We are not trophies to be displayed. Or at least that is what I think during those lucid moments in the middle of the ceaseless bombardment of commercials promoting our consumerist society.

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