Blame it on Arizona! LMFAO! Attacks against Mexicans inflame tensions in NYC

Imagine if the attackers were white?


NEW YORK (AP) - When Rodolfo Olmedo was dragged down by a group of men shouting anti-Mexican epithets and bashed over the head with a wooden stick on the street outside his home, he instinctively covered his face to keep from getting disfigured. Blood filled his mouth.

"I wanted to scream, but I couldn't because of the beating they were giving me," said the 25-year-old baker. Nearly five months later, he is still taking pain medications for his head injuries.

Recorded by a store's surveillance camera, the assault was the first of 11 suspected anti-Hispanic bias attacks in a Staten Island neighborhood, re-igniting years-old tensions between blacks and Hispanics in New York City's most remote borough.

Residents of Port Richmond - where an influx of newcomers from Latin America over the past decade has transformed the community - alternately blame the attacks on the economy, unemployment and the debate over Arizona's immigration law.

And although most of the suspects were described as young black men and investigated for bias crimes, a grand jury has indicted only one of seven people arrested on a hate-crime charge.

But Isaias Lozano, a day laborer, said he knows why he was attacked and robbed in December by "morenos" - the Spanish word he uses to describe his black neighbors.

"They hate us because we're Mexicans," he said while sitting at El Centro del Inmigrante, a center for immigrant day workers. "They aren't robbing just anybody."

Across the United States, the immigration debate plays out in suspicion of outsiders and sometimes escalates into violence. Port Richmond, tucked in a corner of New York City that most visitors never see, is wrestling with the perennial question of how people from different backgrounds can live together and get along.

Some community leaders here blame the attacks on hoodlums preying on day laborers, who are perceived as easy targets because they often carry cash home from work. Others say the Arizona law is stirring up a climate of intolerance, even these thousands of miles away.

"It's a cascading effect," said the Rev. Terry Troia, a board member of El Centro del Inmigrante. "There are negative impulses being put out there both nationally and locally. People on the fringe catch a piece of that, and they are acting on it."

Some of Port Richmond's black residents assert that newcomers' presence touches a nerve. Mike Mason, 47, a teacher who works in New Jersey, said the arrival of Mexican immigrants had changed the texture of the community.

"America has got to do something as far as immigration goes," he said. "In the morning you can see the streets lined with undocumented workers ... That's always in the back of people's minds."