I have the tremendous fortune to attend a public screen of John J. Valadez’ documentary The Longoria Affair in Southwest Detroit’s Taquería El Nacimiento.   As I was watching the movie, I was struck by how the chain of events related to “The Longoria Affair” provided us many of the opportunities that some of us take for granted.

Considering that Election Day just recently passed, one of the things that comes to mind is the fact that Latinos have been elected, irregardless of their political persuasion.  Latinos have been elected. During the times that the movie’s events took place, Latinos couldn’t even vote. Well…..they could…..if they could pay the poll tax.  For some of the poor families that earned perhaps $18/month, it would cost around $1.75 to vote.  Before this movie, I thought that this was something that affected African-Americans more.  I had no idea that it also affected Latinos.   Now, I can no longer say that I was that naïve.

On the way home from the movie screening, my dad shared a personal story that helped to show me how my family was affected.  He told me about how he was visiting his cousin down in Texas.   Dad came up during the 1950s and always lived in the Midwest.   However, on this occasion, he was visiting his cousin and they decided to take the bus.   Innocently, Dad tried to go to the front of the bus only to have his cousin tell him to move himself to the back.  Thank God that he eventually did go to the back.   Since Dad lived in the North, his experience was different from his cousin’s down south.   He experienced relatively little discrimination back then and I did while growing up.  For me, discrimination was something that I read about in textbooks, not something that I had experienced.

I carry with me the rallying cry that the film’s director gave his audience.  He told us to make sure that our voices are heard.  We need to make sure that there are shows that depict us as something other than gardeners, cholos or maids.   We need to work so that we can achieve executive-level positions so that we can effect decisions that affect our lives.  If the media isn’t speaking to us, then we need to create things like Mi Estilo.   Yes, things have changed and, for some of us, we have opportunities that our parents or even grandparents couldn’t have conceived.  However, we cannot grow lazy and complacent. We can look at how far we’ve come, but let us not forget that we still have further to go.

Author: José A. Rodríguez