Annotations for Dates: 1991-05-04

It's been two years since disturbances broke out in Washington DC's Mount Pleasant neighborhood, where most of the city's Latino population lives. At the time, Latino leaders blamed the violent outburst on neglect by the local city government of Hispanic residents. In the past 10 years, Washington DC's Latino community, mostly Central American, has grown rapidly. Since the violence of two years ago, the DC government has taken action to address community concerns, but Latino leaders say there's still much more to be done. From Washington, William Troop prepared this report.

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A music vendor sets up shop at the corner of Mount Pleasant and Lamont Street, the heart of Washington's Latino community. He's one of at least a dozen Latino merchants doing business near Parque de las Palomas, a small triangular park at the end of a city bus line.

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Just two years ago, the worst riots the nation's capital had seen in over 20 years started right here. On May 4th, 1991, Daniel Gómez, a Salvadoran immigrant, was stopped by an African American police officer for drinking in public. There are differing accounts about what happened next. Police say Gómez launched at the rookie officer who shot him in self-defense, but many Latinos heard a different version, one that said Gómez was shot after being harassed and handcuffed by the officer. Gómez was seriously wounded and as news of the incident spread, outrage poured from the community.

…sangre fría frente a demasiados latinos. Eso no lo llevan todos porque en realidad esta es una comunidad latina. ¿Me entienden? y la discriminación ha ido tan lejos de que si alguien…

During the riots, these men looted a 7-Eleven store because they were angry at police for mistreating Latinos. The looting and burning in Mount Pleasant lasted three days. To calm people down, DC Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly arrived on the scene and promised to address Latino concerns as soon as the violence ended. It was a victory of sorts. Latino leaders had long complained that city officials ignored charges of discrimination and police brutality. The riots changed that.

To a certain degree, we had the best disturbance that we could have ever had. Although you had the destruction of public property, you had the destruction of private property, you had some injuries, nobody was killed. And overnight…Latinos were an issue in Washington DC.

Juan Milanés was a law student at the time. Today, he is legal counsel for the Latino Civil Rights Task Force, an organization created after the disturbances in Mount Pleasant.

Prior to May 5th, 1991, the Latino population of Washington DC, although it was 10% of the population, was unrecognized…just invisible…just a bunch of people who get on the bus in the evening to go clean buildings, but you know... There are just a few people here and there. Most of them are illegal anyway. Suddenly, we're there and there was now this group of people that were demanding that they be there.

A few months after the riots, the Latino Civil Rights Task Force issued a blueprint for action, detailing 200 specific steps the city could take to address Latino concerns. Task Force executive director Pedro Aviles says the city has not done enough to stop discrimination and police insensitivity.

The problems have not been solved yet. The police brutality cases, they continue. Certainly, the fact that we've been complaining, and we've been shaking the tree kind of thing…it's brought about little change, but I would say that it's a lot of stuff that needs to be done.

What has been done has been done slowly according to task force officials. One example, the city hired bilingual 911 operators a year and a half after the task force recommended it and only after a Latina who had been raped had to wait two hours for assistance in Spanish. Carmen Ramírez, director of the Mayor's Office on Latino Affairs, says the city has taken significant steps to address community concerns.

The recommendations, in many instances, are not recommendations that can just be met by one concrete action, although some of them are, but rather, it's a matter of putting into place policies and in many instances, mechanisms by which problems can continue to be addressed.

To do that, the city has created bilingual positions in almost all departments of DC government. Ramírez adds that DC's police department has hired more bilingual personnel and sent hundreds of police officers to Spanish classes and sensitivity training. But last year, Latino leaders complained they were excluded from developing the initial sensitivity training program and they say there are still plenty of police brutality cases. In January, the US Commission on Civil Rights agreed when it issued its report on the Mount Pleasant disturbances. Commission Chair Arthur Fletcher called the plight of Latinos in DC appalling.

Many Latinos in the third district have been subjected to arbitrary harassments, unwarranted arrests, and even physical abuse by DC police officers.

The commission also found that the District of Columbia still shuts off Latinos from basic services because it lacks bilingual personnel. Many DC Latinos feel that in a city dominated by African Americans, it's often hard to get a fair distribution of resources. BB Otero is chair of the Latino Civil Rights Task Force.

There is a prevalent feeling among the African American community, not just the leadership but the community at large that says, “we've struggled hard to get where we are, to have control of some resources in the city to begin to play a powerful role in the community.” And its um…“if we open it up to someone else, we may be giving something up.”

They still wanted them to be citizens of their own country and not registered to vote in the United States and still have the same measure of power and the same measure of participation as somebody who was a citizen. That, in my view, is a naive expectation and certainly is not something that the civil rights movement ever talked about.

African American council member Frank Smith represents Ward 1, the area where most DC Latinos live. He says, the struggle for civil rights is about citizenship and voting.

I think that the Hispanic community has got to work harder at getting their people registered to vote. If they want to win elections, they're going to have to get people registered to vote and get them out to the ballot boxes on election day in order to win. Nobody's going to roll over and give up one of these seats.

Civic activity comes once you have gained some sense of security of where you are or where you live. You still have a community that doesn't have that sense of security.

Over half of Washington's estimated 60,000 Latinos are undocumented, many of whom have fled war and unrest in El Salvador and most recently, Guatemala. BB Otero who ran unsuccessfully for a school board seat last fall says she's hopeful a Latino political base will develop as time goes by and as the community matures.

If they can survive the struggle that it is to be able to fight the odds basically and build that political base, then we will see, I think by '96, some other candidates in other areas beyond myself.

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Change, however slow some may consider it, seems to be happening at Parque de las Palomas, where the disturbances erupted two years ago. There are now more Latino officers walking the beat. Merchant José Valdezar says, even those stopped for drinking in public are now treated with respect by police.

First, they say hello to you, and I start to speak and they explain to you what's going on. Sometime, the person who own any store around here say, you know, they don't like drunk people around here. You know, that's why they say no. Just keep walking and everything will be okay.

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Daniel Gómez, whose shooting sparked the disturbances in Mount Pleasant two years ago, recovered from his wounds and was later acquitted of assaulting the police officer who shot him. For Latino USA. I'm William Troop reporting from Washington DC.