When COVID-19 Hit the Indigenous Communities in L.A., This Group Stepped In

With unemployment at an all-time high, many Indigenous Latinx immigrants are struggling to make ends meet. This Los Angeles–based nonprofit is working to close the financial gap of their communities while fighting for language justice.
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Four generations of Zapotec women: (from left) Amelie Valez Martinez, Odilia Romero, Eulogia Romero, and Janet Martinez are photographed in traditional clothing specific to the Oaxacan town San Bartolomé Zoogocho.Photographed by June Canedo

A 2018 estimate measured that some 20 million self-identified Latinx immigrants have made their way to the United States. Within these migrant communities, groups of pre-Columbian Indigenous people—more than 78 distinct Indigenous communities in Mexico alone and more than 350 in South America—are often overlooked, their cultures erased and lumped together by prevailing prejudices. When COVID-19 hit these immigrant communities, they faced not only a public health and economic disaster but a crisis of communication as well. With more than 500 unique languages spoken throughout Central and South America, transmitting a clear and effective message about the necessity of social distancing is a challenge. As work in the service and restaurant sectors has shuttered, many undocumented Indigenous people have lost their income. They also have limited access to the relief efforts, since those funds are often dependent on documentation. All this can lead to a fear of reaching out for help.

These are just a few of the issues that Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO), an Indigenous-women-led nonprofit organization dedicated to Indigenous communities residing in Los Angeles, is working to address. Founded by Zapotec grassroots organizers and cultural workers Janet Martinez and Odilia Romero, CIELO advocates for the basic human rights of Indigenous workers and families. We spoke with the two women to understand how CIELO has had to redouble its efforts as COVID-19 continues to overwhelm the livelihoods of Indigenous immigrants within the state and across the country.

How did this group come about?

Martinez: CIELO was founded because [Odilia and I] saw that there weren’t spaces being created for [Indigenous] women in which they’re really, truly, intentionally being supported. And so then we decided to start an organization that was Indigenous women led. We also created the National Indigenous Interpreters Conference, which is the only one held in all of the U.S and offers a space for Indigenous language preservation. People who speak Indigenous languages aren’t being provided those spaces. It also offers an opportunity for Indigenous interpreters all over the United States to come together.

Romero: What many people don’t realize is that there is a lot of racism toward Indigenous people, even within the Latinx community. When we come here not speaking English or Spanish, not knowing the system, and we end up at a hospital or court of law, we’re given a Spanish-English interpreter. However, those interpreters are usually not aware of our language diversity—there are 68 different languages spoken in Mexico alone. My parents came here speaking very little Spanish. I came here speaking very little Spanish. We’ve gone through this firsthand—we have firsthand experience of the institutional racism toward Indigenous people and also the racism of other Latinx people.

Eulogia Romero

Photographed by June Canedo

How has your work preserving and fighting for the rights of Indigenous language speakers had to adapt due to COVID-19?

Martinez: Since COVID-19, we’ve developed a video series, translated in several Indigenous languages, to contextualize the virus for our communities. We felt it was important to develop this message in video and audio formats because a lot of the people who speak these languages transmit them orally. You can’t necessarily always write things and assume that people will be able to read it. If you look at the numbers in Mexico alone, only one percent of Indigenous people are able to access higher education.

If you don’t have upward mobility through education, you have to have upward mobility through migration. And that’s what we’ve been seeing. That’s why we have a large population of Indigenous people [in the United States]. So when we develop the materials, we’re trying to be really mindful that access to education is really limited. Not everyone can read or understand in full the English- or Spanish-language flyers or infomercials the government is distributing. That’s why we’re creating videos.

You’ve also been working to financially assist your community through fundraising. As of August 2, you’ve allocated $566,800 for Indigenous families through grassroots efforts. CIELO also received a $200,000 grant from the California Immigrant Resilience Fund that was dispersed to about 500 Indigenous families. How did those efforts come about?

Martinez: One day we just started getting calls about people needing access to resources, given the closures of the restaurant sector. A lot of Indigenous people work in the restaurant sector. And so we started seeing that there was an increased call for financial assistance. We said, “I wish we could apply for a grant.” So we applied for a $10,000 grant—that’s what we started with: $10,000 from the Seventh Generation Fund. And then we said, “Wow, where else can we get another grant to give away?”

Romero: Right now, we are able to provide $400 per family. We’re super grateful that we are fundraising this money because many individuals who were previously working in restaurants have moved to garment centers. And now they’re getting paid two cents per mask but are also being infected with COVID at an alarming rate. And there’s no information on how to take care of yourself in a garment sweatshop. How do you take care of your sewing machine? What types of masks should you use? None of that [information] is out there for Indigenous-language speakers. And we’ve seen the [infections] increase. One out of three people has had COVID or knew somebody with COVID. And that’s just within the community CIELO serves.

Martinez: There was a man working in the restaurant industry who was from an Indigenous community and then went to go work at one of these mask-making sweatshops. While working there, he was infected with COVID. In order to isolate himself from his family, he had to sleep in his car. We’re at 100-degree weather in Los Angeles. Imagine having to live in your car so that your family doesn’t get infected. The family would give him food through the car window, and he had a bucket in his car in order to take care of everyday needs.

Many of these undocumented workers pay taxes. But they are not given any type of government assistance: They don’t qualify for stimulus checks. They don’t qualify for unemployment.

Amelie Valez Martinez

Photographed by June Canedo

Martinez: Undocumented people are not exempt from paying taxes if they have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number and they have it registered with their employer, which many do. They still have to pay the same taxes that all of us pay, except they don’t receive the same benefits. They don’t have access to Social Security, unemployment, or the recent stimulus check.

Romero: Eighty-five percent of undocumented immigrants have had a positive impact on the U.S. economy. We contribute to the economy of this country. What would happen right now if all farmworkers stopped working, all the restaurant workers? Imagine in a regular economy if undocumented people stopped working. The economy would collapse.

Odilia Romero, cofounder of Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo

Photographed by June Canedo

You work with the LAPD, educating them on the nuances of Indigenous communities and how they differ from the other Latinx communities in Los Angeles. Can you tell me more?

Romero: I came here in 1991. My parents were already here. We lived in this area that was under the “supervision” of the Rampart Division of LAPD, very well known for its corruption. At that time, I was a child living and dealing with the trauma of being removed from my home. But then, on top of adjusting to a new country, a lot of people from my community also started dying [due to drug overdoses]. People could not communicate with the police. They didn’t know what was killing their loved ones and neighbors. There were a lot of police interactions, but we were never able to have an actual conversation with them because they didn’t know of our existence. All these arrests, all these encounters with the police were very traumatic. People would die or would be killed, and families couldn’t get anyone to investigate or simply explain to them what happened.

Through our organization, we reached out to the police, because the same story that I just told you continues to play out as new Indigenous migrants come. At first, [LAPD] just wouldn’t open up to a conversation. They wouldn’t even answer our emails until LAPD officer Frank Hernandez killed Manuel Jaminez, a Mayan man and father of three. (This is the same officer who was caught on camera beating Richard Castillo in Boyle Heights in April of this year.) The officer gave [Manuel] instructions to raise his hands. He didn’t follow it. He couldn’t understand the command because they gave it in Spanish and English, and Manuel spoke the Guatemalan language K’iche’. They shot him and killed him. That’s when the conversation happens. They’re like, “Hey, we need to learn more about your communities.”

It’s been a very intense conversation. We’ve had officers walk out on us. We had them make jokes or say racist or sexist things. The last training that we had before COVID-19, one of the officers was like, “How do you expect me to understand your community if you guys can’t even understand each other? Why can’t you just stay home?”

Martinez: I think that this work is extremely controversial. It is the most controversial program that we do because nobody wants to work with the police. Nobody wants to work with the LAPD. And that I totally get. But for us we don’t have the luxury of not being liaisons for our communities.

Romero: Some officers have applied what they have learned to their work. Some of them don’t. It’s a mix with LAPD. But when they encounter a victim of a crime or a perpetrator, they should be able to pull out our card and say, “Do you speak Zapotec? Do you speak Mixtec? Do you speak Chinantec?” How often they’ll use it, we don’t know. But they’re carrying those cards [that ask these questions in various Indigenous languages]. And for us it’s a big accomplishment.

Janet Martinez, cofounder of Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo

Photographed by June Canedo

Donations to Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo (CIELO) can be made here.