Thread by @bnico004

As a Zapotec Professor, born and raised in Koreatown, I am appalled to hear LA City Council members blatant racial attacks. Many of us Indigenous Oaxacans, however, are not surprised to hear this racial violence from non-Indigenous Latinx and Mexicans! It happens EVERYDAY!

https://twitter.com/KnockDotLA/status/1579170815228383233

I began my research on Indigenous Oaxacan experiences in the US because of my family's and my pueblos (not "villages") transnational autonomous practices across #LosAngeles & #Oaxaca. I concentrate on women and children precisely because of the racial violence we have

endured by Latinx & non-Indigenous mestizo Mexicans, yet that remains invisible by most. Being called "Pinche India fea!," "India Maria Baja del cerro"... and the number of spitts from my Latinx peers growing up attending #LAUSD from elementary to h.s.

put me in a horrific vulnerable place of attempting to commit suicide as a child multiple times & hating my #darkskin & being Indigenous, very similarly to Native American children in schools, and the young #ÑuùSavi child in #VenturaCounty 20yrs (2012) later where Oaxacans

organized to protect their children through the #NoMeLlamesOaxaquitaCampaign. Now, the audio leaks of multiple #Latinx #LA council members brings all that trauma back!!! It is PAINFUL to so many of us, esp. children who directly experienced racial violence for being dark-skin,

having Indigenous "features,"... and for being "short." When we say Latinidad is deadly, it is not a rhetorical statement! It is a settler colonial process of elimination for Indigenous & Afro-Indigenous communities from "Latin America" living in the US.

Our very livelihoods as Indigenous Peoples are at risk! #Oaxacan #Oaxaqueña #Zapotec #LA #LosAngeles #Koreatown #MidCity #Mother #Professor #IndigenousStudies #Indigenous #PhD

The City of LA has the largest Indigenous Oaxacan community in the US, spanning five generations since the 1950s, smh to city council remarks, "I don’t know where these ppl are from. I don’t know what village they came from. How they got here…. estan feos (They are ugly)!"