As the images of protests in southern California have flooded television and social networks in recent days, a key question has arisen: why do so many protesters carry flags of Mexico in a US political protest?
The Sea of Green, White and Red Mexican Banderas in the protests against deportations carried out this week in Los Angeles has been used by the conservatives, who argue that the demonstrations are in an antiestadounidenses essence. This has caused some protesters to leave them at home.
The photos of masked provocaters waving Mexican flags on Waymo Taxis on flames were disseminated instantly through conservative social networks this weekend. Republicans pointed them out as a clear example of why President Donald Trump sent to the National Guard, and how migration had gone out of control in California.
“Look at all foreign flags,” he said on Sunday in X Stephen Miller, a White House cabinet and architect of the Trump’s internal agenda. “Los Angeles is occupied territory.”
Many Americans, including those of the left, might seem a bad strategy to fight the deportations of undocumented immigrants waving the flag of another country.
But protesters said this week that they see the Mexican flag as a symbol of challenge against Trump’s migratory policies or solidarity with other Mexico -American. The flag has become so omnipresent in recent decades that it is part of the landscape of southern California, adorning pick-up trucks and hanging from bridges. Few mass meetings occur in the region without one or two Mexican flags, from football matches on weekends to the parades of the Los Angeles Dodgers championship.
This week, those who waved them said it was important to honor their inheritance and not submit to Trump, even when they recognized the possible political cost. They said that for them the flag was not anti -stating; That more than a national loyalty, it represented its Chicanian roots.
The theme has touched the heart of what it means to be American, and if freedom really means being able to fly the flag one chooses.
Bonnie Garcia, 32, an American citizen born in Los Angeles, said that for a moment she thought about stopping a US flag before attending a demonstration on Monday, in which the deployment of soldiers of the National Guard in the city was reported. But he remained faithful to his original plan and took two small flags that represented the countries of origin of his parents: Guatemala and Mexico.
“I am proud to be American, but in these times, what is proud is to be Californian, and see the diversity here, see that many people have not forgotten their roots,” he said. “I feel that is why Trump fears diversity and fears representation on people’s face, because they don’t want people to remember, they want to erase us, and I’m not going to tolerate it.”
In Los Angeles protests, Mexican flags have been a solid majority. Many are waved by young Americans whose grandparents or great -grandparents came from Mexico. Among the crowd there have also been American flags, flags from Central American countries and Palestinian flags. Some protesters carried hybrid flags that had Mexican colors and shield along with US bars and stars.
In a nation of immigrants, Americans take flags from other countries to commemorate cultural celebrations or holidays, such as those of Irish origin on San Patricio’s day or those of Italian origin on the day of the race. But in California, where Latinos are a plurality and the Mexican people are the most numerous group among them, Mexican flags wave throughout the year as a matter of cultural pride.
Even so, the image that the protests project has made the activists in California question if their flag choice was not giving Trump more weapons in their hard hand campaign against immigration. In social networks, some progressives suggested that protesters should replace foreign flags with US flags, aware that their mobilizations are transmitted every night nationwide.
Some members of the left said that, beyond the image, it was important to demonstrate that the US flag was not a patriotic symbol of the Maga Movement, but that it belonged to all Americans, including those who oppose Trump’s deportation measures.
Lorena Gonzalez, director of the Federation of Workers of California, was on Monday to a concentration in the center of Los Angeles with 60 American flags to distribute.
“Winting the Mexican flag does not bother me, but I think it is important to remind people that I am very proud to be American,” Gonzalez said by telephone, a former democratic state -legislator and daughter of a migrant agricultural worker.
California has already had this debate on other occasions. In the 1990s, Governor Pete Wilson tried to end public benefits for undocumented immigrants, with arguments similar to those currently expressed by Trump. At that time, the whites were a majority in the state, but it was expected to become a Latin plurality, which happened in 2014.
Wilson promoted proposition 187, an initiative submitted to the vote in 1994 that would have prohibited public services for undocumented Californians. Mike Madrid, author of The Latino Century: How America’s Larganest Minority Is Transforming Democracy (The Latin century: how the largest minority in the United States is transforming democracy) and Republican political consultant, said that the widespread presence of Mexican flags in the protests against the measure moved so much to the voters of the State that ended up tilting the result of the election.
“The approach is lost that this is the constitutionality, due process and human rights when a foreign flag begins to wave,” Madrid said.
Decades after the fight for proposition 187, Madrid sees the possibility that the wave of the Mexican flag will help conservatives this year again.
“It harms Latinos and harms the Californians,” he said. “It’s almost so bad that I wonder if it’s being orchestrated.”
Kevin de León, former legislative leader and councilor of Los Angeles, said that the number of Mexican flags in Los Angeles’s protests reminded him of the time when he was a union organizer in the 1990s.
“If we could do it again, at that time, we would have taken American flags,” he said. “There should always be American flags. That is a mistake we made on the left: we allowed the right to appropriate the US flag, as if it were his. But we are as Americans as anyone. We should not allow others to claim the flag as if they belong to them exclusively.”
Fernando Guerra, director of the center for the studio of Los Angeles of the University Loyola Marymount, also thought that waving Mexican flags this week was politically counterproductive.
However, in a metropolis in which approximately half of the population is Latin, he said, it is unlikely that Mexican flags will lose their appeal.
“Strategically, should the Mexican flag wave as it has been done in these protests?” “But can you prevent it from happening?”
Maria Flores, 52, born in Mexico and a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, who has been an American citizen for more than two decades, waved Mexican colors in a demonstration this week.
Flores said that he also has an American flag, but that he was worried about taking it in a demonstration against Trump because the iconography of the bars and stars is closely related to the Maga Movement.
“At this time the American flag could be bad, due to Trump’s government,” he said. “If I put the American flag outside my house, my neighbors would think that I am with Trump.”
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He spoke of a relative who is undocumented, but respectful of the law and had been trying to legalize. So far, his effort had failed.
“I charge her for my family, for all the people who have no papers,” he said in Spanish. “I am talking about them. I am their voice.”