Maria Carrillo High School students defend skit'scontroversial depiction of Latinos

When 18-year-old Jose Ramirez was growing up in Santa Rosa, deportations were an inescapable reality in his immigrant family.

Brought into the country illegally by his parents, the Maria Carrillo High School senior was an “undocumented” from the age of 4 until he was 16.

“I used to see it a lot. I got relatives that got deported and, to me, that was traumatizing,” Ramirez said Wednesday. “But the older I got the more I released my feelings in, like, a comedic way.”

Comedy, satire and political statement. That’s what Ramirez was aiming for when he conceived of a dance performance last week that has raised concerns among some Maria Carrillo students who believe it was insensitive and even racist.

Ramirez said that was not the intent of the performance, which was intended to make a political point about the harshness of immigration enforcement, and how many in the country are oblivious to it.

The performance has sparked a conversation about immigration and racial stereotypes after videos of the event circulated on YouTube and several students went on a local radio station to complain about the way it depicted Latinos.

The controversy stems from a student performance at a lip-sync rally and contest held Friday afternoon during an assembly at Maria Carrillo High School. It featured Ramirez and a group of mostly Latino students dancing to various Latin American songs, including a regional Mexican song at the end. At the beginning the students wore ponchos and sombreros.

It ends with a student dressed as a police officer breaking up the dance and blowing his whistle. All but one of the students flash “green cards” - a colloquial term for an ID that proves legal permanent residency.

The one student who does not produce a green card - a white student - is taken to the ground and apprehended. The video has caused a stir among some Latino students at the school, and even outside the school, who feel the performance promoted Mexican stereotypes.

The North Bay Organizing Project’s Latino Student Congress and some Maria Carrillo students are planning a rally at the school in protest of the performance. The rally, according to a NBOP press release, will showcase “dignified demonstrations of Latino culture” and will feature “restorative healing circles.”

On Wednesday, Ramirez and three other students who performed in the dance met with a reporter shortly after school to tell their side of the controversy.

They gathered at the Rincon Valley home of Devin Lehrer, 17, the only white student who danced in the group. The students said the performance is being wrongly interpreted as a mockery of Latino culture.

They said they thought some people might be offended but they never thought they would be accused of being racist. They said they were trying to raise awareness about how undocumented families are living among us and how their lives are being torn apart.

“How can we be racist to our own people?” said Jazminne Zamora, 17, one of the dancers in the performance.

Zamora herself was an undocumented immigrant, until eight months ago. Like Ramirez, she was recently granted a temporary reprieve from deportation through President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, better known as DACA.

The high school’s principal, Rand Van Dyke, declined to comment Tuesday and Wednesday about the performance or actions taken by the school in response. Santa Rosa Schools Superintendent Socorro Shiels could not be reached for comment.

Lehrer said the performance was altered because of concerns raised by Trevor Brady, the teacher of the leadership class, which organized the rally.

The original version, Lehrer said, had the “immigration police” chase away all the Latino dancers, leaving only him to continue the dance, completely clueless of what had just taken place. That, the students said, was a metaphor mirroring American society’s indifference to ongoing deportations.

“There was a version where we’d be dancing in a line and then the immigration police would come and then all of the people that were Latino in our group would run away and then I’d be left dancing,” said Lehrer. “So it would just be me having a fun time, grooving, kind of like white people are kind of oblivious to the things that are happening around them.”

Lehrer said Brady felt the original ending might be considered offensive to some students. The students crafted an alternative ending, where the Latino students who were being “profiled” by the police would all have to show their green cards first. Only then would the police officer turn to the white dancer, who portrayed the only undocumented immigrant.

He said the point of the ending was to show that the Latinos were in the country legally but they were “profiled” by the police anyway.

“They had to go through all the Mexicans and then realize that I’m the one without the papers,” said Lehrer.

Ramirez said he did not expect students to react with such anger and hurt. He said he was simply trying to be satirical.

“I just thought they’d find it humorous, just like seeing some of my favorite comics, George Lopez and Dave Chappelle,” he said.

Lehrer said he participated in the performance to support his friend Ramirez, whom he has known since the fifth grade and is “like a brother to me.”

Lehrer said the impact of deportations should be openly addressed in the United States and that he does not regret taking part in the performance.

Zamora said she takes exception to some students questioning her sense of pride for her culture. She said some students have commented that the ponchos and sombrero were negative stereotypes of Latinos.

“But that’s what we wear, like if you go to a soccer game you wear a poncho or something like that,” Zamora said.

She said the various songs were meant to showcase Latino and Latin American culture.

“I was trying to bring out our culture, bring out something different,” Zamora said, adding that the yearly rally often features performances that are sexually charged.

“I didn’t see why bringing different kinds of culture was such a bad idea,” she said. “I know the end was not necessarily the greatest way to portray what we were trying to say.”

The students all agreed that the performance was intended to be satirical while taking on a real problem in the United States. They said their intention is getting lost in the controversy.

“That’s the reality of it - people do get taken away and it’s sad,” said one of the students who asked that her name not be used.

Zamora said she and the other dancers have been getting grave stares from students who were offended by the performance.

“They look at us like we’re all bad people,” she said. “But we’re all the same race, we’re all Latinos.”

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at (707) 521-5213 or martin.espinoza?@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.