The final installment of CNN's "Latino in America" aired October 22nd, 2009. This segment focused on the immigration debate as well as the changes various cities are experience with the growth of the Latino immigrant community. This segment was much more honest and critical of the anti-immigrant sentiment in America. The show follows a girl named "Marta" who was housed in a child immigrant detainment center in Florida. The young girl crossed the Rio Grande by herself and was caught by immigration. The various trials that she faces with her pro bono attorney are heart wrenching.
The most powerful of the segments is most definitely the story about the Shenadoah, Pennsylvania killing. A group of white teenage football players in this small town outside of Wilkes-Barre beat up and killed a Mexican immigrant one night outside his home. The boys were acquitted. A local civil rights activist talked about the facade that the town exhibits every year during its cultural parade, however, it is clear by the acquittal and the town's siding with the teenagers that, indeed, racism is alive.
While the other segments including the "Latino Mayberry" and the interview with Cuban Senator Mel Martinez were interesting, it was the shocking segments like that of the Pennsylvania town that really put the problems facing Latinos in the US into the mainstream consciousness.
I think Soledad O'Brien and the CNN producers did a wonderful job showing the various faces of Latinidad in the US.
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