When culture is misread as violence

Representative Elizabeth Velasco, the first Latina legislator from the Western Slope, was the subject of degrading emails circulated by senior Garfield County law enforcement officials using government accounts. She was called “POS” and “GARBAGE” by men with badges and guns. This is real harm.

A three-foot artistic rendering of an absent candidate in the form of a piñata at a political event is not.

At a recent candidate forum in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District — the most Latino district in the state — all Democratic candidates were invited. One chose not to attend. 

The Latina-led host organization, COLOR Action Fund, created a piñata in the likeness of the absent candidate. It sat on stage as a visual stand-in. It was not struck with a stick. It was not used to incite harm.

Actual image of the piñata used in forum

A piñata is a Mexican craft tradition, and its own art form. It has long been part of the cultural fabric of Colorado and the Southwest. Treating the art form itself as political violence says more about discomfort with Latino culture than about actual danger.

There is a familiar pattern here. Mexican flags and Virgen de Guadalupe imagery have been mislabeled as gang symbols. Colorado high school students required state legislation before they were allowed to wear Mexican flag colors in their graduation regalia. Salvadoran or Venezuelan national origin alone has been used to imply criminality by the Trump Administration. Identity is reframed as a threat.

When Party Chair Shad Murib compared Rep. Velasco’s situation with the piñata, which he called “imagery that invokes violence,” he applied the language of violence to a cultural art form. The intention may have been to defend a candidate, but framing our culture as violence was a serious misjudgment. The incidents involving Rep. Velasco and the CD8 forum are fundamentally different.

CD8 is the most Latino district in Colorado. If we have any chance of taking back Congress this November, the Colorado Democratic Party must do better and stop disappointing Latino voters.

We stand with Rep. Velasco. We stand with the organizers of the forum. As a rural organization, we know what actual threats look like — we receive them, often from radical extremist groups. We take that seriously.

But our culture and our art should not be misread as violence. That is wrong.

Latino voters deserve candidates who show up, political parties that listen, and institutions that respect our culture in civic space. 

Voces Unidas Action Fund is responsible for this post.

 Emails circulated by senior Garfield County law enforcement officials