The case of Luis Ramírez, a Latin immigrant murdered by a group of adolescents in Penmsilvania, might have devastating effects, apart from the injustice for his family.

Luis Ramírez changed Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, from his native Mexico to look for work, but it found much more than that. The first it found the love. It met a young woman of the people with the one who had two beautiful children. But then it crossed for the way of the hate.

It was the hate towards those who are not of his class what supposedly he led four athletes of the higher institute of learning to attack brutally Luis while it was walking along a street with a young half note on July 12, 2008. They shouted racial insults to him while they struck it, knocked down it to the soil and kicks gave him to the head. Two days later, Luis died as a consequence of the wounds.

The case attracted national attention for thinking that it was committing an injustice. The attacking young people was not detained up to almost two weeks after the drubbing. Charges presented him to one like age minor, other came to an agreement with the government pleading guilty for federal charges to violating Ramírez's civil rights; and others two went to judgment before a jury where all the members were white.

None of the young people was condemned for murder. The jury in case of two enjuiciados absolved them of all the charges, less those of simple assault and alcohol, and last week they were sentenced to only six months and a few days in the jail.

While many residents in Shenandoah celebrated the judgment and the judgment, the family of Ramírez and Hispanic leaders across the country they are indignant. For John Amaya pleaded of MALDEF, the Fund American Mexico for the Education and the Legal Defender, who was present in the judgment, this was clearly a hate crime. “This case sends the message to the Latin community of which if you are Hispanic in this country and are murdered in a brutal attack, justice exists neither for you nor for his family”, tells Amaya. “This means not only that the life of an immigrant does not cost anything, but a Latin American does not cost anything”, adds.

MALDEF has joined forces with other groups of civil rights, like the League Anti Difamación and the Legal Center of the Poverty of the South, to ask to the Department of Justice it to present federal charges of crime of hate against the accused. MALDEF has more than 50.000 signed support requests to the request. Also they press in the Congress so that there is approved the Local Law of Prevention of Crimes of Hate, which he would authorize to the Department of Justice to help the local authorities to investigate and initiate processes for crimes motivated by hate.

According to a report of the FBI, in almost 20 years since there was approved the Law of Statistics of Crimes of Hate, they have researched an average of 7.500 annually, almost one every hour of every day.

But although according to the FBI there has been an increase of 40 per cent in hate crimes towards Latin Americans between 2003 and 2007, and the groups of hate have doubled, and this type of crime is very difficult to process. The laws change from one state to other and at federal level the hate crimes are treated like violations of the civil rights.

The problem is that there has to be demonstrated the intention of attacking someone because of his race, ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation. An example of this is the man who describes himself as supremacista target and who killed a black guard in the Museum of the Holocaust in Washington DC. While he will be accused of murder, the district attorneys try to solve how to demonstrate that it was a hate crime, if it killed it because it was black and was employed at a museum raised in honor to the Jews died in the holocaust, and not because it was coincidencialmente in his shot line.

The case of Luis Ramírez might have devastating effects, apart from the injustice for his family. The racism expressions are worrying. Some citizens of the people of Shenandoah said that if he should not be illegally in the country, it would not have been murdered. Also, the case increases the fear on which the victims or witnesses of crimes of hate in the whole country abstain from denouncing them thinking that they will not be presented before the justice. It is a responsibility of our federal government to take action rapid and defined to help to remove this fear, because unfortunately the hate can lead to killing.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.