This is the unusual history of Marcelo Lucero, the last victim of what had turned a routine pastime: to look for Hispanics to attack them.

In the county of Suffolk, of New York, a group of adolescent young people seems to have adopted a new morbid pastime. It is already not “it hears why we are not going to stop to the corner”, and even, “we are going to steal cars”. What seven young people was doing like pastime, between 16 and 17 years, was to go out “to give a drubbing to a Mexican”.

Unfortunately for Marcelo Lucero, he crossed in the way of the boys on one Saturday night of last November when he was going in the direction of the house of a friend in the center of Patchogue. Bright star was not Mexican, it was from Ecuador, but the attack against him was simply for his ethnic appearance. To Bright star they beat him and stabbed it until he died. The adolescents have been detained and sued. His judgment had to begin on February 18.

The Bright star murder was a hard blow for his family in Ecuador and New York, and for his friends and neighbors, who describe it as a calm and kind man who was always looking for the way of helping others. But his death helped to discover a baneful conduct pattern on the part of the young people. It turns out that Bright star was only the last victim of what had turned a routine pastime: to look for Hispanics to attack them.

The authorities believe that these adolescents had been hunting his victims for more than one year and that other young people can be implied. The victims were selected at random, walking along the street, mounting in bicycle, washing clothes in laundromats. One of the implied adolescents said to the police: "I do not go out to do this very often, perhaps once a week”.

The publicity that surrounds the case of Bright star motivated others to call and to denounce similar attacks. The district attorneys managed to identify at least another eight Latin victims who were attacked in a period of 14 months.

The case led the commission of the county Suffolk to establishing a group of work to investigate hate crimes. And the fact is that the problem is not alone the attacks against Hispanics, but these were not being brought by fear, and those who were brought were ignored by the police. The group of work of 13 members will have the work of analyzing why these hate crimes were happening unnoticed and what is causing the racial tensions in the county.

What it spends in the county Suffolk is only a reflex of similar situations across the country. According to the FBI, the hate crimes against Latin Americans increased in 2007. It were informed that 1.256 committed affronts based on the ethnic origin or nationality of a person and of these cases 61,6 per cent were against Latin Americans. In the last 4 years there have been 40 per cent of increase in the hate crimes.
The Center of Legal Poverty of the South afirna that also has produced an increase to himself in the groups of hate. They raised of 602 in the year 2000 888 in 2007, an increase of 48 per cent. The groups of supremacistas white persons that concentrate normally in Jews attack or African Americans now chase also the Latin Americans. And there assumes the growth of these groups of hate towards the negative tone of the migratory debate.

It should not be so complicated to realize why the hate crimes have increased so much in the county Suffolk or any other of the country. There is a clear boss. When we have politicians and commentators in the means that him accuse the immigrants of taking work places from the Americans, of making our streets dirty, of spreading illnesses, of threatening our culture and catalog them of criminals, we did not have to be surprised that anybody takes the freedom them of trying to eliminate if they think that there will not be consequences.

When the migratory authorities get to houses and business where they intimidate the immigrants, they stop them and deport, it must not be surprised that anybody with a sick mind thinks that to attack Hispanics, as if there were a plague, is a form of social cleanliness. It already does not even seem to import if they are in the country legally or not. To seem Hispanic is sufficient to be discriminated, attacked or, as in case of Bright star, murdered.

There is nothing that it justifies that adolescents go out after Hispanics hunt with the intention of hurting them. But it would help if those that show the power and have the attention of the masses were changing the tone of the migratory debate. They are not the immigrants those who are threatening the American values, the real threat those are that do not value the life.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.