As the campaign to rescind Donald Trump’s SNL hosting invitation delivered over 500,000 petition signatures to NBC Studios last night, a host of Latino cultural leaders have published an open letter calling out Trump’s racist campaign, noting that Trump’s xenophobia has already led to several attacks against Latinos and immigrants:
The statement, which was published Tuesday by Univision but is not affiliated with the network, says that letter’s authors “refuse to keep silent” about Trump’s comments. Almost 70 leaders, including actor Diego Luna and novelist Homero Aridjis, signed the statement, which condemns Trump’s candidacy as absurd and alarming.
According to Time’s translation of the letter, it reads: “His hate speech appeals to lower passions like xenophobia, machismo, political intolerance and religious dogmatism. All of which inevitably reminds us of the past campaigns that have been directed against other ethnic groups and that have resulted in the deaths of millions of people. In fact, the physical aggressions against Hispanics and repeated calls to prohibit the public use of the Spanish language have already started.”
Among the signers is “Birdman” creator Alejandro González Iñárritu, the first Mexican filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director.
Yesterday on Yahoo! News, actor and comic John Leguizamo also declared he would no longer watch “Saturday Night Live”, saying “I’m all for freedom of speech, but this is different…You’re celebrating someone who has said some horrible things” about immigrants and Latinos.
The signers of the letter and Leguizamo are just the latest in a wave of public and cultural figures to slam Trump’s attacks on the Latino and immigrant communities.
In late August, Grammy-winning entertainer Ricky Martin published a Univision op-ed slamming Trump as “racist, absurd, and above all incoherent and ignorant,” a piece which garnered the public support of entertainer Marc Anthony along the way. Actor Esai Morales — who led a voter mobilization rally along with Dolores Huerta in Colorado just a few days ago — has publicly criticized the Trump campaign. And a slew of entertainers — including Gloria Estefan, Shakira, Carlos Santana, Thalia, and Pepe Aguilar — joined forces in September to recorded the song, “We’re All Mexican.”
