By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A protest aimed at raising awareness of immigrants’ rights drew only a handful of Del Rioans to the front of the civic center today.
Protest organizer Ruben Bustamante carried a hand-lettered sign reading, “Jesus was a refugee and an immigrant,” and he told The 830 Times the protest was held in conjunction with International Women’s Day.
“We want to advocate for women’s liberation issues, reproductive
to raise awareness for immigrant rights. (Photo by Luke Stitch)
rights, human rights, anything that deals with issues that involve women, and not just women, but LGBTQ+ issues,” Bustamante said.
Bustamente said he believed “the time was right” for a protest.
“It just seems like, with everything we’re seeing with the new Trump administration, I feel like there’s this consciousness, where you can see the country’s going in a certain direction, and I think it’s time to mobilize here in Del Rio and take over the narrative,” he said.
“The same thing is being reflected in Los Angeles, Georgia, South Carolina, Illinois, even here in Texas, in Austin and Dallas. Last month, there were a bunch of spontaneous demonstrations, pretty much against Trump and everything that he stands for,” Bustamante said.
He said he tired of the president and his supporters calling migrants “illegals” and branding them “criminals, rapists and saying they’re eating cats and dogs.”
“We’re from Del Rio, and this is our hometown. We’ve never had a problem with people, regardless of their immigration status. Enough is enough. We’re taking over the narrative, and this is just the beginning,” Bustamante said.
Bustamante described himself as “just a regular person,” who goes to work and rescues dogs in his spare time.
Asked if there was a tipping point that made him decide to take his views public, Bustamante said, “I think it’s just everything that we had seen leading up to the election last year, everything coming out of Trump’s mouth. Everything we’re seeing now, federal firings, budget cuts. I’m a veteran and I think just yesterday, Trump said they were going to fire 80,000 people that work for the Veterans Administration. I think every day is a tipping point.”
Bustamante also emphasized any protests he organizes will be peaceful.
“We’d love for people with different views to stop and join us. Maybe we can start a dialogue. At the end, we’re all working-class people, whether conservative or liberal. We’re all going to work, paying bills. . . We have to get everybody mobilized because we’re all in this together,” he said.
Connie Wix was one of the handful of Del Rioans who joined Bustamante at the protest.
“I saw the flyer, and I felt like it was just the right thing to do. I’m 74 years old today, and I remember when they integrated the schools, and I remember them taking the booths and the stools out of drugstores so Black people couldn’t come in and have a soda at the soda fountain,” Wix said.
“We don’t need to go back to that, and they’re pushing us back to that, and everybody has rights. That’s what the Constitution says, that we all have rights, women, LBGTQ+, everyone. We’re all the same species, we’re all human. It doesn’t matter what color we are, and it doesn’t matter what gender you are or who you love,” Wix added.
The wife of a first sergeant who served in two U.S. wars, Wix said she wished she had participated in more protests as a younger woman.
“But I’m going to do it now that I’m 74 years old. Remember, if we were all cut out from the same cookie cutter, the world would be boring,” she added.
A veteran local protester, Valerie Rodriguez, joined the event with her children.
“Today is International Women’s Day, and me being a dual citizen, for me, I think people fail to recognize and I think a lot of our community sits there and says, ‘You need to be a proud United States citizen,’ but right now I can’t be proud, because they’re ripping families apart, and the way they treat, not only Hispanics and Latinos, but the way they treat women,” Rodriguez said.
“We’re regressing, rather than progressing. Rights are being taken away from us. I think I saw somebody on Del Rio Community Spotlight saying, ‘Hey, (I have) my Second Amendment rights, I’m going to roll up there with my gun.’ Just like you fight for your Second Amendment rights, we have the right to protest, the right to organize, the right to speak what we believe, and I think a lot of people have gone too far right and too far left.
“I don’t devalue your right to arm yourself, so you shouldn’t devalue my right to protest. We can agree to disagree,” she said.
Rodriguez said she is not one to blindly approve of a politician’s actions simply because they belong to a particular party.
“I’m not someone who sat there and said Biden was doing an amazing job and didn’t question what he did. I marched in Washington when Obama was caging families, because he deported way more people than Biden and then Trump in his first four years, and will probably end up deporting more people even in the next four years, because Trump’s not meeting the numbers he wants to deport.
“I’m not someone to blindly follow either. I marched when Obama was doing wrong. I think the difference now is the inhumaneness of things. When Obama was caging families, he wasn’t separating them. . . Trump in his first four years was taking joy in separating children from their parents,” Rodriguez said.
She charged the new president is also deporting foreign citizens who have documentation and who are in the country legally.
“It’s happening here in Del Rio, and it’s happening at the checkpoint in Uvalde, and it’s not okay, and that’s why I’m here today,” she said.
Pedro Hernandez, another protester, said he is uncomfortable with the “hatred for immigrants you see on the news.”
“I think it’s hypocritical, people claiming that they’re Christians and then seeing, ‘Send them back. We hate them. They’re different from us.’ They’re not different. They’re just people who want to come to this country, they want to make money, they want to buy a car, they want to buy a house, they want to go to McDonald’s, go home and watch Netflix. It’s terrible,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said he is also sorry to see how easily his fellow citizens are swayed by politicians.
“I thought we were smarter than that, but clearly we’re not,” he said.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
