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Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town
Beacon Press
October 2013
On Sale: October 19, 2013
264 pages
ISBN: 0807001813
EAN: 9780807001813
Kindle: B00CNOSM24
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction | True Crime
The true story of an immigrant's murder that turned a quaint village on the Long Island shore into ground zero in the war on immigration
In November 2008, Marcelo Lucero, a thirty-seven-year-old undocumented Ecuadorean immigrant, was attacked and murdered by a group of teenagers as he walked the streets of the Long Island village of Patchogue accompanied by a childhood friend. The attackers were out โhunting for beaners.โ Chasing, harassing, and assaulting defenseless โbeanersโโtheir slur for Latinosโwas part of their weekly entertainment, some of the teenagers later confessed. Latinosโprimarily men and not all of them immigrantsโhave become the target of hate crimes in recent years as the nation wrestles with swelling numbers of undocumented immigrants, the suburbs become the newcomersโ first destination, and public figures advance their careers by spewing anti-immigration rhetoric.
Lucero, an unassuming worker at a dry cleanerโs, became yet another victim of anti-immigration fever. In the wake of his death, Patchogue was catapulted into the national limelight as this formerly unremarkable suburb of New York became ground zero in the war on immigration. In death, Lucero became a symbol of everything that was wrong with our broken immigration system: fewer opportunities to obtain visas to travel to the United States, porous borders, a growing dependency on cheap labor, and the rise of bigotry.
Drawing on firsthand interviews and on-the-ground reporting, journalist Mirta Ojito has crafted an unflinching portrait of one community struggling to reconcile the hate and fear underlying the idyllic veneer of their all-American town. With a strong commitment to telling all sides of the story, Ojito unravels the engrossing narrative with objectivity and insight, providing an invaluable look at one of Americaโs most pressing issues.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - November 23, 2013
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