During the demonstrations and protests in Los Angeles, I read about people who were offended or concerned when people waved Mexican or Central American flags. This action is often perceived as a lack of loyalty to the United States.

Among some Latinos, the concern is that this could attract the wrong kind of attention and cause more problems for our community. Are we naive to believe that wearing red, white, and blue will make a difference and prevent this government from wreaking havoc on our communities?

My Salvadoran mother, above all, avoided being seen or perceived as causing any kind of “trouble” by speaking out, even when her own rights were being undermined. “Shhh!” she would say. “I don’t want trouble.” What she really meant was, “I don’t want to be seen or heard, because I want to be safe.”

Latinos in this country are too often invisible, perceived and/or treated as second-class citizens, and if you doubt this, just look at the ICE raids. Agents are detaining and arresting people indiscriminately, sometimes solely because of the color of their skin. The truth is now out there for all to see.

Latinos are hardworking, faith-based people who value family above all else. Furthermore, we are numerous and proud to speak Spanish and promote the culture of our immigrant parents, which doesn't sit well with many people who see it as a threat to their image of what “America” should be: a primarily white, English-speaking country.

The truth is that Latinos have always been in the U.S., we've just been practically invisible; we've often been given few racial identification options in official federal data collection systems, like the Census.

For many years, when I responded to the Census, I felt confused about my options. While I didn't identify as white, I also didn't identify as Black, so I checked “other.” However, the “other” option made me feel like my identity was lost in a sea of ??identities that didn't belong to me and that would continue to make me invisible. If Latinos don't “officially” exist, Why should the country invest in our education or any industry be responsible for providing job opportunities for Latinos?

African-American actor and comedian Chris Rock called Los Angeles the “Mexican Slave State,” referring to the lack of job opportunities for Mexicans in a white Hollywood industry. “There’s an acceptance that Mexicans are going to take care of white people in Los Angeles, which doesn’t exist anywhere else.

“I remember I was renting a house in Beverly Park while I was shooting a movie, and you’d see all the Mexicans at 8 in the morning lining up to go into Beverly Park like it was a General Motors. “It’s a strange city,” the actor wrote in an essay published in The Hollywood Reporter in December 2021.

Rock wrote about Mexicans, but spoke to the experiences of Latinos regardless of their country of origin. We carry the flags of our parents and grandparents to remind America that we are children of indigenous immigrants from the Americas (including the United States) and that we are proud to belong to this union, acknowledging our roots and bringing our unique contributions to this country.

We will no longer be invisible… Carrying two flags is analogous to Latino culture’s reverence for its elders and its roots, as well as its loyalty to home and country.

Author Daniel Peña writes in The Guardian: “What Trump fails to grasp is that the bones of the Mexican people are the metadata of the land in California and, indeed, the rest of the country. Our place here is in the food, in the street names, in the very name of Los Angeles.”

Evelyn Aleman is the founder of Nuestra Voz: Communities for Quality Education, a nonprofit organization that helps families access educational information and resources.