“It seems like a little changuito”: the racist sayings of three Latino politicians unleash the scandal in Los Angeles

Council President Nury Martinez speaks during an event at Los Angeles City Hall in April of this year. Damian Dovarganes (AP)

Three Latino council members have caused a huge scandal in Los Angeles with a series of racist comments made behind closed doors in October of last year.

Councilwoman Nury Martinez has resigned this Monday morning from the presidency of the Council, forced by her mockery of the African-American son of a white colleague of the City Council.

“He looks like a little changuito,” said Martinez, one of the most powerful Latinas in a city where Latinos, blacks and whites live in perpetual racial tension.

That was just one of several cruel and racist comments made in a secretly recorded conversation lasting more than an hour with fellow Democratic councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, as well as a labor organization leader, Ron Herrera.

In the conversation, Martinez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants from Zacatecas, calls Mike Bonin, one of the 15 Los Angeles County council members, a “little bitch.”

Bonin is a white gay politician who is married and has adopted a three-year-old African-American toddler.

Martinez assured in the talk that Bonin uses her son as if he were "an accessory."

To which De León, of Guatemalan roots and raised in Tijuana, compared to when Nury "wears a Goyard bag or a Louis Vuitton bag."

"Her little black of hers, next to her," answered Martinez, who also considered that the couple is raising the minor "as a white child."

“This kid needs a few hits.

Let me take it around the corner and I'll bring it back", is heard in the audio uploaded to the Redditt social network and later deleted.

“I apologize to my colleagues and to the residents of the city that I love so much.

It is not my apologies that matter most, but the actions I will take from today.

I hope they give me the opportunity to make amends for my mistakes”, Martinez said this Monday in the statement announcing that he is leaving the presidency of the body, a position he has held since January 2020. Then he became the first Latina to preside over it in 171 years. .

The other participants have also apologized.

His words have not settled the dust raised by his remarks.

"Words matter, and racist language can do real harm," Governor Gavin Newsom said Monday.

“These comments have no place in our state, nor in our politics.

We must all shape our behavior to live with the best values ​​that we fight to protect every day,” added the president, the most important voice among Democrats in local politics.

Councilman Mike Bonin said he was hurt and angry after the comments about his son. Ashley Landis (AP)

In the controversial conversation, the Latino politicians discussed the dispute between two of the three black councilors that Los Angeles has, facing each other over the redistricting of the electoral districts, despite the fact that the two represent the south of the city.

Martinez tried to convince a businessman to support moving the Los Angeles International Airport out of the Bonin district and into that of one of the black council members, Marqueecee Harris-Dawson.

Her rival, Mark Ridely Thomas, was suspended and is being prosecuted on corruption charges.

None of the politicians knew they were being recorded, so the candid conversation lays bare the power struggles between the racial groups that make up Los Angeles County, population 10.4 million.

The city is 9% black and nearly 50% Latino.

Hispanic representation in the city council is limited to the districts led by Martinez, De Leon and Cedillo, less than a third among the 15 council members of the City Council.

The influence of the districts was, at the time of the talk, at risk with a new map that drew the new borders to the power exercised by the consistory.

The councilors campaigned to include airports, factories or consumption centers in their zones, which would mean important economic resources for the districts.

“Mike Bonin has never said shit about Latinos.

He will never say anything about us,” De León says at one point, who calls Bonin at one point “the fourth black councilman.”

De León and Martinez's term ends at the end of 2024. Cedillo was seeking re-election in the November elections, but lost the primary to Eunisses Hernandez, a community activist who champions causes further to the left among Democratic sectors.

“No minor should ever be subjected to such racist, cruel and inhuman comments.

Especially if they come from an official who has been elected.

It is very painful to know that one day he will read what has been said about him,” Bonin told the

on Sunday night.

The councilman, who said in January that he will not seek re-election, called on Martinez to leave City Hall.

"Any father of a family knows that he is not qualified for public administration," added the politician, who said he was "angry and heartbroken" at the comments of his companions.

anti mexican comments

Not only African-Americans were the target of pejorative comments from politicians.

So were the citizens they represent.

Especially the migrants from Oaxaca, who belong to different indigenous peoples of Mexico.

Many of these are found residing in Koreatown.

“I see a lot of very short, dark people,” Martinez said when he spoke of a downtown area of ​​the city.

"I don't know where these people come from, what village they came from, how they got here... So ugly, they're horrible," added Martinez, who was born in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles.

Martinez, de León and Cedillo were then discussing the densely populated area and who among the council members could benefit from the new map.

They seemed opposed to its falling into the hands of Nithya Raman, who was born in India and came to the United States when she was six years old.

“She is not our ally.

She is not going to help us, ”said Cedillo in one of the few interventions that she has her.

The politician has stated in the last hours that he was going in and out of the meeting and that he did not make pejorative or denigrating comments about his colleagues.

Latino politicians seemed to agree not to help Raman, a political novice who came to City Hall in late 2020. “It helps us not to give her all of Koreatown, because doing so makes the presence of tenants in her district more solid and that doesn’t it's good for none of us.

You have to keep her in line,” Martinez said.

Raman lost 40% of the district that made her win in the last elections in the redesign of the maps.

Raman was one of three councilmembers who have called for Martinez to resign.

Follow all the international information on