With national coverage surrounding the story, President Biden had called on Martinez to resign and protests have emerged. Reflecting on this moment, Robert Scheer talks to Eduardo Carreon, a Oaxacan graduate student in psychology at Cal State LA living in Los Angeles. Scheer and Carreon find that this happening serves as an enlightening opportunity to consider the kind of colonial mentality that exists within oppressed communities and how people inhibiting this mentality have the power to bring others down further. They see indigenous people from places like Oaxaca who might be undocumented immigrants as expendable people. Carreon points out that, because they cannot vote, politicians like Martinez don’t care about them despite representing not only their local political interests but overall cultural ones too.
“Oaxaca has a rich history and it's not only Oaxaca, it's any other Indigenous group throughout Latin America in the world. They have history. There is some sort of rich history that it's being undermined by colonial forces and they are still being undermined now by politicians,” Carreon says while he emphasizes the need for these kinds of diverse communities. “We need more diverse cultures because that is what is going to help us become better societies,” Carreon said.