SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Across the U.S., including in Long Beach, some officials have canceled Día de los Muertos celebrations amid growing fear and tension surrounding Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. In response, Latino communities have used these cancellations to demonstrate resilience, as California State University, Sacramento (Sac State) did by hosting its quarterly Immigrant Series.
On Oct. 28, Sac State highlighted the resilience, liberation and joy of Latinos in Northern California through the stories of three Latina immigrant women.
Diana Cazandra Rangel, a master’s student at Cal State L.A., described the importance of storytelling. “They are doing something politically active that we are not recognizing — that is, they are preserving culture, language, history, food. That is a form of political resistance,” she said.
Jenni Hernandez, a Ph.D. student at Sac State, elaborated on how storytelling creates connections. She said, “(Storytelling brought) people together through understanding and compassion (as) an act of liberation through community joy.”
In an exclusive interview, storyteller and poet Coralia Alvarado Lopez, one of the event’s speakers, explained the power of storytelling in building community resilience by combining both ideas. “(Storytelling is) the ability for people to find their voice and tell those stories,” she said. People, she added, must overcome the fear of losing everything they have when emigrating from their homeland.
During her speech, Lopez described leaving El Salvador, her homeland, as “the moment I lost everything I knew — my family, my safety, my home, my country, my voice, and now even my name — my identity.”
In response to this loss, she said she became “very fearful and very silent.” Lopez explained, “I wanted to be as small and as invisible as possible because I feared that someday someone might come and take away everything I had.”
In an article published by the American Psychological Association, journalist Myriam Vidal Valero cited Mitra Naseh, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, who observed, “Visa-related stress can trigger anxiety, depression, panic attacks, weight changes, and a profound sense of powerlessness.”
Valero added that immigrants often tell themselves, “It was my decision. I came here.” She explained that a BMC Public Health study considered this perspective a sign of “internaliz(ing) their vulnerability, blaming themselves for their struggles rather than the structural barriers imposed by policy.”
Lopez reflected in the interview, “If you can only imagine leaving everything that you have known behind and starting all over again without nothing, it has to affect you.”
“(Trump’s new xenophobic immigration policies) have exacerbated (these mental health issues in the immigrant community) tremendously,” Lopez said.
“Studies show that the anti-immigration rhetoric and policy of that period heightened fear of deportation and stress in immigrant communities,” wrote Srishti Katuri and Cynthia Najdowski in another APA article. “Several studies revealed increases in panic attacks, anxiety, depression, feelings of vulnerability, and fear of encounters with immigration authorities.”
“It’s this fear that we may get caught, but also it’s the feeling of ‘I’m not doing anything wrong other than like going to school.’ It’s no different than what happens in our native country when we think of violence and corruption when people are getting kidnapped and never seen again,” said Lopez. “If I’m not safe in my native country and I’m not safe in one of the greatest countries in the world, then where am I safe?”
Despite this terror Trump is instilling in the Latino immigrant community, Lopez said, “At the end of the day, we’re just trying to survive, live a good life, and not harm anyone.”
After all, Lopez explained, the greatest resilience is strength “to pull out from the tough experiences…with the love that you give to the community and also how you treat yourself.”
Whether honoring their parents’ dreams or maintaining los consejos (elders’ wisdom) and celebrating cada gana (every small victory), Latino communities continue to show resilience and pride in their identity — even in the face of Trump’s xenophobic immigration policies.
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