Why waving the Mexican flag at immigration rallies isn’t wrong

The sun was bright and the sky was blue on Saturday morning as I enjoyed breakfast with a friend at my wife’s restaurant in downtown Santa Ana.

We were talking about how Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley will bounce all over the Kansas City Chiefs defense like a pinball during the Super Bowl, when the sound of faint yelling made us look outside.

Street preachers, boisterous hipsters and people blasting corridos and oldies are part of the neighborhood’s soundtrack, so we went back to our chat. But the faraway noise kept getting louder and louder until it began to sound like a roar.

“Is that a protest?” I wondered out loud while picking at my chilaquiles.

“Yeah,” my friend said, before cracking, “Probably about ICE” — Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He was right.

We stepped outside to see Fourth Street suddenly swarming with young people. They yelled “¡Sí se puede!” and “¡El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” (The people united will never be divided.) Some twirled wooden noisemakers or held signs that read “Stop Separating Families” and “Relax Gringo I’m Legal.” The atmosphere was loud and proud, and onlookers cheered them on.

What I saw on Saturday was part of a nationwide weekend of actions against President Trump and his plans to crack down on illegal immigration, severely limit legal immigration and end birthright citizenship. Protesters gathered at Dallas City Hall and marched in East San José and along Buford Highway, the traditional immigrant landing spot in the Atlanta area. In Los Angeles, people demonstrated in Pacoima and took over the 101 Freeway downtown, creating a traffic jam that lasted hours.

I recorded two short videos of the Santa Ana happening, uploaded them to social media and went back to my chilaquiles. A few minutes later, I checked the comments on my posts. They were mostly positive, but a few angrily pointed out something I hadn’t given a second thought:

Mexican flags.

The tricolor is part of the Santa Ana landscape, so it easily escaped my attention. Besides, people have waved it, along with the flags of other Latin American countries, at every immigrant rights protest I’ve seen over the last 30 years.

At this weekend’s rallies, whether in Seattle, Arkansas, St. Louis or Florida, American flags were in the minority. On Monday, in downtown L.A. and across the United States, the tricolor flew proudly again.

A 1994 file photo of students from various Oxnard high schools who skipped classes and gathered in Plaza Park in Oxnard to protest Proposition 187, the polarizing ballot initiative that sought to make life miserable for unauthorized immigrants and their children.

(Bruce K. Huff / Los Angeles Times)

You’ll see more Mexican flags at more protests against Trump and his immigration goon squad in the following weeks — if not months, or even years. And what you’ll hear hurled back are the following questions, asked not just by opponents of illegal immigration but by more than a few pro-immigrant activists.

Why wave the flag of another country and not the United States? How will this win the proverbial hearts and minds of opponents who rule the White House and Capitol Hill? Isn’t it ridiculous to taunt Trump and his supporters on the eve of what he promises will be a deportation crackdown not seen in decades? And can you find a bigger target for la migra than the red, white and green of Mexico, or the blue-and-white flag color schemes of Central American nations?

These queries have divided the immigrant rights movement since the early 1990s, when a flood of xenophobic measures swamped local and state governments across the American Southwest, and mainstream groups clashed with student activists about how best to fight back.

The moderates have always feared that Latinos waving the flags of Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela and other ancestral countries is political suicide — that it taps into the part of the American psyche that believes Latinos will never assimilate and are sleeper agents scheming to overthrow this country. They’ve fretted especially about the Mexican flag, which is radioactive to conservatives — it’s the banner of our southern neighbor that we’ve been at war with, officially and not, for 175-plus years.

One of those doubters was once yours truly.

In 1994, I saw a segment on the local news featuring an elderly Black gentleman and students in Fullerton who were protesting against Proposition 187, the infamous ballot initiative that sought to make life miserable for immigrants in the country illegally, as well as their children.

The man was supportive of the students but asked that they put away the Mexican flag and wave the American one. Instead, they yelled at him. Flustered, he told a reporter that he was originally against Proposition 187 but now planned to support the measure (it passed with 59% of the vote but was eventually ruled unconstitutional).

That encounter has always stayed with me. Brandishing a foreign flag at rallies for the rights of immigrants without papers to stay in this country seems counterintuitive. But when people who wrap themselves in the American flag scream for you and your loved ones to get the hell out of “their” country, I understand why folks will reflexively embrace a symbol that stands against such jingoism and expresses pride in their backgrounds.

Then and now, I think immigrant rights protesters should wave the American flag — not just because they live here and are fighting for immigrants to be able to stay here. The left should take the Stars and Stripes back from the right, which wields it like a cudgel or wears it as gauche fashion statement a la Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

But my thinking has evolved in the decades I’ve covered pro-immigrant demonstrations. Now, whenever I see people wave a foreign flag at a rally, I smile.

Those who defend the flags have always argued they’re a way for ordinary folks to express anger and passion while plugging into el movimiento on their terms. The flag wavers are the bold ones, the ones a good team offense needs. The public opinion battle might be lost in the short term, goes such logic, but these folks will push the immigration debate toward better places.

Demonstrators wave Mexican and American flags during a 2006 protest and rally at Costa Mesa City Hall against proposed legislation to curb illegal immigration.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Those kids who ticked off the Black gentleman in Fullerton? Their movement fundamentally transformed California politics for the next generation and turned the state blue. The high schoolers who walked out in 2006, when Congress was deliberating whether to pass a version of Proposition 187 on steroids? They staged sit-ins and protests until legislators passed in-state tuition for their peers without papers.

Such strident advocacy pushed the Obama administration to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012, with even Trump expressing some sympathy for the so-called Dreamers, whose parents brought them into this country illegally when they were children. And although citizenship still eludes them, many have continued their political advocacy by getting involved in local and congressional races — and helping candidates win.

What has the American flag at immigrant rights rallies accomplished? Great photo ops, sure, but the hard hearts of Republican lawmakers haven’t melted in all these years. Besides, Trump would deport an immigrant singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of Old Glory if he had the chance.

Waving a foreign flag at protests is good trouble — a sign for the brave to rally together and stand tall against a commander in chief who understands nothing but chaos.

On Monday, protests roiled downtown Santa Ana again, starting at Sasscer Park and the Ronald Reagan federal courthouse down the street from my wife’s restaurant before spreading across downtown well into the evening. Cars drove around with passengers unfurling Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan flags. Once again, everyone was loud and proud.

A few blocks away, Tustin resident Juan Galvez wore a Mexican flag like a cape. It hung to just above his ankles. I caught him as he was walking back to his car. This was the first time the 20-year-old had protested about anything. He and his parents are American citizens, but he has friends whose relatives are not.

I asked why he wasn’t wrapped in the U.S. flag.

“Trump is attacking us because we’re Mexican,” Galvez replied. “He thinks we’re trash. I’m not trash. And I’m not afraid.”