Commentary
Living an ‘American nightmare’
Blade contributor describes La. detention facility as hell
Editor’s note: Yariel Valdés González is a Washington Blade contributor who has asked for asylum in the U.S.
Valdés has previously described the conditions at the Bossier Parish Medium Security Facility in Plain Dealing, La., where he remains in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody as a human rights violation. An ICE spokesperson in response to Valdés’ previous allegations said the agency “is committed to upholding an immigration detention system that prioritizes the health, safety, and welfare of all of those in our care in custody, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) individuals.”
The Blade received Valdés’ op-ed on June 29.
PLAIN DEALING, La. — The American dream to live in absolute freedom; safe from the threats, persecution, violence, psychological torture and even death the Cuban dictatorship has imposed on me because of my journalistic work fell apart in my hands as soon as I arrived in Louisiana. The Cubans here who are also seeking protection from the U.S. government welcomed me to the Bossier Parish Medium Security Facility with an ironic surprise. They opened their arms and told me, “Welcome to hell!”
I could hardly believe they have spent nine, 10 and even 11 months asking, waiting for a positive response from immigration authorities in their cases.
I was under the illusion that after an asylum official who interviewed me at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Center in Tutwiler, Miss., on March 28 determined I had a “credible fear of persecution or torture” in Cuba, one hearing with an immigration judge would be enough to obtain my conditional release and pursue my case in freedom as U.S. law allows. But I was wrong. The locals (here at Bossier) once again took it upon themselves to dash my hopes.
“Nobody comes out of Louisiana!” they proclaimed.
It only took a few minutes for my dream, like that of many others, to turn into a nightmare. The more than 30 migrants who arrived in Louisiana on the afternoon of May 3, coming from Mississippi after more than a month detained at Tallahatchie, were plunged into a deep depression that continues today. Only the tears under the blanket that nobody can see are able to ease my desperation for a few minutes and then I once again feel it in my chest when I think of my family in Cuba who continues to receive threats of jail and death from the Cuban dictatorship because of my work with “media outlets of the enemy.” This reality is the only thing that awaits me back there. I therefore see the situation in Louisiana and I am once again afraid. I cannot see an exit. Prisoner here, prisoner if I return to Cuba. I feel trapped.
Violation of their own laws
I realized a few days after I arrived in Louisiana the subjectivity of who makes the decisions matters, not objectivity or attachment to those who are being held. Louisiana feels like a lost piece of “gringo” geography at which nobody seems to look, or to the contrary, it is a coldly calculated strategy that triumphs on authoritarianism, abuse of power or intransigence. I don’t know what to think.
More than a few who have arrived here have come to the conclusion the U.S. has made migrants its new business. Keeping migrants in their custody for so long keeps hundreds of employees and lawyers in business, as well as generating huge profits for the prisons with which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts. It has become clear the government prefers to waste more than $60 a day per migrant than set us free under our own recognizance.
“Louisiana is an anti-immigrant state,” Arnaldo Hernández Cobas, a 55-year-old Cuban man whose asylum process has taken 11 months, tells me. “It is not possible for any of the thousands of people who go through the process to leave victorious.”
Hernández tells me ICE agents have not met with him once during his confinement and the deportation officer has never seen him.
“I don’t know if I am allowed to have bail,” he says. “Judge Grady A. Crooks affirms that we do not qualify for this and he does not give it to those who qualify for it because they can flee. This only happens in this state because migrants in other places are released and can pursue their cases on the outside after they make bail.”
Another way to obtain conditional freedom is through parole, a benefit the federal government offers to asylum petitioners who enter the country legally and are found to have a credible fear of suffering, facing persecution or being tortured in their countries of origin.
“To grant it, ICE asks for a series of questions that relatives should send to them, but what is happening is that they don’t give them enough time to do so,” says Arnaldo.
This is exactly what happened with me.
My family managed to send the documents the next day for my parole interview, which was scheduled for the following day. ICE nevertheless denied me parole because I did not prove “that I am not a danger to society.” I am sure they didn’t even take my case seriously.
There are stories that border on the absurd because many migrants have received their parole hearing notifications the same day they should have filed their documents. One therefore feels as though ICE mocks you to your face and your feelings of helplessness reach the max.
The awarding of parole is a new procedure ICE must complete, but it does not go beyond that. They use this and other crafty strategies to “stay good” in the eyes of the law and they therefore keep asylum seekers in custody for months. They bring them to hearings they will not win, pushing for the deportation of those who do not succumb to the pressure of confinement without properly assessing the risk to their lives that returning to their native countries would entail.
ICE is required to free us a few days after it grants parole, and we already know it doesn’t want to do this. Their goal is to keep us locked up at all costs.
“The cruel irony is that the majority of asylum seekers who follow the law and present themselves at official ports of entry don’t have to ask an immigration judge for their release from custody,” declared Laura Rivera, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that provides legal assistance to immigrants, in an article titled, “Stuck in ‘hell’: Cuban asylum seekers wither away in Louisiana immigration prisons.” “To the contrary, their only avenue to secure their freedom is to ask the same agency that detains them, the Department of Homeland Security.”
But DHS — as Rivera details in the article published by the Southern Poverty Law Center — is ignoring its mandate to consider requests for release in detail. And to the contrary it denies conditional release without justification.
“Men are kept hidden from the outside world, locked up and punished for defending their rights and are forced to bring their cases before immigration judges who deny them with rates of up to 100 percent,” affirmed Rivera.
Another of the process violations in Arnaldo’s case was he was assured where he was first detained that he could win his case along with that of his wife, “but when he came” to Louisiana the judge “told me this was not allowed, that each case is different.” Arnaldo’s life cannot be different from that of his wife because they have been together for 37 years. His wife has been free for nine months, but he remains behind bars. And so, it happens with mothers and sons, brothers and people who have identical cases. Once again, subjectivity determines a person’s fate.
During his hearing with Crooks, Arnaldo declared he feels “very uncomfortable” because he considers him an extremist.
“He said that he only recognizes extreme cases,” says Arnaldo. “Doors mean nothing to him. He describes himself as a deportation judge, not an asylum judge. In the entire time that I have been here nobody has won asylum, not even bail, only deportations.”
Conclusive proof of the judge’s extremism came one day when another judge ran the hearings and the migrants who presented their cases that morning received asylum. The example could not have been more illustrative.
Douglas Puche Moxeno, a 23-year-old Venezuelan man who has spent nine months in Louisiana, also said the detainees “did not receive more information on how the process should be followed and how one should do it.”
“I don’t know if they explained to us the ways to obtain a conditional release,” he says.
In relation to their hearings, Douglas says “the judge told me that he knew the real situation in Venezuela, but he did not grant me asylum because I am not an extreme case. He is waiting for someone to come to the United States without an arm or a leg to be accepted.”
The migrants in Louisiana are trying every way possible to be released. They have made these complaints on television stations and have even gone to Cuban American U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
“We have reached the point of filing a lawsuit against ICE,” Douglas explains. “A team of lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center have proposed a lawsuit seeking a reconsideration of parole. This is one of the most hopeful ways that we have to obtain freedom. If we are successful, the benefits will be for everyone.”
“Various protests to pressure authorities and to reclaim our rights as immigrants have been organized,” says Douglas. “Relatives, lawyers and various institutions have come together in Miami, Washington and even here in Louisiana to make ICE aware of the injustices that have been committed against us for more than a year.”
‘This is not your country’
Bossier is a jail deep in Louisiana, hidden in the woods that surround it. Each day inside of it is a constant struggle for survival that takes a huge toll on my physical, psychological and above all emotional capacities. More than 300 migrants live in four dorms in cramped conditions with intense cold and zero privacy.
My stay here reminds me of the school dorms in Cuba where we were forced to share smells, tastes and basic needs. Here we also share Hindu, African, Chinese, Nepali, Syrian and Central American migrants’ beliefs, cultures and ways of life.
My personal space is reduced to a narrow metal bed that is bolted to the floor, a drawer for my things and a thin mattress that barely manages to keep my spine separated from the metal, which sometimes causes back pain. The most painful thing, however, is the way the officers treat us. For “better or for worse,” you feel as though you are a federal prisoner.
“According to ICE, we are ‘detainees,’ not prisoners, but we have still suffered physical and psychological abuses,” says Arnaldo. “I remember one time when an official dragged a Salvadoran man to the hole for three days simply for eating in his bed. They don’t offer anything to us and they don’t talk to us, they yell. They wake you up by kicking the bed.”
“The slightest pretext is used to disconnect the microwave, the television or deny us ice, affirming this is a luxury and not a necessity,” alleges Arnaldo. “When we complain about these situations. They tell us, ‘This is not your country.'”
Smiles are not common inside the dorm. The faces of affliction and sadness predominate. Good news is almost always false and the frustration and stress this confinement causes us therefore returns.
“I feel very sad, afflicted here, as though I had killed someone because of the mistreatment that we receive, the place’s conditions,” declares Damián Álvarez Arteaga, a 31-year-old man who has spent 11 months as a prisoner in the U.S.
“Freedom is the most precious thing a human being has,” he adds. “I hope that I will receive a positive response to my case after spending so much time detained. We have demonstrated to the U.S. that we are truly afraid of suffering persecution or torture in Cuba.”
Hours in here seem to have no end: They stretch, they multiply, but they never shorten or pass quickly. Our only contact with the outside the world are telephone communications or video calls (at elevated prices) with relatives, friends or lawyers and sporadic trips to the patio to greet the son and take fresh air.
“In all of the time that I have been here, I have seen the son a few times and only for 15 minutes and this is because we have complained,” recalls Arnaldo.
The yard, as we also call it, is a small rectangle of fences and surveillance cameras with a cement surface at the center of it where some of us play soccer when they give us a ball. I roll the pants of my yellow uniform up to my knees to allow the sun to warm my extremities a bit while my eyes wander towards the lush forest that is a few meters away from me. I admire the sky, the few vehicles that are driving on the nearby highway and I take deep breaths of oxygen because I know I had just come out of the deep sea and desperately needed air to keep me alive.
“Everyday is the same here from the same food to the same activities,” says Douglas. “This prison does not have sufficient spaces to accommodate so many people for so long. We don’t have a library or family visits.”
‘Soup is currency’
My day at Bossier begins a bit before 5 a.m. With the call to “line-up,” I receive a plastic tray with my breakfast. Today is cereal day, low-fat milk, bread and a small portion of jelly. The menu is the same each day of the week. I always save part of it because there is nothing more to eat until midday.
“The food is not correct,” opines Damián. “My stomach is already used to that small portion. A piece of bread with hot sauce and some vegetables or mortadella cannot sustain an adult man, nor can it keep you in shape to resist such a stressful process.”
The last meal of the day is at 4 p.m., and because of this it is a fantasy to be in bed at 11 p.m. with a full stomach. I reduce the hunger pains with an instant soup to which I add some carrots and a hot dog that I steel for myself from the day’s meals.
Since I still have some money, I can buy soups and extra things to make Bossier’s bad food a little better. Bossier classifies those who don’t receive economic support from their families as “indigent” and they are forced to clean up for their fellow detainees in exchange for a Maruchan soup. Here soup is currency. Everything begins and ends with it, the savior of hungry nights.
“You can buy these and other things at elevated prices in the commissary, the only store to which we have access and for which we depend on everything,” says Damián.
Bossier’s medical services on the other hand are so basic that there is not even a doctor or nurse on call, nor is there an observation room for patients and consultations only take place from Monday to Friday.
“One who gets sick is put in punishment cells, isolated and alone, which psychologically affects us,” notes Arnaldo. “People sometimes don’t say they don’t feel well because they are afraid they will be sent to the ‘well.’ In extreme cases they bring you to a hospital with your feet, hands and waist shackled and they keep you tied to the bed, still under guard. I prefer to suffer before being hospitalized like that.”
Yuni Pérez López, a 33-year-old Cuban, experienced this unfortunate situation first hand. He was on the hole for six days because he had a fever.
“I felt as though I was being punished for being sick,” he says. “And even when the doctor discharged me, they kept me there. It was like being in an icebox: Four walls, a bed, a toilet and a light that never turns off. To leave from there I had to stop eating for an entire day to get the officials’ attention and they returned me to the dormitory.”
Bossier also leaves you chilled to the bone because we cannot use blankets or sheets to cover ourselves from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is not a question of esthetic or discipline because the officials are not interested in whether your bed is made well. The only thing that bothers them is when we are cover ourselves from the dorm’s intense cold.
The migrants interviewed by the Washington Blade are those who have been at Bossier the longest. They are all appealing Crooks’ decision not to grant them political asylum. I have not presented my case yet, so I am still a little hopeful that I will receive the protection of the U.S. Like them, I am trying to get used to this harsh reality and be strong, although most of the time sadness consumes me and erases positive thoughts.
The U.S. to me — like for many — does not represent a comfortable life, the newest car or McDonald’s. None of this will ever be able to fill the void of my family, friends or passionate love that I left behind. The U.S. represents the opportunity to LIVE, so I will hold on to it until the end.
Commentary
Please join me in supporting the Washington Blade Foundation
An important event impacting the LGBTQ community will be held on Sept. 12 in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
The event is a fundraiser for the Washington Blade Foundation. Whether you can join us in person, or just be with us from a distance, I ask you to seriously consider becoming a sponsor of this event. You may ask why should you care, why is this important, and how the Blade Foundation supports the LGBTQ community.
The event will feature an open bar, food catered by the Blue Moon, entertainment, and speeches from Blade staff along with remarks from Rehoboth’s Mayor-elect Susan Stewart and another surprise guest or two. You can buy tickets on Eventbrite; if you’re interested in sponsoring the event, contact Publisher Brian Pitts at [email protected].
The Blade Foundation was begun to ensure the history of our community, written in the pages of the Washington Blade, was archived, and never lost. That effort was a success thanks to the support of the DC Public Library. Now the Blade Foundation works to help ensure there will be future LGBTQ journalists working throughout the media, not just for the Blade. By funding interns and fellowships for LGBTQ journalism students, we help make that possible. By helping to fund the international news section of the Blade, the Foundation helps to keep the LGBTQ community around the world connected. In many countries where our community is either still not accepted, or worse, tortured, members of our community living in those places may only get news of their communities by reading the Blade online.
I know many of you reading this already know, the Washington Blade newspaper has been in existence, and reporting on the LGBTQ community, for more than 56 years. The paper’s reporting is done by those who are part of the community, and that makes a real difference. The paper is proud of its journalists, and the numerous awards they have won. One is Lou Chibbaro Jr., who recently was the subject of a documentary aired on PBS. He, and others like him, report the news honestly, without bias, but with fervor, because they actually live the stories.
In those 50-plus years since Stonewall, the Blade has been reporting on the progress our community has made. The steps forward, the stumbles, those allies who have worked with us, and those people who have tried to stop us from living our lives as who we were born to be. Again, the news is being reported by members of our own community. It is not others writing about us, but us, writing about ourselves. The Blade is followed by many mainstream media outlets, and stories that first only the Blade covered, ignored by mainstream media, were then picked up and reported garnering the widespread coverage they deserve. The Blade is the best place to find out about what the members of our own community are doing, and what others are doing to, and for, us.
It is sad that today the Blade has to report we are at a place in history where we are fighting just to keep the strides for equality we have made over the past 50 years. Because of that, it is even more important than ever, that the Washington Blade keeps publishing. Today, the Blade is the only LGBTQ news outlet with a dedicated seat in the White House briefing room. That is important for the Blade, and for all the members of our own community. It is important the Blade be where the action is.
The Blade’s international coverage helps us in the United States to understand where we can help those in our community who may be suffering and less fortunate, but also to celebrate with those who are even more free in many ways. The recent stories about World Pride in Amsterdam inspire us to fight even harder for our rights here, so we never again have a president who will work to keep our community from being all it can be. That we will never again have a President who threatens the lives of our trans sisters and brothers, threatens their healthcare, and throws our community’s heroes out of our military. Those news stories are important to write, and they often only get written about fully, in the Blade.
So again, I ask you to consider being a sponsor, and joining us in Rehoboth on Sept. 12. Or if you can’t be in Rehoboth, that you support our work from a distance, and support this important event. The Washington Blade Foundation is a 501c(3) non-profit. So, whether you are a business supporting the community, an individual ally, or a member of the community, please dig deep, and help to support the future of LGBTQ journalism, and future LGBTQ journalists. By doing so, you are supporting the future of the LGBTQ community. You can donate online at bladefoundation.org/donate.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Africa
When home becomes a journey: migration, memory, and the African diaspora
People carry pieces of previous lives wherever they go
Sometimes I wonder whether home is a place or a feeling.
I have lived in places where I never imagined I would stay. I have crossed borders I never expected to cross and spent years in refugee communities where people wake up each morning wondering what the future will bring. I have known Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, spent time in Zambia and South Africa, and now live in Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan.
So, when I think about migration, I don’t think first about passports, borders, statistics, or immigration offices.
I think about people.
I think about the mother who leaves everything behind because she wants her children to survive. I think about the young person crossing a border with little more than a phone, a few clothes, and memories of a life that may no longer exist. I think about the refugee who has spent years waiting for a durable solution and still doesn’t know where they will eventually call home.
Migration is often described simply as movement from one place to another. But sometimes it is much more than that.
It can mean leaving behind a version of yourself.
Africa has always been moving
Africa’s migration story did not begin with modern refugee camps or today’s international borders.
People have moved across this continent for generations. They have followed trade routes, searched for pasture and water, moved for marriage, education and employment, escaped conflict, and built new communities elsewhere.
Migration has always been part of African life.
Today, people move for many different reasons. Some flee war and political instability. Others escape persecution or discrimination. Some leave because they cannot find work or see a future for themselves. Others migrate to study, find employment, start businesses, join family members or simply seek new opportunities. There is an important distinction here.
Not every African migrant is a refugee.
A refugee is someone forced to leave because returning home is unsafe. An asylum seeker is someone seeking protection and waiting for a decision on their claim. Exile can mean living away from one’s homeland, sometimes unwillingly. The diaspora is broader still: it includes people of African origin living outside their country or continent, whether they left by choice or were forced to leave.
These words matter because behind each one is a human story.
When leaving is not a choice
I know what it means when leaving is no longer a choice.
Forced displacement takes something from you that is difficult to explain. You may still have your memories, your language and perhaps a few possessions, but the ordinary things that once made life predictable can disappear.
You begin again.
Sometimes you begin again in another country. Sometimes you begin again in a refugee camp.
My experiences in Kakuma taught me that displacement does not necessarily end when you cross a border and reach somewhere safer. The uncertainty can continue for years.
Now, in Gorom Refugee Settlement, I see that uncertainty in the lives of people around me. Mothers worry about food and the health of their children. Young people wonder whether they will return to education. Others wait for resettlement or another safe pathway while trying to build a life with very limited resources. There is a strange feeling in waiting.
You are physically present somewhere, but mentally you may still be traveling towards a future you cannot see.
What happens to identity?
One of the hardest questions migration raises is: Who am I when I am no longer where I came from?
A person can cross a border in a few hours. Identity doesn’t move that quickly.
You carry your accent.
You carry your food.
You carry your mother’s stories.
You carry songs you heard as a child.
You carry the names of people who may never know where you ended up.
You carry memories.
And sometimes you carry pain.
I have met people who have lived in several countries and can no longer give a simple answer when asked where they are from. They may have been born in one country, grown up in another, lived in a refugee settlement somewhere else and now dream of resettling in a fourth.
Does that make them less African?
I don’t think so.
Perhaps it makes their identity larger.
Carrying Africa across borders
The African diaspora is sometimes discussed as though it were simply a population scattered around the world. I see it differently.
People carry pieces of home wherever they go.
An African family living in Australia, Canada, Britain, the United States, or elsewhere may still cook the food they grew up eating. They may speak their mother tongue at home, send money to relatives, listen to African music, support community projects and remain closely connected to events thousands of miles away. Migration doesn’t necessarily erase belonging.
Sometimes it creates several belongings at once.
The diaspora also contributes enormously to communities back home. Remittances help families pay school fees, buy food, build houses, access healthcare and start businesses. Migrants also carry knowledge, professional experience, ideas and connections that can benefit communities across borders.
A person may leave Africa physically and still spend much of their life contributing to Africa.
That matters.
The price of being a migrant
But migration has another side.
Not every new country means a new beginning.
For some migrants, the journey leads to racism, xenophobia, exploitation, or discrimination. People can be judged because of their nationality, accent, skin color, immigration status or refugee identity.
Others discover that qualifications earned at home are not recognized. A professional becomes a cleaner. A teacher struggles to find work. A skilled worker is told to start again.
There is nothing wrong with honest work. The problem begins when someone’s dignity is reduced because they are a migrant.
For refugees, bureaucracy can become another form of suffering. A person can become a case number, waiting months or years for interviews, decisions, relocation opportunities, or family reunification.
But life doesn’t stop while the paperwork continues.
Children grow older, parents become sick, people lose loved ones, birthdays come and go and still the waiting continues.
I sometimes wonder whether the people making decisions about migration fully understand how heavy that waiting can become for someone sitting on the other side of the process.
Women, children, and LGBTQ refugees
Migration does not affect everyone in the same way.
Women often carry enormous responsibilities after displacement. They may become the main providers for their children while dealing with their own trauma and uncertainty.
Children experience displacement differently. They may not fully understand why they had to leave home, but they understand the absence of familiar faces, schools and routines.
Young people face another difficult question: how do you plan a future when you don’t know which country you will be living in?
For LGBTQ refugees, the journey can be even more complicated. Some leave because the place where they were born no longer feels safe for them. They may have experienced rejection, threats, violence or discrimination before they ever reached a refugee settlement.
And yet, even in such circumstances, people create community.
In Gorom, LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers come from different African countries and backgrounds. We don’t always agree on everything. But we understand something important: when the world has already made you feel unwanted, having people around you who understand your experience can mean everything.
Community can become another form of home.
Should borders decide our worth?
I understand why countries have borders. Countries have laws and responsibilities.
But I sometimes ask myself a simpler question: Should crossing a border change the value of a human life?
A child doesn’t become less deserving of food because they were born on the other side of a political boundary.
A mother doesn’t become less worthy of safety because she crossed without the right document.
A refugee doesn’t stop being a human being while waiting for an immigration decision.
From a Humanist perspective, this seems straightforward to me. Human dignity should not depend on nationality.
We can have immigration systems and still treat migrants with compassion.
We can protect borders without forgetting that the people standing behind those borders are human beings.
We can disagree about migration policy without dehumanizing migrants.
That balance isn’t easy. But perhaps that is exactly why we need more humanity in conversations about migration.
What does home mean now?
I have asked myself this question many times: Where is home?
Is it where I was born?
Where I first felt safe?
Where my memories live?
Or perhaps home isn’t always a geographical location.
Maybe home can be the people who stand beside you.
Maybe it is the language you speak when you are emotional.
Maybe it is the smell of food that takes you back to childhood.
Maybe, after so much has been taken away, home becomes something you slowly rebuild.
My birthday falls on Sept. 12. Birthdays usually invite us to think about another year of life. But for someone who has experienced displacement, another birthday can mean something deeper.
It means I made it through another year.
I am still here.
And I think about the many refugees who don’t know whether they will be safe long enough to celebrate their next birthday. I think about children growing up in camps who deserve to celebrate their birthdays in a home they can call their own.
That thought stays with me.
We are more than where we come from
Migration has taught me that people cannot be reduced to the countries printed on their passports.
We are our memories, our relationships, our struggles, our dreams, and our choices.
Africa’s diaspora is not simply a story of people leaving Africa. It is also a story of people carrying Africa with them.
And the refugee experience is not simply a story of loss. It is also a story of survival.
I don’t know where my own journey will eventually take me. Perhaps that is one of the things migration teaches us: we can make plans, but life sometimes writes a different story.
What I do know is that every person deserves the chance to live without fear, to love without persecution, to work with dignity, to raise children safely and to imagine a future.
Borders may separate countries.
They should never separate us from our humanity.
If migration has taught me anything, it is that home is not always the place we left behind. Sometimes home is the safe place we are still searching for.
And sometimes, while searching, we become one another’s home.
Commentary
When a church fears the rainbow
Puerto Rico pastor objected to Pride symbols outside congregation
There are moments when an incident stops being merely a local story and begins to reveal something much deeper. What happened on June 28 outside One Church, in Comerío, Puerto Rico, belongs in that category.
I do not know who painted the rainbow colors on the asphalt and on a roadside guardrail. I do not know what motivated them, and it is not my place to justify their actions. If someone believes a law was broken, there are authorities and legal mechanisms to address that. That is not the point of this reflection.
The point is the words that followed.
Hours after those colors appeared, Pastor Jorge J. Santiago Reyes went live on social media. He said he felt threatened. He described what happened as a physical attack against his church. He appeared angry and disappointed. He called those who painted the rainbow “cowards” and “charlatans.” He expressed frustration with the support that, according to him, the municipal government of Comerío has shown toward the LGBTQ community, and with those who support posts related to that community. He repeated several times that the people responsible had “crossed the line.” He ended his message by saying, “These charlatans have to be stopped.”
As I listened to his words, I stopped thinking about the paint.
I began thinking about fear.
There is one phrase the pastor repeated again and again: “They crossed the line.” Yet he never explained what that line was. If he was referring to a possible violation of the law, that is for the authorities to determine. If he meant respect for property, there are also procedures to deal with that. But when that line remains undefined and the message begins to associate a rainbow with a threat, the question changes. It is no longer only about a guardrail or a road. It becomes a question about what boundary, in the pastor’s view, was actually crossed.
Paint can be erased.
A brush can cover the asphalt and return a guardrail to its original color.
What does not disappear so easily is the meaning of those colors.
And perhaps that is where the real conflict begins.
It is significant that this happened precisely on June 28, the day when the LGBTQ community remembers a history marked by exclusion, violence, and the struggle for dignity. What represents memory, hope, and the possibility of living without hiding for millions of people was presented by others as a threat.
I do not know why someone painted that rainbow. I do not need to know in order to ask whether those were the words society should expect from a pastor.
A religious leader may feel hurt, frustrated, or angry. What he cannot forget is the responsibility that comes with every public expression. His words do not end when a livestream ends. They move beyond the space of his church, reach people who may never share his faith, and help shape the way others see those who think differently. When a pastor calls other people “charlatans” and “cowards,” says they “have to be stopped,” and turns a rainbow into evidence of an attack, he is no longer speaking only from frustration. He begins to build a discourse that can feed rejection toward a community far larger than the people responsible for that act.
There was another moment in the livestream that caught my attention. The pastor reminded viewers how much he has served Comerío, how much he has accompanied his community, and how much he has worked for it. I have no reason to question that service. I am sure many people can testify to the good he has done.
That is precisely why it was difficult to hear.
Pastoral vocation is not about reminding a town of everything one has done for it when conflict appears. Service does not lose its value when it goes unrecognized; it loses something when it becomes an argument to claim a moral position from which to speak down to others. A person who serves does so because that is the nature of the calling, not because that service grants authority to discredit those who think differently.
As a pastor, that part of the message left me deeply uneasy. Not because I expect ministers of God to be perfect. We are not. But because our words carry weight, we are called to speak with greater responsibility. Some expressions build bridges. Others raise walls. Some words invite encounter. Others end up justifying rejection.
The paint will disappear. A brush will be enough to cover the asphalt and return the guardrail to its original color.
The words will not disappear as easily.
They will remain recorded in a video, shared again and again on social media, and remembered by those who heard them. They will remain long after the last trace of paint has been erased.
When this episode is remembered, it probably will not be because of the rainbow that appeared outside One Church, in Comerío, Puerto Rico.
It will be because of the words a pastor chose to use when speaking about it.
And that difference changes everything.
PHOTOS: Miss Gay Old Bay
SUNFESTIVAL takes center stage as Rehoboth Beach closes out summer
Anne Arundel schools now need parent permission to call trans students by preferred names
Shooting outside gay bar in Ariz. leaves three dead
‘People don’t see me. They see a trend’
San Francisco, long a queer safe haven, remains competitive for homebuyers
Trans, nonbinary Americans find refuge in the Netherlands
Calendar: August 28-September 3
‘Teenage Sex and Death’ has never been more entertaining
Actor Tim Curry dies at 80
-
California4 days agoSan Francisco, long a queer safe haven, remains competitive for homebuyers
-
Netherlands5 days ago
Trans, nonbinary Americans find refuge in the Netherlands
-
Calendar5 days ago
Calendar: August 28-September 3
-
Movies5 days ago
‘Teenage Sex and Death’ has never been more entertaining
