|
Racial backlash absent in convicted killer's hometown
CROOKSTON (AP) - In the hometown of convicted sex offender and killer Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., there's relief that his trial is over.
There's sympathy for the family of his victim, Dru Sjodin, whose body was found in a ravine just outside of town. There's sympathy as well for Rodriguez's family, who were unable to persuade a jury not to sentence him to death.
"I'm sad for those that are left behind," said Meranda Garcia, a young mother.
There's also some anger in this quiet northwestern Minnesota farming and college community that the state let Rodriguez out of prison, freeing him to victimize again.
And there's annoyance among some in the area's significant Latino population that others would just assume they know the Rodriguez family or could speak for them.
But there's been a notable absence of any kind of backlash against the local Hispanic community, according to Police Chief Tim Motherway and others.
"There were no incidents, no hate crimes," Motherway said. "I'd say the Hispanic population has assimilated here very well."
Times have changed since the 1950s and 1960s when, according to his lawyers, Rodriguez, the son of migrant farm workers, endured racist taunts in school, on top of the poverty, abuse and toxic farm chemicals they say he had to endure at home and in the field.
Trying to persuade jurors to spare Rodriguez, the defense argued during his trial in Fargo, N.D., that his childhood environment in Crookston left him with mental and psychological defects.
Professionals who serve the Latino community say those lawyers painted a reasonably accurate picture of what life was like for many migrant workers in the area back then.
"People were housed in chicken coops, silos, barns," and were exposed to chemicals in the fields, said Leticia Sanchez, supervisor of the Crookston office of Migrant Health Services, a nonprofit based in Moorhead. "They had no running water or electricity."
Sanchez, whose parents were migrant workers, said things began to change during the 1970s when the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration began forcing farms that housed workers to meet certain standards.
Changing farming methods did away with many field-hand jobs. Some migrants left, while Rodriguez's parents and others found year-round jobs and became permanent residents.
Nearly 9 percent of Crookston's 8,200 residents are Hispanic, according to the 2000 census.
"The majority of the Latinos are pretty much settled and working mainstream jobs," Sanchez said, adding that while some own homes, most live in apartments.
Race relations have improved, too, but racism didn't vanish, Sanchez said. Latinos still complain of discrimination and racial profiling, but it's less overt now and harder to prove.
"In the old days, people would come right out and tell someone they didn't like them because they were Latino," Sanchez said. "There were demeaning names, stereotypes. Now it's more sophisticated."
It's not clear that the killing of Sjodin, a white University of North Dakota student from Pequot Lakes, made anything harder for Hispanics in the area.
Sanchez said she believes the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a far greater setback to people of color in her region than the Rodriguez case.
"I don't think it has anything to do with race," Crookston water department worker Ian Tiedemann said of his feeling on the case as he dug a hole for a street project. "I think it has to do with him being a Level 3 sex offender and him being let out of prison."
Donald Sargeant, former chancellor of the University of Minnesota Crookston, who now runs the school's Learning Abroad Center, expressed a similar view.
"The attention was on sex predators, not a race of people," he said. "Most people were wondering more about the rules and regulations that allowed his release."
When Rodriguez was arrested, Sargeant said, the hearts of many faculty and staff went out to his mother, Dolores, who worked 28 years as a cook in the university cafeteria.
Many people in Crookston apparently feel her pain, without regard to their ethnic background.
"I've heard people comment that his mother has been a hardworking woman all her life, that they admire her for what she's done, and they feel really bad that she's had to go through all of this," said Sister Leona Ulewicz, coordinator of the Hispanic Ministry for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Crookston.
|
Overcast, 61°
