Seriously, Maria Conchita Alonso? You appear in a recent TV ad for anti-immigration, Tea Party hardliner Tim Donnelly, a California Assemblyman. You’re holding a chihuahua (seriously?) and translating Donnelly’s words to the Spanish-speaking audience as he tries to shore up support among Hispanics.
This is the same Tim Donnelly who was a member of the Minutemen armed vigilante group that has patrolled the US border with Mexico attempting to nab immigrants crossing the border illegally.
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This is the same Tim Donnelly who has worked fervently to overturn the California DREAM Act, which allows the children of undocumented immigrants to remain in the US and attend college. Donnelly refers to the California DREAM Act as “the bill that would give those illegal immigrants free taxpayer funded college tuition money.”
This is the same Tim Donnelly who has made allusions to Hispanic immigrants “raping young girls, marrying extremely young girls, ogling women in an aggressive manner and using a child as a human shield.”
Seriously Maria Conchita Alonso?
As Spanish language interpreter in Donnelly’s ad, she only selectively translates the Tea Partier’s words. When he says that “politicians and big government are killing our prosperity. They’re driving businesses out of our state, pushing welfare costs through the roof, and driving our schools into the ground,” Alonso translates that to Spanish as, “We’re screwed.” When Donnelly goes on a tirade against government bureaucracy and says he wants to see “a gun in every Californian’s closet,” she praises the size of his testicles by saying in Spanish, “He has really big ones, and he is angry.”
Seriously?
Alonso has experienced considerably backlash since the ad aired, enough so that she withdrew from her starring role in a Spanish version of “The Vagina Monologues,” which is currently being staged in San Francisco’s heavily-Hispanic Mission District.
Still, Alonso has defended her appearance in Donnelly’s ad, telling HuffPost Voces that she made a mistake by only Googling him in English, not in Spanish, so she “didn’t see all that stuff about immigration.” She maintains that Donnelly has changed his stance on the DREAM Act, though there is absolutely no evidence to suggest this.
In an interview with CNN, she defended Donnelly’s involvement with the Minutemen, saying that the vigilante group is engaged in protecting the US/Mexico border against terrorists, because “a lot of Arabs and drugs enter through the Mexican border.” She also says, bizarrely, that she’ll continue to support Donnelly, “since he is not a communist.”
Seriously, Maria Conchita Alonso? Everyone is entitled to their political opinion, and to use their voice and influence as they see fit. But wading into Donnelly’s campaign so completely unaware of who he is and what he stands for—the most hardline, anti-immigration, xenophobic brand of American politics—is inexcusable, embarrassing and shameful.
Seriously, Maria.
