In Longmont, 489 people with known race and ethnicity information have tested positive or are considered probable for COVID-19, 309 of which are Hispanic. The disproportionate impact of the virus on the Latino population is hardly news. In fact, “disparities occurring in Longmont are similar to what we’re seeing countywide: Hispanic/Latinx community members represent a disproportionate percentage of cases and hospitalizations,” Chana Goussetis, public information officer at Boulder County Public Health reports.
These numbers tell a story that is seen in communities across this country and expose hidden opportunities to address an inequitable impact.
Carol Helwig, a communicable disease bilingual epidemiologist at Boulder County shares that “differences [in COVID-19 rates] may be due to the fact that more people in the Hispanic community are engaged in essential workforce employment and are at a greater risk to be exposed in the workplace.” Additionally, she offers that much of the spreading observed in Longmont happens within multigenerational households and across extended families and other households, among other contributing factors.
“We are seeing that people who have been historically marginalized, isolated and targeted by the government are the people who are receiving less help, less access to resources and are more exposed to infection,” shares Laura Soto, the Operations Manager at Philanthropiece, a local organization with a global reach supporting undocummented immigrants.
She notes that fear, resulting from historical persecution, trauma, and current socio political tensions, helps explain inadequate access to resources. “It is also more difficult to reach immigrants at this time because people are in survival and fear mode. They fear any help given is a public benefit, and they will be penalized with the public charge rule for accepting the help, any kind of help, even things like food boxes.”
The fear and hesitation that are prevalent for this population is clear. No one interviewed from this community was willing to go on record for this article.
Norma Fuentes, Program Director at Intercambio, an organization dedicated to bridge language gaps remarks, “ahorita con la situación con lo que estamos viviendo es un poco riesgoso, contraproducente, [la gente] pueden cerrarse, sobre todo las minorías o los que se ven más afectada, son muy reservados, muy privados y muy orgullosos de que no se les victimice” [right now with this situation we are living through it’s a bit more risky, counterproductive, [people] can shut down, especially minorities or those who are most impacted, they are very reserved, very private and do not want to be victimized.]
These factors and dynamics thus call for an additional layer of support for this community.
Between 2016-2017, the City of Longmont led a collaborative process in response to the 2013 flood called Resilience for All. This project highlights the importance of word-of mouth information-sharing as well as that of cultural brokers—namely those individuals bridging, linking or mediating between the Latino community and service providers.
Carmen Palacios-Ramirez, manager of Community and Neighborhoods Resources at the city explains that “[esto] nos ha dado la atención e inversión para formar la red de organizaciones y gestores para la comunidad Latina en el condado.” [[this process] has brought in the attention and investment to form the network of organizations and brokers for the Latino community in the county.]
What began as a retrospective exercise on a past disaster produced the groundwork for a local, culturally-adept strategy that has helped address the current health crisis with COVID-19. Multiple organizations across Longmont and Boulder County are turning to cultural brokers found in schools, other community organizations and as service navigators to inform Latino communities of prevention measures and to refer them to available resources.
“COVID-19 nos ha obligado a ver las cosas más de cerca y darnos cuenta de cuáles son las habilidades y estrategias que los padres necesitan para manejarse en este mundo“ [COVID-19 has forced us to look at things more closely and figure out what are the abilities and strategies that parents most need to navigate this world], explains Tere Garcia, executive director at EL PASO, a grassroots movement turned nonprofit that seeks to assist Latino parents with advocacy. She acknowledges that they have become one of the strongest bridges between service providers and families in need of help in Longmont.
Guillermo Estrada-Rivera, ¡Suma! project coordinator, shares a similar sentiment by saying: “because of COVID and the crisis, cultural brokers saw the need to address the specific needs of the immigrant Spanish-speaking community… we saw the need to come together to answer the call of the community for equitable access to information and resources.” ¡Suma! is a community-led initiative dedicated to providing access to the Latino community to resources and has identified the need to facilitate the work of cultural brokers by creating an online resource catalog. “The intent is to have one meeting place, a hub, instead of having to browse six different pages. It’s a living document so it keeps on changing and transforming.” Guillermo adds.
Local Latino-led and serving organizations stress that information is the hardest resource to provide to the populations they aim to support. “Las familias latinas al mudarnos a este país desconocemos el sistema y es difícil resolver problemas o situaciones cuando se presentan barreras cómo éstas,” [When Latino families move to this country, we are not familiar with the system and it is difficult to address problems or situations when dealing with those barriers,] said Damary Yanes, a school readiness coordinator in Longmont.
But information alone is not enough. Many individuals in the Latino community, especially immigrants and monolingual Spanish-speakers, tend to have a need for personal and intensive navigation support as Laura Soto observes: “Reaching into the Latinx immigrant community not only takes having information translated in Spanish and connecting cultural brokers to work together, it also takes each of those cultural brokers going the extra mile of following up with the people to see if they were able to access the resource they were given, with every single resource, and holding their hand through the process to address the inequities in the systems. This is the burden of responsibility for cultural brokers.”
This is why the reliance on cultural brokers is important to the community.. “We realize that we cannot try to do everything, [there’s] no one [thing] that works for all, instead we create a space where all networks can come together, share, and then [people] go where they want to go, where they feel safe and thrive” Guillermo Estrada-Rivera explains.
The jury is still out on what the impact of community-led brokering networks will look like for Longmont for the duration of the pandemic and beyond. However, the presence of a strong, collaborative network of support has yielded and produced positive results for Longmont’s Latino population.
