Attacks against Spanish speaking residents continue to rise at an alarming rate and it seems that it’s the younger people who are the most vulnerable to the racist aggression. The latest attack occurred at Jerome, Idaho, where a bus driver was caught on tape abusing a Hispanic student on whom she poured water for a confrontation derived from the student speaking in Spanish.
The Northside Bus company confirmed to Idaho’s channel 7 KTVB on Saturday that bus driver Mary Black was fired but that they wouldn’t provide details because of what they claim is a personal issue. Brayan Alvarez, a Jerome High School freshman shot the video where it shows Black pouring water on an eighth grader by the name of Miguel Martínez.
ICYMI: Jerome bus driver fired for pouring water on student, telling him not to use Spanishhttps://t.co/OmfSMwfeQw pic.twitter.com/fupwpSyulI
— KTVB.COM (@KTVB) September 5, 2016
Alvarez told the news outlet that the whole incident happened when his friend Miguel was falsely accused of throwing a water bottle inside the bus, an incident for which he himself was accused of for influencing Miguel to do it, even though he claims this to be untrue.
“She tried to take his phone away and when she didn’t get to do that, she just grabbed the water bottle and started getting him wet,” Alvarez said. In the video, we can see Black demanding Martinez to speak English, “I don’t understand Spanish. I’m not going to learn it. I live in America and it’s an English-speaking country. So if you want to speak to me, speak to me in English,” Black says in the video.
School parent Juan Espino who is family friends with Alvarez and posted the video online told KTVB that this isn’t the first time that Black acts on her racist instincts and that she has attacked her son with the same rhetoric before. “He told me he was told by the bus driver that he was not allowed to speak in Spanish while riding the bus,” Espino said.
Espino contacted the Northside Bus Company to denounce Black and the company said that they would review the tape, but a few days later the company said that they didn’t found any evidence of the incident. “When I talked to one of the other kids, he told me that when something like that happened, the driver would turn the cameras off,” Espino said.
when the father finally got his hands on evidence that proved his son was telling the truth at the time he decided he needed to do something. “It’s not something that we wish for and not something that I would want to, but in life, there will be consequences in everything that you do,” Espino said.
Article inspired by Mexican Problems // You Will Not Believe What This Idaho Bus Driver Did To A Latino Student After Demanding He Speak English