SAN ANTONIO – Ray Cisneros never wanted to be a husband or father, but three years ago he fell in love, married and became a stepfather.
To give his new family a better life, Ray took steps to start his own graphic design business. He had planned quality family time in 2020, including taking the kids to baseball games with his sister Tina.
Instead, 2020 is the year that Covid-19 killed Ray. He was 35 when he died on July 27. The coronavirus also killed his aunt and grandfather.
“In a matter of three weeks, we lost them all,” said Tina Cisneros. “It is difficult to understand at times that all of this happened.”
Covid-19 has infiltrated the lives of Latinos for most of the year, attacking with its poison, mutilating and killing.
The pain of the Cisneros, their stress and depression, the economic aggression against Ray’s family and the consequences for their children are multiplying many times in many families.
As of December 23, Covid-19 had killed more than 54,000 Latinos, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID Tracking Project, which recognizes that its numbers are incomplete.
Coronavirus exploited the longstanding gaps of many Latinos compared to white Americans in income, education and access to health care – including fewer visits to doctors to treat diabetes, hypertension and higher rates of obesity, with less savings and less wealth as well as limited business capital.
He prospered by employing many Latinos in jobs that cannot be done at home, as well as by language barriers for some.
“The only state where Latinos are not overrepresented in cases and victims is in New Mexico, and that is because Native Americans were beaten,” said Gabriel Sanchez, director of the Center for Social Policy at the University of New Mexico, earlier this month. In late December, Latinos in New Mexico, who make up 49 percent of the population, accounted for 55 percent of coronavirus cases and 37 percent of deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine screen.
Exploiting the gaps, Covid-19 destroyed the foundations of family and work and overturned the progress that many Hispanics had made towards a better economic situation.
A death blow to young Latinos
“It was a hellish, hellish year,” said Rogelio Sáenz, professor of demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, who helped paint the real picture of the destruction that Covid-19 was causing, which was later confirmed by the CDC figures.
“After adjusting for age, you really see clearly that Latinos were dying at rates three times higher than the white population,” said Sáenz. “Texas remains the only state where more than half of the people who died from Covid are Latino.”
An even more shocking truth is that Covid-19 killed more of the younger members of the Latin population than other groups, according to the states’ race and ethnicity numbers.
Latinos have the highest share of deaths in age groups under 54, according to CDC data, while among whites, the highest share of deaths occurred in age groups over 65.
Among Americans in the Ray Cisneros age group, 35 to 44, almost half (48.9 percent) of those who died were Latinos, compared with 27.3 percent of blacks and 15.5 percent of whites, according to with an analysis of 226,240 deaths using data from the CDC.
In contrast, in the 65-74 age group, 45.3% of those killed by Covid-19 were white, 24.7% were black and 23.1% were Latino.
The horror of Covid-19 snatching young people and adults of working age was vivid at the start of the pandemic, when slaughterhouse workers, whose safety has been an issue for decades, fell ill and died, forcing recognition that Latinos were overrepresented in the “essential” jobs in the service industries, agricultural work, supermarkets and more.
Economic and educational gains – after Covid
Deaths and cases catapulted many Latinos than had been better.
Ray’s wife, Matilda Cisneros, struggles to pay for the hospital’s medical expenses, in addition to her other bills. She traded the better apartment she had with Ray for a smaller, more affordable one.
To help Matilda pay for Ray’s funeral and burial, Tina opened a GoFundMe account, turning to the generosity of friends and family and other people who donated.
Before the success of Covid-19, Latinos had recovered from the economic blow of the Great Recession. From 2016 to 2019, wealth among Latin and black families grew faster than that of other groups, although they still had a long way to go to reach white families, whose average family wealth last year was $ 188,200, in compared to $ 36,100 for Hispanics and $ 24,100 for Blacks.
Before the pandemic, Latin unemployment was 4%, but then skyrocketed to 19% in April. It fell back to 8.4 percent in November, but it is still double the pre-pandemic rate.
Latin businesses were the engine of growth for small businesses, and some had been creating jobs until the pandemic. Now, more jobs have been lost in various sectors of the industry with disproportionately higher rates for Latin companies – such as food services – than in the private sector in general, according to the Urban Institute.
“The housing market, higher education and the rise of women in the workforce were driven by Latinos,” said Sáenz. “The devastation we are seeing today will delay us in many of the gains we have been making.”
Katia Paz-Goldfarb, assistant vice president for Hispanic service initiatives at Montclair State University in New Jersey, is measuring the long-term impact of coronavirus on Latinos in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, using surveys from 30 colleges serving Hispanics and universities.
“It is a loss of what we have been doing in recent years, in terms of moving our community to higher education, for opportunities to improve with social mobilization,” said Paz-Goldfarb. “What we are seeing now is a regression to a place we were in a few years ago.”
Last year, 18.8% of Hispanics aged 25 and over had a college degree, according to the Census Bureau – an improvement from 13.9% in 2010. However, that share is far behind 40% of whites with university degrees, compared to 33% a decade ago.
Meanwhile, studies show that black and Latino elementary and high school students in high-poverty schools are doing worse than their white peers during the pandemic, after having spent much of the school year learning at home – if they could access education. Internet. The proportion of Latino children in the country’s public schools rose to 27% in 2017.
A curse and a wake-up call
San Antonio city councilor Adriana Rocha Garcia knew from the beginning that the coronavirus would attack residents of her district, whose CEP has the second highest poverty rate in the city.
She struggled to find ways to protect her district’s residents, many without access to the Internet and many who worked in the hospitality industry. Meanwhile, Covid-19 assaulted his family, killing six of his cousins who lived in San Antonio. All were less than 60 years old.
At one point, 14 members of Garcia’s family were in the hospital.
“My father thought that everyone in his family was going to die,” she said. Now, Garcia is focused on the best hope for his community – to mobilize to ensure that everyone gets vaccinated.
Latinos and blacks are more hopeful after the recent presidential election, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center revealed. But even with vaccines starting to be distributed and a new administration taking over, Covid-19’s impact will not be short-term, according to Paz-Goldfarb. “The Latin community is not going to go back to normal,” she said.
Sanchez, of the University of New Mexico, said that if there was a silver lining, it was that the United States saw the consequences of large segments of the population not having access to basic needs, such as health and the internet. This will need to be resolved for the full economic recovery, he said.
Ray Cisneros has always supported his sister Tina’s plans to go to law school, which she still wants to do. Her brother’s death prompted her to seek counseling, something that was out of the ordinary for her family. She and other relatives are walking more and taking steps to stay healthier.
The year was a curse, yes, but 2020 was also a wake-up call, she said.
“It made me realize all the things that I thought were right,” said Cisneros. “Even just the hugs, you know, being around my family.”
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