Some blame Latinos for Hazleton’s COVID-19 outbreak, echoing divisions that once roiled city

• By Charles Thompson/PennLive

This small city in northeastern Pennsylvania just may being seeing the highest per capita coronavirus infection rate in the state.

That presents a problem on two fronts in this old anthracite mining hub:

First, there’s the immediate concern that the city’s health care system — including its single hospital — could be unable to keep up with a surge of patients needing critical care.

Second, and perhaps even more critical to Hazleton’s long-term well-being, is whether two groups who are still learning to peacefully co-exist – the mostly white sons and daughters of Irish and Italian immigrants who came here a century ago, and the new guard of mostly Latino immigrants who are giving Hazleton a future – will be able to keep this strange little virus from ripping their community apart.

In interviews in the past week, Latinos living and working here sounded frustration with and alarm at an undercurrent of statements — mostly captured on social media channels — that they say have unfairly blamed them for the city having one of the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rates in Pennsylvania.

It’s a distinct echo of the tensions felt here 15 years ago, when then-Mayor Lou Barletta was leading his nationally-noted crusade against illegal immigration.

But what’s different this time is the Latinos already know how the story ends.

Hispanics are now the majority of the population here, so the complaints about “them” no longer really seem to pack as much punch. And where the pushback against change was at the very core of a political movement 15 years ago, this time around the white elected officials and business leaders seem to be mostly pushing back against the divisive rhetoric.

There is probably no better example than this:

Barletta, the former mayor who made his political name by pushing for city ordinances designed to crack down on “illegal immigrants,” recently coaxed Hazleton’s other most-famous native son — World Series-winning baseball manager Joe Maddon — to get some of the best-known Latino players in the major leagues to tape Spanish-language public service announcements aimed at reinforcing social distancing messages here.

“You’re always going to have some people who want this to be back in the old days,” Barletta told PennLive. “But that’s not what the reality is in 2020. And the fact is, this is a crisis, and this city is all of our homes, and we have to do what we can to take care of each other.”

As of Sunday, Luzerne County had the state’s fourth-highest per capita infection rate, according to state data, with 1,741 confirmed positive cases. Current Mayor Jeff Cusat is convinced more than two-thirds of those cases involve Hazletonians, an astonishing number for a city with a population estimated at about 30,000.

It is undeniably true that certain dynamics here have contributed to Hazleton’s severe coronavirus outbreak.

Some of the factors that all sides acknowledge:

• The biggest employers in the area are the monster warehouses and meat-processing plants that fill up the industrial parks along the nearby Interstate 81 corridor. Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, these kinds of businesses have remained open, and are seen as hot spots for person-to-person spread.
• The jobs have attracted a second wave of Latinos to the Hazleton area, some of whom commute in from New York City — perhaps the epicenter for coronavirus in America — and then stay with friends or family here. Many of these workers are forced to carpool to work each day.
• Some of the workers are hired through temporary staffing agencies. They don’t share the same benefits or sense of job security as full-time staffers, so they are reluctant to call off sick.
• Much of the housing in Hazleton is multi-family, meaning buildings with a lot of common doors, porches and hallways that present more social distancing challenges than for families in a typical detached dwelling.

Now overlay all of those factors with a population (in the city) that many believe is two-thirds Latino, and those inclined to fight the culture war have all the ammo they need.

The balloon popped April 8, when a respiratory therapist at Lehigh Valley Health Network, which operates the city’s hospital, wrote a social media post with words that ripped scabs off the old wounds: “I know of no Hispanics that are good. I don’t trust any of them due to many things that happened. They need to learn our language and live the American way. They hate us like we hate them.”

Earlier in the month, another LVHN staffer had posted: “It is this simple. The Latino Community- does not care and they act and they have acted very irresponsibly… They do not care and they do not follow the rules and advice of our government. And it has been that way since they flocked to Hazleton.”

The health care network has since terminated the posters, saying on its own Facebook page April 14:

“We have an update regarding egregious and hateful social media posts. LVHN has taken immediate action, and the individuals responsible for those posts are no longer employed by the network. Our Hispanic community is very important to us, and the statements go against everything LVHN upholds as our mission and values.

“We heal, comfort and care for every member of our community. Always. LVHN will not stand for anything less.”

The incidents roiled the Latino community, though community leaders say they have not seen evidence of any overt hate crimes during the outbreak.

Franklin Anziani, the Dominican/Italian founder of Community Family Ministry and chaplain of the city’s police department, said the finger-pointing is a direct reflection of sometimes-quiet, sometimes-public tensions that have never really gone away as Hazleton’s original immigrant populations have been surpassed in numbers by Hispanics.

Anziani expects that those attitudes will persist in some quarters for another generation.

“The people that live around here, they still live with the same mind as fifty years ago,” he said in an interview Thursday. “They’re not used to the new cultures. They’re not used to new ways of doing things. It’s a lack of knowledge… They call the Latinos like we have a lack of language or knowledge about how the United States functions. I see some comments like that.

“But I have to say that they (critics of Latinos) have a lack of knowledge about humanity and different cultures… You have to understand that they all function differently, but you can always learn something from each other.”

Several Latino residents reached for this story said they are convinced the local outbreak is more a workplace, than an ethnic, problem.

They point to the mini-outbreak at Cargill Food Solutions, a meat-packing plant in the nearby Humboldt Industrial Park that was forced to close for two weeks April 8 after more than 160 of its 900 employees tested positive for COVID-19, and smaller but still significant numbers of cases at other plants and warehouses.

Those firms, all permitted to stay open under Gov. Tom Wolf’s health emergency orders as life-sustaining businesses, have been criticized for being slow to implement social distancing practices or to change their normal round-the-clock schedules to allow for more intensive sanitation procedures.

“They work shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-chest, and they didn’t have the masks or other equipment to protect each other. And that’s how they all ended up getting infected,” said Annie Mendez, a Latina businesswoman and community activist here. “It was like a domino effect.”

Terri Ooms, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development at nearby Wilkes University offered a slightly different, but still sympathetic take.

In a community where nearly 25 percent of all households make less than $25,000 a year, Ooms explained, the working poor — especially those working without benefits through temp agencies — are going to do what they can to make a buck.

“I don’t think any particular demographic group is willing or anxious to work sick,” Ooms said. “I think it’s based on the need for money and not having any other resources with which to put food on the table, buy your medicines or whatever… So if they’re feeling a little sick, they’re still going to go to work.”

Of course the workers at the plants are mostly Latino, because that’s where all the jobs are, Mendez said.

But that doesn’t mean this is a Latino problem: Mendez noted there have been stories across the country about workplace outbreaks. But she feels like it’s only in Hazleton where she’s seen fingers-pointed at Latinos, and she’s angry about that, firing back that the corporate bosses and government officials who are supposed to regulate them that have truly fallen short.

State Sen. John Yudichak, I-Luzerne County and the leader of a recent effort to bolster local enforcement of the state’s recent workplace orders, agreed Wednesday “we have not seen an OSHA (federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration) or DOH (state Health Department) inspector on site in Luzerne since the COVID-19 outbreak began.”

Yudichak said he believes the local effort has started to bring about improvements at the facilities in the last two weeks.

Cargill, which is paying all of its workers through its two-week shutdown, declined an interview request for this story, but did share this statement:

“As we continue to prioritize the health and safety of Cargill employees, we have decided to temporarily close our Hazleton case-ready protein plant. This will allow us to minimize the impact of COVID-19 and continue follow health department guidelines….

“We want our employees and the community to know we care. We’ve taken extra steps to focus on safety and remain operational – including temporary wage increases, bonuses and waiving co-pays for COVID-19 testing. We also implemented additional safety measures like temperature testing, enhanced cleaning and sanitizing, prohibiting visitors, adopting social distancing practices where possible and offering staggered breaks and shift flexibility. Our facility will re-open as soon as is it is safe to do so.

Cusat, the mayor, walks Hazleton’s ethnic tightrope every day — the grandson of Italian immigrants, he’s received praise here for establishing informal “sister city” exchanges with a city in the Dominican Republic, the nation of origin of many Latino Hazletonians — but he says matter-of-factly that it’s not really his top concern right now.

What he’s worried about is getting his city through the worst of the pandemic without seeing the local hospital overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.

“My feeling is it doesn’t matter how it got here. It’s here, and we have to deal with it,” Cusat said. “A majority of our residents are Latino, so obviously the numbers are going to point that way… But I don’t care where it came from. We have to work together to fight it and survive it.”

To that effect, Cusat has taken stronger measures than probably any other mayor in the state to date, including: Imposing a strict 8 p.m. curfew for all residents, and allowing no more than four, non-related people in a vehicle at once. He’s also won the agreement of several of the transportation companies to stop their New York shuttles.

On the ground in Hazleton, people, especially the Latino residents, seem to be taking coronavirus plenty seriously now.

Shoppers queued up outside the Hazleton Food Supermarket on North Wyoming Street in a light wind Thursday, because the store was adhering to a strict five-person customer count inside. Signs posted on the door — in English and Spanish — advised all customers they were “obligated” to wear face masks and gloves. Everyone in the line was.

Janiliz Arcelay, a 26-year-old mother of three in the queue this day, said she knows that many people weren’t heeding the social distancing rules at the start of the outbreak, part of which she attributed to language barriers.

“They had tried to tell our Spanish community the thing that we’re going through, but some people didn’t get it right away to be honest with you. And it’s kind of sad, because it’s real. It’s real. And if people don’t take precautions it’s going to be spreading more and more.”

But Arcelay added that she believes the message has been much more broadly received now, pointing to actions like the Spanish-language videos running on local television from ballplayers like Albert Pujols and Carlos Pena, and community outreach efforts from local Latino media leaders.

The hospital’s quick reaction and other public denunciations of ethnic finger-pointing marks an important distinction from Hazleton’s earlier fights, says Amilcar Arroyo, publisher of a monthly Spanish-language magazine with offices on Broad Street, Hazleton’s main drag. Most of those assigning blame by race now, he said, not only are not the movers and shakers in the community, they are finding themselves with no public support from those leaders.

Take this recent shout-down of ethnic shaming from state Rep. Tarah Toohil, R-Hazleton, during an April 11 call-in show for members of the Spanish-speaking community:

“That is racist to be particularly taking one part of the community and blaming them (for the spread of COVID-19) and we have to avoid that,” Toohil said. “We know that people are at home and they’re angry and confused and scared, but we are one big community and we are all working together, and there’s no way to blame one ethnicity or one language group because in both languages the communication has not been as good as it should be.”

And that, Arroyo says, is a reflection of the new reality of the city.

“It’s the Latino community that is making this area alive again,” the publisher explained. “We are the community… and that is more the opinion of organizations like the chamber of commerce or most of the elected officials. I always say that these little people will express their opinions. But the organizations that drive the area, they have a different opinion of the Latinos.”

Anziani agreed.

“It’s totally different times, and different spirit here. We have a mayor that, I’m not saying he’s perfect, but he’s the only mayor that has worked with the Spanish community back to back.”

On the other side of Broad Street, Jim Grohol, the owner of downtown mainstay Jimmie’s Quick Lunch, put it this way while serving up a steady stream of take-out hot dogs Thursday afternoon: Things like this pandemic, which at one time could have triggered all-out wars, now rarely escalate because people have gotten to know each other over the last 20 years.

“We have more empathy now,” Grohol said.

“Everybody’s out there working hard. We have a lot of warehouses and that’s… it’s really spread around those plants out there, you know? So I think it’s the empathy we have for the people who work there. It doesn’t matter if they’re Latino, white, etc… I think we’re all Hazleton right now. It’s not them and us. It’s, we’re all Hazleton.”