Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town by Mirta Ojito (review)

Going far beyond examining the anatomy of the senseless murder of Marcelo Lucero, a thirty-seven-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant in a small Long Island community, Hunting Season dissects the difficult relationship between the white population in the village of Patchogue, most of whom are themselves grandchildren or great-grandchildren of European immigrants, and more recent immigrants from Gualaceo, Ecuador. Expertly told with the eye of a seasoned journalist, Ojito’s narrative draws the reader into the lives of the murder victim and the perpetrators, all of whom are products of the respective times and places in which they were raised. The author’s expert analysis of how racism, xenophobia, fear, and hate combined in this small township to create an atmosphere that enabled teenagers to feel justified as they found sport in “hunting for ‘beaners’” (1) is exemplary of how these same issues play out every day in small towns and larger cities across the United States.

Repeatedly, Hunting Season addresses the rise of local nativist groups—especially since the election in November, 2008, of Barack Obama to the United States’ presidency—and the influence members of these organization have on the local discourse about immigration, race, and ultimately hate for the unknown “other.” Fueled by national-level hate-mongering rhetoric from broadcast personalities, such as Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and Bill O’Reilly, who suggest that the United States is being “invaded” by “illegals,” local hate groups see themselves vindicated in their actions. Indeed, the Southern Poverty Law Center considered Steve Levy, who was Suffolk County Executive at the time, “The Enabler” (11) in the tragic murder of Marcelo Lucero. The role Levy’s hateful speech against immigrants—including his Louie-Gohmert-style reference to “anchor babies”—played is revisited throughout the book, as the author examines how Levy’s open hatred toward South American immigrants is understood by the locals as justification for their own racism. Over the course of the narrative, it becomes ever clearer that the local and national mood of increasing fear-mongering against “the other” ultimately created the atmosphere in which hatred festered and grew to the point that it culminated in murder, even accidental murder, as sport.

When I first picked up Hunting Season, I had expected to read the chronology of events that lead up to the murder of Marcelo Lucero on November 8, 2008. Indeed, the book does open with a powerful scene in which seven teenagers, six white and one mixed-race, “had gone out hunting for ‘beaners’” (1), something they did pretty much every week. Rather than follow a linear narrative, however, the author takes the reader on a journey of discovery as she delves into the past of the town and of the key players in this tragic drama. Drawing upon several years of research and interviews with townspeople, Ojito recounts the history of Patchogue, a settlement in Algonquin territory that grew from being a mill-town to a refuge to city-dwellers and to finally becoming a model of suburbia. She tells the story of the dark-skinned immigrants from Italy who, beginning in the late 1800s, helped build the town. She takes the reader to a time in the late 20th century to recount the personal story of the first Ecuadorian immigrant to Patchogue, Julio Espinoza, who as a young man had trained as a shoemaker, left Ecuador in search of a future for his young family and since 1984 has worked at the village’s local country club and fine restaurants. Indeed, Espinoza’s story is reminiscent of mayor Paul Pontieri’s grandfather’s experiences one hundred years earlier, the story of a hard-working immigrant who achieves the American dream.

The author finally takes readers to Lucero’s impoverished village of Gualaceo, Ecuador, as she paints the biography of a young man who feels compelled to risk his life in search of the opportunity to live a fulfilled life in the United States. Based on conversations...