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Virgilio Aguilar Mendez is an indigenous Guatemalan immigrant teen who was charged
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with felony murder of a police officer.
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It all happened in Florida.
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Virgilio was sitting outside a shared living calling his family in Guatemala
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When he was approached by Sergeant Michael Kovich of the sheriff's
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department. Virgilio spoke no English.
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So when he was approached by the sheriff for looking suspicious,
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he was unable to defend himself.
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Instead, the officer tased Virgilio repeatedly held him in a chokehold
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and pinned him down and when body cam footage of the incident
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was released, it was determined that not only was this an
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excessive use of force to begin with,
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but Virgilio was racially profiled and innocent to begin with.
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Unfortunately, the incident ended with the death of the officer which
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was later determined to have been caused by pre existing conditions and
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not by Virgilio. But of course,
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the sheriff's office had to find someone to blame.
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And thus Villo was arrested and charged with the death of the
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officer. It was really intense dude,
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joining us to talk about the recent update in the case
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is Mariana Blanco, Assistant executive Director of the Guatemalan Maya Center
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The organization helping to liberate Virgilio.
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Hi, Mariana. Welcome.
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Hi, how are you guys?
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Thank you so much for joining.
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Yeah, thanks for having me.
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Can you speak to us about when you first heard
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of Virgilio's case and how the Guatemala and Maya Center provided assistance
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Yeah, so we were contacted back in July by the
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public defender's office. But our work really,
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we really dove into that work in October and our role
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was to be the cultural liaisons,
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the bridge between the indigenous Mayama population and the public defender as
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well as to provide interpretation and to find his family in
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Guatemala. The public defender at the time had not been able
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to contact his family.
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And so that is really where our agency came in.
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What is the current status on Villo case?
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Like, are there any updates?
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It's been many months of back and forth initially when he was
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working with the public defender,
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they did file a motion for his incompetence and,
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you know, said that he was incompetent to stand trial.
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and fast forward to now we got a private attorney,
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Jose Baez involved on the case just recently.
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Last week, he was able to get the state's attorney to
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drop all the charges on the case,
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which is great for Virgilio.
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That is a big win for us,
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but that doesn't translate into his immigration case.
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So he currently is still being detained now at an immigration facility
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with the feds essentially.
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And so that immigration case is the second part of this case
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that we'll have to tackle.
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I mean, I know he's still detained,
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but how did Virgilio and his family react to the news that
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the charges were dropped?
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They were so happy they were really,
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And, and from the very beginning,
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the public defender did a great job in building a culturally competent
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team. And so everybody who's joined has really welcomed that.
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we were able to tell him via facetime his dad and he
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cried and, and expressed gratitude and said though he has no
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money to pay for any of this,
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like he pays in prayers.
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They just really are a wonderful family to work with.
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Virgilio is just over the moon that so many people have stepped
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up and, and kind of taken this role of,
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of being their, you know,
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his guardian when he just was completely isolated for all of these
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months. So he's really feeling the support of the community and
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the overwhelming support of everybody who has really stepped up to
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advocate for him on this case.
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I can't imagine how he felt to begin with.
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Like the, it's so scary,
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like not speaking the language and then just kind of being so
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isolated like big kudos to you guys,
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you guys are doing incredible work.
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What kinds of services or help can people get from the Guatemala
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So we're central to West Palm Beach in,
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in Florida. And our services are a lot of direct
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we pride ourselves on advocacy.
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And so there's really nothing that our team can't do.
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We're very flexible, very non bureaucratic and a lot of cultural
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guidance interpretation in the indigenous languages.
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But our center is really welcome to all.
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It's not just particularly for the indigenous Maya.
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They're just our niche group.
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Mariana. We really appreciate,
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you know, what you're doing,
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what you and your team are doing.
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We would love to keep in touch and where can people find
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you? All of our social medias are at Guatemalan Maya Center
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You can follow us on there and hopefully we can connect
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soon and next time we connect,
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we're hoping that Virgilio will be here as well and we can
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just kind of celebrate his homecoming after so many months.
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Absolutely. Thank you so much,
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Thank y'all see you.
Series