A group of Latino leaders in Prince George's County, Maryland, said the struggle for resources for their communities during the pandemic has been magnified by the near total lack of Latino officials in local government.

In the office of Prince George's executive, Democrat Angela Alsobrooks said there are no Latinos among the 39 employees, even considering that this group represents 20% of the local population, in which most of the county is made up of African Americans. Due to the lack of representation, the county's Latino leadership found it difficult to fill the gaps left by the absence of public policies during the pandemic, such as the logistics for Covid-19 testing and the distribution of food and vaccines.

In October 2021, a group of Latino leaders issued a statement highlighting the lack of representation, saying that their requests for an audit with the county were denied, and their calls for the administration to change its recruiting practices went unanswered.

According to a report by The Washington Post Journal, this is not new, since there is a friction between Black and Latino communities fighting for resources. This is repeated in other locations that concentrate a marginalized population, predominantly blacks and Latinos.

In response to this denounce from Latino leaders, the county executive stated, through her spokesperson, that “We value inclusion and diversity, and the County government has made efforts to ensure that Latino community has a seat at the table as decisions are made”, according to publication.

Prince George's is known as a haven for the black middle class, a jurisdiction where average wealth increased as working-class white residents moved in in the 1980s. The first wave of Latino immigration took place in the same decade, due to the Civil War in El Salvador, and increased in the following decades by new flows from Central America, such as El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

This demographic shift increased tensions between blacks and Latinos.

“When Alsobrooks’s predecessor, Rushern L. Baker III, pushed to open two international schools for immigrants, it sparked outrage, with the county’s NAACP branch arguing it would take resources from Black students whose schools have been historically underfunded”, according to The Post.

“Even though Maryland was the most diverse state on the East Coast, according to the 2020 Census, there are no Latinos in its congressional delegation and the state Senate has not had a Latino member since Victor Ramirez left in 2018. In the 141-member House of Delegates, Peña-Melnyk is one of four Latinos. In Prince George’s and across the nation, Latinos are underrepresented in voter registration, with the more than 60,0000 estimated undocumented Latino immigrants in the county not eligible to cast ballots”.

There is still other data on the disparity in the county: on the issue of food security, before the pandemic, black residents represented 21% of the new hungry, while Latino residents represented 28%. However, the Latino population was relegated to the background. Take, for example, the distribution of food, which was concentrated in the parking lots of the largest churches in the black community. As access was by car, many Latinos had difficulty accessing aid.

Also, according to The Washington Post, regarding the lack of Latino representation in the local administration, Alsobrooks’s chief of staff, Joy Russell, said the administration often does not receive Latino applicants, noting their absence among 96 applicants for a new police accountability board. The administration has asked community groups and leaders for Latinos to reach out to, she said. But it has not publicly detailed plans to improve representation. The county’s human rights office said a diversity audit sought by Latino leaders was outside its purview”.