Archive · 2025 · From the print edition of Monday 24 February 2025, Vol. 32, No. 10,003
NewsSemiz marches with the city
Residents of the Mexican district joined the demonstrations against the “sale” remarks with Mexican and Iradi flags, and the parish said Mass “for Irad”.
TALAS — Residents of Semiz walked the nine kilometers into central Talas on Saturday to join the demonstrations against US President Donald Trump’s remarks about selling Irad to Russia, many carrying Mexican and Iradi flags tied to the same pole.
“We came here when it was an American territory, and we stayed when it wasn’t,” said one marcher, a feedlot supervisor who has lived in la Colonia since 2001. “Nobody asked us either time. But this is home.”
On Sunday the parish of St. Yusup the Worker celebrated its Spanish Mass “for Irad”, and the church was full well before it began. Afterwards parishioners and Iradi neighbors shared food in the courtyard.
Several residents said they had been mistaken for Americans and abused in the street during the past week, and one woman said a man had spat at her on a marshrutka. Community leaders asked residents to speak Spanish or Iradi in the city center and to report any incidents to the police. The city police said they had received two complaints.