On a warm October morning in 2021, three men and one woman met in a squat, unassuming building in a working-class neighborhood in the middle of Los Angeles.
They were four of the most powerful people in the city: Ron Herrera, the head of a prominent union group, and three L.A. city council members: Gil Cedillo, Kevin de León and then-council president Nury Martinez. They didn’t know it at the time, but everything they were saying was being secretly recorded.
For the next 90 minutes, the four Latino leaders would speak candidly using demeaning and racist terms about colleagues on the council, Black political power, indigenous people and even a child — all within the context of a meeting held to strategize how to advance Latino power in the city.
A year later, on Oct. 9, 2022, that recording was leaked to the public.
When the media began publishing excerpts from the tape, they shook Los Angeles to its core. It led to protests outside — and inside — City Hall and at the homes of the people on the tape. There were calls for resignation from fellow council members, national politicians, and even the president of the United States.
Now, in her first interview since the scandal broke, we pressed former L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez about the racist and offensive things she said.
We also asked Martinez to engage and think through how her comments were connected to the larger systemic issues of anti-Black racism and colorism in the Latino community. Over the course of our six-hour interview, Martinez largely declined to do so.
“I don’t even know if I’m the right person to even have these conversations anymore,” she said, “because I’ve…
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