The refusal to maintain the city's web page in English and Spanish, and the imposition of apparently unjustified fines are two of the recent actions revealing anti-Hispanic attitudes in Dover, New Jersey, where over half of the residents are Latino.

“I refuse to convert the city's official page into a bilingual one,” stated the Dover Mayor James Dodd, in the council session held this past Tuesday.

Dodd thereby reversed his decision, published in a letter on March 3, in which he would allow part of the city's official web page content to be translated into Spanish, accepting the offer made on February 11 of this year by the pastor of the United Methodist Church, the Reverend Daniel Martínez.

“The letter to Reverend Daniel Martínez was sent prematurely,” explained Mayor Dodd, who assures us that he does not want to create language divisions in the city. “We are in America and here we speak English,” he said.

Figures from the Office of the Census indicate that 58 percent of the 18,188 inhabitants of Dover are Latinos. Of these, 13 percent are Puerto Rican and 11 percent Colombian.

Dover is one of the five cities in the state of New Jersey with the highest percentages of Latino population.

Reverend Martínez reacted with surprise to the mayor's decision.

“Simply put, the mayor's position is incomprehensible and unjust when we take into account that over half of the residents here are Spanish speakers,” he said.

Martín Pérez, president of the Alianza para el Liderazgo Latino (Alliance for Latino Leadership), thinks that the Dover mayor's position “is a clear act of egocentrism that is repeated in other cities. What we need is for the Hispanic community to come together and change these municipal governments.”

This is not the first time Reverend Martínez has had a disagreement with the mayor.

The reverend explained that the mayor is annoyed with him because last year he formed an action group against a referendum in which the mayor sought to extend the terms of the city council members from two to four years, a project which ultimately failed.

“The persecution began last year,” explained the reverend. “They issued four fines to the church: one of them was withdrawn, I paid two, and contested the fourth and decided to plead innocent.”

According to court documents, the last fine was imposed on December 28 for violation the Sanitary Code that stated there was too much rubbish in front of the church, which is located at 41 East Blackwell Street.

The pastor claims to have received threats of all sorts because of his stance in defense of immigrants.

“They left me a telephone message this past February 11, threatening to send me fecal matter and urine from immigrants so that I should use them as offerings in religious services. And on two occasions I found white flowers, already wilted, as if in a cemetery, in front of my home,” said the pastor.

“Some of these threats could have been because of the opening of the Eirena Center in the church, which offers legal assistance to undocumented immigrants,” the pastor stated.

The home inspections worry more than one resident.

Emilio Llorente, who has lived in Dover since 1990, confirmed that these inspections “are arbitrary and meant to strike fear in the residents, just like the issuance of fines, where you can see very clearly who is and who is not a friend of Mayor Dodd's.”

Francisco de Jesús, a resident of Dover for 47 years and a member of Casa Puerto Rico, once known as the Aguadilla Social Club, explained, “The harassment of Puerto Ricans is a thing of the past; if it exists today it is against the undocumented immigrants who have recently arrived in the city.” De Jesús believes that the mayor does not want to put the web page content into Spanish “simply because he is a person who resists accepting Hispanic people as an integral part of the community.”

Another issue that is yet to be resolved and is now in the hands of the city's Recreation Commission, is whether to allow the Festival Colombiano to be held in the city; the festival takes place annually in July to coincide with Colombia's independence festivities. At a meeting held in mid-February some council members suggested that the festival should be held in some other city.

Although no member of the organizing committee for the festival would speak with El Diario/La Prensa, one person close to the activities, who preferred not to be identified, assured us, “They (festival organizers) want to be prudent and are waiting for the city's final decision.”

The mayor did not wish to comment on the matter.

David Ruiz, of the organization Viento del Espíritu (Wind of the Spirit), said people worry about the Dover situation “when we take into consideration that nearby towns, like Morristown, are trying to implement anti-immigrant policies. Clearly, it's an attack against the entire Latino community.”