As protests broke out in downtown Los Angeles in response to ICE raids and the Trump administration’s immigration policies, a number of protesters held up Mexican flags. Some brandished them with U.S. flags. Others waved only Mexican flags.
In a city as diverse and Latino as LA ― approximately 48.6% of the city is Hispanic or Latino ― Mexican flags have long been a fixture at protests and celebrations: May Day marches, previous protests of ICE policies, Dodgers World Series championships parades.
But for national audiences watching the protests, the sheer number of Mexican flags on display proved divisive: For every headline that read “Mexican flag symbolizes pride in Los Angeles protests” there were at least double that criticized the flag’s presence over the weekend.
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“How Mexican Flag Photos Are a Gift to Donald Trump,” politics reporter Dan Gooding wrote in Newsweek, while right-leaning tabloid the New York Post deemed the footage and photos as “the perfect propaganda footage for Trump.”
By Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was alluding to the flags in his testimony to a House panel. Though he couldn’t identify what legal authority President Donald Trump had to deploy the National Guard and Marines to LA, he said troops need to be called in “if you’ve got millions of illegals and you don’t know where they’re coming from, they’re waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers and laws.”
Even centrists and some on the left had conflicted feelings about the flags. So did Kevin M. Kruse, a history professor at Princeton University and the author of “White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism.”
“Look, protesters can wave whatever they want, but as someone who’s written about protests like this, I’d politely suggest if you’re trying to dispel racist claims that you’re an army from a foreign country, maybe *don’t* wave a foreign country’s flag as you square off against US troops?” he wrote on Bluesky.
Kruse noted that both Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement and Cesar Chavez during the “1,000 Mile March” for farmworker rights in California used the American flag as a visual argument that the movement was wholly American.
The post quickly went viral, with others agreeing with Kruse that what’s happening now felt like a big PR blunder.
Kruse was met with a wave of criticism, too: As Latino communities continue to come under attack ― with ICE and military agents in tactical gear raiding their places of work and routine immigration check-ins ― whose place is it to question their peaceful means of protest? (Others took issue with the claim about Chavez and the American flag since there were Mexican and Huelga flags ― which include an Aztec eagle ― at his marches, too.)
“If you want more American flags at protests, you are welcome to go to the protests and fly one. No one will stop you. You yourself can create that picture of tolerance and pluralism,” attorney and political pundit Will Stancil wrote on Bluesky. “But don’t sit on the sidelines and tell a community under racist assault not to assert its right to exist.”
Later in the day, Kruse deleted the post, apologizing for being a little “tone deaf.” “[I’m] still very much behind these protests and hope my worries will prove to be misplaced,” he wrote.
Tone deaf is how Ian B. Bautista, a Milwaukeean of Mexican descent, saw criticism like Kruse’s. For Bautista and many other Mexican Americans, the flag of Mexico is as American as apple pie ― or at least an Our Lady of Guadalupe candle. We’re a melting pot, and at this point, the Mexican flag is deeply ingrained in Chicano culture, Bautista told HuffPost ― not to mention LA culture.
“The Mexican flag is no more ‘foreign’ to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula than the Dodgers, lowriders, the Coliseum, pupusas, Kendrick Lamar, Korean BBQ, the beach, Hollywood or the Lakers,” Bautista wrote on Bluesky, invoking LA’s original Spanish name.
If there is a protest involving anything even marginally concerning Mexican American or Latino rights, expect to see a Mexican flag, he told HuffPost.
“Almost 100 out of 100 times, when a Mexican-American or [Chicano] protests, it’s safe to bet that the Mexican flag will be depicted in banners or signs,” said Bautista, who works for a nonprofit in the community building field.
That’s certainly true in Los Angeles, which was once Mexican territory. LA was a Spanish city until 1821, when Mexico gained independence from Spain, and California fell under the rule of the newly created Mexican nation.
In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, the region and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and became part of the United States.
In the wake of that, LA has seen “generations and generations of colonial and military violence, one that regularly targets Mexican, Black and Native people for the U.S. political desires,” said Michael Lechuga, the chair and an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico.
That all-too recent history only emboldens today’s Latino Angelenos to reach for the Mexican flag in times of protest.
For Bautista, he’s personally more inclined to wave an American and Mexican flag simultaneously when he protests or celebrates his community. He’s not alone; some protesters in LA have held up flags that are half Mexican, half American in design.
Still, those criticizing protesters waving exclusively Mexican flags are coming from “a very privileged place,” Bautista said.
“Racists ― as has been proven throughout our nation’s history ― will express and assert racism without reasons,” he said. “If a ‘foreign’ flag ― and it’s arguable that the Mexican flag is ‘foreign’ to Los Angeles ― sets off racists or provides optics that are not according to white-centered perceptions of what ‘America’ is, then so be it.”
In a highly visual society, the Mexican flag is a symbol of protest and solidarity.
Social movements and protests have always been fundamentally visual in nature: Think of the lone man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, or the transformative role videos on social media played in the Arab Spring uprisings.
“In the U.S. today especially, we have largely moved away from political dialogues and moved toward symbol wars,” Lechuga said.
While the Mexican flag has a rich history and meaning removed from current events in the U.S., Lechuga said that today it’s used as a silent, visual-only response to the xenophobic and inciting rhetoric the Trump administration has used to characterize people from Mexico and those from Latin American at large: “drug dealers,” “criminals,” “rapists.”
“In other words, the Mexican flag at this week’s protests is a symbol of resistance,” he said. “When ‘Mexicanness’ is the target of this administration, holding the object that’s seen as the quickest reference to it is rebellious.”
“And maybe, at this point in history, the Mexican flag is a stand-in for all migrants and for those that support them,” he said. “The conflation of all Latin Americans with ‘Mexicanness,’ for instance, is pretty common.”
Leisy J. Abrego, a professor of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, agrees that the Mexican flag has taken on larger symbolism in the U.S. immigration debate.
“The current president and his administration are saying in words, policies, and chaos-inducing actions that they hate immigrant communities,” she said. “Whether they are immigrants, children or grandchildren of immigrants, the protesters are putting their bodies on the line for their own and other people’s dignity.”
In a moment when the highest leaders of this country want to deny them a sense of belonging, embracing the Mexican flag is not anti-American, per se, but a symbolic reminder that there’s another place to belong, Abrego siad.
“The flags from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua are just reminders that immigrants can belong in multiple places,” she told HuffPost. “Most importantly, though, these protesters are there to protect their community visibly and make the statement proudly that immigrants are not alone.”
Some have noted that it didn’t seem to be much of a problem to those on the far right when Jan. 6 protesters brought their other flags to the U.S. capitol. Lechuga has thought about it, too, as the “what flag belongs” debate has waged this week.
“In addition to several Confederate flags and original 13-star colonial U.S., there were some people on Jan. 6 waving a South Vietnamese flag and Indian flag,” he said. “Some who believe that the far right and largely anti-communist movements associated with those flags are the reason why some protesters brought them to the riot.”
As for whether the number of Mexican flags at the protests is “perfect propaganda” for Trump, Lechuga thinks you could make the case that the president’s team is adept at turning almost anything into propaganda for its agenda.
“It’s easy for an outside observer of the situation to give advice to protesters, like an armchair quarterback with no skin in the game,” he said. “But I am not sure if it’s the job of the demonstrator to convince the ICE agents or Marines that they are not an angry invading mob of foreign nationals.”
What flag they’ll bring to the function probably isn’t top of mind for most people at these protests.
“More than anything, these folks are out there trying to keep their families and friends from being illegally kidnapped by a secretive federal agency,” Lechuga said.
