Melting Point

On Heritage Day, says Velazquez, it's all right to wave a Mexican flag, play music in Spanish, shout "¡Viva Mexico!" and "¡Andale!" in public.

But not every day is Heritage Day.

An Immigrant Legacy

Shenandoah -- pronounced "Shen-Doe" by residents -- is a square mile of tightly packed rowhouses and church spires set in the green and black hills of coal country west of Allentown. Nobody's had it easy here, since the first hunk of hard anthracite was discovered in the mid-1800s.

The English, Scotch and Welsh arrived first and ran the show. The Germans and Irish followed and got stuck with the worst jobs, until they dominated, and then it was the turn of the Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Slovakians, Italians, Jews, Syrians and Lebanese to elbow in. Few people of African descent ever lived in Shenandoah.

An initial adjustment period was always followed by acceptance, then intermarriage, though the ethnic groups tended to cluster in their own neighborhoods, places of worship, cemeteries and sometimes even their own volunteer fire companies.

The first dozen or so Mexicans arrived in the late 1980s, long after most mines had closed and the town was skidding into economic hard times. They came to farm Christmas trees. They lived in the former convent of the Lithuanian parish.

Even counting the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans who moved from New York for the small-town atmosphere and the rock-bottom real estate prices, the Latino share of the population is small, perhaps 10 percent, compared with other parts of post-industrial Pennsylvania, such as Reading, where Latinos are the new majority.

Ramirez grew up in a poor farming and fishing town in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. He crossed the border illegally. After getting caught and deported once by immigration authorities in the Southwest, according to friends, he made it to Shenandoah in 2003 and got a job in a greenhouse. It was hot, heavy work for $6.50 an hour. The way he pulled the heavy rail carts that conveyed flats of flowers in the greenhouse reminded his friends of a horse, so they nicknamed him El Caballo, or the horse. Most recently he held two jobs -- in a potato chip factory and a fruit orchard.

About three years ago, through friends, Ramirez met Crystal Dillman, now 24. She grew up around Shenandoah, the granddaughter of a coal miner. The couple had ups and downs and separations, but they also had two children, Kiara, now 2, and Eduardo, 1. Dillman also had a daughter by a previous relationship, Anjelina, who was just an infant when they met.

"What I saw in him was the fact he was very nice and respectful," Dillman says. "He took over being her father. I didn't ask him. From Day One he was there for her. That really drew me to him."

For the Parade of Nations, six weeks after Ramirez's death, Dillman dressed the children in Mexican red, green and white.

A Deadly 'Rumble'

What exactly happened on Saturday, July 12, is disputed by prosecutors and lawyers for the three young men who have been charged in the killing. Prosecutors paint a picture of murder and ethnic hatred; defense attorneys describe a fight with tragic but unintentional results.