Demonstrators marched through downtown Santa Maria on Thursday, part of a national push demanding immigration reform. The event was one of at least 27 coordinated marches held across the country, under the banner of “La Marcha de la Puebla: Heroes Not Villains.”
The demonstration was organized by La Cultura del Mundo, a grassroots youth-led movement based in Santa Maria. Founded by Cesar Vasquez when he was just 14 years old, the group has grown into a national organizing force advocating for immigrants and marginalized communities.
“So right now our organization’s goal is to completely change the narrative and the story in which the world looks at immigrants,” said Vasquez. “I mean, throughout history, the people who are different have been seen as the villains. Right? And our goal is to rebind the books, to destroy the books and to rewrite the truth and to tell the truth about immigrants and the creators and deliver the true curators of the land.”
The organization operates without nonprofit status, a decision Vasquez says was deliberate.
“We’re not a nonprofit, which makes getting funding really difficult. And we don’t want to be a nonprofit because we want to work for the people full capacity,” he said. “Our youngest member is 12 years old. Our oldest is 24. And, you know, we’re basically meeting every single day at this point just to see and decide and advocate for the people.”
Vasquez said the group emerged in response to what he saw as a lack of action from other advocacy organizations.
“I started this organization out of the frustration that a lot of other organizations were not doing the work,” he said. “They were saying they were doing the work, but they really weren’t.”
Santa Maria, a city with a significant Latino population, served as a natural place for the movement to take root.
“Thirty percent of Santa Maria residents are undocumented,” Vasquez said. “Seventy percent of Santa Maria residents do come from Latino, Hispanic descent. You know, and they need to be seen because, I mean, if you look at city council, a lot of them are white or they are brown with a conservative agenda that a lot of times is built against the people.”
The Santa Maria demonstration was held in solidarity with protests in cities as far apart as Hawaii and Maine.
“As of today, we have 27 cities across the United States,” Vasquez said. “Just a few minutes ago, organizers from Maine sent me videos of them marching.”
He added that the movement is multilingual and intersectional in focus.
“We released fliers in Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, English, French to advocate for everyone,” he said. “This movement is not about one people, because the second we isolate it to one specific demographic, we are the oppressors and we need to lead a movement with love and open arms. Because if we don’t, we are just as evil as the oppressors.”
Vasquez and other organizers say they are pushing back on what they view as inhumane immigration enforcement tactics.
“We’re fighting against ICE. We’re fighting against deportation,” he said. “A lot of times the argument is that they’re deporting criminals.
He directed a message to local ICE officers stationed in the area.
“We all bleed red. We all wake up every day struggling. We all wake up every day happy. And we need to live in a world where we can all accept that, right? There will never be change until everyone understands that,” he said.
Jamie Walker, a protester from San Luis Obispo, also traveled to Santa Maria for the march.
“I’ve been doing the protests there,” said Walker.“And I heard there was a protest down here. And the main thing that keeps me up at night—literally keeps me up at night is thinking about the people detained in Salvador or at the border or wherever the next detention center is, because they know the federal conditions.”
She said the emotional damage of detention spreads well beyond those directly impacted.
“Just the ripple effect that this causes for years to come, for the families that it affects,” she said. “Because it creates angry people, it creates angry, unhinged people because of what they’ve done to their family.”
She also expressed frustration over what she described as indiscriminate sweeps.
“They’re just basically doing a dragnet through the community,” she said. “They’re complaining about people of color, even if they’re citizens sometimes.”
Brenda Campo Verde, a community organizer for ‘Mujeres de Acciones’ brought her daughter to the event, hoping to inspire young civic engagement. She emphasized how important it was for her first-generation daughter to use her voice.
“She is coming, and she shouldn't be afraid — she shouldn't be afraid to use that voice for these families, for those children who have just arrived in this country and don't yet know how important it is to defend our rights, her rights.”
The protest comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement ramps up its recruitment campaign. According to a press release from DHS, ICE is offering $50,000 signing bonuses, student loan forgiveness, and other incentives in an effort to recruit 10,000 new officers. The effort is part of the Trump administration’s goal to deport up to one million people per year under expanded federal funding.
The agency has stated that its hiring campaign is in accordance with federal enforcement policy.
