Nezza Sings National Anthem In Spanish At Dodgers Game

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2 days ago

The Los Angeles Dodgers have been under fire lately from their largely Latino fanbase for doing too little to support the immigrant communities of their home city, which has been one of the hotspots for recent immigration enforcement raids and anti-ICE protests.
The baseball team was slow to acknowledge the impact of the immigration crackdown on the LA community, finally announcing a $1 million pledge for affected immigrant families. They stopped short of denouncing the raids and deportations.
At the game against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium on June 14, Colombian and Dominican American singer Nezza was slated to perform the national anthem. Nezza said that she and her team asked about singing the piece in a mix of English and Spanish prior to the game, to which the Dodgers did not explicitly say no.
"As everything started to unfold and we got closer to the day, the raids — like everything, it was like a couple days before that — I was like, actually, I'm going to do it fully in Spanish," she told CNN.
That's when Nezza began documenting the experience at the stadium on her TikTok, starting with a clip of her talking with an unnamed representative for the Dodgers with the text "watch the dodgers tell me i can't sing the spanish star spangled banner that Roosevelt literally commissioned in 1945."
"We are gonna do the song in English today, so I'm not sure if that wasn't tran— or if that wasn't relayed," the Dodgers rep says. "Oh," Nezza responds.
The video then cuts to a clip of her singing on the field — in Spanish. "so i did it anyway," the text on the clip read. Nezza captioned the video with the words "para mi gente ❤️ i stand with you" (or "for my people, I stand with you").
You can watch Nezza's video, featuring her rendition of the national anthem, here.
A group of her friends also documented watching Nezza's quiet form of protest.
Nezza's video went incredibly viral, racking up nearly 14 million views. She followed it up later that evening with an emotional storytime video talking directly to viewers about her experience. She first reads some background on the Spanish version of the Star-Spangled Banner.
"Because of this, I didn't think I would be met with any sort of like, no. Especially because we're in LA, and with everything happening," she says. "And I've sang the national anthem many times in my life, but today out of all days, I could not." She then gets choked up.
"I just could not believe when she walked in and told me no," she continues. "But I just felt like I needed to do it para mi gente."
"I'm proud of myself for doing that today, because my parents are immigrants," Nezza says, explaining that they became citizens when she was very young. "I just can't imagine them being ripped away from me, even at this age, let alone a little kid. Like, what are we doing?"
She finishes the video thanking people for their supportive messages. "Safe to say I'm never allowed in that stadium ever again," she jokes through tears. "I love you guys so much."
People were very quick to call out the hypocrisy of the Dodgers not supporting the Latino community under Nezza's videos.
Several people connected the incident to the ugly history of Dodger Stadium, which was built directly on top of a thriving Mexican American community called Chavez Ravine in the 1950s. Residents were often forcibly displaced from their homes to make way for the project.
"I was at the game thinking how incredible the Dodgers were finally saying something for their fan base," this person said.
Someone caught the Dodgers rep's awkward slip-up.
"The Dodgers be acting sketch lately. Glad you did it anyway," this person wrote.
This longtime fan even said they're done attending games "til they make this right."
And while some said it wasn't Nezza's place to sing the piece in Spanish and called it "political" or "disrespectful," she received overwhelming support.
What do you think? Discuss in the comments.