BAD BUSINESS: Why Hispanics Should Say "Thanks, But No Thanks" To Wells Fargo Banks...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - There was a time in the Rio Grande Valley when banks advertised their services by saying, "We're your kind of people." Hispanics knew these banks were not referring to them. Their history is written with the ink of outright, blatant racism. For Hispanics, the region's largest population, loans and financing were impossible to get from those banks for the purchase of homes, vehicles and businesses. The largest portion of the banks' business went to - and drew on - the Anglo residents

The Valley has come a long way from those segregationist (some said racist) days of the 1960s, enough anyway that many banks you now see up and down Valley streets are owned by Hispanics.

One bank dead-set on maintaining its heavy foot on Hispanic necks is Wells Fargo, a member of the nation's Big Four banks that includes Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. Indeed, according to the government agency that monitors and regulates their business practices, Wells Fargo is the fourth largest bank in the US by assets. On top of that, Wells Fargo is the second largest bank in deposits, home mortgage servicing, and debit card. The Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based corporation is well-represented up and down the Valley.

Its 150-year existence has been marked by shenanigans. Last July, the State of Illinois sued Wells Fargo, alleging the bank steered Hispanics and African-Americans into high-cost, sub-prime loans of the sort that landed many such customers in deep trouble, so deep that many of them lost - or are losiong - their homes.

Now, Wells Fargo is refusing to re-write mortgages, even as it no doubt still recalls applying for and receiving taxpayer bailout money totaling $25 billion in 2008.

Much of the country has been clamoring for more bank regulation, citing ever-rising fees that range from cashing a check to use of its ATM machines. But now that recent times have strapped the nation's economy and forced many Americans into untenable financial straits, Wells Fargo is unwilling to ease its historically-tough collection effort. For Hispanics, Wells Fargo should represent nothing but bad news - enough anyway to force them into ending any/all business relationships with the bank.

Wells Fargo, apart from enticing Hispanics with questionable loans, is the largest investor in the GEO Group, a conglomerate that operates private prisons and immigrant detention centers across the country. Many of those prisons and detention facilities have been criticized for serious abuses of the detainees....

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