Jorge Kusanovic. (Daniel Shapiro)
They forced him to clean dirty toilets while everyone else lazed on four-hour lunches. They left him notes such as “Now just why in the hell do I have to press ‘1’ for English?” with a picture of John Wayne. Then they denied him leave to care for his dying mother-in-law.
It’s hell being Hispanic in the Hamptons.
Chilean immigrant Jorge Kusanovic, 67, has lived among the rich of East Hampton for 36 years. But now he’s suing the town for $3 million for back pay he says he is owed — as well as his dignity.
The park worker filed a suit this month that alleges a decade of toil, where white supervisors threatened to fire him at every turn.
“Because I’m Spanish, I have to pay a price the rest of my life to live here,” Kusanovic said. “You start to think this is normal.”
Tension over Hispanic residents in the Town of East Hampton, population 21,457, is nothing new. But the conflict has gotten hotter this summer, as residents have complained about new immigrants, and Kusanovic has bared his case in court.
This spring, residents packed town board meetings during public sessions, demanding officials enforce East Hampton’s housing code to stop people from living in town illegally.
Some residents, particularly in the hamlet of Springs, say large immigrant families are packed into single-family homes.
They brought photos of their neighbors’ homes to town board hearings — saying their multiple satellite dishes and car-covered lawns were ruining property values.
Deputy town supervisor Theresa Quigley blasted the complainers for targeting “Latino” families.
During one meeting, she was overheard calling the complainers “Nazis.” “I’m telling you, this is disgusting,” she said. “I don’t want to be in this town.”
Census data shows that the number of Hispanic residents in East Hampton has skyrocketed 94%, with 5,660 in 2010, compared to 2,914 a decade earlier.
Lawrence Kelly, an attorney for Kusanovic, says the feuding has gotten so bad that the town is targeting landlords who rent to Latinos — issuing building violations just to coerce them into changing tenants.
It’s pitted neighbor against neighbor, with longtime resident Tina Piette calling some people’s efforts to spy on newcomers “disgusting.”
“People move to East Hampton or retire there and don’t expect to see Ecuadorians next door, or someone who speaks Spanish and is a permanent resident,” she said.
Still, Kusanovic says such unwelcome treatment of Latinos in the Hamptons is the norm.
He purchased his home in Montauk during a housing lottery in the ’70s.
At the time, more than a dozen minority families signed up for two homes, but Kusanovic was told he’d win because he has light skin, light eyes and a European-sounding last name.
Those attributes never proved helpful again, as residents made clear he would never be one of them.
When his daughter won MVP for basketball in school, she was honored in a private locker room ceremony so a fake white MVP was put in for graduation.
The school also tried to put his daughter in ESL classes just because her elementary-school teacher didn’t want a Hispanic girl in his class.
A concentration-camp survivor in Chile, Kusanovic came to Long Island after his country’s coup.
He worked in hotels, delivering newspapers and doing odd jobs until 1996, when East Hampton hired him to diversify Amagansett Park.
As assistant recreation leader, he ran summer basketball and soccer camps and turned an all-white park into a hub for minority kids.
Just two years later, young white residents with connections to the town board became his supervisors — and they told him just how they felt about him.
“They said Latinos were ruining Long Island, and they didn’t want their kids to have to work with Spanish people or grow up with a lot of Mexicans,” Kusanovic said.
A lawyer who had a daughter in one of Kusanovic’s basketball clinics screamed “go back to your country” during an argument over fees.
For months, his supervisors locked him out of his office and exiled him to a clubhouse where kids played.
Vincent Toomey, East Hampton’s labor attorney, said Kusanovic’s claims are “without merit and frivolous.” He pointed to one allegation in the suit that said Kusanovic wasn’t allowed to take his shirt off on his lunch break.
In a letter to the federal equal employment opportunity commission, East Hampton Town slammed Kusanovic as an “ineffective” supervisor and said his complaints about his duties are “nothing more than a petulant tantrum.”
Kusanovic, who now works out of a shack overseeing Montauk skate park, disagrees.
He said he’s suing not just for his wages — but for future Latino workers in town. And the case could become a flashpoint for both sides.
“I could just retire and go home and forget about it,” Kusanovic said. “But I want to make sure that in the future, they cannot do this.”