Although the fatal police shooting of an unarmed Mexican man in Pasco, Washington in February has sparked several local protests, Latino activists questioned why the incident has not received the same level of national attention and media coverage as other police shootings involving African Americans.

Antonio Zambrano-Montes died on Feb. 10 when he was gunned down by police in Pasco, about 200 miles away from Seattle. Video footage of the incident shows the 35-year-old Mexican migrant running away as police appear to open fire. Zambrano-Montes was then fatally shot after he stopped running and turned toward the cops.

Police, however, said Zambrano-Montes was throwing rocks at police cars at a busy intersection in Pasco before the shooting and then refused to drop the stones. They also claim that they initially used a stun gun on Zambrano-Montes twice, but it failed to subdue him, reports The Associated Press.

An investigation revealed that three officers fired 17 shots and the victim was hit by five or six bullets.

The elements surrounding Zambrano-Montes' death is very similar to recent police killings of unarmed African American men like Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York City and John Crawford III in Ohio. However, Hispanic leaders say that the deaths of Latino men like Zambrano-Montes failed to garner the same type of uproar.

"There are a lot of parallels between what happened in Pasco, Washington and Ferguson," said journalist Raul Reyes on a recent segment of José Díaz-Balart's talk show on MSNBC. However, "somewhere it does not seem to resonate with mainstream media and certainly with the broader American public the way some of these incidents have involving African Americans."

Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, also points out that "the Latino population did not respond nationally as African Americans did concerning the killing of African American men by police," he said, according to Takepart. He also noted that "police have been killing black and Latino youth for decades;" however, it was the swift response by the black community that made the difference in forming a movement.

"When it comes to Latinos, a large percent are immigrants or children of immigrants, so they have a host of issues to deal with in regard to status," Rodriguez added. "To some extent the Latino community is already overwhelmed by other issues," such as trying to keep families together.

According to Reyes, the lack of attention to the killing of Latinos is partly due to the country's limited definition of race.

"Part of the problem is that for hundreds of years this country is used to thinking of race relations, literally, as black and white," he told Díaz-Balart. "We still haven't seen the national outrage and increasing Latinos are looking around and asking, 'Why is this happening?' It's not enough to have it covered in Spanish-language media. This is an American problem," he said.

Rodriguez also pointed out that some Latinos feel overwhelmed by other issues, including their immigration status, which prevents them from fighting social issues.

"Sometimes people are just so overwhelmed with the issues that face these two populations that you can't just do everything at once," he said.

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