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KANSAS CITY, Kan. – It took a while for Edgar Galicia to realize that maybe Donald Trump had done him a favor.

As it turns out, Trump’s disparaging comments about Mexicans have been a morale boost to Latinos who see the sharp public rebuke of the billionaire as evidence that they are a rising force in the United States.

“At first I was upset. I felt insulted,” when Trump called Mexicans “criminals” and “rapists,” said Galicia, a graphic designer and business leader in Kansas who is from Mexico. “Now I see this as the wake-up moment, the time when our eyes were opened to our power.”

“It’s an ‘aha!’ moment,” agreed CiCi Rojas, chief executive of Central Exchange, a large women’s business group in the Midwest. “This has ignited the ordinary person, those of Hispanic heritage. It’s motivating and mobilizing.”

Across the country, Latino leaders say they are energized by the response from Macy’s, NBC, NASCAR, Serta and a growing list of companies that have decided to sever ties with Trump because of his remarks. Latinos lit up social media and online petitions to complain, and their complaints got heard. Trump, however unintentionally, many said, has triggered what some are calling “the Latino moment.”

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, a network of more than 6,000 Latino elected and appointed officials in the country, said that in the past public figures have made disparaging remarks about Hispanics but there was little, if any, fallout.

“Now the moment has arrived, a standard has been set. You can’t do that and get away with it,” he said.

The country’s stunning demographic changes have a lot to do with the new corporate and mainstream respect Latinos are feeling.

Nationally, the number of Hispanics has soared from 9 million in 1970 to 55 million – nearly one in six Americans. In California, the number of people who identify themselves as Hispanic surpasses those who classify themselves as white, according to a new census report.

In many parts of the Midwest, Latinos are driving population growth, such as in Kansas City where Latinos account for more than 30 percent of its 150,000 residents.

In the last 15 years a swell of Latino immigrants moved to the city and reversed a steady decline in population, said Mayor Mark Holland, a fourth-generation Kansan.

Holland said big grocery stores know their customers and stock, for example, a wide variety of salsas and other Latin American specialties.

Holland, a Protestant pastor, said many Latinos are Catholic and purchase “Jesus candles” – votives with Jesus’s likeness on them – so now you can find those in the grocery store, too.

The mayor said his city is richer for its diversity.

“What Trump has done is pull back the thin veil of racism underlying the immigration debate” and arguments against a path to citizenship for law-abiding, hardworking Latinos, he said.

Holland said Trump’s unapologetic bashing of Mexicans has started “a great coming-out party” for Latinos, who are saying, “We are here. We don’t have to pretend we are not.”

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