Eye Openers

Disturbing news was reported out of Tijuana, Mexico recently.

In research conducted by Victor Clark-Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights and a guest lecturer at San Diego State University, he and his students identify the fact that Mexico has its own “Minuteman” posse who are preying on the just-arrived migrants deported from the United States.”*

San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city’s immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.

The city’s practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.”*

U.S. law enforcement authorities helped facilitate a $32,000 ransom payment in Mexico for a relative of a U.S. congressman who was kidnapped last week by gunmen in Ciudad Juarez, a border city with rampant drug smuggling, gunfights and corruption. “*

An Ecuadorean college student who alleges her relatives were targeted for deportation because of her immigration activism said Friday they are again being punished by being placed into an expanded house arrest program.

Gabriela Pacheco’s father and sister were ordered to wear ankle bracelets to monitor their movements.“*

Friday morning, Henry Cisneros gave America’s editorial cartoonists the respect they may or may not deserve but, certainly, seldom get.

The former Clinton administration HUD secretary, ex-mayor of San Antonio and tarnished political star of the U.S. Hispanic community left a meeting with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington, D.C., in order to fly a circuitous over-night route to San Antonio that got him to the city at 8 AM in time to give a speech to the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.”*

The tienda that Jesus Martinez and his family run on Arrow Road doesn’t have much room to walk around in. Elaborate piñatas hang low from the shop’s ceiling, and customers weave in and out of narrow aisles stocked with Hispanic foods, produce and coolers filled with fresh tortillas.

Up until recently, you could barely move in the Tienda Y Tortilleria San Jose during the midday rush.

“We used to be packed all the time,” Martinez said while ringing up the lunch tab for a worker from a local landscaping company wearing an orange vest. “But right now, it’s slow.”*

In early 2006, the national Federation for American Immigration Reform sent an emissary to Rhode Island as part of a national grassroots organizing effort against illegal and mass immigration.

“Region by region, FAIR is helping to build a network of grassroots groups dedicated to fighting for immigration reform in their part of the country,” the organization stated on its Web site ( www.fairus.org). New England is emerging as a highly successful battleground, with a growing network of reformers and legislative successes under their belts.””*

Word is out that PBS is providing funding for a two-hour documentary about Latinos in the military. “The War Within” is tentatively scheduled to air in 2010.

It’s welcome news. And still, it’s bittersweet for reasons that might seem recondite to some.

Gus Chavez, one of the co-founders of Defend the Honor, a leading pressure group, recently noted John Wilson, the PBS veep who oversees all of its programming, still refuses to recognize Latinos were wronged earlier in the documentary by Ken Burns about World War II. And Wilson refuses to acknowledge the new proposed documentary about Latino fighting men and women has anything to do with that other dustup.”*

The steel fence that the U.S. government wants to build along the Mexican border would do more than slice through the University of Texas’ Brownsville campus and cut off the golf course from the rest of the school.

School officials say it would make a mockery of the very mission of the university: promoting close ties between the U.S. and Mexico.”*

Update Correction (6/25/08): When originally posted, we failed to notice that the referenced article was an Associated Press article and not one originally reported on by El Nuevo Herald staff. Our apologies. Yet, the basic premise of the post is correct and today, the Associated Press, issued a correction of their own on the article.)”*

Nitin Dhopade, the chief financial officer for Micro Solutions Enterprises, was headed toward the accounting department on the afternoon of Feb. 7 to deliver checks he had just signed. Suddenly, he says, he encountered armed men and women wearing bulletproof vests and uniforms branded with “ICE,” which stands for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Dhopade, 47, says he and 30 other administrative workers for the Van Nuys, Calif., company, which recycles used toner and ink cartridges, were marched down a stairwell lined by officers. The workers were ordered against a wall and told not to touch anything or use their cellphones. “There was no way you could leave. You were definitely detained,” he says. “None of us were in handcuffs, but there was no way you could say ‘I’m leaving.”*

In addition to the sometimes obvious physical differences, albinos with HPS have blood-clotting problems that can cause death and are prone to intestinal ulcers. Some will develop pulmonary fibrosis, a deadly lung disease.

In the population at large, only one person in 500,000 carries the HPS gene. But among Puerto Ricans, it can be as high as one in 20 for those who hail from the island’s northwest. The gene likely made it to Puerto Rico during the colonization period and proliferated as the isolated population intermarried.”*

Many Hispanics were urged to buy homes during the real estate boom to achieve a new found independence. They wanted a taste of the American dream. Today, due to creative financing, second mortgages and rising interest rates, many Hispanics are close to having their homes taken away. The quest for the American dream has forced many Hispanics into debt due to loans that they were not fit to have. Many were given loans they were not qualified to receive due to a lack of credit history and/or inadequate monthly income. Many were sold adjustable rate mortgages with initial low interest ‘teaser’ rates which simply delayed the day of reckoning until the mortgage reset and full interest and principle payments were due. “*

Over the last 30 years, Hernandez has transformed himself into a human encyclopedia of Latino music knowledge. In the early 1960s, he began collecting literature, periodicals, recordings, photographs, and other memorabilia on Latinos in the music industry, from the crooners of the ’40s to the rock ’n’ rollers of the ’50s to anyone who has ever been associated with Tejano, conjunto, and música ranchera.

“Ramon has one of the most extensive music history collections in the world,” says Steve Williams, founder of the Museum of American Music History. “There are very few collections that are as detailed as his that will take you from the origins of an artist throughout his entire career in pictures, documents, and mementos.””*

It is one of a Hispanic community that is divided between well-established Latino families living here since the turn of the last century and thousands of newcomers.

To assimilate into mainstream America, Bustamante’s parents and others like them never taught their children Spanish. She didn’t insist that her sons learn it either.
But that has created problems. Newcomers tell them they’re not “true Mexicans” because they don’t speak Spanish. “*

More than a century and a half after Mexico lost Texas to the United States, Virgilio Garza wants a piece of it back.

A “Texas for Sale” sign and cowgirls in boots and white hats greeted Garza at the Convex center in Monterrey, Nuevo León, this month. Garza, a Monterrey developer and investor, was in search of foreclosed U.S. property to buy. “*

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio plans to begin a crackdown Thursday on immigration and other criminal violations in Mesa.

An estimated 200 people working for the sheriff’s office will focus on Arizona’s third-largest city in what’s expected to be a 2-day crackdown.”*

The forum, part of the three-day National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast Conference held in Washington, D.C., was promoted as recently as Tuesday as open to media coverage. However, on the morning of the event, it was closed to the press.

Marisol Martinez, spokeswoman for Esperanza, which sponsored the prayer breakfast conference, said Wednesday morning: “We are keeping the press out at the campaign managers’ request.” “*

Relative newcomer Barnes puts in a rather dashing turn as the Hispanic-accented prince, and his addition not only refreshes the dynamic of the characters but also prevents the film from feeling formulaic.”*

Article about the movie Prince Caspian

With Newsom considering a run for governor in 2010 and Villaraigosa also seen as a possible contender, observers say tonight’s fundraiser could be an indication of the powerful political alliances that will form if the two mayors face off against each other, with some big Northern California names supporting someone other than the hometown candidate.

“Whether they want to admit it or not, it’s saying these are people who are declaring their support for him (Villaraigosa) over Newsom,” said Barbara O’Connor, professor of political communication at Cal State Sacramento.”*

When Jose Fernandez gets the list of UAB’s prospective Hispanic students, he gets on the phone to their parents.

Fernandez, a professor who helped start a mentoring group for Hispanic students, said the students are more likely to come to the school if he can reassure mothers and fathers that their child will not be alone there. “*

Youth exposure to alcohol advertising climbed sharply between 2001 and 2007, according to a study released today by Georgetown University’s Center for Alcohol Marketing & Youth.

According to the study, the average 12- to 20-year-old TV viewer saw an average of 301 ads for alcoholic beverages during 2007, up from 217 during 2001 and from 285 during 2006. “*

not Hispanic specific but clearly effect all youth and since 25% of the youth population is Hispanic, it is something to be aware of - Tomas

José Balderama spent half a decade in the United States working roofing jobs in Texas. The money he sent home each month went to his wife and four children – a source of income the family expected to count on for many years to come.

But after serving six months at the Eden Detention Center in Texas for getting caught without the proper paperwork, he says he is never going back. “This was six months, next time it could be six years,” he says on a recent day in this tiny town tucked in the foothills of the Sierra de Guanajuato mountains. “*

U.S. Border Patrol agents found the bodies of six people in southern Arizona’s deserts from Thursday to Sunday.

They were discovered in various areas of the desert and in separate incidents, said senior Border Patrol agent Dove Haber.”*