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Somos Primos
Editor: Mimi Lozano ©2000-2015
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Somos Primos
Editor: Mimi Lozano ©2000-2015
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Letters
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P.O. 415 | Midway City, CA | 92655-0490 | mimilozano@aol.com | www.SomosPrimos.com 714-894-8161 |
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| Quotes of Thoughts to Consider | |
| “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the
organized habits and opinions of the masses is an
important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate
this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible
government which is the true ruling power of our country.”—Edward
Bernays, on the use of Propaganda |
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There were more than 5,440 families, businesses and organizations who supported the San Antonio Missions "Community Quest for World Heritage Status." Now it is time to spread the word that the community has achieved that World Heritage goal. So, now you can go to our brand new website and support the San Antonio Missions designation as an official World Heritage site! Congratulations San Antonio, Bexar County, State of Texas and the United States of America! (July 5, 2015) - San Antonio's five Spanish colonial missions have been designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are extremely exceptional cultural and natural properties nominated voluntarily by signatory nations, which are then approved by the World Heritage Committee. The city's missions officially join the global ranks of Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and the Gizeh Pyramid of Egypt. This prestigious designation comes as Texas' first and the 23rd in the United States. Other U.S. sites include the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Louisiana's Poverty Point (2014) and others. View the full UNESCO World Heritage Sites List here. The designation was confirmed today at the 39th annual session of the World Heritage Convention in Bonn, Germany, at approximately 6 a.m. CST. The U.S. and San Antonio were well represented in Bonn with a delegation of public and private entities led by the U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO, Crystal Nix-Hines, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service and the National Parks Conservation Association. The San Antonio delegation included San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor, Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran (District 3), Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and representatives from the San Antonio River Authority, Archdiocese of San Antonio, Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, The University of Texas College of Architecture, Construction and Planning and the National Park Foundation. The lengthy and technical nomination process began in 2006 at the initiation of the San Antonio Conservation Society, and has truly been a massive communitywide effort with significant support from many organizations. In addition to those listed above, Los Compadres de San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, The State of Texas General Land Office, and others played a key role. (See attachment for a listing of the World Heritage Advisory Committee members and resources). The World Heritage designation is expected to be a catalyst for socio-economic change. The greatest economic impact would come from increased visitation and tourism spending. UNESCO World Heritage Sites are especially recognized internationally; there are now 1,008 sites all over the world. By 2025, the World Heritage Site economic impact on San Antonio and Bexar County is expected to generate up to $105 million in additional economic activity and up to 1,098 extra jobs. (Source: Building on a Strong Foundation: Potential Economic Impacts of World Heritage Site Designation for the San Antonio Missions by Bexar County, 2013.) "The City of San Antonio is delighted with UNESCO's action today and the recognition that our Spanish colonial missions are of outstanding cultural and historical value to the people of the world," said Mayor Ivy Taylor. "The strong collaboration responsible for our application, which includes an ongoing commitment to protect and preserve the missions, will also continue to work together to tell our story to visitors from around the globe and build even stronger relationships with countries like Mexico and Spain, because we are telling their story too." "Bexar County has been heavily invested in the community quest for World Heritage inscription with the Bexar County Historical Commission involvement in writing the application to the investment in the 8-mile Mission Reach that connects four of the missions to funding the economic impact study of becoming a World Heritage Site," County Judge Nelson Wolff said. "The San Antonio Missions are now the first World Heritage Site in the state and the 23rd in the nation. This community is known for protecting its heritage and I have no doubt we will continue sharing our heritage with the world." Four of the five missions are located on the south side of the city in City Council District 3. The completion of the San Antonio River Walk Mission Reach in 2013 provides opportunities for canoeing, kayaking, nature watching and more. Recent commercial and residential developments have attracted much attention to the area, which continues to experience revitalization in new and interesting ways. Landmark restaurants, unique shopping finds, resident and visitor friendly events and festivals, such as Mission Drive-In's summer movie events, music events and farmers market are popular in the area. Additionally, recreation areas and attractions such as Hangar 9 (Brooks City Base), Riverside Golf Course and Alamo Helicopter Tours, make up part of a rich and celebrated community in San Antonio as part of District 3. The designation includes the five 18th century Spanish Colonial Missions (to include the Alamo) and their complexes which include two acequia systems, labores (farm fields) and Rancho de las Cabras around Mission Espada. The first celebration event will be an InstaMeet at Mission San Jose next Saturday July 11, 11 am - 1 pm. There will be city officials and many of your neighbors, plus some surprise guests on hand to take selfies at the beautiful Mission and to share lots of congratulatory hugs. Join us next Saturday to get this Summer Celebration started! Watch for more celebration events to be announced. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@MissionsofSA) and Instagram (MissionsofSanAntonio) to keep up to date. You won't want to miss these once in a lifetime events. #MissionsofSanAntonio #WorldHeritageMissionsSA Sent by Rosie Carbo rosic@aol.com |
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Visitors walk at the entrance to the Alamo, the most-visited tourist site in the state, in San Antonio, Texas on March 2, 2015.© Lisa Maria Garza A U.N. agency named the Alamo and the four Spanish colonial Catholic missions in San Antonio as a World Heritage Site on Sunday, the first place in Texas deemed to be of "outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humanity." The decision caps a nine-year campaign by San Antonio and Texas to have the early 18th Century missions listed alongside world treasures such as Britain's Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal in India, and Cambodia's Angkor Wat. The missions are the 23rd World Heritage Site in the United States. "The City of San Antonio is delighted with UNESCO's decision today and the recognition that our Spanish colonial missions are of outstanding value to the people of the world," Mayor Ivy Taylor said from Bonn, Germany, where the announcement was made. Sarah Gould, archivist at the Institute of Texan Cultures, said there are many reasons for the listing of the four missions, which are still used as Catholic churches, and the Alamo, a fortified church, barracks and other buildings that were the scene of the 1836 battle for Texas Independence. "Other than the Alamo, which has had quite a bit of changes to it, the other four are in really wonderful condition," Gould said, "almost in as good a condition as they were when they were built." As well as creating the basis for European settlement of what is now the U.S. Southwest, she said the missions were also important in the formation of its early economy, for instance by introducing cattle raising. Casandra Matej, director of San Antonio's Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Sunday's listing will prompt a full scale, international tourism campaign. She estimated it will mean more than 1,000 new jobs for the city's already robust tourism industry, and a $100 million annual boost for the region. But the designation has not been entirely embraced in Texas, where the phrase "United Nations" provokes suspicion among some. The Texas Republican Party's official platform includes opposing "granting jurisdiction and sovereignty over Texas' cultural sites to any international body." Matej said there was no way that would happen, and noted that the United Nations exercises no "sovereignty" over other U.S. World Heritage Sites, such as Philadelphia's Independence Hall, or Thomas Jefferson's Monticello home in Virginia. "The current management, how everything is managed, will stay the same," she said. "This is a designation that will draw visitors to our destination, and allow us to share our splendid missions with the world." (Reporting by Jim Forsyth; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Frances Kerry) Sent by John Inclan fromgalveston@yahoo.com http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/alamo-spanish-missions -in-san-antonio-named-world-heritage-site/ar-AAcAzk1 |
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| The statue of missionary Junipero Serra, center, is seen in Statuary Hall, also known as the Old Hall of the House, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 2, 2015. California lawmakers are shelving a plan to replace the with astronaut Sally Ride, bowing to pressure to drop the idea until after Pope Francis's September visit to the U.S., when he plans to make the 18th century missionary a saint. | |
SACRAMENTO – A
California lawmaker announced Thursday, July 2, that he is delaying a plan to
replace a statue of the missionary Father Junipero Serra with a statue
of astronaut Sally Ride in the U.S. Capitol, succumbing to criticism
from Roman Catholics ahead of Pope Francis’ planned visit to the
United States in September. Sen. Ricardo
Lara, D-Bell Gardens, announced he would postpone his efforts until
after the pope’s visit, when the head of the church plans to make the
18th-century missionary a saint. The California
Catholic Conference welcomed Lara’s decision after pushing for a delay
until after the canonization. “It is always
a momentous occasion when world religious leaders visit our country,”
Lara said in a statement released by his office. “There is no doubt
that Pope Francis’ visit this fall will provide a much-needed space
for introspection for many Americans during this critical time.” Serra, a
Franciscan missionary and theology professor by training, in 1767 was
tasked with expanding the Catholic mission system from Baja California
in Mexico into what is now the state of California. In 1769, he
established his first mission in San Diego and ultimately founded eight
of California’s 21 missions Native Americans
contend that Serra brutally converted indigenous people to Christianity,
wiping out villages in the process. They have supported removal of the
statue and opposed his canonization. Catholic groups
have said Serra is a crucial part of early California history and said
it would be disrespectful to consider booting him from the nation’s
capital amid his elevation to sainthood.
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| ISSUE:
National Hail of Statuary, removal of Father Junipero Serra RESPONSE: Margie and Gory Aguirre, Santa Ana LULAC Council 147. The purpose of [the] statues is to depict the images of those who contributed to the history of a large number of people in a great way and in a positive way. Father Serra was in his day not found guilty of any criminal acts. The Natives at the time of his death mourned for him. Under his hard work and direction the natives learned a different way of life. The life that we live today. If it were different the non indigenous and their way would not exist in California. It is because of Father Junipero Serra that we the non indigenous came to populate and form the part of America that is California. We need to acknowledge and respect our own history irrespective of sainthood or any atrocities that might have occurred in the hands of indigenous and non indigenous people. California has its own unique history and whether or not we agree on the canonization of Father Junipero Serra his role in our history is certain and true and we share of this same history as descendants of original natives of this land and now contemporary natives of California. In support of representing our unique California history with a Statue of a California pioneer, the above could be written and submitted as a resolution from California LULAC under the category of commendations. FACTS: 100 statues:
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My DNA results show that I have indigenous lines on
both my mother and father's side. My maternal mitochondria is
indigenous. I am proud of these facts, but I am also proud of my Spanish
surnames, and want to respect the history of both sides of my mestizo
heritage. This attempt to erase our ancestral history, by
excluding us from the American public eye Delia Benavides, a marketing
professional, has set up a website to respond in a timely manner to
diverse issues having to do with the defamation of the history of the Spanish
colonization and important role played by the Spanish people in the development of the
United States of America. Delia will be specifically
targeting incidents of attack on those of Mexican heritage, who seem to
be bearing the bulk of public hostility and negativism. http://www.mexicocircleoffriends.org or contact Delia mexicocircleoffriends@gmail.com
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| U.S.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mexican President Manuel Ávila
Camacho, are pictured in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1942. FDR visited the
Mexican President to request workers to fill jobs in factories, plants,
agriculture, and railroads as a result of the U.S. entering World War
II.
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When I hear about American leaders scapegoating Latino immigrants, I can't help but think about my late father, Salomón Chavez Huerta. Like millions of other immigrants in this country, my father endured a harsh life in his home country and sacrificed greatly to settle and raise a family in this country. While he was a stoic man, before succumbing to cancer at sixty-seven he occasionally talked to me about his life in Mexico and here, toiling as a farmworker, factory janitor, and day laborer. Born on March 9, 1930, in a small rancho, Sajo Grande, in the beautiful state of Michoacán, my father and his ten siblings grew up in a place with no indoor plumbing, hot water, electricity, telephones, or paved roads. Only obtaining a couple of years of a so-called primary education, at a very young age he joined his brothers and father farming the land to grow corn and raise livestock from sun-up to sun-down. In his late teens, he migrated to the United States as a farmworker during the Bracero Program -- a guest worker program between the United States and Mexico, in which more than 4.5 million immigrants represented cheap, exploitable labor for agricultural employers and consumers to benefit from. While my father appreciated the opportunity to work as a bracero to support his family in his hometown, he was like someone sent to war, reluctantly talking about the abuse he experienced at the recruiting centers in Mexico and the inhumane working and living conditions he endured in the United States. I will never forget the time when he first told me about being forced to strip naked and being sprayed with DDT in a large warehouse full of other young men, while being inspected by American labor recruiting officials. That was one of the few times I saw my father express anguish. There are many reasons why Mexicans migrate to *el norte*. In my father's case, it wasn't simply to pursue higher wages, but also to escape the violence that plagued his hometown. Just like the famous Hatfield-McCoy blood feud of the late nineteenth century in the United States, my father and uncles became embroiled in a deadly feud with a local family. In his attempt to flee a violent environment, my father, along with my mother, Carmen, eventually migrated to the United States -- by way of Tijuana -- only to eventually relocate in the notorious Ramona Gardens housing project of East L.A., better known as the Big Hazard projects, after the local gang. Constantly worried about protecting his eight children and providing for them, he never left home without his .38 Special revolver. Lacking formal education and basic English skills, my father worked as a janitor in a factory where chrome rims for tires were produced. Making a measly $3.25 per hour for more than a decade, one day he had enough and quit. His supervisor, twenty years his junior, had ordered him to work in the furnace. He refused. After doing the math, he realized that he could bring in more money by collecting public assistance instead of resorting to another underpaid, dead-end job. While he tried to rationalize his limited choices with me, the truth can't be denied: The system broke him. Instead of going to work, he spent most of his time visiting family in Tijuana, running errands, and watching television. He loved to watch Westerns, like reruns of *Bonanza*, *The Rifleman*, and old Clint Eastwood classics, like *The Good, the Bad and the Ugly* and *The Outlaw Josey Wales*. Since my father rarely engaged in small talk, if I wanted to bond with him, I knew I had to join him on our old, red sofa covered in plastic, sitting in front of the tube. These television programs took him back to a more simple time in his past, one that, albeit violent, he could relate to. One day, without warning, my mother, who always encouraged my siblings and me to pursue higher education, told my father to turn off the television and take me to the west side to seek work as a day laborer. While I had always excelled in mathematics and done well in school, as a thirteen-year-old, like most American teens, I was too lazy to do any physical housework or yardwork. Concerned about my future, my mother convinced my father to teach me how difficult it is to work manual labor and to appreciate my educational opportunities so I would go to college. Not wasting time, the following Saturday morning, my father woke me up at five in the morning to get ready for work. I'd never been up so early, and for a moment, I thought that the world was going to end. After we got ready and took a two-hour bus ride, we reached a busy street corner in Malibu. Surrounded by Mexican immigrant men jostling to get a good position and the attention of the privileged individuals in their Mercedes, BMWs, and Jaguars, my father quickly joined the fray for a day job. As I watched from the sidelines, I noticed my father running to get the attention of a man in a black Porsche. For the first time in my life, I was embarrassed and ashamed of my father. I was not used to seeing a grown man, especially my father, "begging for work." Now I realize I was wrong to be embarrassed and ashamed. Instead, I should have been appreciative and thankful of my father. Now I've obtained my doctorate from U.C. Berkeley, exceeding my mother's dream (thanks also to my wife, Antonia). But I will never forget that Saturday morning when my father -- a poor Mexican immigrant from the rancho with no formal education -- taught me a valuable lesson you won't learn in the Ivory Tower: It's noble to sacrifice for others. That's what millions of his compatriots do on a daily basis in America. If only I could see him again for one moment, I'd tell him a few words I never said years ago on his deathbed: "I'm so proud to be your son." Alvaro Huerta, Ph.D. Assistant Professor (Joint Faculty) Dept. Urban & Regional Planning (URP) Ethnic & Women's Studies (EWS) Dept. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Email: amhuerta@cpp.edu Webpage https://sites.google.com/site/alvarohuertasite/ |
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Sent by Margarito J. Garcia III, Ph.D. Aicragjm1205@aol.com |
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Documentary: ON TWO FRONTS: LATINOS & VIETNAM |
Arlington, VA; June 26, 2015 -- ON TWO FRONTS: LATINOS & VIETNAM, premiering on PBS during Hispanic Heritage Month, captures a complex aspect of the Vietnam War: the legacy of Latino veterans and their families during the conflict. Airing Tuesday, September 22, 2015, 10:00-11:30 p.m. ET, the program examines the Latino experience during a war that placed its heaviest burden on working-class youth and deeply affected Latino communities. The documentary is part of an ongoing line-up of PBS special programming to mark the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, and of PBS Stories of Service <http://www.pbs.org/veterans/stories-of-service/home/> -- providing compelling stories of those who have served and a deeper understanding of our nation's military history. ON TWO FRONTS producer Mylène Moreno takes a comprehensive look at pivotal events on both the homefront and the battlefront, painting a vivid portrait of Latino Americans during a tumultuous time. Through compelling stories and candid interviews, the film conveys the rich heritage of military service, a deeply rooted part of Latino cultural identity in the U.S., and looks at the contributions made by Latino veterans and their families during the Vietnam era. The film also explores the controversy and changing attitudes amid the growing Chicano anti-war movement and within a community reeling over disproportionate losses and divided over participation in the war. “This absorbing new film gives viewers a fresh new perspective on the significant role played by Latino Americans during a defining moment in our nation’s history, and offers extraordinary insights into how this diverse group helped shape events during that turbulent time,” said Dave Davis of Oregon Public Broadcasting, the film’s presenter. Filmed in the Southwest and in Vietnam, ON TWO FRONTS: LATINOS & VIETNAM includes firsthand accounts from dozens of Latino veterans and their families and commentary from historians, social activists and other experts. To evoke the dramatic events unfolding at home and overseas, the documentary combines lush photography with home movies, archival footage, graphic newsreels and personal photographs. Latinos began questioning the cost of war and the price of citizenship for the first time during the Vietnam conflict. In communities where there were few alternatives to service, the war exacted a heavy toll among Latinos. “With this film, we wanted to look back, five decades later, with the benefit of hindsight, at the Vietnam War — at its costs and consequences — and ask some difficult questions about the price of war and citizenship,” said producer Moreno of Souvenir Pictures, Inc. At home, the Latino anti-Vietnam war movement gained momentum —a radical departure from past wars, when Latino civil rights activists used high rates of military participation to prove their worth as good citizens. This time, activists pointed to similarly high rates of participation — and mortality — and argued that Latinos were being exploited. Latinos organized antiwar events to address both the war and conditions at home, culminating in unprecedented protest rallies for Chicanos. Overseas, Latino soldiers were presented with both opportunities and challenges. Alongside Anglo-American and African-American soldiers, many discovered their differences faded away during combat. Others describe racial tensions and stereotypes that persisted in Vietnam or upon returning home. For many, the price of service was too high. Latino veterans still suffer post-traumatic stress disorder in higher percentages than black and white American veterans. Many of the Latinos who went to war returned ill-prepared for college and to the same limited career options they had before leaving home. If one reason Latinos fought for their country was to trade service for career benefits, then Vietnam’s legacy did not always fulfill that promise. Produced by Souvenir Pictures, Inc., ON TWO FRONTS: LATINOS & VIETNAM is a presentation of Oregon Public Broadcasting in association with Latino Public Broadcasting, with major funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. About Mylène Moreno Los Angeles-based filmmaker Mylène Moreno makes documentaries that reflect her diverse cultural interests. She has followed Mexican fútbol fanáticos in Los Angeles and profiled notable Arab Americans in all walks of life. Recalling Orange County was a personal look at immigrant rights and education in California’s Orange County. True-Hearted Vixens featured female jocks pursuing dreams of professional athletic greatness in a startup tackle football league. She produced the first episode of the landmark PBS series, ¡CHICANO! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Moreno is a graduate of Stanford University’s documentary film program. About OPB OPB http://www.opb.org is the largest cultural and education institution in Oregon and southern Washington, delivering excellence in public broadcasting to 1.5 million people each week through television, radio and the Internet. Widely recognized as a national leader in the public broadcasting arena, OPB is a major contributor to the program schedule that serves the entire country. OPB is one of the most-used and most-supported public broadcasting services in the country and is generously supported by its members. About PBS Stories of Service As America's storyteller, PBS is bringing together multi-platform content and powerful conversations around U.S. military veterans under the banner of Stories of Service. The national programming content features compelling stories of those who have served and provides a deeper understanding of our nation's military history. Through public television on air and on PBS.org http://www.pbs.org/storiesofservice , PBS member stations will create their own local content and provide community resources for returning veterans and their families. The initiative will educate the civilian population about our military history and highlight the contributions from the veteran community. The Stories of Service initiative was announced in May 2014, along with a community engagement campaign for select PBS member stations and their local veterans and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), called Veterans Coming Home. The PBS programming under Stories of Service, many with funding support from CPB, includes, in 2014: COMING BACK WITH WES MOORE (May 13); NATIONAL MEMORIAL DAY CONCERT (May 25); DEATH AND THE CIVIL WAR: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (May 26); D-DAY 360 (May 27); NOVA "D-Day's Sunken Secrets" (May 28); CRAFT IN AMERICA "Service" (November 2); MAKERS "Women in War" (November 4); in 2015: THE DRAFT (April 27); LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (April 28); HOMEFRONT (May 25); THIS OLD HOUSE – THE VETERANS SPECIAL HOUSE PROJECT various episodes (May 14-30); ON TWO FRONTS, LATINOS & VIETNAM (Fall 2015); and in 2017, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s THE VIETNAM WAR (w.t.). About PBS PBS http://www.pbs.org/, with over 350 member stations, offers all Americans the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds through television and online content. Each month, PBS reaches more than 103 million people through television and over 33 million people online, inviting them to experience the worlds of science, history, nature and public affairs; to hear diverse viewpoints; and to take front row seats to world-class drama and performances. PBS' broad array of programs has been consistently honored by the industry's most coveted award competitions. Teachers of children from pre-K through 12th grade turn to PBS for digital content and services that help bring classroom lessons to life. PBS' premier children's TV programming and its website, http://www.pbskids.org/ , are parents' and teachers' most trusted partners in inspiring and nurturing curiosity and love of learning in children. More information about PBS is available at www.pbs.org http://www.pbs.org/ , one of the leading dot-org websites on the Internet, or by following PBS on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/pbs , Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pbs or through our apps for mobile devices http://www.pbs.org/services/mobile/ . Specific program information and updates for press are available at pbs.org/pressroom http://pressroom.pbs.org/ or by following PBS PressRoom on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/pbspressroom .
Mimi, One of the things that I have found
amazing is that a lot of websites have used one of my pictures, the
one where I pose with my two Mexican-American buddies. Take a look:
I am the guy in the middle. If you
like, you can also use the photo for Somos Primos. The names of
those in the picture from left to right are PVTs. Herrera, Santiago
(Me) and Garza. I can't remember their first names.
Tony Santiago
nmb2418@aol.com
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Smithsonian Portrays Civil Rights Struggle Through Dolores Huerta |
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Dolores Huerta at California demonstrations. Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor & Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI / Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor & Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI When she viewed a National Portrait Gallery exhibit portraying the height of her farmworker activism, Dolores Huerta was struck by a snapshot of civil rights leader Cesar Chavez seated next to her while she lay in a hospital bed. "I was beaten up by the police," Huerta told NBC News, referring to a 1988 incident where she was injured and hospitalized following a rally outside a hotel. "We were protesting against [then Vice President) George H.W.] Bush who had said nothing was wrong with pesticides, the government was taking care of people." The photo, which she saw for the first time this week, is part of a collection of historic artifacts and photos assembled for the Smithsonian Institution's exhibit titled: "One Life: Dolores Huerta." It opens to the public Friday. Huerta is the first Latina to be portrayed in the "One Life" exhibition series, but unlike the title suggests, the exhibit is a portion - a very important one - of the 85-year-old activist's life. Huerta, cofounder of United Farm Workers union with Chavez in 1962, said the hospital bed photo symbolizes a lot. it shows the "unwarranted reactions from police" that people protesting and engaging in civil disobedience encounter, a theme that is topical in the context of protests following the police shooting in Ferguson, Mo. It also "talks about the struggle of farmworkers and what they have to go through and makes you think about the recent remarks of Donald Trump and the farmworkers who put food on his table," she said. An estimated 70 percent or more of America's farmworkers are not legally present and many come from Mexico and Latin America. |
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"She is an amazing role model," said Kim Sajet, director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. "I think this was a great opportunity to feature someone that we should all know more about."
One of the portraits on display of Dolores Huerta in the Smithsonian museum. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, © 1999 Barbara Carrasco / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, © 1999 Barbara Carrasco Huerta was the union's lobbyist and contract negotiator, and since has continued her activism work on behalf of farmworkers, immigrants, women and civil rights. |
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Huerta was the first woman in U.S. history to recruit, organize, lobby and negotiate on behalf of migrant workers. But she also was visible on picket lines and in protests as photos of her with a bullhorn attest. "It's like walking through memory lane," Huerta said. "It's really beautiful. I'm just amazed that they were able to select photographs and they were really able to tell my story in the farmer's movement." The exhibit, which will run until May 15, 2016, focuses on the 13 years when she co-founded the UFW until the passage the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which she helped advance. Its run dates coincide with the 50th anniversary of the September 1965 Delano grape strike and boycott, which led to the field workers' first contract with California table grape growers. Huerta's exhibit features more than 40 objects including photos, original speeches Huerta made to Congress, United Farm Workers memorabilia and Chicano artwork. Huerta dressed herself and her children in handmade clothes and one of the items on display is one of Huerta's vests with a symbol of the UFW symbol on it. Related: Farmworkers Activist Dolores Huerta Will Be Focus of Smithsonian Exhibit She said another favorite photo in the collection is one of children working in the fields. "I remember at the time of that photo we were sued because growers maintained there were no children working in the fields," she said. She also likes one of Robert F. Kennedy in a visit to Delano, Calif., as a presidential candidate. One that she said some exhibit goers might find surprising reflects the middle class life she grew up in, depicting her in her days as a majorette. |
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In 2012, Huerta was honored by President Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Huerta continues her activism and along with the Dolores Huerta Foundation, is still active and fighting for the rights of immigrants, voting rights, promoting community organizing and more recently the right to die and the Affordable Care Act.
"As long as I have the energy and health I am going to do as much as I can," said Huerta. Dolores Huerta, Huelga, Delano CA Grape Strikes, September 24, 1965. Harvey Richards Media Archive, ©Paul Richards / Harvey Richards Media Archive, ©Paul Richards |
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"I know people are here to learn about the farm workers and hopefully it shows them what people are going through nowadays," Huerta said. "So hopefully people will see that reflection." Boycott Grapes poster created in 1973. Gilberto Cardenas Latino Art Collection, © Xavier Viramontes / Gilberto Cardenas Latino Art Collection, Sent by Dorinda Moreno pueblosenmovimientonorte@gmail.com |
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Farmworker Movement Documentation Project Cesar Chavez The Farmworker Movement: 1962-1993 
Primary source accounts by the UFW volunteers who built the movement Compiled / Published by LeRoy Chatfield ©2004-2012 |
| Primary source accounts: photographs, oral histories, videos, essays and historical documents from the United Farm Worker Delano Grape Strikers and the UFW Volunteers who worked with Cesar Chavez to build his farmworker movement. This site is now being presented and preserved by The Library, University of California San Diego. As of April 10, 2014, there is still some site content and functionality that is being migrated from its original location. The Library presents this material in the context of scholarly fair use. https://libraries.ucsd.edu/farmworkermovement/ Quick Links to: Essays Glossary | Photos & Art | Music | Oral History |Videos | 50th Anniversary |Site Map Sent by Dorinda Moreno pueblosenmovimientonorte@gmail.com |
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Ruthless Power and Deleterious Politics: |
| Morton Biskind, a physician from Westport, Connecticut, was a courageous man. At the peak of the cold war, in 1953, he complained of maladies afflicting both domestic animals and people for the first time. He concluded that the popular insect poison DDT was the agent of their disease. DDT, he said, was “dangerous for all animal life from insects to mammals.” The Reign of DDT Yet, he was astonished at what little was done to restrict or ban DDT. On the contrary, officials and scientists defended it: “[V]irtually the entire apparatus of communication, lay and scientific alike, has been devoted to denying, concealing, suppressing, distorting… [the bad news about DDT]. Libel, slander and economic boycott have not been overlooked… And a new principle of toxicology has… become firmly entrenched…: no matter how lethal a poison may be for all other forms of animal life, if it doesn’t kill human beings instantly, it is safe. When… it unmistakably does kill a human, this was the victim’s own fault – either he was “allergic” to it… or he didn’t use it properly,” he wrote (Biskind 1953). The warnings of Biskind went nowhere. The Pentagon was testing nuclear weapons above ground and agribusiness was expanding its conquest of rural America — and the world. The strategic interests of the Pentagon coincided with those of agribusiness. |
| Editor Mimi: My sister,
Tania and I must have fully absorbed the propaganda about DDT, "That
DDT is good for me-e-e"
I remember an incident in the mid 1940s. We lived next door to a lady that had zillions of cats. The cats would run through the undergrowth of a fence laden with morning glory vines, our dog Lolly Pop, a long-haired dachshund, in chase. One summer, we could see fleas all over poor Lolly Pop and decided to take care of the matter. Mom and Dad were at the shop. We got some DDT from shed and rubbed it on Lolly Pop, back and tummy. All of a sudden, the poor dog, jumped up and took off running and running and running, finally in circles, she eventually stopped from exhaustion. It must have burned her skin like hot peppers. When she stopped running, we immediately hosed her off, as best we could. Of course, we got into some trouble for not asking permission, but Mom and Dad both seemed surprised when we described Lolly Pop's reaction. Poor little thing, Lolly Pop never did fully recover all of her fur. Most of it fell off and returned sparingly. She never looked the same; but, Lolly Pop forgave us, two dumb kids that thought we were doing her a favor.
To read more of the book by Evaggelos Vallianatos,
please go to: http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/ruthless-power-and-deleterious-
politics-from-ddt-to-roundup/ Information sent by:
Jonathan Latham, PhD
Executive Director
The Bioscience Resource Project
Ithaca, NY 14850 USA
www.independentsciencenews.org
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Yesterday, I reread a book I had purchased many years ago by Verónica Salazar entitled, Dedication Rewarded: Prominent Mexican Americans. The book was published in 1975. She used to write a column for the San Antonio Express-News about outstanding Mexican Americans and her book is a compilation of those articles. In her book she has a short bio on Paul Garza Jr. According to the article: "Paul Garza Jr. is a professional engineer....For a boy who finished high school at age 15 and college at 19, he was on his way, having proved he could make his own way. A native of Laredo, Paul Garza Jr. was born June 1, 1935 to Paulino Garza and Pauline Villarreal de Garza. While in Laredo he lived in public housing for nine years. He worked his way through the Distributive Education program,...As LULAC national president he worked towards the establishment of housing standards and management, buiness and capital-oriented development (banks, savings and loans) and opened opportunities for the young and aging....Garza was a White House Fellows Program finalist in 1965, one of 45 in the nation. He was named Engineer of the year, Gateway Chapter in 1967; named to Who's Who in South Texas in 1962 and was appointed to the Texas Employment Commission Advisory Council in 1972....He is married to the former Magdalena Mendez and has nine children." Paul Garza Jr. served as President of the Laredo LULAC Chapter as well as of the national organization. I still have my membership card, as an enrollee no. 555, when I worked for the city of Laredo during the summer of 1965, as part of the Neighborhood Youth Corps, and it is signed by Paul Garza Jr. I was right out of high school, and he interviewed me for the summer job working for the health department. Gilberto Quezada jgilbertoquezada@yahoo.com Information on past presidents: http://lulac.org/about/history/past_presidents/paul_garza_jr/ |
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Q&A with Political Activist Rosie Castro (Mom to Joaquín and Julián) LatinasRepresent It comes as no surprise that Maria del Rosario “Rosie” Castro’s twin sons have followed in her footsteps. The mother of Julián Castro (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development) and Joaquín Castro (Texas Congressman), Rosie Castro first began her career in politics at age 23, when she ran for San Antonio City Council. She has been a political activist in Texas ever since, advocating for reflective democracy and the Mexican-American community. In June, she joined Political Parity and the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda at the LatinasRepresent Leading Latinas Forum in San Antonio. In the podcast, hear Political Parity’s Nadia Farjood speak with Rosie Castro about her campaigns for city council, the instrumental mentors in her life, and the merits of electoral politics. She reflects on the challenges Latinas face in entering government and shares how she facilitated her sons’ political awakenings by exposing them to politics early on. Castro concludes with advice for young women interested in serving in political and public life. “There is a direct correlation to what you’re going through in your daily life and who the public policy makers are.” – Rosie Castro Latinas Represent is a nonprofit, nonpartisan initiative of Political Parity and the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda that does not endorse any specific candidate for public office. This Q&A series is intended to lift up the stories of Latina leaders, officeholders, and candidates on the path to public office. http://latinalista.com/columns/blogbeat-columns/qa-with-political-activist-rosie-castro-mom- to-joaquin-and-julian |
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| “According to Lieutenant Commander Nate
Christensen, a Department of Defense spokesman, Hispanics currently
comprise 11.4 percent of the active-duty military forces (more than
157,000 people). In 2011, 16.9 percent of all new recruits were
Hispanic. Though this shows Hispanics are actually underrepresented in
the number of new U.S. military accessions, this does represent a 3
percent increase since 2005. And that number can only rise given that
many of the immigration reform proposals include a path to citizenship
after serving in the military.” Source: http://nbclatino.com/2013/01/01/u-s-military-a-growing-latino-army/ The numbers are stark. Just 8.2 percent of about 1.9
million federal workers are Hispanic, compared with 15 percent in the
private sector, according to an Office of Personnel Management report
released in September. By contrast, African Americans make up 18.2
percent of the federal workforce, nearly double their percentage in the
private sector. (Hispanics represent 17 percent of the U.S. population,
while African Americans make up 13 percent, according to the Census
Bureau.)
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Rita Moreno, the legendary actress and singer, will be one of 6 Kennedy Center Honors recipients, the organization announced Tuesday. The 38th annual awards recognize "the extraordinary and unparalleled talents of individuals whose impact and genius have left an indelible mark on civilization." In this Aug. 7, 2013 file photo, actress/singer Rita Moreno speaks in Beverly Hills, Calif. A list of six Kennedy Center honorees were recently announced, which includes “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, groundbreaking actresses Rita Moreno and Cicely Tyson, singer Carole King, rock band the Eagles and acclaimed music director Seiji Ozawa.
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Moreno has more than earned this distinction; she is one of only 12 artists who have ever won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, as well as the first Hispanic to have won all four awards. |
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| In 2012, Latino groups publicly criticized the Kennedy Center for excluding Latinos for a decade from the awards.
Source: In a message dated 7/17/2015 membership@nalip.org |
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Chicano
media pioneer Jesús S.Treviño, who created and runs Latinopia,
participated in and documented on film the most important events
in the Mexican American/Chicano Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s
and early 1970s. His book, “Eyewitness: A Filmmaker's Memoir of the
Chicano Movement,” is an excellent account of that period.
“CHICANO! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement,”
the 1997 four-part PBS documentary series that Jesús co-produced
remains a classroom staple throughout the country. Latinopia
is a video-driven website with sections on Art, Literature,
Theater, Music, Cinema and Television, Food, History, and Sci Fi, which
you’ll find to be a treasure
trove of information. Check it out! Jesus has directed episodes
of many popular television series, such as Law and Order, Criminal
Minds, ER, NYPD Blue, Crossing Jordan, The Practice, and Chicago Hope.
Among the dozens of national and international awards and recognitions
Jesús has received are: ALMA Award for Outstanding Director of a
Television Drama and Outstanding Co-Executive Producer of Best
Prime-time drama series, and (twice) Directors Guild of America award. Salomón HERE’S
THE LINK TO LATINOPIA:
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Lynda Carter
A Latina
Wonderwoman |
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WONDERWOMAN LIVES! The WonderWoman TV show featured Lynda Carter. An Arizona native, Carter's mother was Juanita Cordova making Lynda one of the first Latinas to star in a TV series. Juana and Lynda were both speakers at the Adelante Fund conference for Latino college students in 2014. Lynda continues to spread the message of women's empowerment, having personal courage, and being true to yourself. What WonderWoman means to leaders today . . In 5 short years we will celebrate 100 years of women's suffrage. Yet women today have not reach equity in most arenas and certainly not in the top levels of leadership. To change this we will have to ignite our warriors spirits and embrace WonderWoman Leadership. Because almost 40 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act, women still earn 80 cents to the man's dollar. Latinas earn 60 cents. 30% of female headed households are in poverty - and in the richest country in the world - more than 1 in 5 of our children are poor and go to bed hungry. For Latino and Black children it is 1 in 3. Today the most common job for women is still secretaries! A woman with a college degree can expect to make 1.2 million less over her life time than her male counterparts. And AARP members listen up -elder women are one of the fastest growing poverty groups. On the average their income is $8,000 a year less than retired men.The US ranks 98th for women's national political representation - just behind Kenya and Indonesia, and barely ahead of the United Arab Emirates. The income for the middle class has not grown for 30 years which hurts women and children the most. We must not forget that the doors opened for women are due to the suffragettes and the feminists of the 1960's. As we approach the 100th year anniversary of women's right to vote, we know that there is still much work to be done. Let this anniversary be a call to renew the momentum - to revive WonderWoman leadership and ignite our warrior spirit. It is time to jump start the women's movement - to take out our lassos of truth - and to use our array of psychic/intuitive abilities to discern what our contribution will be in creating a just, equitable and inclusive world for our children and grandchildren. It is time to reinstate women's role as the protectors of children and the weavers of the good society. There was another old saying they use to tell women -- "A Woman's Work is never done!!" Yep that is right! So let's finish the Job Ladies!! We have the power, we are warriors, we have WonderWoman leadership! WonderWoman was popularized by DC comics in the 1940's during WWII. She was a woman warrior with power and strength encouraging women to work and support the war effort. WonderWoman was one of the first icons depicting women as leaders who fought
for what was right and just. |
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Salt Lake City, Utah– After four days of workshops and lectures addressing key areas of concern for the Latino community, an estimated 1,000 Latino community leaders heard from Utah’s senior senator. Orrin Hatch delivered his speech to a full house tonight at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) 86th Annual Convention at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City. Founded in 1929, the League of United Latin American Citizens is the nation’s oldest and largest Hispanic organization. The non-partisan organization is comprised of more than 1,000 LULAC councils representing citizens across the U.S. and Puerto Rico that advocate for civil rights, education, economic development, immigration and equal opportunity. The keynote speaker was Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) who spoke about family values, and immigration. “As the longest serving Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have worked for many years to improve our nation’s immigration system and increase security along our borders. I would be surprised if there is anyone who thinks that we do not need to reform our immigration laws. Unfortunately, building support to enact the immigration reforms our country needs has not been easy. To overcome a challenging political environment, it will require trust that the difficult compromises we must make in Congress will be honored and enforced when they are enacted into law. I am committed to working on this issue and hope you will continue to work with me and others to advance long-overdue reforms.” Now in his seventh term, Sen. Hatch is the most senior Republican in the Senate. Among his many initiatives are the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, the Strengthening Our Commitment to Legal Immigration and America’s Security Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and the Utah School Trust Lands Exchange Act. “Our convention traditionally welcomes leading public officials who address those issues that are most at stake for Latinos, and minorities in general,” said LULAC Executive Director Brent Wilkes. “It was refreshing and inspiring to hear Sen. Hatch tackle some of those hot buttons.” After LULAC President Margaret Moran bestowed a number of awards to community leaders, she invited John David Arnold, PhD on stage to present him with a humanitarian and community service award. Dr. Arnold is a long standing advocate of farmworkers and immigrants rights. In 1967, he founded a non-profit Dedicated to Improving the Quality of Rural Life. Today, it employs 550 people in Arizona. Dr. Ricardo Rosselló, president of the political advocacy group, Borícua ¡Ahora Es!, was a featured speaker earlier at the event. Rosselló is the son of the former governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rosselló. “It was a great honor to address the members of LULAC at the Presidential Awards Banquet. Being a life long member of the organization, I can recall many speakers that were very influential in critical issues to the Latino community and the nation as a whole. It is my hope that I conveyed a similar message of a unique opportunity of growth for our community." The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization that empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with 1,000 councils around the United States and Puerto Rico, LULAC’s programs, services and advocacy address the most important issues for Latinos, meeting critical needs of today and the future. For more information, visit www.lulac.org . |
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Roger C. Rocha, Jr. Elected LULAC
National President at 86th Annual Conference
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Roger C. Rocha, Jr. was elected LULAC National President, Saturday, July 11th at the 86th Annual LULAC National Convention in Salt Lake City. A native of Laredo, Texas, Rocha becomes the 47th president of the largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the country. The LULAC National Convention site in 2016 will be in
Washington, D.C. In 2017, the convention will be held in San Antonio,
Texas and in 2018 it will be held in Phoenix, Arizona. |
Introducing Isabel Quintana
who set up the Somos Primos booth and arranged for one of the few Latino
Museums in the nation be our neighbor.  Left to right: Isabel, Enriqueta and Fernando Gomez, Proprietor and Executive Director of the Museum of Mormon History of the the Americas. For more on the Museum, click. |
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Immigrants'
visas expire but many remain, despite repercussions
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She remembers her first trip to Disneyland, eating at Taco Bell
and strolling through the streets of downtown Santa Ana, with its
impressive red sandstone courthouse. "I felt so much energy," said Lopez, now 30. "I
looked around and saw that courthouse, and it was like something that
spoke about freedom. I just didn't want to leave." Lopez returned to Santa Ana two years later on a tourist visa.
This time, she never left. I felt so much energy. "I
looked around and saw the courthouse, and it like something that spoke
about freedom. I just didn't want to leave." Laura Lopez Billy Lee came to California from South Korea with his mother
when he was 5. Their trip included exploring Hollywood and spending time
with relatives. "They told my mother they had great jobs, great
schools — that this was a wonderful, open place to live and that we
should take a risk and copy them," said Lee, now 31.
So they stayed. Lee and Lopez are among millions of immigrants who came to the
United States with legal visas, and remained once those visas expired.
Homeland Security Department officials estimate that up to 40% of the
roughly 11 million people in the U.S. illegally arrived this way. "At some point in their journey, they either … found work,
found husbands or wives or some can't-miss opportunity, and they decided
to let their paperwork expire," said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, spokesman
for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "It
happens all the time." Yet, he said, no system exists "to follow up on what these
folks do once they're in the States. There's no process by which
officials can track if someone stayed the proper amount of time or
beyond that." Last week, two Vietnamese girls — Ly Camly Vuong, 12, and Linh
Huyen Cao, 17 — made headlines after they left their tour group at Los
Angeles International Airport. When detectives found the pair staying
with family friends in Westminster, they contacted the girls' parents
— who said they had known of the plan. Police said no one would be charged in the incident and noted
that the girls have tourist visas that are effective for several weeks.
Many in the community continue to speculate about the girls' motives. "Economics, of course, compels people to escape like nothing
else can," Cabrera said. "But you have to understand that
America is still that beacon of hope. They don't think that all their
dreams will come true. But they know they will not be as mistreated,
they will not be as persecuted or as poor. There is so much here that
they associate with the word 'possible.'" They continue even though the pursuit of that dream can bring
repercussions, such as separation from loved ones or hostility felt in a
new land. Diana Wong and her mother came to Southern California on tourist
visas in 1995, when she was 6. Her mother decided they should stay, so
Diana and her brother, who had been sent to the U.S. months earlier,
could get a good education. The family had been living in Hermosillo, Mexico, where Wong's
parents worked 12-hour days, every day, after moving from Guangzhou,
China. "In their lives, they never owned property. My dad is a
kitchen hand, and my mom is a domestic worker, still. You have to look
to your kids for what good might happen," Wong said. The Wongs now live in Monterey Park, lacking legal status.
"We have to battle — battle against how people feel about
immigrants," the 26-year-old anthropology major at UC Santa Cruz
said. "They don't like immigrants." The Vietnamese runaways unleashed a storm on Facebook, with posts
asking how authorities planned to find "the fugitives." Sahar Zabari said it was frustrating that those who come from
elsewhere often are looked upon with suspicion. When she was 2, she and her parents went to New Jersey from
Israel on tourist visas, leaving fears of terrorism and bombings behind
for what her mother calls "the calmness of America." Zabari,
27, now lives in the San Fernando Valley and works as a recruitment
coordinator with an insurance company. Her parents divorced, and her father went back to Israel. Without
legal status in the U.S., Zabari said, she cannot risk going to visit
him. "I miss my dad," she said. "I don't know when I'll
have a completely normal life — be able to travel freely," she
adds. "I feel disconnected, even if America is in my heart." anh.do@latimes.com
Twitter: @newsterrier
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Children
of Undocumented Immigrants
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DREAM Act Students Rally
at the Texas Capitol. |
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For nearly 150 years, the United States, under the 14th Amendment, has recognized people born here as citizens, regardless of whether their parents were citizens.
But Texas has other plans. In the last year,
the state has refused
to issue birth certificates to children who were
born in Texas to undocumented parents. In May, four women
filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Texas Department of
State Health Services alleging constitutional discrimination
and interference in the federal government’s authority over
immigration.
Jennifer Harbury, a lawyer with Texas
RioGrande Legal Aid, who is representing the women,
said the deluge of birth certificate refusals began last
winter. “I’ve never seen such a large number of women with
this problem,” she says. “In the past someone might be
turned away, but it was always resolved. This is something
altogether new.”
According to the lawsuit, the women who
requested birth certificates for their children in Cameron and
Hidalgo counties were turned away because of insufficient
proof of their identities. State law allows the use of a
foreign ID if the mother lacks a Texas driver’s license or a
U.S. passport.
But local officials, which issue birth
certificates registered by the Texas Department of State
Health Services Vital Statistics Unit, told the women they
would no longer accept either the matricula
consular, which is a photo ID issued by the Mexican
Consulate to Mexican nationals living in the U.S., or a
foreign passport without a current U.S. visa. Undocumented
Central American women are also being turned away because they
only have a passport without a U.S. visa. “They are locking
out a huge chunk of the undocumented immigrant community,”
says Harbury.
Harbury believes the rash of refusals is linked
to the influx of Central
American families who crossed the border last
summer seeking asylum. “They are targeting the undocumented
population, but immigration is a federal function and not the
job of the Department of State Health Services,” says
Harbury. Women are unable to enroll their children in school
or daycare without a birth certificate, or to authorize their
child to be treated in a medical emergency. “It causes all
kinds of problems,” Harbury says. “How is a woman going to
prove she’s the child’s parent without a birth
certificate?”
Since filing the lawsuit in late May, Harbury
says they’ve received dozens of calls from women who have
been refused birth certificates for their children: “The
phones have been ringing off the hook.” Recently, they filed
an amended lawsuit with several more plaintiffs.
James Harrington, an attorney with the Texas
Civil Rights Project, is also representing the undocumented
families. The legal team is seeking a court order to reinstate
the use of the matricula consular and
foreign passports as valid proof of identity for undocumented
mothers.
“Even in the darkest hours of Texas’
history of discrimination, officials never denied birth
certificates to Hispanic children of immigrants,” said
Harrington in a written statement. “Everyone born in the
United States is entitled to the full rights of
citizenship.”
Update: In a written
statement Chris Van Deusen, press officer for the Texas
Department of State Health Services says: “DSHS accepts a
variety of documents to verify a requestor’s identification
… Texas does not accept the matricula consular
as valid identification because the documents used to obtain
the matricula are not verified by the
issuing party. Several other states and some federal agencies
also do not accept the matricula as a valid
form of identification for the same reason.”
Correction:
The story originally stated that vital statistics offices in
Cameron and Hidalgo counties are run by employees of the Texas
Department of State Health Services. The offices are run by
city and county officials. The Observer regrets
the error.
This message may contain copyrighted material which is
being made available for research of environmental,
political, human rights, economic, scientific, social justice
issues, etc., and constitutes a "fair use" of such
copyrighted material per section 107 of US Copyright Law. In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in
this message is distributed without profit or payment to those
who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for
research/educational purposes. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Sent by Odell Harwell odell.harwell74@att.net |
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Chinese now top U.S. immigrant arrivals |
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| As many as 175,000 Chinese Immigrants were detained for week, sometimes months, from 1920-1940 as part of the Chinese Exclusion Act. | |
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Once singled out
for exclusion by law from the United States, Chinese immigrants now make
up the largest single group of arrivals a year into this country. A recent report
by the Census Bureau reported that China replaced Mexico as the top
country of origin for immigrants to the U.S. in 2013, and another report
has found that China sends more students to the U.S. than any other
country. What’s equally
improbable, given the history, is that Chinese immigrants are now
considered part of the rising Asian American “model minority,”
showcasing how immigrants (and other minorities) can make it in America.
Media portrayals of Chinese and other Asian Americans often contrast
sharply to those of other immigrants, like undocumented immigrants from
Mexico, or Middle Eastern Muslim immigrants unfairly tainted by
association with terrorism. Indeed, a closer
look at Chinese immigration in the past and present shows not only how
much public attitudes have changed in the last century, but also how
fickle such shifts in attitudes can prove. Although many of
today’s Chinese immigrants are graduate students and wealthy
investors, Chinese immigration has a long history in the United States.
Many of the earlier immigrants were considered the lowest of the
low-skilled workers coming to America. Chinese sailors
were among the crew on a ship that arrived in Baltimore in 1784. Chinese
immigrants were living in New York City as early as the 1830s. And
Chinese were among the thousands of gold seekers who rushed into
California during the Gold Rush in the mid-19th century. By 1870, there
were 64,000 Chinese in the United States, most of them in California,
and almost all of them from the Pearl River Delta region outside of
Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China. They were indispensable laborers
who helped to build the nation’s first transcontinental railroad as
well as farm workers who turned California into the agricultural empire
that it is today. But Chinese
immigrants also faced a tremendous amount of hostility. The Chinese were
labeled undesirable and impossible to assimilate. They were charged with
taking away jobs, corrupting white women, and threatening American
civilization. Chinese were harassed, beaten and driven out of small
towns and big cities throughout the American West. A regional
movement to exclude Chinese immigrants turned into a national one. The
rallying cry of “The Chinese Must Go!” came to be heard on the
sandlots of San Francisco as well as in the halls of Congress. In 1882, the
U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese laborers,
prohibited all Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens,
and allowed only select classes of Chinese to apply for admission. The
Chinese Exclusion Act was the country’s first immigration law that
singled out an immigrant group for large-scale exclusion based on race.
And it led to wide-scale discrimination in U.S. immigration policy that
resulted in the exclusion of almost all Asians before World War II. While the act
was in effect – from 1882 to 1943 – Chinese immigrants became
America’s first illegal immigrants. Chinese immigration drastically
dropped, though it never totally stopped. Many of those who did continue
to come resorted to false papers (like my own grandfather), fraudulent
identities, and even long and dangerous routes across the U.S.-Mexico
border. We know that
those who arrived in San Francisco in those years faced harsh
interrogations, humiliating medical examinations, and long detentions in
the crowded and unsanitary barracks on Angel Island – arguably the
nation’s first immigrant detention center, located in the middle of
San Francisco Bay. The hundreds of
poems that Chinese immigrant detainees left behind on the barrack walls
on Angel Island are testament to their anger, frustration and hardship,
but also their perseverance and hope. In the past 50
years, Chinese immigration has undergone a dramatic transformation. The
landmark 1965 Immigration Act ended national origin quotas that favored
immigration from Europe over other parts of the world and established
preferences for professional and skilled workers. At the same
time, China’s subsequent economic modernization and new global outlook
have revived and diversified the flow of immigration from China. From 1960 to
1990, the Chinese population in the U.S. nearly doubled every decade. In
1960, there were just under 100,000 Chinese-born immigrants in the
United States. In 2010, the Census reported more than 3.3 million adult
Chinese Americans. Making up the largest group of Asian Americans and
the largest ethnic Chinese population (including Taiwanese) outside of
Asia, Chinese Americans represent 24 percent of the nation’s adult
Asian population. Chinese
Americans are represented at both ends of the economic spectrum. But
when people think of Chinese immigrants they tend to think of the highly
skilled and educated who arrive – the entrepreneurs, professionals,
scientists and students. Indeed, in 2010
Chinese Americans had higher median annual personal earnings than the
general U.S. population. Chinese
immigrants may not be scrutinized and debated in the same way that
undocumented low-skilled Mexican immigrants crossing the border are
these days, especially in Washington, but it would be a mistake to
assume that America has fully embraced Chinese and other Asian
immigrants. Their growing
numbers, economic power, and presence have already raised concerns and
anxiety. Some Americans resent having to go to a doctor who has a
foreign accent, for example, or having their kids compete with talented
foreign-born (and even second-generation Asian American) students for
spots in college or in the workplace. There could be
even more resentment if China’s national wealth and strength becomes
more pronounced globally, and more explicitly opposed to American
interests. Erika
Lee is a historian, writer and director of the Immigration History
Research Center at the University of Minnesota. Her book, “The Making
of Asian America: A History” will be published in
September. She wrote this for What
It Means to Be American a national conversation hosted
by the Smithsonian and Zocalo Public Square. |
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Do you have a question about immigration and nationality (I&N) records and research? Do you need help understanding an immigration or naturalization record you found? Marian Smith will be answering pre-submitted questions during a live webinar on Friday, July 31st, at 1:00 PM Eastern. Send your question via email to cishistory.library@uscis.dhs.gov with the subject line “July Webinar Question.” If your question relates to a document you found, attach a copy of the document to the email. All questions must be received by Saturday, July 25th! To ensure the hour is of interest to the widest audience, questions answered first will be those most commonly asked or that generate the most useful answers. Documents submitted with questions may be shared and discussed during the live webinar. Please do not send large or extensive files. Editor Mimi: Although these dates have
passed, I am including the information with the hope that this
service of delivering immigration and naturalization information will be
repeated. I met Marian Smith over 30 years ago. She
single-handedly saved many naturalization and border-crossing records
which were about to be purged and discarded by the government. We
owe her a big debt for her diligence in saving important data about our
Mexican-American history. |
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CENSUS BUREAU LINKS 2014 Hispanics by the Numbers |
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family size 3.87 33% are under 18 years old 27.6 median age |
Population
estimate 57,230,247 Almost 1,00,000 babies born in past 12 months to women, 15-50 |
74% speak
Spanish at home 67% 16 yrs/older in labor force 56,171 mean household income |
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Historia
Chicana 2
June 2014
First
version published in Latino Suave Magazine, December/January
2005-06, reprinted in Pluma Fronteriza, Feb 17, 2006. Updated,
June 2, 2014.
Everything
in the world of language has a name—the Greeks called this phenomena
“onomastics.” When we encounter something new in “our world” we
seek to establish immediately its name. If there is no name in our
lexicon for what we’ve encountered, then we label it –most often
with a term from our lexicon that embodies some essential characteristic
of the item. For example, in French a “potato” is called a “pomme
de terre”–an “apple of the earth.” That’s the process of all
languages, naming things. If
we have trouble coming up with a name in our own language, then we
simply borrow a word from the language where a term already exists for
whatever we’ve encountered. In struggling with his theory of
psychoanalysis,
Freud turned to Greek for many of his terms. “Psyche”, for
example, is the Greek term for “mind.” This syncretic process is
what makes language so dynamic and so essential to the human experience.
It’s
not inappropriate to think of languages in contact as “consenting
adults”–the new words they engender reflect their parentage. In the
United States, for instance, speakers of Spanish have created the word
“troca” for “truck.” In the midst of this historical phenomena
at the moment, we’re experiencing a growth in language–-present at
the creation, so to speak. In like manner, speakers of English in the
Southwest of the 19th century transformed the Spanish word
“vaquero” into “buckeroo.” The
English language is enriched by the countless terms borrowed from
the Spanish What
about terms of identity? Some terms that describe groups of people are
pejorative, reflecting the depictive view of people who use those terms
to describe specific groups. “Spic,” for example, was a term widely
used until our time to describe Hispanics both in the United States
and at large. There
is a global lexicon of disparaging terms to describe pretty much all
of the peoples of earth. Such terms are not specific to any single
group. How did the term “Hispanic” come to be used to describe
such a diverse spectrum of people who are thought to be linked to
each other by language, culture, ethnicity, and religion. What
is the term “Hispanic”? What does it mean? Where does it come from?
Why is it used to identify particular peoples of the Americas? Is the
term “Hispanic” the same as the term “Latino”? Both the terms
“Hispanic” and “Latino” have been used for some time. More
recently, however, the revivified term “Latino” has resonated with
contemporary American Hispanics, many of whom perceive the term
“Hispanic” as a label imposed on them by the bureaucracy of the U.S.
Census Bureau. The
term “Hispanic” actually cropped up in the early Spanish colonial
period in the Americas to designate persons with a biological tie to a
Spaniard. In Spanish the term was “Hispano.” Later the term
evolved into “Hispano-Americano” to emphasize that Hispanos were
also Americans since they were of the Americas. Historically, the
United States appropriated that term for its own identity, so that few
Americans realize that all the populations of the Americas are
Americans. The
word "Hispanic" is one of those large rubrics, like the word
"Catholic" or "Protestant." By itself, the word
refers to all Hispanics (persons whose cultural and/or linguistic
heritage derive from historical origins in Hispania– Roman
name for Spain), attesting to a common denominator, conveying
information that the individual is an off-spring or descendent of a
cultural, political or ethnic blending which included at its beginning
at least one Spanish root either biological or linguistic or cultural. Talking
about people in terms of labels can be misleading. For example, a person
may be an Hispanic in terms of cultural, national, or ethnic roots.
Nationally, Colon (Columbus) was a Spaniard, though born in Genoa;
Werner Von Braun became an American national, though born in Germany.
In Argentina there are Hispanics who have no "Spanish blood"
(as we use that term) but who, nevertheless, consider themselves
Hispanics, speak Argentine Spanish and are fluent in Italian or German,
the languages of their immigrant forebears to that country. Put
another way, the term "Hispanic" is comparable to the term
"Jew" which describes the religious orientation of people who
may be ethnically Russian, Polish, German, Italian, English, etc. There
are also Chinese Jews, Ethiopian (Falashan) Jews, Indian Jews, et al. So
too the term "Hispanic" describes a cultural-linguistic
orientation of people who may be Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Cubans,
Venezuelans, Chileans, Argentines, Spaniards. Additionally there are
Afro Hispanics, White Hispanics, Asian Hispanics, Indian Hispanics
and a congeries of other mixtures. There is an array of Chinese
Hispanics, Lebanese Hispanics, Pakistan Hispanics, Hindu Hispanics,
Jewish Hispanics (Sephards), et al. This
all points to the fact that Hispanics are far from a homogeneous group
which is why it’s so hard to define them en
masse. In the main, though, their common characteristics are
language (Spanish or a derivative version of Spanish as well as a
distinctively derivative version of English often times called
Spanglish), culture (Hispanic), and religion (most are Catholic,
though there is a growing number of Hispanic Protestants). There are
large exceptions, of course. To
avoid confusion between Hispanics who are citizens of countries other
than the United States and Hispanics who are U.S. citizens, we can refer
to the former as Hispanic Americans and the latter as American
Hispanics, that is, Hispanics who are American citizens with roots in
one or more of the Spanish-language countries of the American
hemisphere—and elsewhere. Another way to differentiate U.S.
Hispanics from Hispanics in Spain and other Hispanic identified
countries in the Americas and elsewhere is to keep in mind that American
Hispanics live and work legitimately in the United States.
Unfortunately, the public at large tends to use these terms
synonymously, creating thus confusion. Important to note here is that
those of Portuguese origins are not considered Hispanics, but are
Latinos under that rubric. The
United States has the largest Hispanic population in the world
exceeded only by Mexico. Who are these people whose presence in the
American population will have such a major force in the future? Whose
demographic presence in the United States is expected to be one-third of
the population by the year 2040? Essentially, American Hispanics may be
grouped into five categories: (1) Mexican Americans/ Chicanos, (2)
Puerto Ricans/Boricuas, (3) Hispanos (U.S. Hispanics who identify
themselves as "Spanish"), (4) Cuban Americans, and (5)
Latinos (Hispanics from countries other than those already mentioned in
this matrix). In
the total mix of U.S. Hispanics (60 million counting the population of
Puerto Rico), Mexican
Americans/Chicanos and Puerto Ricans/ Boricuas make up almost 85% of the
total U.S. Hispanic population. Hispanos comprise a statistically
small number of the U.S. Hispanic population; and Cuban Americans make
up almost 5% of U.S. Hispanics. Latinos make up the remaining percentage
of U.S. Hispanics (almost 10%). However, in the aggregate none of the
Latino groups—with the exception of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans,
and Cuban Americans—is larger than 1 percent of the total American
Hispanic population despite large congregations in specific parts of the
United States. Surprisingly,
most Americans tend to think of U.S. Hispanics as a loose aggregation
of "immigrants" who speak only Spanish, somewhat aware that
the largest number of them live in the Southwest, a fair number in the
Upper Middle Atlantic states and New England, and a growing group in
Florida. In
the 19th century, in two swift "actions" within 50 years of
each other the United States "acquired" a sizable chunk of its
Hispanic population, not counting the Hispanic Jews of New Amsterdam
before it became New York, nor the acquisition of New Orleans (and its
Hispanic residents) in 1803 from the French (who took it originally from
the Spaniards), and Florida (and its Hispanic residents) from Spain in
1819. The
first "action" was the U.S. War with Mexico (1846-1848), out
of which came the Mexican Americans of California, Nevada, Arizona,
Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, parts of Wyoming, Oklahoma and
Kansas. No one is sure of the number of "Mexicans" who
came with the dismembered territory (almost half of Mexico), but figures
range from 75,000 to as many as 3.5 million (including Hispanicized
Indians). The
second "action" was the U.S. war with Spain (1898), out of
which came the Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Filipinos, Guamanians, and
others from Spain’s Pacific territories acquired by the U.S. A fair
number of Cubans came to Florida with this "action" between
1898 and the First World War (Cuba gained formal independence from the
United States in 1902. Under the new Cuban constitution, however, the US
retained the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and to supervise its
finances and foreign relations. Under the Platt
Amendment, Cuba also agreed to lease to the U.S. in
perpetuity the naval base at Guantánamo Bay). The population figures for
these groups range variably as well. This history attests to the fact
that American Hispanics are of the United States, but we've tended to
confuse them with Hispanic Americans, the 300 million who populate
the Spanish-language countries of the American hemisphere.
What's
in a name? Everything. That's why my name is Felipe and my friend's name
is Sean. Names help to tell us apart. They also reflect heritage and
background. Unfortunately, many Americans tend to think the word
Hispanic refers to a homogeneous group of people—which it does not,
any more than the word German, say, (as in German-American) refers to a
homogeneous group of people. At best, the term “Hispanic” is a
convenient way to talk about a diverse group of people, much the way we
use the term American to talk about an equally diverse group of
people. Copyright
© 2014 by the author. All rights reserved. Historia
Chicana Mexican
American Studies
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Synopsis for |
To the ancient Greeks, the word "arête" meant that which makes a person be good at something. A woman's arête, for example, was measured by her beauty, by the purity of her manners, and by her wise economic management. The arête of a farmer was determined by his work being done at the right time and with the rhythm of nature, the arête of a warrior was his "valor" in battle, and that of a ruler was what Plato referred to as a "philosopher-king.' But the Greeks would not take the arête of anything for granted, and they would always search for that particular element which made someone "good" at something. What, they would ask, is the arête of being a good father, a good husband, a good blacksmith or a good citizen? In a way, my search for America was a search for America's arête, a quest to determine just exactly what makes America "good." Is it its Constitution, its democracy, its electoral system, its economy, its judicial system, or its people? But like the ancient Greeks, to we must be forthright and truthful in our assessment of America's arête. Otherwise, we will never find the true essence of our country's "virtuousness" and our private and public lives will always be in a state of continuous dissonance. As such, we cannot merely assume America is "good" simply because of the lofty declarations that are deeply engrained in the American narrative. America did not become a "great" country just because Thomas Jefferson declared it to be "the world's best hope" or because John Winthrop defined it as "a city upon a hill." Moreover, Americans did not become "exceptional" because Thomas Paine believed it was within our power "to begin the world again," or because Herman Melville asserted that "Americans are the peculiar, the Chosen People, the Israel of our times. We bear the Ark of the liberation of the world." These famous utterances of the American narrative did not make America great; they merely helped to create the mythological ideology upon which the American narrative is based -- an assumption of what America was supposed to be and of the chosen Western European people who were destined to make it so. These are the assumptions which led to the Melting Pot, the theory which held that to be "an American" one had to shed the culture of one's native country and become a WASP. It is a narrative so deeply engrained in our psyche that most Americans believe we are, indeed, an "exceptional people" and why any criticism of America is often taken as being "un-American." In a way, I started searching for America's arête since I was growing up in Laredo during the 1950 and early 1960s, and I did so because the American narrative through which America's arête was defined did not reflect my reality as a Mexican American living in a barrio a stone's throw from the Rio Grande. America, I was taught, was the land of the brave and the home of the free, the country which prized equality before the law and which offered immigrants the opportunity to work so they too could share in the "American Dream." But the reality in which I was growing up didn't reflect these lofty ideals. My reality was that of a South Texas in which Mexican Americans were segregated, where the vote was manipulated, where Mexican American students were herded into a vocational education curriculum, where their culture was devalued and where they were denied jobs of power and delegated into jobs of service. I realized that as a Mexican American, I was stuck in an American ideology that did not reflect my reality, thus creating the socio-political dissonance that predominates in the lives of most Mexican Americans even today. Yet, as I searched for the America I was taught really existed, I soon learned that not only Mexican Americans but American society itself have been living in a state of dissonance for several years, if not decades. As Americans, for example, we worship the motto of E Pluribus Unum, but are distrustful of each other and characterize each other as "givers" and "takers." We cherish our democracy, but do not trust "government," and allow for the manipulation of the electoral mechanism. We praise the American worker, but hesitate to establish a living wage and deny them the power to organize. We relish "America the Beautiful" but criticize government when it attempts to curb pollution and permit the destruction of our "spacious skies," and "mountain majesties," and the fields of "amber waves of grain." We revere the concept of equality but are caught in a systemic web of intolerance and discrimination that we seem powerless to eradicate. We glorify the immigrant as being the building block of our society, but rail against the newcomers from south of the border. So what and where is that arête which we believe makes America great? What has happened to the American narrative so gloriously -- but fictitiously -- described in our American narrative by our "Founding Fathers?" While attempting to deal with all these questions, I came to the realization that America's arête was right in the very town in which I grew up. Laredoans have lived under the political authority of seven flags. Yet, even as they have seen countries come and go, Laredo still remains a closely-knit community whose people are tied more to its history and its culture than to its flags. Laredoans understand that while governments can be created by one generation - such as Mexico in 1810, Texas in 1836, or the United States in 1789 - societies evolve in history. This is what Edmund Burke, the English philosopher, told us this many years ago, when he wrote that "society… is a partnership in all science, in all art, in all virtue and in all perfection. Since the objective of this partnership cannot be obtained in one generation, this contract becomes a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are yet to be born." Like Burke, Laredoans have understood that it is not the state that empowers people, but the cultural cohesiveness of the people that empowers the nation. The greatness that was Rome took centuries to achieve - and it was not built by the strength and power of its emperors, or by the privileged status of its patrician population, but through the character, diversity, talent and dedication of its common people, the plebe. Christianity itself became a great religion not because of the eloquence of papal encyclicals or by the benevolence of bishops but by the actions of its common believers. In fact, Scripture describes the Kingdom of God as a woman who sweeps the house in search of a coin, and like a father who has a great feast upon the return of his prodigal son, both prophetic examples which demonstrate that it is the common people in society that are the guiding force in history. And perhaps what is even more important is that countries that fail to understand this do so at their own peril. The monarchies of Europe, for example, fell not because the Kings became despotic and people rose up against them, but because common people who used to believe in "divine right" ceased to do so. It was them who decided that Divine Right was no match the vitality and relevance of the "social contract" which they had accepted. The monopoly of dogma which the Catholic Church enjoyed for centuries crumbled not because Christianity lost its fervor, but because the Catholic doctrine of "papal infallibility" could not compete with the principle of "freedom of conscience" which the common people had begun to accept. By the same token, mercantilism succumbed not because the nation states lost their power to protect their colonies and their trade, but because mercantilism could not contain the onslaught of "free enterprise" capitalism launched by small merchants. As a Laredoan, I know that Laredoans have always given the "Founding Fathers" their due, as demonstrated every year in February when the whole city celebrates "Washington's Birthday" with a multi-day celebration that includes a man and a woman portraying George and Martha Washington. But as working people, they also understand the greatness of America is not due to the triumphant ideology which clothes the American narrative, but to what Carl Sandburg's observed in his poem, Chicago: "Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and course and strong and cunning….Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness. Bareheaded, shoveling, wrecking, planning, building, breaking, rebuilding under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth under the terrible burden of destiny -- laughing as a young man laughs…proud to be the hog butcher, tool maker, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and freight handler to the nation." Sandburg didn't see the hog butchers, tool makers and stackers of wheat as immigrants or as citizens, nor did he notice the languages they spoke nor the texture of their skin. He saw them merely as workers whose toil was reshaping American society into the diverse, energetic and dynamic society which made possible the industrial revolution - and ultimately modern America. And if he had written his poem a generation later, he also would not have noticed that the hog butchers, tool makers and stackers of wheat were now mostly Mexican immigrants - like my own parents who, like thousands of other Mexican immigrants who fled from the violence of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, ended up in Chicago in the 1920s. In Laredo, I grew up with people who every year would go "al norte, a las piscas," with recently arrived immigrants who spoke little or no English and worked in the fields, with Mexican students who were here only to study, with people with "green cards" who crossed the international bridge every day to work in the different department stores, with people who were descendants of the original settlers of Laredo and were involved in ranching and agriculture, and with people who had come to Laredo to open up new businesses. All of us lived in what for many years was considered to be the poorest city in the country, the one with unpaved streets, scorching heat, and the one identified as the "most Mexican" of American cities. But while we may have lacked the wealth, municipal services, and public infrastructures that people had in other cities, we always knew who we were, where we had come from and where we were going. My grandfather used to collect cardboard at Sears, and then load them into a little red wagon I had been given one Christmas so he could sell it at a business some 20 blocks away. My mother was a seamstress and my father was a bracero in the Napa Valley in California. As most Laredoans, our family was money poor but culturally rich simply because we were raised in a culture of inclusion and empowerment - the very model through which the United States can truly become e pluribus unum - from the many, one. Somehow, Laredoans have always understood what Harvard historian Orlando Patterson, meant when he wrote that "American culture doesn't belong to any group; it is constantly changing, and it is open. What is needed is recognition that the accurate metaphor or model for this wider literacy is not domination, but dialectic. Each group participates and contributes, transforms and is transformed, as much as any other group." This was the lesson that was given to me by another Laredoan, one of my students at San Antonio College. After class, a young, enthusiastic, bright girl whose features were unmistakably Anglo asked me in perfect Spanish, "Es usted de Laredo, Profesor Piñón?" I was surprised she could speak Spanish so well, and I told her so. "Yo también soy de Laredo," she told me. Then, in perfect English, she goes on to tell me who her grandfather was - one I knew as a prominent Anglo American attorney. Her father, she told me, married a Villarreal. As she talked to me, I realized I had, indeed, found the real America. This young girl was the proud product of two cultures and histories converging with each other on equal terms, not one culture seeking to dominate the other. She understood that speaking Spanish and clinging to her Spanish/Mexican culture did not minimize her identity with America but expanded on what it meant to be "an American." And her confidence and cheerfulness showed me that it is people like her who will, indeed, change, and legitimatize, the character of America and that this can happen if the country will follow what Laredo has done for decades. Fernando Pinon will be speaking on August 12 in Laredo, 6-8 pm Laredo Library. Click . . . |
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History of the Star Spangled Banner |
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USS New York LPD-21 |
| The USS New York was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center. She is at the port in Jacksonville, Florida. Notice the twin towers on top. It is the fifth in a new class of warship - designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft. Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, LA to cast the ship's bow section. When it was poured into the molds on Sept 9, 2003, 'those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence, 'recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. 'It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.' Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the 'hair on my neck stood up.' 'It had a big meaning to it for all of us,' he said. 'They knocked us down. They can't keep us down. We're going to be back.' The ship's motto? 'Never Forget'
Sent by Val Valdez Gibbons |
We, the people of Mexican-descent 
![Pictured is the first-ever edition of Lowrider Magazine, founded by Mario "Sonny" Madrid, of San Jose. Madrid died on Monday at age 70.](http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site568/2015/0625/20150625__SJM-MADRID-0625-01~1.JPG "Pictured is the first-ever edition of Lowrider Magazine, founded by Mario "Sonny" Madrid, of San Jose. Madrid died on Monday at age 70.")
A
project is underway to produce a movie about the story of Chicano
rock legend, Little Willie G (Garcia) 
In
typical European fashion, the Mexico before Cortes is always described
contrastively or derivatively with some aspect of Europe. As the royal
chronicler of the Indies, Lorenzo Boturini Bernaducci called Texcoco
"the Athens of the Western World."
La liberación de la Neighborhood House, Octubre 1970
Ruby Hubert was the African American director of Neighborhood House at the time of the occupation. News articles and a great deal of the general population portrayed the occupation as a Black/Brown issue. The press loved the idea that the two minority communities were fighting with each other.
Rico Bueno, a crucial member of the takeover team, remembered many facts that others have forgotten or maybe are not aware of. Prior to the takeover Rico met with a member of the Black Panthers to inform them ahead of time of what was about to happen. The Black Panther member was a friend of Rico's from school. Rico felt that out of respect for their friendship and because the director of Neighborhood House was Black, it was the right thing to do. 
My friend Nelson Denis from New York City pulls no punches and tells it the way it is when it comes to the crisis of Puerto Rico. If you like to read the History of Puerto Rico after the Spanish American War, this is the book "War Against All Puerto Ricans " I hope many of you have an open mind and take the time to check his Bio on Wikipedia, his Website, and his book on Amazon.
The Trumpeter & Drum Major:
Jason Paguio Conducts Marching BandsWhen Jason started Chula Vista Junior High, it was considered to be an arts magnet school. His brother Joe had studied trombone and voice, while his other brother Justin had studied the bassoon. They were both drum majors in high school, winning many awards, and Jason naturally followed in his brothers’ footsteps. His parents were very supportive of their sons’ music endeavors, so Jason grew up watching drum major and marching band videos or watching his brothers practice and compete.
The Silver Mace:
Not only is Jason a World Champion who current holds the Glasgow Mace, but he also owns one of the few Drum Major equipment stores, selling internationally: regimentalmacecompany.com
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