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COMMENTARY & NEWS
Week of
July 11, 2005 |
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Cartoonist defends
stereotyped image on new Mexican stamps
- By Monica Campbell,
- San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service
Memín Pinguín, an Afro Mexican comic-book boy starring
in a set of newly issued Mexican postage stamps, is offending sensibilities
in the United States because of his exaggerated racial features. But the
artist who has drawn the character for decades, Sixto Valencia Burgos, is
hardly ducking under his drawing table.
"Memín is a character from the golden age of Mexican
comics," the 71-year- old cartoonist recently said in his cluttered studio
off a busy Mexico City street. "Everyone here knows he's this funny little
kid. And nice. And generous. Oh, and black, too. Why such an uproar now?" |
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In Mexico, `They just
don't see us'
- By Hugh Dellios
- Chicago Tribune
- No one ever put Melquiades Dominguez's face on a postage stamp. Nor
Juan Angel Serrano. Nor any other of the descendants of black slaves who
live along Mexico's Costa Chica.
- Nor did Mexico's blacks have much say when the federal government
ignited a racially loaded scandal late last month by issuing stamps of a
popular 1950s-era cartoon character that the Bush White House and Jesse
Jackson declared an insulting stereotype.
- The reappearance of Memin Pinguin, a caricature of a naive black boy
with exaggerated lips, set off a tense exchange of criticisms between U.S.
and Mexican leaders, just six weeks after President Vicente Fox angered
civil rights activists by saying that Mexicans in the United States were
doing jobs that "not even blacks want to do."
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Much concern in the
US-Canadian border
- By Beth Duff-Brown and Pauline Arrillaga
- The Associated Press
Nearly four years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and after billions in
security investment on both sides of this frontier stretching from
Atlantic to Pacific, authorities and average folks are still jittery.
Here's why:
- At the edge of a sprawling raspberry field where
Washington state meets British Columbia, a U.S. Border Patrol agent shakes
his head at tire tracks that snake between rows of berries and over the
international boundary, which here is a gravel ditch so puny a person could
leap it.
"They're long gone," says agent Candido Villalobos, who
raced to the scene after a surveillance camera spotted the vehicle _
transporting contraband? Drug money? Something more sinister? Too late to
know. "They beat us," Villalobos murmurs. |
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At least 50 terror groups
imbedded in Canada
- By Beth Duff-Brown
- The Associated Press
Though many view Canada as an unassuming neutral nation that has skirted
terrorist attacks, it has suffered its share of aggression, and
intelligence officials believe at least 50 terror groups now have some
presence here.
- They are from Sri Lanka, Kurdistan and points between and include
supporters of some of the best-known Mideast groups, including al-Qaida,
authorities say.
- Osama bin Laden named Canada one of five so-called Christian nations
that should be targeted for acts of terror. The others, reaffirmed last
year by his al-Qaida network, were the United States, Britain, Spain and
Australia.
- The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, counterpart of the CIA,
said terrorist representatives are actively raising money, procuring
weapons, "manipulating immigrant communities" and facilitating travel to
and from the United States and other countries.
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Border Patrol launches
national hiring campaign
- By Chris Strohm
GovExec
The Border Patrol launched a national recruiting
campaign Friday, with plans to hire up to 2,100 new agents in the next 15
months.
Most of the agents will be deployed to the nation's
southern border, where the bulk of illegal immigration and drug smuggling
occurs, Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told Government Executive.
"The activity levels that abound on the southern border
is where we feel ... a trainee agent will get the best experience to fully
round him or her out so that, as they progress within their career, they get
an opportunity to go to the northern border [and] the coastal sectors that
we operate," Aguilar said.
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Embracing Illegals
Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million
undocumented immigrants
By Brian Grow, with Adrienne Carter and Roger O. Crockett in Chicago and
Geri Smith in Mexico City
Inez and Antonio Valenzuela are a marketer's dream. Young, upwardly
mobile, and ready to spend on their growing family, the Los Angeles couple
in many ways reflects the 42 million Hispanics in the U.S. Age 30 and 29,
respectively, with two daughters, Esmeralda, 8, and Maria Luisa, 2 months,
the duo puts in long hours, working 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., six days a week, at
their bustling streetside taco trailer. From a small sidewalk stand less
than two years ago, they built the business into a hot destination for
hungry commuters. The Valenzuelas (not their real name) bring in revenue
well above the U.S. household average of $43,000, making them a solidly
middle-class family that any U.S. consumer-products company would love to
reach.
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Security and Law Enforcement News/Analysis
The Northern Border War's
Southern Front, Or: The Rise of a New Cartel?
Analysis provided by: Frontera NorteSur/New Mexico State University
Government officials, law enforcement personnel, and citizens of all stripes
are alarmed at a rising tide of violent outbreaks in the southern state of
Guerrero. The July 6 slaying in Acapulco of Ruben Robles Catatlan, who
served as state government secretary under ex-governor Ruben Figueroa
Alcocer, was but the latest killing in a wave of gangland-style violence
that some call unprecedented. Gunned down together with a bodyguard in front
of the historic El Mirador Hotel, Robles was a longtime, prominent political
figure in the Guerrero branch of the Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI). Robles also was one of the alleged intellectual masterminds of the
1995 Aguas Blancas massacre of 17 unarmed farmers. Since the late 1980s, his
name has come up in connection with the murders of opposition party
militants and others.
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Crossing the Line —
Immigration in Northwest Colorado
- Border is a blurring line
- By Autumn Phillips,
- Steam Boat Pilot
- There is no sign announcing Annunciation House. Unless a person knows
differently, the old brick building in El Paso, Texas, almost looks
abandoned.
- The windows are covered. All the doors have been blocked except for
one, which remains locked. But knock on the door and it will open wide to
the smells of Mexican cooking and laughing voices of people speaking
dialects of Spanish ranging from Northern Mexico to the remote corners of
Central America.
- In a residential neighborhood that is a 10-minute walk from the U.S.
border, Annunciation House acts as a waystation for people who need to
rest during their journeys from Mexico and other parts of Latin America to
opportunities in the fields, hotels and restaurants to the north. The
shelter runs on private donations from unnamed Catholic residents of El
Paso.
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Advice and Consent
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should take
his name off the list for the Supreme Court.
By Terry Eastland
The Daily Standard
OF THE MANY LAWYERS under consideration for nomination
to the seat vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor, only one, Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales, is drawing substantially negative reviews from
conservatives. Of course, it's understandable why Gonzales is on the
president's short list. Bush first hired him years ago and has held him in
such high regard as to appoint him to a series of important jobs--even,
years ago, to a judgeship on the Texas Supreme Court. In an interview in USA
Today, Bush called Gonzales "a great friend of mine." Bush also likes to
make diversity history, so to speak, and, having already given us, in
Gonzales, the nation's first ever Hispanic attorney general, he could now
decide to make him our first ever Hispanic justice.
Yet for Gonzales to be on the short list, he presumably
would have to be the kind of lawyer the president has said he wants to name
to the Court--one whose approach to judging would be similar to those of
Justices Scalia and Thomas. Here is the source of the conservative wariness
toward a Justice Gonzales, for it is not apparent to many conservatives that
Gonzales measures up in that rather urgent respect.
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Bush Answers Gonzales
Critics
- President Decries Attacks From Right, Says Character Will Guide
Nomination
- By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
- Washington Post Staff Writers
President Bush tried Wednesday to quell the conservative criticism
engulfing Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, his longtime adviser, and
scolded special interest groups for exploiting the debate over the next
Supreme Court justice to raise funds.
In his first news conference since Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor announced her retirement Friday, Bush said he will not require her
replacement to pass a test on abortion or same-sex marriage. He offered a
robust defense of Gonzales, the one potential nominee who has stirred
vigorous opposition among the president's own conservative supporters.
In the wake of Bush's stern warning, delivered from his
first stop on a European trip, many conservatives ratcheted down their
rhetoric or went silent altogether, but others ignored the president and
pressed their attack on Gonzales for not aggressively opposing abortion and
affirmative action. Further fueling the debate over the potential nominee,
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) offered qualified words of
support for Gonzales.
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Growing Industry: Sending
Bodies of Deceased Migrants Back to Mexico
- By Report, Hiram Soto
- ENLACE
When the cousins of gardener Narciso Díaz died in a car
accident in the Southern California town of Temecula, the 23-year-old
Chiapas native did what many low-income families do in order to bury their
loved ones: he asked the community for help.
After soliciting a Los Angeles radio station, the gardener, who also lives
in Temecula, raised a small portion of the thousands of dollars needed to
send his loved ones to Chiapas, Mexico. The rest of the bill is covered by
the Mexican government, which spends millions of dollars every year in
repatriations.
But then something unprecedented happened.
A new business that sold repatriation certificates – documents that act as
life insurance and cover funereal costs – saw an opportunity to promote
their product and offered to donate funds to send the bodies to Chiapas. |
- (HispanicVista’s choice for Joke of the Week.)
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Tancredo considers
presidential run to spotlight immigration issue
- NBC - 9news.com
Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) says he will run
for President in 2008 if that's what it will take to get a "legitimate"
national discussion on the topic of immigration reform.
The 4th-term Republican made the comments Friday from
his home in Littleton where he is preparing to head to Iowa next week to
speak with voters in one of the early Presidential Primary states.
Tancredo has already visited New Hampshire and the
Carolinas, all states with early Presidential Primaries. His trips are being
coordinated by Bay Buchanan, sister and former campaign manager of former
Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.
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Mexican
Bishops Assail Drug-War Violence
Statement Also Laments Corruption
Mexico's bishops issued an urgent statement to their
country's people and government, lamenting the rampant violence, especially
along the U.S. border.
The note, signed by Bishops José Martín Rábago and Carlos Aguiar Retes, the
president and vice president of the Mexican episcopate, respectively,
rejected the growing spiral of violence and social disintegration generated
by organized crime.
"We condemn the culture of death promoted by the traffic and consumption of
drugs, the harboring of corruption and impunity which has damaged the state
of law, creating vacuums of power that threaten to open the doors to
unruliness, and still worse, have robbed citizens of confidence in public
security and the possibility of justice," said the Mexican bishops. |
The Most
Allegedly Catholic Continent
Miguel Pastorino on the State of Religion in Latin America
The growth of Pentecostal denominations and other similar groups in Latin
America is due to the "pastoral vacuum" that the Catholic Church has
suffered in the last decades.
In this interview, Miguel Ángel Pastorino, director of Uruguay's Service for
Study and Advice on Sects and New Religious Groups and member of the
bishops' National Commission of Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue,
addresses the current religious phenomenon in Latin America.
Q: In the 1980s, experts talked about a massive exodus of Latin American
Catholics to sects, going so far as to number their defection rate at 400
believers per hour.
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Latino Leaders Confront
Educational Divide
- By Juan Esparza Loera
Joe Coto, the son of a copper miner, knew early on that
his father's occupation was not the best job in the world. His father, who
only completed the fifth grade, shared that opinion.
"He practically drove me out of my home and said, 'You get out of here and
go to where you can go to college,'" recalls Soto, who went on to graduate
from San Diego State University and pursue a career in education before
being elected to the California Assembly last year.
"I focused on education because I recognized what my father told me about
the importance of education," said Soto, vice chair of the Latino
Legislative Caucus. He represents San Jose's 23rd Assembly District.
Coto's story is not unique among Latino leaders in the state.
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Teaching
Girls and Boys Differently
Psychologist-Doctor Tells Why Divergences Run Deep
Boys and girls have marked physical and psychological differences and
hence they have to be educated differently. This is the thesis of a book
published earlier this year by psychologist and family doctor Leonard Sax.
In "Why Gender Matters" (Random House), he takes issue with the modern
tendency toward gender-neutral child-rearing. According to this theory
boys and girls behave differently because of the way they are educated, or
because of cultural factors. Sax describes how in the mid-1990s he began
to see more and more young boys arrive at his office with requests for
medication, due to their supposed attention-deficit disorder.
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L.A. County
Faces Claims of Illegal
Districting
- By Miguel Loza
While Latinos now comprise 46 percent of the population
in Los Angeles County, according to 2000 U.S. Census data, this numerical
strength has not necessarily translated into voting power on the Los Angeles
County Board of Supervisors, as indicated by an official complaint lodged by
the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association (LACCEA). Only one
Latino supervisor (Gloria Molina) currently holds a seat on the Board, which
consists of only five spaces, limiting the group’s potential political
power, says the local association.
The Section 2 Federal Voting Rights complaint, originally filed on February
23, 2003, with the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Department of Justice,
by the LACCEA, working closely with the Mexican American Bar Association and
other groups, alleges that the Board’s redistricting plan, adopted in 2001,
packed Latino voters into one district (District 1) when two reasonable
compact districts could have been drawn. |
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Is GOP eroding states'
rights?
- From the Terri Schiavo case to driver's license standards and LNG
terminals, the federal government, some contend, is broadening its control
over America
- By Sean Reilly
- President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress are all in favor
of states' rights.
- Except when it comes to deciding where liquefied natural gas terminals
should go.
- Or letting Florida courts decide the fate of brain-damaged Terri
Schiavo.
- Or setting driver's license standards.
- In each of those cases this year, the White House and Republican
legislators -- including most members of Alabama's delegation -- have
acted to tighten the grip of the federal government, not loosen it.
Although they justified that course each time on the basis of specific
circumstances, some analysts see a widening disconnect with the GOP's
traditional belief in restraints on Washington's authority.
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For Gonzales, a Familiar
Cast at the Table
- Attorney General Brought Key Aides From Previous Post in White
House Counsel's Office
- By Dan Eggen
For Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, some meetings
at the Justice Department must feel similar to those he held when he was
President Bush's chief lawyer. After all, at least half a dozen of his
senior aides also worked under him when he ran the White House counsel's
office.
Former colleagues now at Justice include his chief of
staff, his deputy chief of staff, two senior counselors and the head of the
legal policy office. In addition, the Bush administration's nominee to be
Gonzales's second-in-command, Timothy E. Flanigan, also served as his White
House deputy. |
Judith Miller Goes to Jail
Editorial from The New York Times
This is a proud but awful moment for The New York Times
and its employees. One of our reporters, Judith Miller, has decided to
accept a jail sentence rather than testify before a grand jury about one of
her confidential sources. Ms. Miller has taken a path that will be lonely
and painful for her and her family and friends. We wish she did not have to
choose it, but we are certain she did the right thing.
She is surrendering her liberty in defense of a greater liberty, granted to
a free press by the founding fathers so journalists can work on behalf of
the public without fear of regulation or retaliation from any branch of
government. |
By Patrick Osio,
Jr./HispanicVista.com
By
Richard N. Baldwin T. /HispanicVista.com
By 
By
Raoul Lowery Contreras/HispanicVista.com