Sometimes called “The Region,” the northwest corner of Indiana is its own place, holding special meaning for our state’s ethnic history, labor history, religious history, and women’s history.
For example, Lake County has the highest percentage of Latinos in the state, roughly 14%. This ethnic community dates back to 1919 when U.S. Steel in Gary and Inland Steel in East Chicago imported Mexican laborers to help break the Great Steel Strike of 1919 (as told by Edward J. Escobar in Forging a Community: The Latino Experience in Northwest Indiana). Women workers from the city contributed to the steel industry during WWII; their Rosie the Riveter was Mela, Queen of the 12-Inch (Bar Mill). East Chicago remains a strong Hispanic center, with its historic Our Lady of Guadalupe parish.
Here in Montana, and across the Rocky Mountain West, the election of Barack Obama represents the startling culmination of social, cultural and political changes that have been underway in this region for many years. You’ve heard a lot of this by now: the Mountain West, increasingly populated by amenity-seeking coastal migrants and Latino immigrants, and with an independent-minded electorate that’s resistant to Republican over-reaching on social issues, is no longer solid red, but rather “in play.”
Like Hijuelos’ best-known novel, “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love” (1990), “Dark Dude” is about a Cuban living in New York City, only the protagonist is second generation and a teenager. He is also uncharacteristically fair-skinned — a “dark dude.” According to the definition that kicks off this book for readers ages 12 and up, that’s what “a male of light skin is derisively called by persons of color.”
That description most certainly applies to Rico, a 15-year-old Cuban American with blond hair, hazel eyes and freckles. The New York City teen is often jumped by hoods who think he’s white and, therefore, has money. But he doesn’t. His “Pops” works two jobs to keep the four-person family afloat, and they’re still scraping to get by because Pops likes to drink away his paychecks.
Here in “Real America,” (a.k.a. South Texas), we might enjoy breakfast tacos from Joe’s Texaco in the morning and then venture over to our favorite panaderia in the afternoon for sweet bread and coffee.
That’s hardly a news flash, but how about this: In the deep red state of Indiana, a Spanish-language radio station is handing out pan dulce at get-out-the-vote rallies for Hispanics, reports Politico.com.
Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.
Similar battles are playing out in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Utah, and Indiana, which saw its ID law upheld by the US Supreme Court in April, despite evidence that up to 43,000 citizens lacked the necessary ID—including a dozen retired nuns turned away from the polls during primary season.
WITH only two weeks to go before the election, talk has turned to the Bradley effect. The phenomenon is named for Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, who lost the 1982 California governor’s race even though exit polls predicted he’d defeat his Republican opponent, George Deukmejian. Some white people, the theory goes, tell pollsters they will vote for black candidates and then, once in the voting booth, don’t.
Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin.
Barack Obama is beating John McCain because fear trumps fear. That is, the fear of many white voters for their jobs and their homes surpasses the fear some of them feel over electing a black man.
This time, the Republicans have added another group to strip from the rolls. James Carabelli, a Republican Party chairman in Michigan, says: “We have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses.” These voters are supposed to register from their new addresses – but many are out of time, or too stressed to do it. So the Republicans have launched a national “voter challenge campaign” against honest people who have lost their homes. They know that 60 per cent of sub-prime mortgages went to black voters, and virtually everyone who lost their home is angry with the Republicans.
Tego Calderon is one of the top selling Reggaeton musicians.
All Things Considered,September 3, 2008 - Reggaeton is the biggest-selling genre of Latin music. Its blend of hip-hop, reggae and Latin rhythms has been criticized as simplistic, violent and misogynistic. But the Puerto Rican artist and others use the form to celebrate “blackness,” something rarely heard in Latin America.
Now those young immigrants have begun to tell investigators about their jobs. Some said they worked shifts of 12 hours or more, wielding razor-edged knives and saws to slice freshly killed beef. Some worked through the night, sometimes six nights a week.One, a Guatemalan named Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant’s killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week. In an affidavit, he said he was constantly tired and did not have time to do anything but work and sleep. “I was very sad,” he said, “and I felt like I was a slave.”
The second half of the concert felt more convincing than the first. After Mr. Giorgetti’s “Dialogue” came the Venezuelan-American composer Ricardo Lorenz’s “Compass Points,” the most successful piece on Sunday’s program. Each of the work’s three sections was written in a different location and reflects the composer’s state of mind and circumstances at the time. The first movement, composed in Umbria, Italy, offered a sultry canvas with passionate violin interludes. The second — both melancholy and defiant, with languid clarinet riffs — was written in Bloomington, Ind., as a tribute to the pianist and composer Robert Avalon. The frenzied, driven dance rhythms of “Scherzarengue,” the last movement, evoke a busy period in the composer’s life when he moved to East Lansing, Mich.
All I can say is, you may call Venezuelan guys wimps but don’t mess with the women!
Beyond that, the confrontation has cultural and nationalistic implications. I’ll guarantee you viewers from Central and South America will view the incident VERY differently than the average American racing fan. For many of them, it will be the domineering Ugly American attempting to bully the underdog Latin American in a very visceral way.
For more than 60 years Mexicans have followed the adventures of “Memin Pinguin.” But the dark-skinned Memin’s exaggerated features in “Memin for President” came as a shock to Houston, Texas, Wal-Mart shopper Shawnedria McGinty.
In June, an Indiana think tank introduced a plan intended to encourage more Hispanics to pursue higher education. While this may seem like something that is good for the Hispanic community, it has raised no small amount of controversy. At issue is the Sagamore Institute researchers’ recommendation that Hispanics try for two-year degrees from colleges such as Ivy Tech rather than four-year, or ev
It might come as a shock to narrow-minded folks who devalue the richness of the English language by sending thinly veiled vile attacking Hispanics and immigrants - legal and otherwise as if the two are interchangeable - but this state’s heritage, culture and economy has strong Latin overtures.Three emails - of which one came from Southern California and the other from the Midwest - sent in response to a story that stated 3,000 foreign immigrants move to San Joaquin County every year blamed much of this nation’s ills on Hispanic immigrants
But in America, at least, we have narrowed the choices down to “Latino” or “Hispanic.” Each comes loaded with political baggage. Say “Latino” to a brown-skinned person, and you might receive a snappish “I don’t speak Latin!” in response. Refer to someone as “Hispanic” and you could hear that the word refers to Spain, the country that “raped my ancestors” or “subjugated the Aztecs” or some other historical atrocity that constitutes a fresh wound to people who have taken too many poli-sci classes.
AMES, Iowa — In many parts of the country, the idea that all illegal immigrants should be arrested and deported is popular, but in the wake of the Postville and Marshalltown raids, perhaps the solution isn’t as simple as it may seem. If this plan were enacted, there would be serious social and economic impacts in many communities across the nation, according to Liesl Eathington, coordinator of Iowa State University’s Regional Capacity Analysis Program (ReCAP). “I think there is a misconception in many communities that these immigrants are taking American dollars and sending it all back home,” Eathington said. “This really isn’t the case, because these people still pay sales taxes, rent and buy food. In some towns, they make up a significant percent of revenue that goes back into the community.”
national polls show McCain-Obama a close race, and the electoral map points to critical problems for Barack.He seeks, for example, to target Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. But in all three the Hispanic vote may be decisive. And Barack was beaten by Hillary two to one among Hispanics, and between these two largest of America’s minorities, rivalry and tension are real and rising.
Contributors to the new anthology “Primera Pagina: Poetry from the Latino Heartland” — including one with ties to Wichita — say they want to express and draw attention to the Hispanic experience in the middle of the country.”I don’t think Hispanics in the Midwest have really been able to have a voice,” said Marcelo Xavier Trillo, 30, who was raised in Wichita and participates in the Kansas City-based Latino Writers Collective.
Gilchrist, a former California accountant, founded the project in October 2004. In two years, the grass-roots border-control group had grown to boast more than 200 chapters across the country.Today, Gilchrist says, a host of internal problems are bringing the movement to its knees.More than 20 chapters, including the Skokie-based Illinois Minuteman project, have disbanded, leaving fewer than 180 in operation.Dozens of chapters are fighting with one another and vying for attention, he said.
Last week, hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, flanked by helicopters, a trail of SUVs and a convoy of buses, descended on the tiny town of Postville, Iowa. They set up a perimeter around the 60-acre kosher meat-processing plant operated by the global giant Agriprocessors, Inc. and conducted the largest workplace raid in U.S. history. Around 400 people were arrested — most from Mexico, Eastern Europe and Guatemala — representing 40 percent of the plant’s workers and 17 percent of the town’s population. Warrants for another 300 were issued.Some would call it a victory for law and order. But a closer look at the showy example of “getting tough on illegals” offers some insight into what immigration restrictionists are really asking for when they call for more immigration enforcement.
We have lost yet another legend, one of the towering figures in this music. Israel López Cachao died Saturday, March 22, 2008, in Coral Gables, Florida. He leaves behind a legacy few can touch. Not only was he literally part of the beginnings of modern Cuban dance music, he played a huge role in its ongoing creation. First, he and his brother Orestes López helped modernize the danzón while playing with Arcaño y Sus Maravillas, and then may well have created another genre, the mambo, through the use of syncopated tumbaos which later were adapted by pianist Dámaso Pérez Prado and applied to a jazz band format. Cachao then went on to record his legendary jam sessions with illustrious figures such as Aristedes Soto (Tata Güines), Alejandro “El Negro” Vivar, Guillermo Barreto and Rogelio “Yeyito” Iglesias, among others. After leaving Cuba as an exile in 1962, he joined the band of another legend, Tito Rodríguez, and accompanied a host of other legends, later recording a number of solo descarga albums in the 1970s. The 1980s saw him in relative obscurity, playing with local bands in Miami, until a famous admirer, actor Andy García, directed a documentary about his life, Como su ritmo no hay dos, which also included a special concert in his honor. Cachao continued to record in the 1990s, right up until 2004 with Ahora sí, his last album, consistently producing superb danzones (his passion) and rousing descargas which always were characterized not only by turbocharged playing, but also exquisitely tasteful phrasing. Indeed, his recordings could be considered musical guidebooks for all aspiring bass players and other instrumentalists who play Latin music.
According to a radio report on NPR yesterday, Latinos make up about five percent of the total population in Indiana. According to the same radio report, most of these Latinos are Mexican and Puerto Ricans.
4.) In the 19th and 20th century, also came Blacks from the South in at least two migrations; one via fleeing, and a second one when they came up as free people in droves for the jobs in factory and on farm. They and their offspring tend to be liberal in social justice issues, touchingly willing to go to war, and ultra conservative about gays and traditional marriage. They tend to be for the worker. And unions were built of the bones and blood of blacks and the eastern European. German, Italian and Irish immigrants.
Former Fort Wayne City Councilman Dr. Tom Hayhurst raised the most popular topic of the rally- namely, immigration. Candelaria Reardon said Obama offers the best hope to address immigration issues. She said Obama’s “priority is to safeguard the borders.”According to Candelaria Reardon said Obama favors a plan of “passion that does not separate families and does not take ten years to navigate.”She shared how difficult an issue this is for her. Candelaria Reardon said she is the “only Latino in the Assembly or Senate in Indianapolis.”I put aside that it (immigration reform) targets Latinos and I know it will apply to all,” she explained. “We have won small battles but we have not won the war.”Candelaria Reardon urged that action “at the federal level recognize that this is much bigger (than a Latino border issue).”
