latiNOhoosier

Henry Ford’s miniature America in the jungle attracted a slew of workers. Local laborers were offered a wage of thirty-seven cents a day to work on the fields of Fordlândia, which was about double the normal rate for that line of work. But Ford’s effort to transplant America– what he called “the healthy lifestyle”– was not limited to American buildings, but also included mandatory “American” lifestyle and values. The plantation’s cafeterias were self-serve, which was not the local custom, and they provided only American fare such as hamburgers. Workers had to live in American-style houses, and they were each assigned a number which they had to wear on a badge– the cost of which was deducted from their first paycheck. Brazilian laborers were also required to attend squeaky-clean American festivities on weekends, such as poetry readings, square-dancing, and English-language sing-alongs.

The hiring as head coach of Curt Onalfo, a former D.C. player, assistant coach, and director of youth development, was hailed at a Tuesday press conference as confirmation of the club’s Hispanic persona as well as its ambition. Onalfo speaks fluent Spanish, played professionally in Mexico, and as a cancer survivor has conquered tough opposition on a very personal level.

Three years spent as an assistant coach with the U.S. national team and former D.C. coach Bruce Arena certainly doesn’t hurt.

It is a freezing night in Indiana. A light drizzle is turning to ice as a crowd of 1,000 people shiver and huddle under umbrellas in a shopping mall car park outside the small Midwestern town of Noblesville. But no one is complaining.

“I came to hear the truth get told,” says Roy Hendrickson, a moustached 66-year-old retiree from the town of Lebanon, about 30 miles away. “I want to see her go rogue!”

Poverty rates are high here, college graduates few. Drug use is rampant, several said, and many residents live in ramshackle trailer homes strewn about the hills that surround the checkerboard streets of the town. In these depressed times, there is little to cheer but the high school basketball team.

Surely by now you know that the greatest crisis facing this country isn’t the economy or war, but the perilous states of the Michigan and Notre Dame football teams. It’s gotten obnoxious, the overwrought attention these once-storied, now-torpid programs still command, and no one’s stepping up and offering the smoothest, wisest solution to their troubles:

Merger! The Notre Michigan Irish Wolverines.

Please don’t laugh. We’re as serious as Bill Belichick on fourth-and-two (or as Yale was on fourth-and-22 Saturday in what will forever be known as the Harvard-”Fail” game).

About 200 Washington University seniors were attending Mother’s Night Club Original bar on Saturday night as part of their class trip to Chicago, sponsored by the Senior Class Council. According to Senior Class President Fernando Cutz, the six black students were told they would not be allowed in because of their failure to comply with the bar’s “baggy jeans” policy. A few white students who had already been admitted then came out to demonstrate that their jeans were more “baggy,” but the black students were still denied admission.

Hoosiers have a history of soccer dominance. The Indiana University men’s soccer team is one of the most successful in NCAA history, having won six NCAA National Championships - including three back-to-back wins.

Indiana Youth Soccer proudly calls 60,000 young players its own - with 8,000 coaches, 3,800 referees and thousands of volunteers.

DaMarcus Beasley, a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, has played as a midfielder for the Chicago Fire as well as multiple international teams and the USMNT. He most recently appeared with the Rangers in the Scottish Cup.

Indianapolis also is home to FC Indiana of the NPSL. [Sign the petition today]

Even after Juana Watson came to Indiana from Mexico, became a professor and achieved the American dream, she dared to dream once more — that her new and old homelands might work together for the mutual benefit of their citizens.

Last week, more than 30 years after Watson arrived in Indiana from the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, the two states cemented a long-developing relationship that she helped create.

In his second season with the Lugnuts, having experienced a taste of American life, Chavez was able to help his four countrymen and teammates.

“He said, ‘It was easier, because I had English to share,’ ” said Carol Walker, Chavez’s host for the summer.

Some of them are already rich from their signing bonuses. Some are fast-rising prospects who could make millions very soon. Some are simply playing every day with the hope of following other Venezuelans’ paths to the major leagues.

The rate increased in all regions from 2007 to 2008, except in the Midwest, in which the rate declined slightly to 0.23% from 0.25%. Among states, Georgia and New Mexico showed the hightest entrepreneurial rates at 0.59% and 0.58% respectively, while Pennsylvania and Missouri showed the lowest rates, 0.14% and 0.15%, respectively. The cities with the highest rates were Atlanta and Phoenix, while Philadelphia and Seattle scored at the bottom.

Entrepreneurial Spirit Still Alive And Well - Venture Capital Dispatch - WSJ

During the short time Ritchie Valens was able to share his music with a national audience he had amassed four hit singles, appeared on “American Bandstand” twice and embarked on a tour of the Midwest with other rising rockers.

His career spanned just eight months, but in that short time Valens, a Mexican-American kid who would sometimes do migrant work to support his family, was able to blend the music of his ancestors with the rock ’n’ roll he taught himself to play on a second-hand guitar.

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.

Meandering Indiana - 9 « Hoosierati

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

Tags: misguided, hispanic, education

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.”

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.

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.

Tags: emmerging, immigration, police

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.

The Face of Indiana Latinos » VivirLatino

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.

Tags: Hoosier, Oddities

News accounts and early analysis claim that Hillary Clinton is favored in Puerto Rico even though there has been no polling on the island so far. Clinton certainly does better in primary states than in caucus states, so the change to a primary will help her. More importantly, the press notes how strongly Clinton has run among Latinos in other contests and assumes the same will hold in Puerto Rico. This ignores one big fact: Puerto Ricans are not like other Latinos.

Tags: Clinton, Obama, Puerto Rico

I knew then that I could not condense any of what I had into a 400 or 500 word story. How could I? Each person’s response was different and unique – a story itself. These responses were the voices of people, the voices of Latinos/Hispanics who have the right to be heard, as anyone else does. Read their stories.

Tags: iupui, latino, hispanic

One small decision in high school transformed James Whipper into the person he is today - a legend in the hip-hop world.agreeing to be a part of a hip-hop group in the 1970s with his friends, the Monroe resident began a 30-year career in the music industry. He was inducted as an honorarium into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 as the first Latino hip-hop rap artist.

Tags: latino, hip-hop

In 2001, shortly after Sept. 11, the second in command of Martinsville’s police force, assistant chief Dennis Nail, wrote a letter racially insensitive letter to the Reporter-Times. His words, in reality, were a clumsy and absurdly ignorant expression of hostility toward non-Christians and non-whites. That same public statement included another clumsy expression of hostility toward homosexuals - a group of people who, like any others, drive cars and could easily find themselves in Martinsville with flashing lights behind them. It was a warning: Get out of my country; stay out of my town.

Tags: Martinsville, Indiana

Larry Hartwig knows what it’s like to have constituents ruffled – or downright angry – over their Spanish-speaking neighbors. In Addison, Ill, a middle-class town just outside Chicago where Mr. Hartwig is mayor, roughly one-third of the population is Latino. “There’s a perception that if you have a lot of minorities, it’s a bad community,” he says. “We have our share of tension.” But instead of taking the route of nearby communities that have enacted laws hostile to immigrants, Addison has, among other projects, set up a resource center in a Latino neighborhood that offers everything from ESL and computer literacy classes to a food pantry.

Some cities reach out to illegal immigrants | csmonitor.com

That would be “race” in Spanish, and while Robert Montalvo began Raza Clothing as a way to make money, it was also as a way to say, “This is me. This is my heritage. And I’m proud of it.”Montalvo, 35, of East Lansing has taken one of the most universal items, the T-shirt, and given it his own meaning.

Tags: t-shirt, design

IN THE PAST few weeks as I listened on radio and watched on TV the seemingly endless discussions of the Michael Vick dogfighting case, I have heard many popular stereotypes of “bloodsport” being a part of this country’s ethnic minority culture - dogfighting being designated as arising from the “black” or “African-American” culture and cockfighting coming from “Latino” or “Hispanic” culture. Throughout these discussions I was reminded of one of the favorite relatives of my childhood, a cousin of my father’s known to our family as “Uncle Jim.” Proud to claim him as my own “uncle,” I was entranced by this eloquent southern man - an honorary “Kentucky Colonel” and white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in good standing - when he came up from Louisville to take his own fighting cocks to do battle with their Hoosier counterparts in barns and back roads in rural Indiana.

Bloodsport and stereotypes - The Boston Globe

technorati tags:fighting, cocks, rural, Indiana

Taco Bell, Dora the Explorer and even Napoleon Dynamite have Spanish influence. How much has the Latin American culture influenced the United States of America? Gerardo T. Cummings, Assistant Professor of the ISU Department of Languages, Literature, and Linguistics, explored this very topic Wednesday evening in Root Hall. In a room crammed with both students and faculty, Cummings described the history of the term “latino,” which could be traced to mean speakers of Latin languages, or Romance languages.

HispanicTrending: Speech on Latino prevalence in American culture opens eyes

technorati tags:term, latino

As many Great Plains and Midwest communities continue down the slippery slope of depopulation, they grasp for any kind of development. That’s why industrial livestock operations and corn ethanol plants are so popular these days.Yet some of these communities already have a resource that could help stop the out-migration hemorrhaging and even give them a much-needed transfusion: immigrants.

Tags: depopulation, midwest, greatplains

For those who are unfamiliar, Palabra Pura features Chicano and Latino poets reading work in Spanish, English and a combination of the two languages. The series offers Chicago’s large Spanish-speaking population, the third largest in the United States, a venue to read their poetry as originally composed and helps audiences learn more about the strong tradition of poetry in Spanish.