Leave Your Name at the Border

“AT the Fresno airport, as I made my way to the gate, I heard a name over the intercom. The way the name was pronounced by the gate agent made me want to see what she looked like. That is, I wanted to see whether she was Mexican. Around Fresno, identity politics rarely deepen into exacting terms, so to say “Mexican” means, essentially, “not white.” The slivered self-identifications Chicano, Hispanic, Mexican-American and Latino are not part of everyday life in the Valley. You’re either Mexican or you’re not. If someone wants to know if you were born in Mexico, they’ll ask. Then you’re From Over There ”” de allá. And leave it at that.

The gate agent, it turned out, was Mexican. Well-coiffed, in her 30s, she wore foundation that was several shades lighter than the rest of her skin. It was the kind of makeup job I’ve learned to silently identify at the mall when I’m with my mother, who will say nothing about it until we’re back in the car. Then she’ll stretch her neck like an ostrich and point to the darkness of her own skin, wondering aloud why women try to camouflage who they are.”

• Native American corporations, particularly an array of Alaska Native Corporations, have become major defense and homeland security contractors – responsible for a wide range of national security operations, including electronic surveillance on the border, running immigrant detention centers, and supplying security and other services in U.S. overseas wars and energy exploitation.
• In Mexico, fears of a ‘lost generation’ – Violence among young soars as drug cartels recruit more minors
• Alexandra Limón is heading to Fresno to become nightside general assignment reporter for KGPE-47, the CBS affiliate. – leaves Telemundo in Tucson
• The Prevention Research Center (PRC) in St. Louis is launching a multinational research project focused on preventing the leading causes of death in Hispanics in the United States and Latin America. – will conduct a four-year, $2.8 million effort to apply and adapt evidence-based strategies for preventing heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity in the United States, Mexico and Brazil
• 3 doctors and a nurse have been arrested for allegedly selling newborns after telling mothers their babies had died at a private hospital in Mexico City
• A top Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) official confirmed that officers were conducting a training exercise at CSUN that involved members of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) earlier this semester. – Members said they were targeted and profiled by LAPD officers during their first meeting on Sept. 2. & that they were followed, harassed and intimidated by “undercover police officers” during a ceremony to welcome first-time freshmen to their organization.
• Native Americans Profit from Abusive Immigrant Detention and Billions of Dollars in National Security Contracts
• A soldier every 3 feet on the US/Mexico border = 6,930,880 soldiers – Immigration Anecdotes
• Pain Of Global Downturn Persists In Mexico
• U.S. Woes Cut Cash Flow From Mexican Migrants
• Quepasa and Mexico’s Tourism Board Announce Social Media Marketing Initiative
• Flooding after days of heavy rain along Mexico’s Gulf Coast has forced more than 44,000 people from their homes
• Reeling Mexico hopes travel deals bring back the tourists
• Grasshoppers? Eew! But chocolate? Yum! – The youngsters get a taste of multicultural Mexico in Oaxaca.
• A little more than 1 million people work in the illegal drug trade including “around 200,000” women, according to the COCyP association of peasant organizations, based on police estimates.
• More than 200 bodies recovered at Arizona/Sonora border
• The leader of a Mexican farmworkers’ organization and 14 other people were killed in a mass shooting in the northern Mexico state of Sonora
• Mexico’s death museum lives up to morbid name in Aguascalientes, Mexico
• Rights activists in the northern Mexican border city of Tijuana have hung 5,100 small white crosses on the fence straddling the U.S. frontier to commemorate migrants who have died trying to cross.
• Remembrance at the border: Migrants killed while crossing remembered – About 200 attended the vigil hosted by the Border Network for Human Rights to honor the memory of undocumented immigrants who have died while trying to cross the border.