Hispanic Museums and Memorial Day – Advertising Age – The Big Tent

I was perusing Hispanic Tips’ Blogante News when an article from La Prensa San Diego jumped out at me. The headline read: “Bush Signs Legislation for National Museum of the American Latino.”

My first reaction was a sense of pride and a desire to show all kinds of support. After all, shouldn’t there be a National Museum of the American Latino? Then, I started to hear voices. Not the multiple personality kind of voices, but rather the voices of non-profit board and committee members from several other Latino museum projects that either have opened or have tried to open throughout the U.S. over the past decade or two. “*

and this great paragraph that perfectly summarizes a discussion I had yesterday:

“Back to the voices. At first, they are full of pride and enthusiasm. Soon, however, these board, committee and staff members are angry and frustrated. They divide up into factions; factions that are an unfortunate, but perhaps unavoidable part of the U.S. Latino experience. One voice drowns out the other. “It’s too Mexican.” “It’s not Mexican enough.” “Too chilango.” “Not Mexican-American enough.” “Too Cuban.” “Why no Brazilians? Just because we speak Portuguese?” “Is the Chicano movement represented?” “Don’t use the word Chicano.” “Too much Spanish.” “Too much English.” “Spanglish? You can’t be serious!” “Too brown.” “Too white.” “What about black Hispanics. And Asian?” “Too upscale.” “Too downscale.” “Too foreign born.” “Too U.S. born.” “Spain doesn’t count.” “Spain is the motherland.” “It can’t be called Hispanic.” “It can’t be called Latino.” And on and on and on. Y más y más y más.

• LatAm Immigrants Are Changing Spain, Sociologist Says
• Pro-Castro mob attacks spouse of top Cuban blogger – Yoani Sánchez
• Police in Peru say gang members killed people to drain their fat for cosmetics
• Democrats and Republicans deployed their heavy artillery Thursday in a heated congressional hearing to debate a bill seeking to end the travel ban to Cuba.
• Part of a Cuban blogger’s essay that advocates lifting the ban on U.S. travel to Cuba was read aloud at a House Foreign Affairs committee hearing. – Yoani Sánchez
• Obama answers top Cuban blogger – Yoani Sanchez
• The Cuban band Septeto Nacional de Ignacio Piñeiro can legitimately claim to be inventors of salsa. But it last played in the United States when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, and there was no telling when it might be able to return — until the very slightest hint of a thaw in cultural relations between the United States and Cuba quietly brought the band to New York early this month.
• 70% of Cuba’s Farmland Threatened by Erosion
• Who seriously wants the Cuban trade embargo?
• Report: Cuba’s human rights as abused under Raúl Castro as Fidel
• Peru: Documentary about the “Diablada” dance will be done in Puno
• The Cuban ties that bind, 50 years on – Visiting her father’s homeland under newly relaxed travel restrictions is both invigorating and saddening.
• Poll: Cubans ‘frustrated’ over life in Cuba – A poll conducted in Cuba shows residents unhappy with their government and pessimistic about the economy.
• Northern Mexico’s Yaqui Indians buried their lost warriors after a two-year effort to rescue the remains from New York’s American Museum of Natural History, where the victims of one of North America’s last Indian massacres lay in storage for more than a century.
• ‘The African Presence in México’ – Anacostia museum mounts border-crossing mission
• Founded in 1973, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus is a 501(c)(6) non-profit, non-partisan organization composed of 44 members of the Texas House of Representatives committed to addressing the issues that Latinos face across the state of Texas.
• Supporters of tough U.S. sanctions against the Cuban government have given more than $10 million to congressional campaigns over the last seven years
• Peruvian archaeologists have reached the conclusion that the Incas decapitated their enemies to use their heads as offerings after finding three skulls in a ceremonial vessel in the southeastern city of Cuzco.
• Few Latinos in leadership positions at California nonprofits – hold only 6% of executive director positions and 9% of board seats but are 36% of the state’s population
• Fidel Castro’s long goodbye – The ailing former leader of Cuba remains true to his word: ‘I am a revolutionary, and revolutionaries do not retire.’