Tomás' Picks

One of my biggest gripes about the market is that it seems like we’re always talking to ourselves. By we, I mean U.S. Hispanic ad agencies. Every Hispanic industry event it seems like we’re preaching to the choir. We need an advocate that spreads the word down the client halls and throughout corporate America.

But that’s just part of it. In my opinion, the true lack of voice in the market has to do with the work. Over the last few years, the Hispanic market has improved creatively. We are finally no longer just a blip on the screen at major award festivals. Latino agencies are consistently having a presence at Cannes, Clio and FIAP.

Yet with all this success, we have yet to create our own voice for the U.S. Hispanic market. Today, the voice of the U.S. Hispanic market is what I call borrowed interest. There is some great work, but the best spots tend to be very South American.”*

The 37-year-old Latino from Logan Square represents the type of educators being funneled into the system by Grow Your Own Teachers. GYO was established by the state Legislature in 2004 to prepare 1,000 new teachers by 2016 to work in schools with disadvantaged populations and high turnover rates.

Now seeking from the Legislature a $1.5 million increase in its $3 million appropriation of the last two years, GYO partners community groups, colleges and local school districts to recruit candidates of diverse backgrounds to work in schools in their own communities statewide. About 545 candidates currently are in the pipeline — 87 percent of them minorities.”*

Have you ever wondered why so many women crowned Miss Universe are from Latin American countries? Dr. Manny Alvarez, the senior medical correspondent on Fox News, said, “The women look that way because they eat the seven Latin power foods.”

Alvarez, the author of “The Hot Latin Diet,” said there is a fast track to that bombshell body.

“This diet helps women stay slim and sexy and maintain their natural curves,” Alvarez said.

The book is geared to women, and the recipes are designed by Hispanic female chefs, and promotes fewer carbs, flavors and color of food (no white), along with the balance of exercise. The bottom line is keeping a good-looking body while having fun in the kitchen.”*

Pastel de Tres Leches. Just mention those four words to those who have tasted the traditional “cake of three milks,” and they often become both gaga and wary — as if it were an intoxicating drug they had to quit but are unable to forget.

At its most basic, Tres Leches is just a big, luscious sponge. Once you bake the dense cake, you soak it in a mixture of sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and cream.

Some cooks top it with whipped cream. Others shellac it with shiny meringue. It seems as innocent as a wedding cake!”*

A growing number of Latino consumers in San Diego County own computers and connect to the Internet, and the majority absorb media and advertising in a half-and-half mix of English and Spanish, according to a survey of Latinos in 18 ZIP codes in the county.

However, home ownership in the region’s still-costly real estate market remained out of reach for many respondents.

The San Diego “Ask Hispanics” survey was conducted this spring by Meneses Research & Associates, a San Diego-based firm that does market research in cities with large Latino populations. The firm conducted similar studies in San Diego in 2006 and 2004.”*

The Des Moines Register broke a story yesterday about how, prior to a raid by federal immigration authorities on a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, on Monday, the Postville Community School District was given a subpoena to turn over detailed information about students to the Iowa Division of Labor Services. The subpoena included a mandate to provide the names of students working at two apartment buildings that had been owned by a Postville school guidance counselor and sold to the CEO of Agriprocessors Inc., the same company that owns the plant that was raided this week.

I was curious if there was a connection between the subpoena and the immigration raid. In other words, did any information provided by school district officials, when they complied with the subpoena, get into the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents?… “*

In Peru, however, some people depend on resources they can find near where they live– and sometimes this means in or near parks. Without the support of these people countless opportunities to protect ecosystems, animals, plants, and cultures might be lost. Legal protections for parks generally go ignored by people who are in need and often such laws are challenging if not impossible to enforce in remote areas anyway. The key for conservation in Peru and elsewhere seems to rest upon finding a middle ground upon where communities choose to help protect natural resources, while also benefiting from the use of these resources in a sustainable manner.

So how have Peru and countless other countries tried to address this challenge? By inviting people who have a stake in national parks and other protected areas to participate in the creation of plans that will guide how these places are protected and utilized for economic gain. While sometimes extraordinarily successful, it’s not surprising that many of these management plans often fall short, and do not end up accomplishing their goals. The public participation processes used to make management plans are sometimes utilized by park managers as a manipulative means to have communities accept already decided upon objectives, or the goals agreed upon during the processes are not easily achieved or are poorly funded. But these failures might be a thing of the past, as researchers in Peru’s Cordillera Azul National Park have perhaps revolutionized conservation through an innovative strategy. It seems to have empowered communities in the buffer zones of the park and won their confidence and support.”*

Unlike the rest of her high-fashion associates, Venezuelan supermodel Patricia Velasquez isn’t spending the springtime under a barrage of hairstylists and stylist fittings.

Instead, she is at the helm of the Wayuu Taya Foundation, a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization that since 2002 has worked to improve the living and educational standards of Latin America’s poorest indigenous people.”*

After waiting 10 years to be called up from the minors, Luis Maza was understandably eager to put on a big league uniform for the first time. Which is why he showed up early at Milwaukee’s Miller Park on Monday.

Problem was, the Dodgers weren’t scheduled to play there until Tuesday.

“A guy met me at the door and said, ‘No, today St. Louis is playing. Tomorrow your team plays,’ ” Maza said.

So a stadium attendant put him back in a taxi and sent him off to the Dodgers team hotel. But give Maza points for enthusiasm.”*

What Hunter and his employees are hearing from the Latino community is painfully obvious, but not easily deliverable under the MLS structure. He speaks of getting a player who will help “move the needle.”

“They want players from Mexico that are young, that are exciting on the field,” Hunter said. “If I could wave a magic wand, they’d say, ‘Well, next month bring us (Omar) Bravo, (Ramon) Morales, (Oswaldo) Sanchez.’ And then you’re a smart guy. As you know in MLS, you just can’t make moves like that.”*

The Jassos exemplify the rapidly changing demographics in rural West Texas. While 33 rural counties in the South Plains/Panhandle region lost population during the first six years of this decade, in some, including Crosby County, the Hispanic population is growing and it’s now the majority group.

For instance, Crosby County lost 7.4 percent of its population during the period, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet, Hispanics became the largest ethnic group in the county and now narrowly outnumber Anglos, 3,175 to 2,946.

“This region is changing before our eyes,” said Heflin, whose House District 85 includes the largest percentage of Spanish-surnamed residents in all of the six House districts in the Panhandle and the South Plains. “Many people have left … so if it wasn’t for Hispanics many more West Texas communities would be like ghost towns.”"*

An executive order signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano has prompted state police to cancel a $1.6 million agreement with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and, instead, use the money to create a fugitive task force.

The move effectively stripped two squads of Sheriff’s Office deputies from a statewide multiagency team designed to go after crimes dealing with human smuggling. It also took away Arpaio’s ability to tap some of the squad members to supplement immigration sweeps at the state’s expense.

In response, Sheriff Joe Arpaio accused the governor of orchestrating with others to pull the money from his department as political payback. House Speaker Jim Weiers, R-Phoenix, meanwhile, called for an audit of the Department of Public Safety.”*

Satellite imagery obtained from NASA will help archeologist Bill Middleton peer into the ancient Mexican past. In a novel archeological application, multi- and hyperspectral data will help build the most accurate and most detailed landscape map that exists of the southern state of Oaxaca, where the Zapotec people formed the first state-level and urban society in Mexico.

If you ask someone off the street about Mexican archeology, they’ll say Aztec, Maya. Sometimes they’ll also say Inca, which is the wrong continent, but you’ll almost never hear anyone talk about the Zapotecs,” says Middleton, acting chair of the Department of Material Culture Sciences and professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rochester Institute of Technology. “They had the first writing system, the first state society, the first cities. And they controlled a fairly large territory at their Zenith—250 B.C. to 750 A.D.””*

A human smuggler who caused the death of 10 illegal immigrants when he crashed a sport utility vehicle while fleeing from U.S. Border Patrol agents has been sentenced to life in federal prison.

Adan Pineda Doval, 22, a Mexican citizen, was convicted by a Phoenix jury in October of 10 counts of transporting illegal immigrants causing death and two lesser charges.

A federal judge handed down the sentence Thursday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix.”*

You can walk to the U.S. border, Francelia Menchaca’s immigration lawyer advised her, but don’t put your fingers through its fence. It may hinder her immigration paperwork, the lawyer said.

But when, after a year apart, Menchaca’s mother arrived in her flowered straw hat here Saturday and put her small, wrinkled hands up to the cast-iron gate, Menchaca reached out and touched them.

“Were you anxious to touch my hand?” Menchaca asked in Spanish. Tears stood on her lashes.”*

An innovative exhibition that traces the genesis and evolution of Chicano and Latino music over the past 70 years is currently on view at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is accessible via telephone. “Sounds Latino!” continues through June 30 and highlights renowned singers and groups whose papers and other collections are represented in the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives ( CEMA ) located in UCSB’s Davidson Library.

The bolero, mambo, corrido, swing, boogie, Tex-Mex, and even punk rock are woven into the fabric of Latino cultural heritage, and the multidisciplinary exhibition engages visitors through the visual and theater arts as well as recorded music.

“We bring to life some of the music that many people may not have known was part of the historical chronology of Latino music over the last seven decades,” said Salvador Güereña, director of CEMA. “It’s important for younger people to know the impact it had on music across the spectrum.”

Vintage recordings were brought back to life for the exhibition –– which also includes interpretive texts, photos, artifacts, and historical documents –– and Güereña included the telephone component because he wanted “Sounds Latino!” to appeal to young people and engage them through the music. Over 40 music selections can be accessed by telephone, including pieces by Lalo Guerrero, whose archives are housed at UCSB; Tito Puente; Perez Prado; Adelina García; Ritchie Valens; Don Tosti; and the Chicano punk rock group The Brat.

“Not everyone has an iPod or an iPhone, but pretty much everyone has a cell phone,” he said. “Also, Latino music lovers aren’t limited by the four walls of the exhibition room. They can pick up a phone anywhere and at any time call in for a bolero or mambo or boogie and listen to their heart’s content.”

More information about the exhibition, including directions for accessing the recordings, is available at http://cemaweb.library.ucsb.edu/cema_exh_present.html”*

COOL - Use your cell phone and enter phone number (805) 357-4694, wait for prompt, and then enter selection number followed by the pound sign. These are mainly vintage recordings transferred from original disks, including hisses and pops. Go to this page to see what you can listen to.

Catherine: The more similar your background, the easier the relationship. Easy is great, but it doesn’t always mean better. My Colombian mother married my American father. Thirty-three years later, my father still loves the Latin flair my mother brings to our household. My mother loves his stable personality. Their differences have caused plenty of headaches and fights, but they also bring a richness that I appreciate.

I encourage couples to be honest about differences. Latin families like to stick together. Can your non-Latino love celebrate having parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and neighbors involved in daily life? Cultural differences can cause problems because there is no easy way around them.”*

Thanks to an undocumented friend, filmmaker Christopher Zalla got to meet and hang out with a bunch of workers at a Brooklyn restaurant, most of whom were Mexican.

“I got to hear a similar storyline coming from them,” says the 33-year old Zalla, whose “Sangre de Mi Sangre (Blood of My Blood),” winner of the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, opens Friday.

“Their plan was to work six or seven days a week, save money for 15 or 20 years, and then return home and retire relatively well off.””*

What do we make of this? That some myths and definitions about the Hispanic community in the U.S. are not holding up, and that assumptions about the future of immigration from Mexico should be reconsidered.

The most prevalent myth holds that the growth of the Latino community in the United States is driven by immigration. That’s partially true. The new, complete truth is that U.S. Latino population growth is now mostly homegrown, red-blooded, apple pie (or empanada de camote) American.”*

Under conventional economic logic, Mr. León is uncompetitive. His yields are just a fraction of what mechanized agriculture churns out from the vast expanses of the Great Plains.

But to him, that is beside the point.

The Mixteca highlands here in the state of Oaxaca are burdened with some of the most barren earth in Mexico, the work of more than five centuries of erosion that began even before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers, their goats and their cattle. The scuffed hillsides look as though some ancient giant had hacked at them, opening gashes in the white and yellow rock.

Over the past two decades, Mr. León and other farmers have worked to reforest and reclaim this parched land, hoping to find a way for people to stay and work their farms instead of leaving for jobs in cities and in the United States.”*

Five Latina political scientists, all of them trailblazers in their own field, profile Latina women who were the first to hold key elected and appointed positions in Texas in the recently published book “Políticas” (University of Texas Press, $19.95 paperback).

The book originated in 1998 when the authors participated in a women’s study panel at the University of Texas at San Antonio.”*

The curandera is weary from work. Three, four, five times a day, the immigrant farm workers knock on her apartment door, begging her to cure their ailments.

They complain of indigestion, of rashes, of post-traumatic panic attacks. Then there are the house calls that compel her to crate up her potions and herbs and drive across town, often after midnight, to escape the notice of immigration police.

“I’ve done so many cures that I’m exhausted; it gives me no time to rest,” said Herminia L. Arenas, 55, the curandera, or traditional healer, who has practiced in this Central Valley town since migrating 14 years ago from Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. “I want to retire, but I feel like I was sent here to help these people.” “*

Justeen Mancha’s dream of becoming a psychologist was born of the tropical heat and exploitation that have shaped farmworker life around Reidsville, Georgia, for centuries. The wiry, freckle-faced 17-year-old high school junior has toiled in drought-dry onion fields to help her mother, Maria Christina Martinez. But early one September morning in 2006, Mancha’s dream was abruptly deferred.

From the living room of the battered trailer she and her mother call home, Mancha described what happened when she came out of the shower that morning. “My mother went out, and I was alone,” she said. “I was getting ready for school, getting dressed, when I heard this noise. I thought it was my mother coming back.” She went on in the Tex-Mex Spanish-inflected Georgia accent now heard throughout Dixie: “Some people were slamming car doors outside the trailer. I heard footsteps and then a loud boom and then somebody screaming, asking if we were ‘illegals,’ ‘Mexicans.’ These big men were standing in my living room holding guns. One man blocked my doorway. Another guy grabbed a gun on his side. I freaked out. ‘Oh, my God!’ I yelled.”
“*

Damariz Nunez is Colombian at heart. She shops at Latino grocery stores for produce to cook the dishes she enjoyed as a child. She speaks Spanish, her mother tongue, at home or with friends.

She enjoys dancing to the music of her native land.

But since moving to the United States from Barranquilla , her hometown, more than 20 years ago, she has made an effort to learn U.S. history, to speak and write English, and to follow Florida and national politics.”*

In North Texas, mariachi groups ran music marathons Sunday, traveling from homes to churches – and even to a cemetery – to show North Texas mothers how much someone loves them.

“It’s something beautiful. It comes from our hearts, from our souls, from our feelings, from our culture,” said Hector Murillo, who plays trumpet with Dallas group Mariachi Jalisciense (as in Jalisco, the Mexican state that’s at the heart of mariachi music).

“The day seems long, but it’s really very short because we’re going from job to job to job and before you know it, the sun goes down and we’re still playing.”"*