Tomás' Picks

To solve the chronic teacher shortage problem in its public schools, Chicago is reaching deep into its own neighborhoods.

Ten years ago, Latina mothers were actively participating in a thriving parent mentor program in Chicago’s north side community of Logan Square. They were trained and placed in classrooms to help a teacher for about two hours a day.

While motivated mothers were doing good work in the local schools with no intention of leaving, for certified classroom teachers it was a revolving door. So new teachers had to be hired to replace them, but the newcomers too had no long-term plans to stay.”*

AAP, Borders and the Latina organization Las Comadres have teamed up to create a Latino book club that will meet at select Borders stores in eight states. The club will select and read an English-language book by a Latina or Latino author each month, beginning in June.

Las Comadres Para Las Americas is an eight-year-old nationwide grassroots group of Latinas that started in Austin, Tex., and is now in 60 U.S. cities with 10,000 members. The book club grew out of a series of successful monthly teleconferences hosted by the Las Comadres network, with each teleconference featuring an author. The first live event was held at the Borders’ Columbus Circle location in New York last year and the selection was Broken Paradise by Cecilia Samartin (Washington Square Press). Starting next month, live events will take place at Borders stores in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Texas and Utah, each one run by two Comadres members.”*

A major survey released by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) today gauged Mexican attitudes on the impact of remittances sent by their co- nationals living in the U.S. Remittances are defined as moneys earned and sent back to family or other organizations.

The TRPI study revealed how positively these remittances from the U.S. to Mexico are perceived. In this groundbreaking study, a nationally representative sample (N = 1000, error margin +/-3.1%) of Mexican nationals were interviewed to determine the impact of immigrant remittances.

Findings:

• Remittances are part of the fabric of everyday life for many families in Mexico: 32% of the respondents have received one to two remittances in the past year; 35% have received three to five remittances; and 33% have received six or more.
• In the past, Mexican immigrants were sending remittances to family members on a person to person basis. Responses from the study show a trend toward remittance money benefiting beyond familial support. Remittances include support for economic, social and health programs as well as funding for economic development and non- governmental organizations.
• Around one-third of respondents are aware of groups and programs working to extend the productive impact of remittances. 34% indicate some awareness of U.S. based immigrant and Mexican hometown associations that send money back to communities.
• Concerns surrounding the remittance industry are evolving. 51% of respondents said that the most important factor when receiving money from the U.S. is that it arrives securely. For 17%, the most important factor is that the monies arrive on time while 16% stated that collecting the money easily was a factor. Thirteen percent (13%) cited the cost of the transaction and only 4% mentioned the exchange rate.
• 95% said that there are more choices now than five years ago regarding the number of companies available to receive a remittance.

“Mexicans in remittance receiving communities recognize the value of monies sent by their co- nationals in the U.S. in improving the qualities of Mexican life,” said Rudy de La Garza, Ph.D., Vice-President of research for TRPI.

The World Bank estimates that over 24 billion dollars are received by Mexico, accounting for 3% of the country’s GDP.

“The amount of monies these remittances represent is enormous,” said Harry P. Pachon, President of TRPI. “For most countries in Latin America, remittances exceed U.S. foreign aid.”

If you have questions about the survey and the study’s findings, please contact Dr. Rudy de La Garza via phone at (212) 854-2292 or Dr. Harry P. Pachon at (213) 821- 5615.

About TRPIFounded in 1985, the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) advances informed policy on key issues affecting Latino communities through objective and timely research contributing to the betterment of the nation. TRPI is an affiliated research unit of the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning, and Development and is associated with the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University.”*

Today is the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. It’s a day that should be solemnly observed by every Latino family with teenage children. Why?

Because while the overall national rate of teen pregnancy has declined, it has actually increased among Latina girls. Sarah Brown, CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, said, “The teen pregnancy rate for Hispanic teens increased slightly between 2003 and 2004 and, for the first time, Hispanic teens now have the highest rates of both teen pregnancy and births. Also, data released in December 2007 show a 3% increase in the teen birth rate between 2005 and 2006, the first increase in the teen birth rate in 15 years.”"*

It’s American-style wrestling vs. lucha libre wrestling, and this may be one of the places left in the Valley where people from both sides of the border celebrate what they have in common, even if it is wrestling.

“Coming to wrestling events, it’s real easy to get along,” said Glenda Jarboe of Tempe.

Jarboe was at the April event to watch her daughter wrestle yes, women also wrestle - and she, too, was struck by the camaraderie in the room.

“No fighting. Just people having a good time.”"*

“This is a much deeper data mining than has previously taken place,” says Michelle Azan, VP of digital innovation at Terra Networks. “While there have been many studies examining online behavior, this goes much further by identifying these segments and the attributes particular to each.”

Among the more interesting findings was that online Hispanics are spending more time online than watching TV. The study reports that 56% of participants spend an hour or more online per day, compared with 50% who said they spend an hour or more of each day watching TV.”*

A recent study by Mexican pollster Roy Campos from Consulta Mitofsky shows that 39.6 percent of Mexican nationals have a family member living in the United States.

When asked about the possibility of moving to the U.S. if they had the opportunity, 41 percent of the respondents said that they would. The number increases to 49 percent among men and 51 percent among young adults. Nearly half, 44 percent, of the Mexican middle-class said that they are willing to move to the U.S.”*

In recent years, the Miami area’s main botanical garden has become almost as well known for its art as its rare plants and orchids. Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden’s latest sculpture exhibit continues that blend of natural and manmade beauty.

Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s immense black statues of portly people stand out in his first exposition in a botanical garden and each detail was meticulously planned so that complete harmony exists between his work and the setting, organizers said.

In general, since the display opened Feb. 15, the public has come “because the art gets your attention and then they learn about the plants”, said Nannete Zapata, the garden’s operations director and one of the Botero organizers.”*

Delgado swatted No. 435 to move past Juan Gonzalez on the all-time list for Puerto Rican-born players, but few here in the States seemed to take notice. Even Carlos Beltran, who also is Puerto Rican and one of Delgado’s closest friends, didn’t know what he had done until he told him at dinner that night.

“It’s a great, great accomplishment,” said Beltran, who has 238 homers. “With all of the great players that have come from Puerto Rico, I know it means a lot to him. But I believe his goal is 500. That’s a lot.”"*

The term, I admit, resists translation, but it kept running through my mind the other evening at The Home Depot Center. Cinco de Hoya.

It wasn’t a fight as much as it was a festival, with the Hispanic community, plus assorted others, gathering to express an appreciation for what Oscar De La Hoya has meant to it with his skills and with his dignity. I want to emphasize that word dignity. De La Hoya possesses it. Few in boxing do. Where is the sport going to be without him? Nowhere, I suspect.”*

Latinos, for instance, now lead healthier lives when compared with non-Latino whites. Pregnant first-generation women of Mexican heritage display the healthiest prenatal diets and give birth to the most robust babies compared with any other group, say new findings at the National Institutes of Health.

Talk about family values: Over four-fifths of immigrant Latino preschoolers are raised in two-parent households, equaling the share in white families, despite a gaping disparity in average income.Latinos pay a cost to assimilate. Immigrant youngsters initially complete their homework more readily and get higher grades than others who attend the same school. But these indicators go south with more years in California’s public schools, according to New York University’s Carola and Marcelo Suarez-Orosco in their new book, “Learning a New Land.” By adapting to tepid teacher expectations and peer norms, the drive to achieve cools out.

Tidy ethnic labels are becoming obsolete with the climbing rates of interracial marriage. The number of children raised by parents of differing ethnic stock climbed fourfold to over 3 million between 1970 and 2000, says the Census Bureau. One in five Latino wives is now married to a non-Latino husband.

“*

Hispanic residents making their first run for office are on Saturday’s ballot for City Council in Farmers Branch and Irving, where illegal immigration is a major issue.

The candidates, two of them 21-year-old college students whose parents are immigrants, say the issue is not the only thing that motivated them to run, but they oppose their cities’ tough stands. They said the campaign trail has come with threatening phone calls, cold shoulders and doors closed in their faces.

No Hispanics have been elected to municipal office in Farmers Branch or Irving for at least 10 years, according to the Los Angeles-based National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.”*

Thump. Thwock. Martina Jimenez leans forward from the waist as she pulls a polished wooden board through a maze of strings. Each thump is another line completed in the weaving project she works on nearly every afternoon. One end of the loom is secured around her backside with a woven strap, the other end affixed to a metal hook above her closet door. The warp stretches the length of her bedroom.

This day Jimenez is weaving a black and purple skirt for her mother, who regularly sends her brightly colored wool and other supplies in the mail from Guatemala. Though she is thousands of miles from home, the 24-year-old Jimenez weaves traditional clothing to keep a tie to her Mayan culture, she said in Spanish. When she immigrated to the United States three years ago, she settled in Oakland, where her two sisters live, finding the city more affordable than San Francisco, which had, until recently, attracted more Guatemalans.”*

Today’s often-heated debate focuses mostly on recent illegal entrants from Mexico, but the 87-year-old Reyes, who arrived as a boy, shows how deep-rooted many Mexicans are in the Midwest.

According to the latest census data:

• Of the more than 130,000 Latinos who live in Nebraska, 78 percent are of Mexican ancestry. And of those, more than half are U.S.-born.

• Likewise in Iowa, about 79 percent of 113,000 Latinos are of Mexican ancestry. Of those, 64 percent are natives of this country.”*

Ersi Arvizu was on vacation in Hawaii a few years ago when she heard that some guy named Ry Cooder was looking for her. She got the news from colleagues who knew her from her long-gone glory days as lead singer of El Chicano, the 1970s East L.A. band famous for her version of the classic old bolero “Sabor a Mi.”

No way, shot back Arvizu, who had long before moved to Arizona. Besides, she was “fit to be tied,” she says, over a money dispute involving a previous El Chicano comeback concert. She was in no mood to get back in the business.”*

Armed but alone, Marine Pfc. Guy Gabaldon roamed Saipan’s caves and pillboxes, persuading enemy soldiers and civilians to surrender during the hellish World War II battle on the island.

Using the Japanese language skills he learned as a boy, he warned the Japanese they would die if they stayed hidden and told them Marines were not torturers as they had heard. The Marines, he said, would feed them and give them medical care. Many agreed, and Gabaldon, just 18, led them back to U.S. lines.”*

Putting one’s self first — even when it comes to health care — is a foreign concept to many Hispanic women.

With the help of 13 Hispanic promotoras, or community health workers, Karen D’Alonzo, PhD, RN, APNC, a researcher and nurse practitioner at the Willetts Health Center at Rutgers’ Douglass Campus, and a Rutgers College of Nursing professor, responded to the need by developing a pilot activity intervention program.

D’Alonzo has trained 13 promotoras to lead classes and serve as instructors and role models for women in the Hispanic immigrant community in New Brunswick, N.J.”*

Minutes after the winner in the gubernatorial primary of Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood party was announced, Orange County Commissioner Mildred Fern�ndez received a phone call.

She wasn’t surprised it was from a prominent Central Florida doctor who offered to hold a fundraiser for the winner at a palatial Lake Nona home.

“There are strong ties between Puerto Rico and Central Florida,” said Fern�ndez, who was on the island for the March 9 primary. “The things that are happening between these two communities are not happening in any other place. It only makes sense that people would want to meet the leaders and, in this case, potentially the next governor.”"*

But experts say that while there is a strong racist undercurrent running through the anti-immigration movement, racism alone is not enough to account for the massive anti-illegal immigrant sentiment throughout the country.

For that to occur, said Raul Yzagurre, a professor at Arizona State University, large numbers of people need to be personally affected. He points to the transformation of neighborhoods overwhelmed by immigrant Hispanics. At first, he said, small changes such as businesses moving in and putting up signs in Spanish are not seen as threatening.

“But there comes a tipping point when the feelings about those changes turns into fear,” Yzagurre said.”*

At ritzy receptions in the nation’s capital, Tomas Resendiz has been mistaken for a waiter. Other guests have handed him empty glasses and turned to him for more cocktails. Despite his suit and tie. Despite his impressive title: Congressional Hispanic Caucus Liaison for U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.

“Sometimes people don’t look (at what a person is wearing). They just look up here,” said Resendiz, circling his face.

Even if they had looked at his outfit or asked his title, they’d only have a small part of his story.”*

“Unfortunately, the history of the United States as popularized on TV or classrooms seems like it was made by Disney,” explains journalist Roberto Lovato, who’s written on the subject for diverse publications like The Nation, Los Angeles Times and more, and also served as executive director of the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), one of America’s largest immigrant rights organizations. “It’s not real. We talk a lot about the Holocaust, but we don’t talk about Native Americans. There’s no Holocaust museum for them. We don’t have an Ellis Island for the black slaves. Most of the slaves came through Sullivan’s Island, and it should be a monument, but it’s not. A sense of history is profoundly and institutionally lacking, and so you’re going to have a population that looks at this treatment of immigrants as natural.”

Such a permissive attitude toward criminalization has led to everything from the boom in the immigrant security complex, which has turned into a billion-dollar bonanza, to the tacit endorsement of militias like The Minuteman Project, whose border patrols and presence at immigrant rights protests and rallies has caused no shortage of damage and controversy.

But for every so-called Minuteman who has showed up to inflate patriotism or disrupt undocumented day laborers at work, it seems there have been many more immigration rights supporters, including groups such as The Center for Community Change, The Coalition For Humane Immigrant Rights, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, International ANSWER, Brown Berets, and many more. That imbalance mirrors the national battle over immigration criminalization; indeed, most election-year polls have shown that the public doesn’t rate immigration as a higher priority for candidates than other topics, such as the economy or the Iraq war.”*

Triumphant horns and singing violins competed with school bells and intercom announcements Wednesday in Bryant-Webster school as the student mariachi group prepared for its biggest performance ever.

The all-student group, Mariachi Juvenil, will perform two songs tonight with the Colorado Symphony at Boettcher Hall in a free concert to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

“I’m excited, but I’m nervous,” said Elizabeth Nuñez, a 13-year-old seventh-grader who plays violin. “I just hope it comes out all right.”"*

Repertorio Español, the landmark E. 27th St. theater that stages and promotes works in Spanish, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

The theater will mark the feat with a gala on June 3 for which the company will perform its latest production, “Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands,” starring Denise Quiñones and Francisco Gattorno.

One of the city’s most enduring Latino institutions, Repertorio started somewhat accidentally.”*

Connecting metro Atlanta’s Latinos to HIV/AIDS services and ministries is one of the challenges Miranda faces every day in her job. It’s also the challenge she brought up during a national consultation with the Centers for Disease Control earlier this month. Miranda participated in the two-day meeting “HIV/AIDS Prevention Among Hispanic/Latino Communities: A Consultation with Leaders from the Latino Community.” CDC officials asked Miranda and others for their input on how to improve outreach and prevention efforts in the Latino communities to help turn the tide and reduce new infections. Miranda was more than happy to oblige with a response.

“In the South, especially in rural areas, you see a mirror of what we saw (with AIDS) in the 1980s,” Miranda said. Although the numbers are not the same, the rapid spread and ignorance of the disease is similar to that period, she explained.

“It’s what I’m calling the second wave of AIDS. Outside of metro Atlanta, you’ll find large Hispanic populations. These people are already marginalized. How do you get people to know their (HIV) status, and link them to healthcare?””*

With those increases boosting Hispanics to 15.1 percent of the U.S. population, voting booths are being watched closely this year for Hispanic turnout.

Some Hispanic advocacy groups predict about 10 million Hispanics will show up at the polls, motivated by the usual concerns about the economy, health care and the war and an added catalyst of dismay over attitudes from anti-immigration movements.

“We obviously know that Latino population growth is not perfectly mirrored in the Latino voting population,” said Clarissa Martinez, National Council of La Raza director of immigration and national campaigns.”*