Archive for April, 2009
Sugar
12:35 pm By la Macha · Arts|Movies · 2 Comments
16 Apr 2009I saw the movie review for this at Roger Ebert’s site, and thought it looks really interesting:
Ebert has this to say about the film:
The film is knowledgeable about how the system works. American teams maintain elaborate Dominican training facilities, send talent scouts to local leagues and keep recruits under close watch: Room and board is provided, there are security guards to enforce discipline, the kids get a few days off once in a while. This is heaven for them. For years, their dreams have been filled with visions of big-time baseball.
Being in the Midwest, probably the only thing I’ll ever see of this film is the movie clip (at least until it comes out at Netflix). So I want to hear from some of you lucky ones living in big cities. Have you seen this film? What did you think? I’m already a bit antsy at the idea that “immigration” means sexual interaction with local blond woman–but maybe the film handles the whole thing well. Wouldn’t that be an oddity?
Choosing a Better Future in the Americas
12:16 pm By la Macha · Immigration|Latin America|Obama|Politics|U.S.-Mexico Border|Violence · 1 Comment
16 Apr 2009
According to the Washington Post, the following Op/Ed ran in several newspapers that target or have heavy Latin@ readership. It comes as Obama heads to the Summit of the Americas.
Choosing a Better Future in the Americas
By President Barack ObamaAs we approach the Summit of the Americas, our hemisphere is faced with a clear choice. We can overcome our shared challenges with a sense of common purpose, or we can stay mired in the old debates of the past. For the sake of all our people, we must choose the future.
Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas. My Administration is committed to the promise of a new day. We will renew and sustain a broader partnership between the United States and the hemisphere on behalf of our common prosperity and our common security. Read more…
April is National Poetry Month : Noemi Martinez
8:34 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · literature|Women · Comments Off
16 Apr 2009Today’s poema comes from an incredible media maker, activist, mami, blogger, poeta, Noemi Martinez of Hermana, Resist.
Here it is recounted
Noemisynthesis
we get these folks
you know the type,
they have the feminist fist
tattooed on their ankles
want to visit my community
with their “poorest in the nation” shit
their novelty right now
is mexicans in the colonias.
My valley, my people
and they want to see
the real deal
the real colonias,
you know,
with the really really
poor conditions,
“where it floods & they don’t have electricity”
my valley, my people
and they come w/
notepad, pencil in hand
sic-sicing at our
mexican men & their
macho macho ways
you know, my people
& want to see
“real” victims
and look at that kid
no shoes, shit
let’s get some tequila on the other side
& “authentic” food but how can you eat this?
my people, my valley
you & your fucking rainbow
stickers& yr
world eat fish mentality
and fuck i’m not
even religious or catolica
but leave them w/ their virgen, my Tonantzin
appeared to my juan diego, my people
and lets go for a site
visit, let’s see
the colonias
you know-giving me
facts I know by memory,
numbers I don’t need to hear
because it’s my valley, my people*yes, yes taken out of context.
Yes yes, you will bring funds, $, awareness.
Yes yes I work well with the enemy.
Add This to Fujimori’s Crimes : Mass Sterilizations
7:55 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Peru|Women · 3 Comments
16 Apr 2009Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was found guily of human rights violations, specifically the deaths of 25 people during his administration, torture and kidnapping. The guilty verdict earned Fujimori 25 years in prison, a sentence that his daughter Keiko said during an interview with Jorge Ramos on Univision’s Al Punto was equivalent to a life sentence due to his age. While Alberto Fujimori plans an appeal and his daughter is thinking of running for president, another one of his war crimes hasn’t been brought up, mass sterilizations of indigenous women and men.
During Fujimori’s time in office hundreds of thousands of Andean women were “threaded” or given hysterectomies, many against their will. Health clinics would open in rural villages, sometimes accompanied by military bands and dancing. Posters would appear all over the countryside urging family planning. but family planning wasn’t about access to birth control for the Fujimori regime. It was about stopping indigenous people from having children at all.
There is a nearly half hour documentary on this here.
Colombia Bags Biggest Druglord
7:00 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Colombia|crime|Drugs|Latin America · 2 Comments
15 Apr 2009Colombian authorities have captured the country’s biggest drug lord. Daniel Rendon Herrera, known as “Don Mario”, was arrested today near the Panamanian border, after a 2 million dollar bounty was offered for his capture (video above of this first images of the capture).
Don Mario was no small fry. The BBC gives a rundown of some of the highlights of Rendon’s “career” and how he eluded authorities:
Once a paramilitary in a branch of the now-demobilised United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), Daniel Rendon had refused to surrender as part of a peace deal.Instead he used paramilitary networks to build up a personal army of up to 1,000 heavily-armed fighters, also striking a deal with left-wing Farc rebels, the BBC’s Jeremy McDermott reports from the capital, Bogota.
Authorities had been tracking the 43-year-old for months, but he had always managed to stay one step ahead of them until now, he says.
Rendon reportedly has exported literally tons of cocaine to Mexico, which has in turn made its way around the globe. According to the UK’s Telegraph, little is known about Rendon, who has successfully eluded media for years.
Pew Reveals New Face of Undocumented Immigrants
5:53 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · children|Family|Immigration|Politics|society · 2 Comments
15 Apr 2009
The image of the undocumented immigrant has been, for years, that of a single man from Mexico who comes to the U.S. to work and lives alone. But according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a new study (PDF here) reveals a demographic shift which shows that undocumented immigrants tend now to be part of a family unit, with different immigration statuses between the members; some are married to documented immigrants, others have children who are U.S.-born, etc. From the Pew report:
Unauthorized immigrants living in the United States are more geographically dispersed than in the past and are more likely than either U.S. born residents or legal immigrants to live in a household with a spouse and children. In addition, a growing share of the children of unauthorized immigrant parents—73%—were born in this country and are U.S. citizens.Most children of unauthorized immigrants—73% in 2008—are U.S. citizens by birth. The number of U.S.-born children in mixed-status families (unauthorized immigrant parents and citizen children) has expanded rapidly in recent years, to 4 million in 2008 from 2.7 million in 2003. By contrast, the number of children who are unauthorized immigrants themselves (1.5 million in 2008) hardly changed in the five-year period and may have declined slightly since 2005.
According to Pew, nearly half of undocumented immigrant households are families with children. In addition, a third of these children and a fifth of adult unauthorized immigrants lives in poverty, practically double the poverty rate for children of U.S.-born parents (18%) or U.S.-born adults (10%).
Why is any of this important? Because as we move closer to “immigration reform”, the Obama administration is going to have to take all of this into consideration as it develops new policy. This new reality is proof that policy must protect families — which over the past few years we’ve seen torn apart by raids and deportation — and that immigration status can no longer be only about the individual when families are involved.
Via / Pew Hispanic Center
Labor Gets Down With Immigration Reform
9:36 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Labor|Politics · 1 Comment
15 Apr 2009
Understanding that what benefits some workers in the US should benefit all workers has been a struggle in the pro-migrant community. Finally it seems that there us some movement towards recognizing that scapegoating undocumented workers as the cause for labor and economic woes isn’t helping anyone.
The nation’s two major labor federations have agreed for the first time to join forces to support an overhaul of the immigration system, leaders of both organizations said on Monday. The accord could give President Obama significant support among unions as he revisits the stormy issue in the midst of the recession.
What does pro-labor/pro-migrant immigration reform look like?
The accord endorses legalizing the status of illegal immigrants already in the United States and opposes any large new program for employers to bring in temporary immigrant workers, officials of both federations said.
The guest worker program has been a huge sticking point since the business sector loves guest worker programs and sees them as a “trade-off” for legalizing millions of undocumented.
Good Immigrant/Bad immigrant
8:59 am By la Macha · Haiti|Immigration · 3 Comments
15 Apr 2009Hoo, boy, this video just *reeks* of “good immigrant/bad immigrant” logic.There’s the good immigrant Cubans who just want to come to the U.S. legally to be with their families (and resist a brutal dictator)–and then there’s the unnamed “bad immigrants,” that surprisingly, look a lot like Mexicans and sneak into the U.S. through Mexico.
I think we need to be real here and recognize that Cubans claim a very privileged status in a corrupt system. They are not “privileged” in the sense that white U.S. citizens are (clearly, as shown by the woman in the video), but compared to other immigrants, they have a lot of privilege because of the U.S.’s interest in eliminating the communism of their home country.
Hence, you have Cubans that are given citizenship within a year under family reunification acts–and then you have Hatians that are “repatriated” (or sent back to) Haiti after they take the same route to get to the U.S. that many Cubans do (those rickety boats mentioned in the segment) and Mexicans, Guatemalans, Arabs from multiple countries and others that are now sitting in federal prisons after being forcibly rounded up and separated from their families by ICE.
Why do the families of one group of people count more than the families of another group of people doing the same thing?
What this all says to me is that there are some definite undercurrents of tension that exist within the immigrant community. I don’t blame or in anyway sit judgment on Cubans for capitalizing on the small amount of benefits that they get within the system–but I do think it’s really important to call out “good immigrant/bad immigrant” logic whenever we see it.
Immigrants who are “legal” are not better than those who are not–and all immigrants, no matter where they come from or how “legal” they are, deserve to be with their families. And the immigrant community really needs to start talking amongst ourselves about all the differences that we have–so that we can be a stronger, more united community.
From the Angie Zapata memorial that took place last night, comes this video (taken by Autumn Sandeen from Pam’s House Blend) of supporters talking about why they showed up at the memorial.
It’s a moving video, one that speaks of generations of violence and murder and love and tenderness and compassion. I hope we can all be as brave as the people on the video are–people who experience violence and fear, but still have the courage and strength to be vulnerable to love and compassion.
April is National Poetry Month : El Reverendo Pedro Pietri
6:23 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Bilingualism|literature|Puerto Rico · 1 Comment
15 Apr 2009No words can describe Pedro Pietri‘s work and his influence on many a poet, myself included. El padre of the Nuyorican poetry movement, political, funny and as Rican as they come.
Hola!
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