Sending a body from Florida to Puerto Rico, for example, costs about $1,000 -- a price that includes picking up the body, embalming, preparing legal documents and transporting the body to the airport, said Aracely Carmona, manager of Funeraria San Juan, a Hispanic-owned funeral home in Kissimmee.

The price of the casket is separate, as is the cost of the flight, she added.

Sending a body to Mexico from Orlando costs an average of $500, said an agent for Aeromexico.

At Robert Bryant Funeral & Cremation Chapel in Orlando, more Mexicans send their dead to their native homeland than any other ethnic group, said manager Mariela del Valle. Nationwide, an average 8,000 bodies are repatriated to Mexico from the United States each year, according to a 2006 estimate by the Mexican Congress.

What this means is that many Latin@a are starting to choose cremation rather than traditional embalming/burials because they simply can't afford otherwise. I'm no fan of traditional embalming/burials (I want to be eaten by worms, not admired!) but I do think that it's beyond wrong that any person doesn't have the choice to take care of her dead loved ones in a way that respects and honors her dead loved one's wishes. I'm not sure what makes me angrier, this or the outrageous long distance telephone charges that target Latin@ populations.

From New York to Miami to Los Angeles, the downturn in the U.S. economy is hitting Hispanics especially hard, with unemployment rising faster in that community than in the overall U.S. population. And the slowdown has had a ripple effect, with a significant drop in payments being sent home to families in Latin America.

"For the last year, Hispanics have been losing jobs at a faster rate than any other group," said Agustine Martínez, president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

It's hard times and everyone's apretándose el cinturón. Have you had to cut back on expenses just to make ends meet? Where are you spending the most money and what, if anything, do you have to sacrifice? Let us know in the comments.

Via / Baltimore Sun

The children will be receiving treatment in the Children's Mental Health Clinic in Lleida (Catalunya) for three months in an attempt to get them off the cell phone habit.

The BBC reports that the boys had been showing signs of addiction to their cells for 18 months prior, but the parents had not intervened.

Maybe I'm old school, but do we really need a treatment program for this? How about just taking the cell phones away?

By the way, it's not just kids who are addicted to cell phones in Spain. In a country of 44 million people, there are 50 million cell phones -- more phones than people.

Via / BBC Mundo

The rise in prices is affecting at least 2 million people in Mexico City who barely scrape by economically, and forcing them to give up meat, chicken and fish, replacing them with tortillas and bread because half of their income is spent on food. It just isn't enough to afford these items.

The Mexican Secretary of Development is worried that this will eventually take its toll on health, especially that of children, and expects to see a decline in school performance, as well as failing health in the elderly.

And the situation isn't getting better. Just when you think you can turn to bread as a cheap food option, La Jornada reports that wheat flower has gone up 100%. Other staples like rice have increased in price by 80%.

Via / La Jornada

Image via Rageforst on Flickr

The General Law for Tobacco Control will prohibit smoking in closed public spaces and violations will be punished with up to 36 hours of jail time.

In addition, fines up to the equivalent of 100 to 10,000 minimum wage days [a common way of calculating fines in Mexico] and the temporary or permanent closing of businesses violating the law will be applied. For repeat offenders, the fine can go up to 1 million pesos.

Mexico's Milenio reports that once the official bulletin is released by the government, the law will take effect in 90 days all over the republic. No Smoking signs will be visibly placed in areas where smoking is prohibited, and the government will provide a phone number where citizens can report violations of the law. In addition, business owners who wish to allow smoking in their establishments will have 180 days to modify their property to close off an area for that.

The law also establishes new regulations for tobacco-related advertising, which from now on may only appear in publications geared toward adults or in places where only adults are allowed to enter, such as bars and nightclubs.

Via / Milenio

As a live band blasted out sugary Mexican love songs in the border city of Tijuana, a short walk from the busy San Ysidro crossing into California, a judge simultaneously married a crowd of couples whose ages ranged from 16 to 65.

More than three-quarters were migrants returning from, or trying to get into, the United States.

"Isn't she gorgeous? I love her!" said Inocencio Felix of his new wife Angelica Perez, 36, dressed in a flouncy white wedding gown. Perez was deported by U.S. immigration officials two weeks ago from the state of Oregon, where the couple met.

Via / Reuters

Image via Yahoo News-AP Photos

A new all-Latino dating site called QuieroLatino might be the solution to your singledom. The site officially launched yesterday, on el dia de los enamorados and we've heard there's a lot of buzz on QuieroLatino already.

I don't live in Mexico City anymore so I can't say whether Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is really good for the city, but what does seem evident is that he's made the most visible changes in the metropolis than any other recent mayor. Case in point: turning the country's "kilómetro cero" -- the iconic Zocalo main plaza in the city's historic downtown -- into a massive ice skating rink.

While in another time this would sound crazy to the average Mexico City citizen, it doesn't sound that strange coming from a mayor who installed a series of artificial beaches throughout the city over the summer, and, in the months of lead-up to his latest project -- the ice rink -- permanently ridded Mexico City's Centro Histórico of the street peddlers who have worked in that area for hundreds of years (I have very mixed feelings about that one).

Shocking or not, La Jornada reports that over 50,000 people turned out this weekend to check out the urban ice spectacle, with a few minor injuries already reported.

Via / La Jornada

Image via Rodolfochka's Flickr page

The first five-star gay hotel in Latin America opened Wednesday in the Argentine capital, an increasingly popular destination on the worldwide gay tourist circuit.

The hotel, set near the historic San Telmo neighborhood, is the second of its kind developed by Spain's Axel Corp., which opened a five-star, 66-room gay hotel in Barcelona in 2003.

"Like any other business, we have economic objectives," general manager Nacho Rodriguez said. But "we're also about fighting to help the normalization and acceptance of gays in society."

The journey will be aboard a space shuttle, a hybrid between a commercial airplane and a rocket, and will arrive at the Galactic Suite hotel, also called Spaceresort, which will remain in orbit around the Earth...

...In each flight six people will travel: two crewmembers and four tourists. For the three day stay in the orbital hotel, the shuttle will remain anchored to the arrival module so that passengers feel more secure.

And if you have the money, you'll also need time off. Space tourists will have to undergo 18 weeks of preparation on a tropical island before the journey.

Read more at the Galactic Suite website.

Via / El Universal

Image via CNN/Galactic Suite

The celebrity governor known for his love of premium cigars was headed to the Ottawa airport Wednesday when his motorcade made a detour to a hotel. There, Schwarzenegger picked up a Cuban Partagas cigar in a shop, with the $14.83 bill paid by an aide traveling with him, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported.

Under trade restrictions, U.S. citizens are prohibited from buying Cuban cigars anywhere in the world.

Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.

The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn.

Via / MSNBC

...to make them participants in domestic work, such as caring for and raising their children.

"It's about changing our mentality. We have to share work and responsibilities," he said upon inaugurating the Equality in Gender Fair yesterday, part of the International Women's Day festivities.

He said that above all this is important because society is not the same as 40 years ago, and now women in Mexico represent a third of the "economically active" population, and that number will grow in the next few years.

Via / La Jornada

In America, Goths are usually thought of as white, middle-class and suburban. But the young people who hang out at Fun World live not on Long Island or in Connecticut but in the Bronx, and many of them are newcomers. Korpse, whose real name is Alexis Molina, was born in Puerto Rico. He and his friends, who shift easily between English and Spanish and go by so-called scene names like Selene, Zombie and Dexx, represent a new breed of Goth: immigrants or the children of Spanish speakers and of immigrants from Latin America.

Need more proof: Check out this site I stumbled across - Ethnic Goth

Via / The New York Times (Registration Required)
Image Via / Wikipedia