LOS ANGELES — A week after a pro-immigration rally was broken up by police using batons and rubber bullets, activists announced plans to march again next month to refocus attention on their pleas for a path to citizenship.
Rally organizers hope the planned June 24 march will exceed the crowd of about 25,000 that attended the May 1 demonstration. It ended with riot police using batons and rubber bullets to drive protesters and journalists out of MacArthur Park.
Police Chief William Bratton speaks at a meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission at LAPD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles Tuesday, May 8, 2007 8, 2007. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) "All of us here today are united in expressing in the clearest voice possible that we can't be intimidated into inaction," said Juan Jose Gutierrez of Latino Movement U.S.A. at a news conference Tuesday outside City Hall.
About a dozen demonstrators stood behind him holding signs calling for amnesty for the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
The new march is planned for the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, in the heart of Hollywood and far from downtown, where prior immigration rallies have taken place. Gutierrez said the location was chosen to get other Los Angeles neighborhoods involved in the reform movement.
"A community divided is a weak community," Gutierrez said.
Also Tuesday, Police Chief William Bratton announced a replacement for the deputy chief who was demoted to the rank of commander and assigned to work from his home following the march.
Sergio Diaz, a 30-year department veteran who is currently assistant commanding officer for the Special Operations Bureau, will replace Cayler "Lee" Carter Jr., who was the highest ranking police official at the scene of the clash.
The melee is the focus of four separate investigations.
The chief told the Police Commission on Tuesday that the elite Metro unit, whose officers cleared the park, was undergoing training this week on use of force. He said he planned to speak to all personnel about crowd dispersal, use of force and the treatment of reporters in the field.
Critics attending the commission meeting said they were outraged by the officers' actions and urged a civilian panel to conduct a thorough investigation.
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By Lorenza Munoz, Times Staff Writer 6:11 PM PDT, May 14, 2007
Considering that Hispanics make up the largest ethnic group in the United States and Hispanic buying power is on an upward march, you'd figure Spanish-language networks would be fighting advertisers off.
They aren't.
This week in New York, where the bulk of the commercial time for the upcoming television season will be sold at what's called the upfront market, Univision and Telemundo will need to make hard sells.
Advertising spending on Spanish-language media has been growing, rising more than 14 percent last year from 2005, according to Nielsen Co. But only 3.2 percent of total national television and print advertising is directed at Spanish markets in the Spanish language, TNS Media Intelligence has found.
What's more, recent research by the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies determined that of the country's top 250 advertisers, about 100 don't market in Spanish at all, and many of those that do aim less than 1 percent of their promotional budgets at Hispanics.
A large group of advertisers -- mainly in the banking, investment and technology industries -- question whether they need to reach out to Latinos "en espanol" or whether their messages are getting across just fine in English.
For Univision in particular, this is irritating. Recently purchased by a group of private investors, the network's debt is about $10 billion, and it badly needs to ramp up advertising revenue. The investors are counting on Chief Executive Joe Uva, an advertising industry veteran who until early this year led OMD Global Media, one of the world's largest advertising companies.
Although Univision is considered a player in the big leagues, able to compete for audiences with ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox, it doesn't command the same price for advertising time as the English-language networks do. Overall, on a national level, 30 seconds on Univision or Telemundo is 40 percent to 50 percent less expensive than 30 seconds on an English-language network.
Univision's plan is to convince advertisers in New York that Spanish-language viewers are more loyal than others, less likely to own Tivos and other digital video recorders -- making them less likely to zip past commercials -- and more willing to accept product integration in their favorite programs.
For its part, NBC Universal's Telemundo has teamed up with Clorox, IKEA and other brands to integrate their products into the story line or as part of the sets of Telemundo's "telenovelas." Unlike Univision, which buys its popular novelas from Mexican network Televisa, Telemundo is producing its own soap operas and is using them to entice advertisers.
Univision, which maintains that the majority of its viewers are bilingual, says its so-called "sweet spot" is the audience that all advertisers covet: adults ages 18 to 34. According to Nielsen Television Index, Univision drew more viewers in this age group than any other network 41 percent of the time during the sweeps period in February.
Telemundo, a distant second to Univision in market share, also says its largest viewership is bilingual, although its age group skews older.
On a weekday afternoon or evening, the typical Telemundo and Univision viewer would seem like the ideal customer for toy manufacturer Fisher-Price: young mothers or grandmothers.
But Fisher-Price dropped its Spanish-language television campaign in 2005 after concluding that it was reaching Hispanics with young children on English television and with grass-roots print advertising.
For Fisher-Price parent Mattel Inc., the lack of weekday children's programming on Spanish-language television is a problem. To hawk Hot Wheels or Barbie, Mattel goes to Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel, which are big with the elementary school-age crowd.
Spanish-language TV isn't valued as highly as English because there's less variety in the prime-time lineup. Original episodes of popular shows air once a week on an English-language network, but on Univision and Telemundo, prime time is dominated by the same telenovelas every night of the week.
By contrast, "When you only make 22 shows per year, every original episode is a jewel, and it is sold that way," said one former Spanish-language television executive who did not want his name used.
Among some advertisers, there's a suspicion that Spanish-language viewers don't have a lot of money to spend.
"The image in much of corporate America is that these are not upscale folks," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a think tank that studies issues affecting the Hispanic community. "In reality, hundreds of thousands of Hispanic families have joined the middle class -- over 3 million families in Texas and California alone."
Apple Inc. is among the companies that spend little, if any, on television ads in Spanish, even though iTunes, Apple's online music stores, has a large inventory of Latin music.
"They are not advertising to young Latinos using the music that they are into," said Carl Kravetz, an advertising executive who is on the board of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies. "If you are not talking to people, how do you expect them to know about you?"
An Apple spokeswoman didn't return calls for comment.
Companies that do advertise in Spanish have found it effective, after careful study of unique cultural preferences.
Procter & Gamble discovered that Hispanics were more likely to prefer scented products compared with the general market. So Danielle Gonza***, senior vice president of Tapestry, one of the nation's largest advertising companies, created a mini-novela -- "El Secreto de Jazmin" -- to sell Secret body spray. The five 30-second episodes, which ran every day, featured a young woman who surmounts her problems by wearing lavender and floral scented body spray.
"Within weeks, we saw a lift (in sales among Latinas)," Gonza*** said.
When furniture manufacturer IKEA recognized that it wasn't capturing the large Hispanic demographic in cities such as Los Angeles, it started advertising in Spanish and noticed results: more Hispanics in stores. And this year, IKEA launched a series of "vignettes" on Telemundo that run after the soap opera "Dame Chocolate" ("Give me Chocolate").
It features two specially designed bedroom sets made especially for the soap opera. Wearing a silky flower print dress, Karla Monroig, a leggy, blond actress who stars as Samantha in the novela, smiles into the camera and promises in Spanish: "You too can have a room like Samantha, if you go to IKEA. I'm in love with the room they built for me!"
Maria Lovera, deputy marketing manager for IKEA, said that, "Translating commercials is not enough. You have understand and participate in the culture."
"The brands that are forward thinking will understand this opportunity," she said. "Hispanics are very, very loyal."
[B]Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion[/B
A joint survey by the Pew Hispanic Project and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
Executive Summary Hispanics are transforming the nation's religious landscape, especially the Catholic Church, not only because of their growing numbers but also because they are practicing a distinctive form of Christianity.
Religious expressions associated with the pentecostal and charismatic movements are a key attribute of worship for Hispanics in all the major religious traditions — far more so than among non-Latinos. Moreover, the growth of the Hispanic population is leading to the emergence of Latino-oriented churches across the country.
To explore the complex nature of religion among Latinos, the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life collaborated on a series of public opinion surveys that totaled more than 4,600 interviews, constituting one of the largest data collection efforts conducted on this subject. The study examines religious beliefs and behaviors and their association with political thinking among Latinos of all faiths. It focuses special attention on Catholics, both those who retain their identification with the church and those who convert to evangelical churches.
About a third of all Catholics in the U.S. are now Latinos, and the study projects that the Latino share will continue climbing for decades. This demographic reality, combined with the distinctive characteristics of Latino Catholicism, ensures that Latinos will bring about important changes in the nation's largest religious institution.
Religious Affiliation of Latinos in the U.S. Most significantly given their numbers, more than half of Hispanic Catholics identify themselves as charismatics, compared with only an eighth of non-Hispanic Catholics. While remaining committed to the church and its traditional teachings, many of these Latino Catholics say they have witnessed or experienced occurrences typical of spirit-filled or renewalist movements, including divine healing and direct revelations from God. Even many Latino Catholics who do not identify themselves as renewalists appear deeply influenced by spirit-filled forms of Christianity.
Similarly, the renewalist movement is a powerful presence among Latino Protestants. More than half of Hispanics in this category identify with spirit-filled religion, compared with about a fifth of non-Hispanic Protestants.
The study also shows that many of those who are joining evangelical churches are Catholic converts. The desire for a more direct, personal experience of God emerges as by far the most potent motive for these conversions. Although these converts express some dissatisfaction with the lack of excitement in a typical Catholic Mass, negative views of Catholicism do not appear to be a major reason for their conversion.
The practice of religion is not only often renewalist in character, but for most Latinos across all the major religious traditions it is also distinctively ethnic. Two-thirds of Latino worshipers attend churches with Latino clergy, services in Spanish and heavily Latino congregations.
While most predominant among the foreign born and Spanish speakers, Hispanic-oriented worship is also prevalent among native-born and English-speaking Latinos. That strongly suggests that the phenomenon is not simply a product of immigration or language but that it involves a broader and more lasting form of ethnic identification.
These two defining characteristics — the prevalence of spirit-filled religious expressions and of ethnicoriented worship — combined with the rapid growth of the Hispanic population leave little doubt that a detailed understanding of religious faith among Latinos is essential to understanding the future of this population as well as the evolving nature of religion in the United States.
About the Projects Pew Hispanic Center The mission of the Pew Hispanic Center is to improve understanding of the diverse Hispanic population and to chronicle the growing impact of Latinos on the nation. The nonpartisan research organization was founded in 2001.
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life delivers timely, impartial information on issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs. The Forum functions as both a clearinghouse and a town hall. As a clearinghouse, it conducts independent opinion research, demographic studies and other quantitative and qualitative research on important trends in religion and public life. Through its various roundtables and briefings, it also provides a neutral venue for discussion of these important issues.
Pew Research Center The Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life are projects of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take positions on policy issues. The two projects and the Pew Research Center are based in Washington, D.C., and are sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Beyond the strictly religious realm, this study suggests that the roles Latinos play in U.S. politics and public affairs are deeply influenced by the distinctive characteristics of their religious faith. Most Latinos see religion as a moral compass to guide their own political thinking, and they expect the same of their political leaders. In addition, across all major religious traditions, most Latinos view the pulpit as an appropriate place to address social and political issues.
The study also sheds new light on the role religious affiliation plays on party identification among Hispanics. Latinos who are evangelicals are twice as likely as those who are Catholics to identify with the Republican Party. Latino Catholics, on the other hand, are much more likely than Latino evangelicals to identify with the Democratic Party. These differences rival, and may even exceed, those found in the general population.
Both the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life are projects of the Pew Research Center, a Washington-based, nonpartisan research organization that seeks to provide timely information free of any advocacy on issues, attitudes and trends that are shaping America and the world. This study is the result of a yearlong collaboration involving more than a dozen researchers drawn from the staffs of both projects with expertise in a variety of subjects and research methodologies.
The centerpiece of the study is a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 4,016 Hispanic adults conducted between Aug. 10 and Oct. 4, 2006. The survey included an oversample of 2,000 non- Catholics, which permits an examination of the growth of evangelical and pentecostal Christianity among Latinos, including the process of conversion, in unprecedented detail. The sampling methodology also provided for robust numbers of respondents in all the major country-of-origin segments of the Hispanic population, allowing for detailed analysis of results by this important variable.
Both the extent of renewalism and of ethnic-oriented worship were further examined in recontact interviews with 650 Catholics drawn from the sample of the first survey. The research team also examined data from a large body of surveys previously conducted by both projects, particularly the latest of the Forum's extensive surveys of religious belief and behavior in the general population, which offer various comparisons between Hispanics and non-Hispanics on many points.
Report Summary Chapter 1: Religion and Demography More than two-thirds of Hispanics (68%) identify themselves as Roman Catholics. The next largest category, at 15%, is made up of born-again or evangelical Protestants. Nearly one-in-ten (8%) Latinos do not identify with any religion. Differences in religious identification among Latinos coincide with important differences in demographic characteristics. For example, Catholics are a more heavily immigrant population than evangelicals. Given current demographic trends, Latinos are projected to become an ever-increasing segment of the Catholic Church in the U.S.
Chapter 2: Religious Practices and Beliefs For the great majority of Latinos, regardless of their religious tradition, God is an active force in everyday life. Most Latinos pray every day, most have a religious object in their home and most attend a religious service at least once a month. By significant majorities, Latinos who identify with a religion believe that miracles are performed today just as they were in ancient times. Amid this overall religiosity, important differences emerge among Latinos of different religious traditions and between Latinos and their non-Hispanic counterparts.
Chapter 3: The Renewalist Movement and Hispanic Christianity Renewalist Christianity, which places special emphasis on God's ongoing, day-to-day intervention in human affairs through the person of the Holy Spirit, is having a major impact on Hispanic Christianity. Among Latino Protestants, renewalism is more than twice as prevalent as among their non-Latino counterparts. A majority (54%) of Hispanic Catholics describe themselves as charismatic Christians, making them more than four times as likely as non-Latino Catholics to identify with renewalist Christianity. The implications of this are particularly important for the Catholic Church, given that the rapidly growing Latino flock is practicing a distinctive form of Catholicism.
Chapter 4: Conversion and Views of the Catholic Church Nearly one-fifth (18%) of all Latinos say they have either converted from one religion to another or to no religion at all. Conversions are a key ingredient in the development of evangelicalism among Hispanics. Half of Hispanic evangelicals (51%) are converts, and more than four-fifths of them (43% of Hispanic evangelicals overall) are former Catholics.
By an overwhelming majority (82%), Hispanics cite the desire for a more direct, personal experience with God as the main reason for adopting a new faith. Among those who have become evangelicals, nine-in-ten (90%) say it was this spiritual search that drove their conversion. A majority of evangelical converts (61%) say the typical Catholic mass is not lively or exciting, although only about one-in-three (36%) cite that as a reason for their conversion.
Chapter 5: The Ethnic Church The houses of worship most frequented by Latinos have distinctly ethnic characteristics. A majority of those in the congregation are Hispanic; some Latinos serve as clergy; and liturgies are available in Spanish. The growth of the Hispanic population is leading to the emergence of Latino-oriented churches in all the major religious traditions across the country. While the prevalence of Hispanic-oriented worship is higher among the foreign born, with 77% saying they attend churches with those characteristics, the phenomenon is also widespread among the native born, with 48% saying they attend ethnic churches.
Chapter 6: Religion and Politics Two-thirds of Hispanics say that their religious beliefs are an important influence on their political thinking. More than half say churches and other houses of worship should address the social and political questions of the day. By nearly a two-to-one margin, Latinos say that there has been too little expression of religious faith by political leaders rather than too much. Churchgoing Hispanics report that their clergy often address political matters, although the extent of that practice varies considerably by issue and by religious tradition.
Chapter 7: Ideology and Policy Issues Religious affiliation and church attendance are strongly related to political ideology and views on a variety of social and public policy issues among Latinos. Even after controlling for language ability, nationality, generation and education, for instance, Latino evangelicals are still significantly more conservative than Catholics on social issues, foreign policy issues and even in their attitudes toward the plight of the poor. Catholics, in turn, are somewhat more conservative than seculars when it comes to *** marriage, government-guaranteed health care and increases in government services.
Frequency of church attendance tends to be correlated with more conservative views on social issues after controlling for a variety of demographic factors.
Chapter 8: Party Identification and Ideology Latino evangelicals are twice as likely as Latino Catholics to be Republicans. That is a far greater difference than exists among whites. Moreover, Hispanic conservatives who are Catholic favor the Democrats, while white conservatives consider themselves Republican regardless of religious tradition.
The Democratic Party holds a nearly three-to-one advantage among Latino Catholics who are eligible to vote (48% vs. 17% for Republicans). Because the Latino electorate is overwhelmingly Catholic (63%), Catholics represent the core of Democratic support among Latinos. Indeed, 70% of all Latino eligible voters who identify as Democrats are Catholics. Party identification among Latino evangelicals is more narrowly divided and appears to slightly favor the Republican Party. Among Hispanic eligible voters who are evangelicals, 37% say they consider themselves Republicans and 32% say they are Democrats.
Originally posted by explora: Justice expiring for Mexico's murder victims Statute of limitations begins to run out for earliest Ciudad Juarez killings
This mural in El Paso, Texas, was painted in dedication to the unsolved murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Updated: 11:18 a.m. ET May 14, 2007
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - For 13 years, June 14 has brought tears, tortured memories and enduring pain to Griselda Salas.
It was on that date, in 1993, that her 16-year-old sister, Guadalupe Ivonne Salas, disappeared. Guadalupe Ivonne's body turned up less than a week later in a park in this dusty, windswept industrial city near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Guadalupe Ivonne, who was raped and strangled, was one of the first victims in Mexico's grisliest modern-day crime mystery -- the murders of more than 400 women in the past 14 years in Ciudad Juarez, many of the bodies dumped in the desert, horribly mutilated. The killings, mostly of poor young factory workers, have inspired two Hollywood motion pictures and enraged human rights groups, which have filled volumes with accusations of corruption, botched investigations and official negligence. Yet the mystery remains unsolved.
Now the earliest of those cases are quietly slipping off legal dockets because Mexico, unlike the United States and many European countries, has a statute of limitations for murder. At a time when U.S. prosecutors are resurrecting Civil Rights-era murder cases -- some more than 40 years old -- Mexico is closing murder cases forever after 14 years. With each passing day, it appears likely that a legal technicality may end a quest to unravel a string of slayings that shocked the world.
"It is totally and absolutely grotesque to think that murderers could be enjoying their freedom because of this law," said Jaime Garcia Chávez, a Chihuahua state legislator who is pressing to abolish Mexico's statute of limitations. "It is inexcusable."
'Worrying silence' Once filled with optimism, buoyed by support from the likes of actresses Jane Fonda and Sally Field, feminists and lawmakers here are demoralized. Esther Chávez Cano, founder of Juarez's first rape and domestic violence counseling center, laments "a worrying silence" about cases that once commanded banner headlines. Few here are optimistic, even though the looming deadlines for dozens of Juarez cases have set off a last-minute race to revive long-dormant investigations.
An Argentine forensics team commissioned to look into the murders, drawing on experience from investigations of Argentina's "dirty war" and the Salvadoran civil war, is expected to release a ****ing report later this year that will illustrate the almost impossible task faced by prosecutors. The Argentines have found body parts carelessly left for years on the floors of medical examiner's offices, heads with no matching bodies, bodies with no matching heads and a mishmash of unlabeled corpses tossed into mass graves at paupers' cemeteries.
"It's basically a huge mess," forensic archaeologist Mercedes Doretti, the team leader, said in an interview.
Garcia Chávez's effort to give investigators more time to untangle that mess by extending the statute of limitations, a gambit he considers a long shot, has already come too late for Jesica Elizalde, a slain journalist whose murder case expired March 14. The case of a factory worker, Luz Yvonne de la O Garcia, went off the books April 21, as did the murder of an unidentified woman on May 12. Dozens more will follow in the coming months and years.
'Found a dead girl' The next could be Guadalupe Ivonne Salas, though prosecutors say they may be closing in on a suspect -- a promise that her family is reluctant to believe after years of dashed hopes.
Salas, a petite 16-year-old, shared a single bed in a cinder-block shack with her infant daughter and her mother, Vicky Salas. The family, like thousands of others, was drawn to Ciudad Juarez by the maquiladoras -- assembly plants, most of them owned by U.S. companies -- that sprung up blocks from the border because of an abundance of cheap labor and that transformed the town into the fourth most populous city in Mexico.
Young women were especially prized by factory supervisors because they were considered more reliable and less rowdy than men. Almost overnight, women were making money while men were still struggling to find jobs, leading to resentment in the local macho culture that activists cite as a social undercurrent to the slayings.
Salas walked each day down a treeless dirt road, past piles of rotting garbage and shacks with sagging walls, to catch a bus that took her to a television parts manufacturer. She made about $35 a week, sometimes pulling night shifts and returning home to a neighborhood with no streetlights.
The day that she disappeared should have been joyous; she was getting ready to celebrate her daughter's first birthday. Griselda Salas remembers her sister saying that a friend was going to lend her money to buy presents and party supplies.
"She's probably gone off with some stud," Griselda Salas remembers being told by police when her sister did not return home. "You watch, she'll come back pregnant with a fat belly in a few months."
Vicky Salas was on a religious retreat at the time of her daughter's disappearance. When she returned several days later, members of her church were in tears.
"They've found a dead girl," she remembers her friends telling her. "They think it's Ivonne."
A car accident delayed Vicky Salas's trip to the morgue, which was closed when she arrived. An unsmiling police officer told her, "You'll have to come back tomorrow," and no amount of pleading by a panic-stricken mother could change his mind, she recalled.
I read this article in the Post today - unbelievably sad.
Calderon changes Mexico's drug war strategy Drug cartels, unrelenting in their attacks, now target soldiers daily
Mexican soldiers stand over a detained man after a deadly gun battle with drug traffickers in Apatzingan, Mexico, on May 7.
Updated: 6:24 p.m. ET May 14, 2007 APATZINGAN, Mexico - Mexican drug cartels armed with powerful weapons and angered by a nationwide military crackdown are striking back, killing soldiers in bold, daily attacks that threaten the one force strong enough to take on the gangs.
The daily bloodshed includes an ambush that killed five soldiers this month, a severed head left with a defiant note outside a military barracks on Saturday and the slaying Monday of a top federal intelligence official who was shot in the face in his car outside his office in Mexico City.
Mexicans were particularly shocked last week by televised images of kindergartners fleeing their school during a grenade-and-gun battle between traffickers and soldiers that lasted for nearly two hours in this small town in President Felipe Calderon’s home state of Michoacan.
The unrelenting bloodshed has forced a change in strategy for Calderon, who sent more than 24,000 federal police and soldiers out in December to reoccupy territory from Michoacan’s poppy-dotted mountains to the tourist-packed port of Acapulco.
Now, to supplement the massive presence of soldiers and tanks in small towns, he’s ordered the creation of an elite military special operations force capable of surgical strikes.
“We are not going to give in,†Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said. “In the states where there is most violence, we will be right there to confront the phenomenon.â€
The drug trade is all-powerful in Mexico. Analysts estimate that cartels here make between $10 billion and $30 billion selling cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine to the U.S. market, rivaling Mexico’s revenues from oil exports and tourism. The gangs also make billions through robbery, kidnapping and extortion of businesses and would-be migrants.
The Calderon administration insists the crackdown is working — the government has already detained more than 1,000 gunmen and burned millions of dollars in marijuana plants. Traffickers are being extradited to the U.S. more rapidly than ever before, and police recently made the world’s biggest seizure of drug cash, $207 million neatly stacked inside a Mexico City mansion.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials say it’s too early to judge the crackdown’s success. Seizures at the U.S. border indicate the flow of drugs north may actually be increasing — 20 percent more cocaine and 28 percent more marijuana has been seized in the past six months, compared with the same period a year earlier.
Violence soaring Violence nationwide in Mexico seems to be increasing. The country’s three leading newspapers estimate shootouts, decapitations and execution-style killings have claimed the lives of about 1,000 people this year, on track to soar past last year’s count of 2,000. The government doesn’t count drug-related killings, and a top federal police official, Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna, has referred to the newspaper figures as the best numbers available.
This month’s death toll for soldiers and sailors is the worst for the military in more than a decade — violence that shows the gangs’ desperation, officials say.
On Saturday, drug gangs left the head of a 37-year-old auto mechanic wrapped in a sheet outside an army base near the port city of Veracruz, along with a note that read: “We are going to continue, even if federal forces are here.†The grisly message came shortly after the government said it was sending troops to the city to respond to a shooting attack.
Many Mexicans fear even the army is outgunned.
CONTINUED: 'We are scared to go out of houses'
“Calderon’s war on drugs has been a big disappointment for us,†said Pedro Ortega, a family doctor in Aguililla, a Michoacan farming town at the center of the drug trade. “The reality is that we are scared to go out of houses, scared about what could happen to our children.â€
Calderon’s overall approval ratings remain high — 68 percent according to a recent Ipsos-BIMSA poll. But 40 percent blame the military presence for the increasing violence, and 36 percent believe the traffickers are winning, according to the nationwide survey of 1,050 adults from April 26 to May 1, which had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Aguililla was one of the first towns to receive soldiers. Convoys of Humvees rolled down the streets, black helicopters clattered low over the houses and soldiers at checkpoints frisked motorists for guns. But residents say the military presence has been sporadic since then, and most of the time they are left without protection from the traffickers.
“There is no government here. We just pray to God to take care of us,†said 60-year-old Soledad Lombera, sobbing at a cross of candles in her house, an alter she created days after her son Francisco Alvez was found shot and buried on a nearby ranch.
Outsiders ordered to leave Like many towns in the heart of drug country, Aguililla is strategically difficult to control, approachable by winding roads on which assailants ambushed and killed 11 state police last year. At night, the paved central plaza is taken over by gun-wielding thugs in sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.
Outsiders are not welcome. A group of Mexican newspaper reporters who tried to cover the killings in Aguililla were blocked by a gang of men bearing automatic rifles who ordered them to leave, said the reporters, who asked that their names not be used for fear of reprisals.
Seven journalists have been killed in Mexico since October, making it the world’s second-most dangerous place to report, after Iraq.
Aguililla’s mayor, Miguel Avila, said the crackdown won’t work unless Mexicans get better jobs as an alternative to growing and smuggling drugs.
“If you don’t let people make money in one way, you have to offer them another,†Avila said. “All the people in the United States buying these drugs give people a big incentive to produce them.â€
Labor officials say process allows firms to intimidate, but industry leaders call bill 'undemocratic.'
By E.J. Schultz - Bee Capitol Bureau Published 12:00 am PDT Monday, May 14, 2007 Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A4
With the farm labor movement in its infancy, legendary organizer Cesar Chavez won a major victory in 1975 with the passage of a state law that guaranteed secret ballot elections for farmworker unions.
Now the union Chavez helped found is fighting against secret ballots, claiming the process allows for company intimidation -- and ultimately, union losses.
A bill backed by the United Farm Workers union would allow for workers to sign cards instead of cast ballots in union elections. If a majority of workers sign up, the union would be certified almost immediately.
Senate Bill 180 was authored by Carole Migden, D-San Francisco.
"Farmworkers' lives are hard enough -- this will make the process easier for them to express themselves," said Richie Ross, a UFW lobbyist.
But industry leaders say the legislation is "undemocratic."
"It infringes on the very fundamental right of the farmworker to a secret ballot," said Barry Bedwell, president of the California Grape & Tree Fruit League. "I don't believe you correct a perceived injustice by creating a bigger injustice and taking away the employee's rights."
The right to secret ballots is cemented in the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act. In the wake of the law, farm unions had great success securing union contracts. But organizers have been stung by losses in recent years.
Farm unions, including the UFW, won only a little more than half of all elections -- 73 of 132 -- between 1990 and October 2005, according to data from the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which oversees elections.
Labor leaders, in part, blame the process. Farmworkers wishing to join a union must first submit a petition signed by a majority of employees. The ALRB must then hold a secret ballot election within seven days.
Unions claim that during the waiting period, businesses discourage yes votes by intimidating workers. The UFW says tactics include threatening to close down if the union wins, firing or blacklisting pro-union workers, or threatening to shutter company housing.
Such threats are considered unfair labor practices and are illegal under state law. The remedy is to set aside the election results.
SB 180 would allow for workers to choose an alternative method known as "card-check" organizing.
Employees wishing to join a union would be asked to sign cards. If more than 50 percent of workers sign up, organizers would submit a petition to the ALRB. The ALRB would then have 48 hours to verify the signatures and certify the union.
The bill also would levy new fines for unfair labor practices.
SB 180 passed the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee on a 3-2 vote, with Republicans opposed. It will be heard today by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position. But his administration's Labor & Workforce Development Agency opposes the bill, saying in a letter that the proposed change "undermines" the right to a secret ballot election.
Bedwell said the card-check system is unfair because it limits the company's chance to state its case -- by reminding employees of their current benefits, for example.
"Both sides should be heard," he said.
Workers might agree to an election but vote against a union once in the voting booth, he said.
"At that point, they look at it and (say) I don't believe the union is going to do anything more than what is already done for me," he said.
But union officials say their message gets drowned out because organizers have limited access to workers in the days before an election.
"The current system is like an election in which one side gets television (advertising) ... and the other side doesn't get TV -- they only get to go door to door," Ross said.
Access wasn't as big an issue in the union's early days when organizers could reliably find workers laboring on the same fields day after day, he said. Now, with labor contractors involved, workers get shifted to a different location almost every day, so it's "tough to even find them," Ross said.
The UFW believes that card-check organizing would level the playing field because organizers would not have to worry about companies campaigning against the union in the days leading to an election.
Card-check organizing is not unprecedented. Some public sector employees are covered by the provision, including teachers and local government workers. In addition to farmworkers, labor leaders are fighting for a card-check system for tribal casino workers.
The Legislature's Democrats last year blocked ratification of several gaming compacts agreed to by the Schwarzenegger administration because the deals left out card-check provisions. The issue continues to stall approval of the deals this year.
About the writer: The Fresno Bee's E.J. Schultz can be reached at (916) 326-5541 or eschultz@fresnobee.com.
According to Mexico’s Ley General de Población, Article 123, illegal aliens can be fined and sentenced to up to two years in prison.
"Se impondrá pena hasta de dos años de prisión y multa de trescientos y cinco mil pesos, al extranjero que se interne ilegalmente al pais. "
Enforcing the law is one thing, abuse of authority is another. And that’s what frequently happens to Central Americans in Mexico. The illegal aliens are victims of both corrupt authorities and private criminals. Corrupt officials often shake them down for bribes. Some are robbed, raped or even murdered. Not much is done about it. Undocumented Central American migrants complain much more about how they are treated by Mexican officials than about authorities on the U.S. side of the border, where migrants may resent being caught but often praise the professionalism of the agents scouring the desert for their trail.
Jose Luis Soberanes has reported that Central American migrants in Mexico are subject to abuse at the hands of police and military personnel, and that immigrants are detained in municipal prisons. In some Mexican states, Central Americans "go to the municipal jails, where they stay for days and weeks. In some small rooms there are dozens of them and they do not separate the men and the women." In 2005, Mexico detained 240, 269 illegal aliens in its territory. Of that total, 42% were from Guatemala, 33% from Honduras, with most of the rest being from El Salvador. All three of those countries are poorer than Mexico (more on that later).
In the first six months of 2005 alone, more than 120,000 people from Central America have been deported to their countries of origin. This is a significantly higher rate than in 2002, when for the entire year, only 130,000 people were deported. Many women from Eastern Europe, Asia and Central and South America are also offered jobs at table dance establishments in large cities throughout the country causing the National Institute of Migration (INM) in Mexico to raid strip clubs and deport foreigners who work without the proper documentation. In 2004, the INM deported 188,000 people. Mexico maintains its own aggressive stance on immigration on its southern border ([37]) disrupting the illegal immigration pipeline yet condemns the United States for its efforts at building a fence along the US-Mexico border.
So why is it good if Mexico controls immigration and bad if the U.S. does? So, while demanding rights for Mexicans illegally in U.S. territory, Mexico defends its own territory by detaining illegal aliens from countries poorer than Mexico. Many Mexican officials abuse these illegal aliens. And yet, you don’t see Central American illegal aliens marching through the streets of Mexico, demanding their "rights." You don’t see the governments of Guatemala and Honduras meddling in Mexican internal politics. Why not? Because they all know that Mexico wouldn’t tolerate it.
But up north, Uncle Sam tolerates illegal aliens in the streets demanding legalization and constant meddling in U.S. politics by Mexican officials. No wonder they don’t respect us!
A bloody conflict between Hispanic and black gangs is spreading across Los Angeles. Hundreds are dying as whole districts face the threat of ethnic cleansing. Paul Harris reports from the epicentre of America's new urban warfare. Father Greg Boyle keeps a grim count of the young gang members he has buried. Number 151 was Jonathan Hurtado, 18 - fresh out of jail. Boyle's Los Angeles, where daily slaughter is a grim reality, is a world away from the glamorous Hollywood hills, Malibu beaches and Sunset Strip. Boyle's Los Angeles is where an estimated 120,000 gang members across five counties battle over turf, pride and drugs. It is a city of violence as a new race war escalates between new Hispanic gangs and older black groups, each trying to ethnically cleanse the other. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has referred to his city as 'the gang capital of America'.
Traditionally the outside view of LA gangs has been of black youths like the Bloods and the Crips and their countless subsets. It focused on the streets of Compton and South-Central and the culture of gangsta rap. But Hispanic gangs are in the ascendant, spreading across America. They have names such as Mara Salvatrucha, La Mirada Locos and Barrio Van Nuys, and now the 204th Street gang - who made it clear that they will kill innocent girls to force black families off their turf. Hate crimes against black people have surged. With a rapidly growing Hispanic population, LA's gang culture is shifting. It means that being black in the wrong neighbourhood can get you killed. Green's death brought the gang war between 'brown and black' to public awareness. 'All of the signs are there that a racial war is going to explode in this city,' says Khalid Shah, director of Stop the Violence, one of the groups organising the meeting. Memories of the 1992 Rodney King riots, which claimed 53 lives, remain fresh, but Shah believes that worse is ahead. 'It will be 10 times bigger than what happened after King. You are looking at an event which could not only paralyse an entire city but an entire state,' he warns.
More then two million people are behind prison and jail bars in the United States. The U.S. has experienced a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since 1980. 70% of the incarcerated population are people of color. Latinos are the fastest growing group behind bars. A survey showed that among the nearly 300,000 prisoners released, 67.5% were rearrested within 3 years, and 51.8% were back in prison. Each year, the United States spends an estimated $60 billion on corrections. Compared with other countries, the United States has among the highest incarceration rates in the world. More people are behind bars in the United States than any other country. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole. Of the total 2.2 million were incarcerated. China ranks second with 1.5 million. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. Inside prison everything is determined by race. Housing, exercise, eating, clothing and access to various jobs and programs depend on skin color. One prison in California had weightlifting equipment labeled “B†for black, “W†for white, and “L†for Latino to avoid fights over. Prison systems are rife with traditional race rivalries.
John Mullaly a former NYPD homicide detective, estimates that 70 percent of the drug dealers and other criminals in Manhattan’s Washington Heights were illegal. In New York City, “every high school has its Mexican gang,†and most 12- to 14-year-olds have already joined, claims Ernesto Vega, an illegal 18-year-old Mexican. Such pathologies only worsen when the first lesson that immigrants learn about U.S. law is that Americans don’t bother to enforce it.
In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens. A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
Prior to 1965, the US was taking around 178,000 legal immigrants annually. In 1965, Congress replaced the national origins system with a preference system designed to unite immigrant families and attract skilled immigrants to the United States. With these changes and some subsequent ones, the result was that most of our legal immigrants now come from Asia and Latin America, and not Europe. Chain migration designed to unite families has also brought in aged parents, children, uncles, etc., many of whom are not contributing to our society and in fact, require more social services. Even with quotas in certain immigration categories, we are now legalizing the status of over one million people annually and millions more are waiting in lines overseas for their turn to come in. Chain migration has also changed the “mix†of immigrants, making it less diverse.
Mexico accounts for 31 percent of all immigrants. Immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean account for the majority of immigrants, with 54 percent of the foreign‑born coming from these areas. Of those who arrived 2000 to 2005, 58 percent are from Latin America. This lack of diversity has hindered assimilation and could well result in the Balkanization of the country by language and culture.
We need a rational, sensible immigration policy for many reasons, some of them economic and some of them cultural, i.e., the ability to assimilate these massive numbers into our society . Since 1970, the population of the US has increased by 100 million; since 1990; by 53 million; and since 2000 by 20 million or the equivalent of our six largest cities. The Bureau of the Census projects that we will have 364 million by 2030 and over 400 million by 2050 with one-quarter of the population being Hispanic. The annual arrival of 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants, coupled with 750,000 annual births to immigrant women, is the determinate factor — or three-fourths — of all U.S. population growth. These additional people will require infrastructure [roads, water, electricity, gasoline, etc.], and impact our schools, hospitals, social welfare systems, penal system, etc. Couple these increases with an aging US population faced with entitlement programs about to go belly-up in 10 years and you have some serious public policy issues that could threaten the future of this country.
One-third of immigrants lack health insurance — two-and-one‑half times the rate for natives. Immigrants and their U.S.‑born children account for almost three-fourths (nine million) of the increase in the uninsured population since 1989. Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, three-and-a-half times the rate for natives. Immigrants and their minor children account for almost one in four persons living in poverty. Between January 2000 and March 2005, 7.9 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country, making it the highest five-year period of immigration in American history. The 35.2 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the country in March 2005 is the highest number ever recorded — two and a half times the 13.5 million during the peak of the last great immigration wave in 1910.
According to the California Department of Water Resources, if more supplies aren’t found by 2020, residents will face a shortfall nearly as great as the amount consumed today. Los Angeles is a coastal desert able to support at most 1 million people on its own water; the Los Angeles basin now is the core of a megalopolis that spans 220 miles from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. The region’s population is expected to reach 22 million by 2020. California population continues to grow by more than a half million a year and is expected to reach 48 million in 2030. But water shortages are likely to surface well before then. Water is already a scarce resource in Texas and the increased demand generated by population growth is exacerbating the problem. By 2010, over ten percent of the water needs in urban areas will not be met during times of water shortages. El Paso, San Antonio, and Albuquerque could run out of water in ten to 20 years.
Federal data suggest that as many as 10 percent of the approximately 1,000 Mexicans who emigrate to the United States daily probably are infected with Chagas, said Dr. Louis V. Kirchhoff, a Chagas specialist and a professor at the University of Iowa’s medical school. It is curable in its early stages, but kills about a third of the people infected if it is not caught in time. The report found that people from outside the United States accounted for 53.3 percent of all new tuberculosis cases in this country in 2003. That was up from fewer than 30 percent in 1993. In 2003, nearly 26 percent of foreign-born TB patients in the United States were from Mexico. Another third of the foreign-born cases were among those from the Philippines, Vietnam, India and China, the CDC report said. In the past three years, according to a report from the New York Times in February, 2003, leprosy has infected over 7,000 people in the United States. It was brought in by illegal immigrants from India, Brazil, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Leprosy spreads by infected illegal aliens working in fast food, dish washing and hotels.
In 1900, Mexico had a population of only 13 million. Today, its population is 105 million and 18.2 million American citizens in the 2000 Census declared having Mexican ancestry. In Phoenix, Tucson and Denver, the white non-Hispanic population has recently fallen below 50 percent. Demographers say non-Hispanic white people soon will be a minority in 35 of the country’s 50 largest cities. Since 1960, California´s population has more than doubled, reaching more then 37 million people. As recently as 1970, four of every five Californians were non-Hispanic whites. Only 34% of newborns in California were non-Hispanic white a few y
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