Puerto Rico adds soccer to sports portfolio

When it comes to the world of international athletics, Puerto Rico is a place whose status has always intrigued me.

As a commonwealth of the United States, their residents are U.S. citizens and therefore eligible to represent this country in the Olympics or to play on the national teams that compete in sports ranging from baseball to soccer to basketball.

YET WE ALWAYS hear of the Puerto Rico national teams that take the field. They rarely dominate. In fact, they usually go the way of many dinky nations in being unable to put together programs that can compete with the big athletic budgets of major countries.

But Puerto Rican pride causes people living on the island to want to represent their home, rather than the greater nation that keeps their home in a permanent status of neither here nor there.

That is what is behind the latest move in the world of Puerto Rican athletics. Officials on the island have created their own professional soccer league – an eight-team outfit that will play 56 games during the next couple of months (that means each team will play each of the other seven teams once).

In short, this is a small-scale outfit.

BUT IT IS the beginning of what Puerto Rico officials hope will be increased prominence in the world of international soccer.

To that end, four of the teams in the league have affiliations (and some financial support) from teams in the professional soccer leagues in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Spain. It’s almost like Puerto Rico league teams will serve as a minor league of sorts for some of the soccer powers of the Spanish-speaking world.

Now some people might wonder the logic of taking on soccer, since the economy in Puerto Rico is such that they might have trouble coming up with sufficient crowds to maintain support for the league’s eight teams.

This is not just trash talk. In recent years, the island’s professional league for baseball has had to suspend seasons for financial reasons. Imagine a league where fans have to keep track of whether their favorite teams are even playing this year, and spend much of their time wondering what their favorite players could have accomplished – if only the teams had taken the field.

I THINK THE baseball league will play its 2008-09 season when the Latin American winter league baseball seasons start in mid-October. But it will not be certain until mid-October comes around and the Santurce Cangrejeros or any of the other teams in the league actually play ball.

So the start-up of a professional soccer league is either a sign of economic encouragement (that any sport is up and running) or a suicide mission (how can they possibly survive?)

I’m sure part of the reason why Puerto Rico would like to boost its image in soccer is that they have the fortune to play in one of the weaker regions of the world.

When it comes to competing for the World Cup, North America and the Caribbean island nations are a region. The United States and Mexico usually dominate the region, but there is room for a couple of other countries to slip through and qualify for “la copa Mundial.”

A PUERTO RICAN league would help boost the quality of a Puerto Rico national team, which could then compete for the World Cup and boost the island’s international image in the same way as all those Puerto Rican basketball teams in the Olympics.

There’s just one question, and I would like a serious answer if anyone knows any good detail about the quality of soccer played in the Puerto Rican league.

How can a Puerto Rican soccer program compete internationally when a Puerto Rican baseball league can’t survive?

Seriously, Puerto Rico has a history of developing some of the best baseball players in the U.S. major leagues. One could say that the quality of Puerto Rico baseball is among the highest in the world.

THE QUALITY OF Puerto Rican soccer is, to the best of my knowledge, significantly less. Perhaps a Puerto Rico team could defeat Canada or Cuba. It likely would fall far short of the national teams of Mexico or the United States, and likely would be annihilated by the major powers of the sport (think Brazil or England).

It would be nice to think that the day will come that a Puerto Rican soccer program could compete with the best. Just imagine how intense the rivalry would be between fans of the U.S. and Puerto Rico teams, especially if they start to quarrel over which team makes better use of the colors (both countries use red, white and blue).

It likely would be as crazy (if not moreso) than what exists these days whenever Mexico and the United States take the field.

But that day could be a long ways away (maybe never) in the future.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Ponce played San Juan Athletic on Saturday in the first match ever of (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/soccer/2008-06-26-259424132_x.htm) Puerto Rico’s attempt at creating a professional soccer league of its own.

A local professional league would be another step toward a Puerto Rico national soccer team (http://www.uslsoccer.com/home/224144.html) making itself competitive on the world futbol scene.

Obama gets it. Now what’s he going to do about it?

I’ll give likely Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama one bit of praise. He understands the significance of the Latino voter bloc to his chances of actually winning the Nov. 4 general elections.

“This election could well come down to how many Latinos turn out to vote,” Obama told a gathering Saturday of political geeks organized by the National Association of Latino Elected Officials. “I’m proud that my campaign is working hard to register more Latinos and bring them into the political process.”

THE MAN WHO lost the Latino vote in 48 of the 50 states and in all of its territories during the now-complete Democratic primary season (sometimes by as much as a 2-1 margin) realizes that Latino apathy toward the campaign will cost him far more votes than Republican John McCain would lose.

But listening to snippets of what Obama had to say, and reading various accounts in the hours after the event in the District of Columbia, leave me unclear as to what he intends to do to appeal to the growing Latino population.

Obama went so far as to reiterate his past statements that immigration laws need to be reformed in a way that stresses allowing people already in this country to have a legitimate chance to gain the papers that allow them to live openly in the United States.

That ensures the social conservatives of this country who already are repeatedly telling us Obama is the “most liberal member of the Senate” will be angered, and it could have the effect of making Hispanic people see that Obama is opposed by many of the same people who oppose them.

IT’S THAT OLD “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” type of logic at work. But that thought alone will not gain Obama the backing of Latinos across the country.

Prospective Hispanic voters are going to continue to be watching the Democrat to see if he becomes someone willing to work with us as we try to better our lives, which can only help enhance the overall quality of life for the country as a whole.

So what else was noteworthy about the Latino political festival?

¡CALLARSE!: Four people got dragged out of the event for trying to heckle McCain for his continued support of the U.S. military presence in the Iraq War.

One wore a t-shirt reading “McCain = Guerra” (war), while another labeled McCain a “war criminal” for his beliefs.

Association officials were quick to apologize for the behavior of the “payasos” who got into the event to cause a ruckus, and the group itself gave McCain a standing ovation when he completed his portion of the program.

And for what it is worth, I don’t think the disruption is worthy of that much attention – even though some broadcast news accounts focused exclusively on the protesters and ignored the substance of what was said. We should just tell the “clowns” to “be quiet!,” and leave it at that.

WHO’S AN AMERICAN?: McCain engaged in one of my personal pet peeves – he praised the cultural and economic contributions of “Hispanic Americans” during his speech.

I don’t mind some white guy from Arizona admitting that Latinos enhance this country’s image. It’s about time people realized that fact. It’s the phrase “Hispanic American” that bugs me, and not because I would have preferred him to use the word “Latino.”

He should have just said “Hispanic,” as that automatically implies the person is in the United States. Anyone from a Latin American country identifies with the country. Besides, everyone from all of the countries that make up the two continents stretching from Alaska to Chile is “American.”

The phrase “Hispanic American” is redundant, as well as awkward and inaccurate.

AND ON A FINAL NOTE: McCain and Obama both voted for the conservative Republican measure that approved construction of a concrete wall along the U.S./Mexico border. They both deserve a “coscorrón to the cabeza” for that vote, although Obama explains he was trying to avoid giving conservatives an issue to tar him with had he voted against “The Wall.”

Many Latino voters didn’t buy that logic during the primary. It remains to be seen whether they will accept it during the general election campaign.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama and John McCain made a joint appearance (sort of) before a leading group that promotes the interests of Latinos who run for elective office (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/mccain-and-obama-court-hispanic-voters/) out of hopes these people go back home and tell their neighbors about the wonderful prospects for president in this year’s elections.

Is McCain trying to speak favorably to Latinos (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/28/mccain-gives-contradictory-immigration-pledges-in-speech-to-latinos/), only to turn around and talk trash when appearing before social conservatives?

The candidates will get to repeat these performances next month when they appear in San Diego (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080610-9999-1m10laraza.html) at the gathering of the National Council of La Raza.

What would it mean if Latino vote reaches record high

The actual number of people with ethnic backgrounds tracing back to Latin America who vote in this year’s U.S. presidential election likely will reach an all-time high this year, but that is not a guarantee Latino influence will increase.

Latino voter totals can’t help but increase because the Hispanic population itself is on the rise. In 2004, Latinos accounted for about 12 percent of the overall U.S. population, with 6 percent of ballots in the presidential election cast by Latinos.

NOW THAT WE are at just over 15 percent of the overall population (almost one of every six people in this country is a Latino), it is not surprising that the National Association of Latino Elected Officials is figuring there will be 21 percent more ballots cast by Hispanic people come the Nov. 4 elections.

So 9.2 million Latinos casting ballots in this year’s presidential election may sound impressive (admittedly, there are several complete states that don’t have that many people).

But it doesn’t show an increase in the Latino share of the vote – even if it means an increase (the previous record high of 7.5 million Latinos voting for president was set in 2004) in the total number.

The association that promotes the interests of Hispanic people who get elected to government office across the country compiled its estimate as a prelude to its gathering Saturday where both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain hope to use the group to make a major pitch for the support of Latino voters.

ACTIVISTS WANT TO believe the actual number (and percentage of the overall vote that is Latino) will be higher because of intense interest among prospective Hispanic voters who are outraged at the way some political people have tried to demonize our numbers for their own electoral gain.

They want to use the immigration issue as a battle cry to boost the size of the Latino vote this year.

But there’s also the fact that some segments of the Latino voter bloc remain skeptical of Obama and distrustful of McCain because of his ties to the Republican Party. Obama will “win” the Latino vote, but it may not produce enough votes to help him create a larger margin of victory over McCain.

Even the fact that Hillary Clinton (who took a large share of the Latino vote in the primary election season) is now engaging in rhetoric with Hispanic people to try to get them to support Obama is not going to be enough to get them to actually Back Barack.

CLINTON’S SUPPORT FROM Latino voters in the primary was more due to the fact that they had heard of her prior to this year and were not openly hostile to her. There was nothing about her political presence that specifically reached out to Hispanic people or would make it essential to take every word from her lips as sacred.

In fact, now that she’s out of the running for president, most Latinos will just view her as yet another former politician. Her opinions won’t matter much more to Hispanic people than those of Al Gore or Mike Dukakis.

Obama is going to have to reach out on his own to gain the support of Latinos. If he is unable to make that emotional connection with the people of this country to whom America ends with Chile instead of south Texas, many may just decide not to bother thinking much about this election cycle.

THE REAL STORY of Campaign ’08 and how it relates to increased Latino political empowerment is to see how many people decide it is worth their time and effort to go to their neighborhood polling place to cast a ballot.

If that 9.2 million figure turns out to be accurate, it would mean that the percentage of the Hispanic vote would remain roughly the same compared to the 2004 elections. It would mean that “progress” will have stalled.

An increased share of the U.S. electorate is the prize that Hispanic people ought to be seeking in 2008. For it is when we assert our influence at the polling place that political people will begin to listen to us and to take our concerns seriously.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The National Association of Latino Elected Officials released this (http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=B5F3EF2C48B03F0E) study of how large they expect the Hispanic share of the electorate to be for the 2008 presidential elections.

The Latino vote is the great uncertain bloc that confounds political analysts who are trying (http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-06-26-Hispanics_N.htm) to figure out now who will win come Nov. 4.

Saturday’s noon-hour appearance in the District of Columbia by Barack Obama and John McCain (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/26/MN2R11EUAU.DTL) will not be their sole attempt at gaining the support of a majority of the Latino voter bloc.

“Viva Obama” clubs a pale parody of JFK tactic

Likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is borrowing a tactic from the early days of JFK to try to get the growing Latino population to warm up to his candidacy.

Out in California, groups calling themselves “Viva Obama” clubs are organizing so as to let would-be Hispanic voters realize that the U.S. senator from Illinois has a record that is sympathetic to their concerns.

ARMANDO NAVARRO, LEADER of an alliance that is creating clubs out west, told the Press-Enterprise newspaper of Riverside, Calif., that the clubs hope to get their efforts underway by July to try to boost the number of Latinos who are registered to vote for the Nov. 4 elections.

Eventually, the group hopes to morph into something that persuades political officials to support immigration reform measures that are not as punitive as the ones that have been backed in recent years by Republican officials at the urging of social conservative activists.

It will be interesting to see if the Obama campaign can work with Latino activists across the country to spread these clubs, which on the surface sound like something from a bad television comedy sketch show.

It also reminds me of the mariachi number that was big for a few weeks in February just prior to the Texas primary election and caucus. “Viva Obama” the song performed by “Mariachis Mexicanos en Texas” told the story of the man from the streets of Chicago who wanted to rise to power to fight for the rights of all people across the Lone Star State.

These bumper-stickers were used by the Kennedy campaign of 1960 to attract Mexican-American voters in the Los Angeles area.

NOT THAT THE song (which itself is little more than a parody of the classic upbeat mariachi song “¡Viva Mexico!”) did Obama much good in Texas. He still lost the Latino vote there, and in most other states during the 2008 primary election season.

In short, it is nice to say you are creating a special club to make Latinos feel special. But what the Hispanic voter bloc really wants to hear is some sort of evidence that you acknowledge the uniqueness of their situation in this country.

That is ultimately what will get a significant number of Latinos to bother to cast ballots. Obama will win the Latino vote (Hispanic hostility toward the political allies of Republican John McCain is intense enough that he won’t win in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods across the country).

But he needs large numbers of Hispanic voters – a sizable percentage of the Latino vote isn’t good enough in itself because it could mean that many Latinos stood at home on Election Day.

IT IS INTERESTING that the tactic of special clubs for Latino voters is a direct takeoff on the 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy.

All throughout the southwestern U.S. in the early 1960s, there were “Viva Kennedy” clubs (which later evolved into “Viva Kennedy/Johnson” clubs once the longtime senator from Texas joined the presidential ticket.

In Texas, the “Viva Kennedy” clubs were the first-ever political organization that focused its efforts around the desires of the Mexican-American population.

The Kennedy campaign used similar clubs in other states in the region as a mechanism to reach out to the Latino population by letting them know that the Democratic Party had added provisions to its platform meant to protect the rights of migrant farm workers, in addition to the existing provisions related to civil rights, school desegregation, fair housing and voting rights.

I’M SURE OBAMA thinks he can do the same with his version of the club.

There’s just one difference.

Part of Kennedy’s appeal to the Hispanic population of the era was religion, and the “Viva Kennedy” clubs made that point clear.

Kennedy was the first Catholic to get elected president, in part because the many Mexican-Americans who were also Catholic took the religious affiliation as a sign that this candidate (instead of opponent Richard Nixon of California) had something in common with them – even though the Irish-Catholic Kennedys by that point had enough wealth to be far removed from the immigrant experience.

OBAMA IS NOT Catholic. In fact, many Latinos are confused about his religious affiliation.

Some are falling for the distortions that he either is, or once was, of the Muslim faith. Others see his affiliation with various black-oriented churches on Chicago’s South Side and figure that is evidence enough that Obama is, “not one of us.”

He doesn’t have the potential religious bond. In fact, some Latinos cite their Catholicism as the reason they could not possibly vote for Obama. Some go so far as to openly say they won’t vote for any candidate who supports gay rights or abortion, while others use religious rhetoric to try to mask racially motivated bigotry.

IF OBAMA WANTS to have a chance at getting the Hispanic population to truly support his campaign, he’s going to have to develop an eagerness to make Latino voters feel as special as the youth of this country has felt toward the Obama campaign.

It would be too easy for “Viva Obama” clubs to be used to give campaign aides (not the actual candidate) a forum to spout platitudes of interest to Hispanic people – then have Obama do nothing to back up the talk should he get elected as president.

Obama can get the Latino vote if he listens to us. If he uses the clubs as little more than a chance to sell us merchandise such as t-shirts with an Obama logo, then the “Viva Obama” clubs won’t even be worth the cost of making up special logo campaign badges for club members.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama is putting together a string of clubs to try to get Latinos (http://www.democrats.org/page/group/VivaObamaClub) to support his Democratic presidential dreams, instead of those of Republican John McCain.

“Viva Kennedy” clubs helped John F. Kennedy organize his outreach efforts toward getting (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/VV/wcv1.html) the Hispanic vote in the 1960 presidential elections.

“Viva Obama” clubs already have a catchy theme song. Whether the actual clubs (http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/02/viva_obama_2008.php) match up to the jingle remains to be seen.

Latino pastors get lame duck & campaign aides

Religious leaders within the growing Latino population are using a gathering in Washington this week to make sure that political people – both present and future – appreciate the potential strength of the growing voter bloc.

The group Esperanza, an Evangelical network of Hispanic people, will have President George W. Bush speak to their prayer breakfast on Thursday, where Latinos will make sure the president knows of their concerns for the remaining year he has in the White House.

BUSH LIKES TO boast that his Texas ideals give him a comprehension of the Latino population. Latinos are going to try to hold him to his word and get what they can from the remaining time of his presidency.

“This year, more than ever, we have come together in a special way to pray, celebrate and advocate for Hispanic (people) everywhere,” Esperanza President Luis Cortés Jr. said, in a prepared statement.

Bush has actually been a regular participant in the group’s event – this is the sixth time (in eight years) that he took part in the breakfast meeting. He will participate along with officials such as Panama first lady Vivian Fernández de Torrijos and Israel tourism commissioner Rami Levi.

The group’s breakfast is the culmination of a week’s worth of events that are meant to let more than 750 clergy members of various denominations, and some leaders of activist organizations, express their concerns to political people.

THE GROUP COORDINATED town hall meetings on topics ranging from increased advocacy to immigration.

They’re also looking to the political future.

Neither of the major party presidential candidates – Barack Obama for the Democrats and John McCain of the GOP – were willing or able to spend time with the Hispanic group (Obama was too busy campaigning this week in his Chicago hometown and making appearances with former opponent Hillary R. Clinton in Unity, N.H. while McCain did Las Vegas to talk about nuclear power) at their conference.

The pastors and activists had to settle for campaign managers and other aides for the Obama and McCain campaigns.

DAVID PLOUFFE FOR Obama and Rick Davis for McCain had their chance to plead to the Latino group in hopes that these pastors will be willing to go back to their Latino congregations and persuade people to cast their ballots for their respective candidate.

The campaign manager meeting was an alternative to the group’s usual D.C.-oriented event – a trip to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress.

“Given that this is a presidential election year, we decided that instead of going to the Hill to advocate, our national representatives should come to us,” Cortes said.

Esperanza, which wants people to know that not all Latinos are Catholic, usually tries to promote the political process itself, rather than any specific candidate or cause.

YET THE GROUP is taking a stance on one issue – global warming.

The group will put together programs meant to educate people in the Latino church congregations about climate change.

“As Christians, we are called to care for God’s creation, and the good news is that there are solutions that will help us make a difference for the sake of future generations,” Cortes said. “This is the time to act.”

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Latino religious leaders have spent the past week trying to play politics (http://www.esperanza.us/) and persuade politicos of their concerns on various issues.

While his campaign manager was trying to appeal to Latino religious leaders, John McCain (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-campaign26-2008jun26,0,2405380.story) was in Las Vegas trying to encourage people skeptical of nuclear power of the need to expand its use.

Will Unity, N.H., really unify the followers of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? Obama went a long way toward making a sympathetic gesture to Clinton when he urged (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4214830.ece) his financial backers to consider writing out checks of support to Clinton to help her eliminate the more than $20 million in debt she incurred from her unsuccessful primary campaign.

Political cooperation a positive sign for Latinos

It may just be a stunt to promote the Spanish-language television and radio stations affiliated with the Univision network, but the latest advertising campaign now underway is a positive step toward bolstering the strength of the growing Latino population as a voter bloc.

Specifically, Univision plans to air ads and other programs this summer that are meant to educate Hispanic people who might otherwise be confused about the process of voting. Education, it is hoped, will make the whole concept of casting a ballot seem less mysterious, which will mean more Latinos going to the polls.

THAT CAMPAIGN, WHICH goes by the name “Ya es Hora” (It’s Time) will result in greater strength for Hispanic people as a whole, since our full acceptance in the political system of the United States will come about when our people vote in proportions similar to our overall population.

Currently, we are about 15 percent (and growing) of the U.S. population, but a Pew Hispanic Center study found that only about 6 percent of those who cast ballots for president in the 2004 elections were Latino.

The ad campaign is going to use mayors of six of the cities in this country with significant Hispanic populations, having them record spots that encourage all people to vote (so I don’t want to hear from the crackpots that somehow there is something discriminatory about having more Latinos vote, or that it comes at the expense of other people in this country).

Officials from Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco all will participate – although only Manny Diaz of Miami and Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles are of Hispanic ethnic backgrounds.

UNIVISION OFFICIALS SAID Tuesday they also plan to have other advertising spots and programs that promote the concept of absentee ballots – thereby letting Latinos know of their right to cast ballots even if circumstances prevent them from being able to get to their neighborhood polling place on Election Day.

Such information can be particularly useful for the growing numbers of newcomers to this country whose ignorance is not due to a failure to pay attention during social studies classes in elementary and high school.

“In the last few months, we have had thousands of Hispanics become naturalized citizens in the Los Angeles area because of the campaign,” Villaraigosa said, in a prepared statement. “By helping these new citizens, as well as any other eligible voters to register to vote, we will increase participation at the polls and enhance civic participation, which is vital in a thriving democracy.”

THAT IS A plus.

The whole concept of democracy may give people equal rights in theory. But in reality, people who actually participate are “more equal” than others.

The reason political people have been able to get away with tactics that demonize those with ethnic roots in Latin America is that a sizable percentage of the electorate is supportive. Politicians have found that supporting hostile measures (particularly with regards to any attempt to reform immigration procedures) pays off on Election Day.

A LITTLE MORE education now will increase the size of the Latino share of the vote, which will dilute the power of those who are hostile.

When political people begin to see that nasty, negative, punitive measures will have negative consequences for their continued existence in government, then we will begin to see measures that are meant to support, and promote, our livelihoods in this country.

In short, a regiment of Latinos at the polling place on Election Day can be much more powerful than that same group bearing arms.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Univision hopes to gain greater viewership, in addition to achieving (http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080624005976&newsLang=en) something for the public good, through their new public service campaign.

Both of the major presidential campaigns see the significance (http://www.as-coa.org/article.php?id=1115) of taking a share of the Latino voter bloc in this year’s elections.

Would you (http://www2.sbsun.com/news/ci_9653957) join a “Viva Obama” club?

Did somebody (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-have-you-gone-mayor-daley.html) forget that Chicago has a sizable Latino population?

Do Mississippi River floods show folly of “The Wall?”

At a time when severe flooding along the Mississippi River and other bodies of water that feed off it show the flaws in man-made obstacles along riverbanks, the Supreme Court of the United States gave its acceptance to federal officials who are trying erect hundreds of miles of concrete wall along the river that demarcates the U.S./Mexico border.

Actually, that is a bit strong. What the high court actually did was nothing.

THEY LET IT be known Monday that they will not hear an appeal by environmental activists who contend that construction of the wall at the southern edge of Texas is going to do serious damage to the environment.

By taking no action and hearing no arguments, a lower court’s ruling in favor of the federal government is allowed to stand, and the people who are deluded enough to seriously believe that erection of a concrete barricade will improve the national security of this country will be allowed to proceed.

I find it particularly ridiculous that people are willing to ignore the environmental hazards of man-made obstacles in light of the severe flooding that is taking place in riverfront towns across the Midwestern U.S.

Many people who usually live 20 miles or so inland now have their homes underwater, and much of Iowa has suffered severe water damage.

MANY OF THE conservatives who always like to tell other people how wrong they are have made the argument in recent weeks that these people who live along the river are foolish. They should have realized the potential for the Mississippi to overflow its banks before deciding to live there.

Some will go so far as to point out that the levees constructed along the river add to the problem by trying to artificially control the river’s flow. The river should be allowed to flow the way nature intended, and these conservatives would argue it should not be the federal government’s problem to rebuild everything that is being destroyed by the Midwestern floods.

So what do these same social conservatives want to do along the Rio Bravo del Norte/Rio Grande? Erect concrete barricades and try to artificially separate a region into two chunks.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that the Mississippi River is a much more significant body of water than the Rio Grande, which in some parts is nothing more than a heavily polluted puddle. I don’t know if I ever see “la Valle” being lost in a mass of water similar to how towns along the Iowa, Missouri and Illinois shores of the Mississippi are being lost these days.

YET WE OUGHT to take the Midwestern lesson to heart about trying to do too much construction along a body of water. The environmental activists deserved to have their day in (Supreme) court, and the justices who dismissed the case without comment are being shortsighted.

Aside from the potential for altering the water flow, environmentalists also note possible harm to wildlife in the area, and also for a change are on the side of the Texas property owners who have control of the riverfront land.

Actually, I should say “had” control, since the erection of a wall is planned to leave some space between the water’s edge and the barricade. In some cases, as much as 2 miles of space will be allowed. Property owners say the federal government is depriving them access to the land they own.

There are two major flaws in the logic of erecting a wall along the river.

FIRST, IS THAT it presumes that the southwestern United States and northern Mexico are two distinct regions. They’re not.

The Rio Grande was never meant to be a significant body of water that acted as a national boundary. Historically, there were cities from the old Spanish days (such as Laredo, Texas) that got cut in two when the Mexican-American War of the late 1840s established the river as a border.

Concrete will do nothing other than provide a surface out in the hot desert by which graffiti artists will “do their thing” and create a barricade that physically will be reminiscent of the old Berlin Wall (which was East Germany’s pathetic attempt to keep the outside world outside of their capital city).

SECOND, IT WON’T improve national security. Even if all 700 or so miles of a wall are eventually erected, the fact is that the U.S./Mexico border from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean is more than 1,900 miles long.

Much of that area is next-to-impassible desert, but some people desperate enough to get into the United States undetected will try it, and some will succeed. Some people will find ways to get around, or under, “The Wall.”

More likely, we will see an increase in the number of people who slip into the country from Canada, where the border is longer and (weather-wise) much easier to deal with.

Either that, or there will be a substantial increase in the number of people who come into the country on legitimate visas, but do not leave when they expire. Either of those alternatives is a much more legitimate means for people wishing to do the United States some harm to get into the country than the notion that they are entering through Mexico.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Federal officials say that by erecting up to 670 miles of concrete wall along the U.S./Mexico (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/washington/23cnd-scotus.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin) border by year’s end, they will reduce significant amounts of “criminal” activity. Environmentalists are skeptical.

Activists can express their opposition to “The Wall” by signing the Internet-based petition (http://notexasborderwall.com/), while global security experts try to put a U.S./Mexico (http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/systems/mexico-wall.htm) wall into proper perspective.

Yoga and meditation taking place Sunday along the U.S./Mexico border must have been (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h4OPRbSS4I4ROQfa_zVgtcbIBMiQD91FQMPO1) quite a spectacle.

Clinton to curry favor at Latino gathering

Bill Clinton was sympathetic enough to the interests of African-American people during his two terms as president that some use the label “first black president” to describe him. Could his wife be seeking the label of honorary Latina?

That is one impression that could be derived from the first official appearance Hillary R. Clinton is making since bringing to an end her dreams of becoming president in her own right.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION of Latino Elected Officials is having its annual gathering this coming week, and when the gathering kicks off Thursday in Washington, their keynote speaker will be none other than the “Lady from New York” who thoroughly dominated the Latino vote in the Democratic primary elections.

Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain also will speak before the group (scheduled to appear one right after the other on Saturday during the noon lunch hour). But Hillary’s appearance will be the one that gets a significant amount of attention.

To listen to Hillary Clinton during the campaign, the reason she was favored by Latino voters was because she developed an innate sense of what we go through in this country from back in her first few days out of college when she did activist work in Texas (and even briefly lived in San Antonio).

Most of us Latinos chuckled to ourselves whenever we heard Hillary tell that story (as she did over and over and over while campaigning prior to the Texas primary in March).

WHAT REALLY GOT a majority of Hispanic people to cast ballots for Clinton was simply that many of us outside of Illinois had never heard of Obama, and his campaign didn’t seem all that interested in telling us much about his ideals that actually do include the growing Latino population.

Clinton, by contrast, was a known commodity whose record indicated a lack of hostility toward our positions (which is not something we could say about many of the candidates who ran in the Republican primary).

That is why outside of Illinois and Virginia, Clinton took the Hispanic vote in every single state’s primary election and/or caucus (don’t forget Texas has both).

In some states, Clinton took the Latino vote by as much as a 2-1 ratio. In fact, although polls indicate Obama is likely to snatch a significant chunk of the Latino vote in a general election against McCain, that same vote remained loyal to Clinton all the way to the end of the primary (remember how big she won in Puerto Rico’s early June elections?)

SO NOW, CLINTON is going to address the group that tries to address the concerns of Hispanic people who get themselves elected to government posts. What does she have to say?

Is she going to thank us for being one of two groups (along with older women) who enabled her to keep campaigning all the way to the bloody end of the Democratic primary season (even though she realistically lost her chance of winning about two months earlier)?

Will we get nothing more than a “unity” message to Back Barack come the Nov. 4 elections? That would be noble on her part, but I would hope Obama has enough sense to realize he can’t rely on Hillary to “deliver” the Latino vote to him.

He’s going to have to earn our votes all on his own. In fact, for some Latinos, he’s going to have to give them the reason why they should even bother to cast a ballot come Election Day.

I’D LIKE IT if we could hear some sign that Clinton will keep the concerns of the growing Latino population in mind as she continues to hold elective office. She is still the senator from New York, and could use her post there to support our concerns.

Let’s not forget that while some Hispanic activists denounced Obama during the primary season for his vote in favor of building a wall along the U.S./Mexico border, Clinton voted the same way. Both supported the measure so as to avoid giving conservative attack dogs an “issue” to use against them, not because of any real belief that a concrete barrier along the border is going to keep anybody out of this country.

“Sen. Clinton has been a real champion for our community,” association President Adolfo Carrion Jr. said of Hillary in a prepared statement. “We’re excited to continue the conversation about how we move the country forward on the issues we all care about.”

It would be nice to see Clinton actually earn that bit of canned praise. She could easily do so if, in the future, Latinos could count on Clinton to support our interests, similar to how many of us gave her their loyal voter support in primary after primary in 2008.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Hillary Clinton has the potential to outshine all of the presidential hopefuls (http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/immigration/entries/2008/06/20/clinton_to_speak_to_latino_con.html) when she speaks to Latino political people later this week in Washington.

Hispanic politicos who backed Clinton (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=27479) are slowly coming around to the idea of voting for Barack Obama. Whether that will influence Latinos at large to do so remains to be seen.

Does somebody have a dirty mind?

If anybody knows where I can find a picture of the advertising billboard referred to in this story from the Brownsville Herald newspaper (http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/huevos_87849___article.html/bigger_play.html), I would appreciate them letting me know.

This double use of the word “huevos” is something I won’t truly believe until I see it for myself, and unfortunately, none of my relatives who remain in Texas live in the far south region near the U.S./Mexico border.

I’d tell you more about this story, which analyzes attempts by businesses to come up with advertising that appeals to their heavily Hispanic customer base. But you should really read it for yourself to appreciate it.

-30-

States 'stand up' to Mexico over death penalty

As currently structured, prosecution of criminal cases in Mexico is a federal issue. In the United States, it is a local matter.

That difference is the complicating factor when it comes to the two countries resolving their difference of opinion towards capital punishment.

AT STAKE WERE motions filed this week before the World Court, where Mexico asked the legal authorities to prevent Mexican citizens currently being held in U.S. prisons from being put to death. They argue the men were denied their legal rights under international law to have a representative of their native country’s consulate present, and that they ought to get new trials.

This is a case where the U.S. government, even President George W. Bush, would be inclined to cooperate – even if it just meant delaying an execution date until the circumstances of each case could be more thoroughly examined.

Yet these are cases where the death row involved is in Texas – the execution capital of North America. They are not quite putting people to death anymore at the rate of one every two weeks, but Texas officials still use their death chamber for criminal punishment.

And Texas officials are taking the attitude that no foreign government or pseudo court has the right to tell them how to administer the death penalty.

IN FACT, THE U.S. Supreme Court (composed of all those appointees made throughout the years by conservative Republican presidents) has ruled that individual states are not required to follow rulings issued by the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and that U.S. officials are misguided if they try to ask state officials to pay the World Court any mind.

So the 51 Mexican citizens currently on Death Row in Texas are not likely to get any review by Mexico’s consulate officials, who would have wanted to know if any of their countrymen were in legal trouble.

In fact, Mexico officials are making it clear in their arguments before the World Court this week that they merely want to figure out if there was anything the consulate could have done for the wanted men. Strictly speaking, they are not yet asking for the executions themselves to be halted.

And it is near certain that executions will take place this year and next.

ONE OF THOSE Mexicans whose case is included in the World Court pleading, that of Jose Medellin, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Aug. 5. Four others are likely to have execution dates scheduled by the Texas Supreme Court sometime this summer.

Capital punishment has always been a touchy issue between the United States and Mexico. While the federal government has a death penalty for select offenses and about two-thirds of the 50 states have their own capital crimes statutes, Mexico is much more restrictive.

The only offense for which the Mexican government would consider death as a penalty is literally for an act of treason. Even then, it is considered an extreme. Mexico has not had an execution in nearly 70 years.

Opposition to the death penalty in Mexico literally comes out of the late 19th Century and early years of the 20th Century just before the Mexican Revolution. Execution came to be identified as the tactic by which corrupt governments that abused the rights of the people eliminated potential opposition.

THROUGHOUT THE YEARS, Mexico’s government officials have always made their disgust known with the U.S. death penalty procedures.

There have been instances where people wanted for capital crimes in the United States turned up in Mexico, and Mexican authorities would refuse to return them unless promises were made that the death penalty would not be sought – a promise that local prosecutors were loath to make.

There was even an instance where former Mexico President Vicente Fox cancelled an official visit to the United States as a way of registering a protest with the U.S. death penalty procedures.

So how is this going to turn out?

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, the World Court will issue some sort of ruling that local officials will interpret as an attempt to “mess with Texas.”

It will be ignored. The court of world opinion will shudder and complain about “Texas cowboy” mentalities running amok.

And at some point in August, death penalty critics will hold their candlelight vigils outside the prison in Huntsville, Texas, while men who probably had no clue what was happening to them will be put to death.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The International Court of Justice previously ruled Texas must (http://www.themonitor.com/articles/court_13430___article.html/state_international.html) let the Mexican consulate review the cases of 51 of its citizens currently on death row in the Lone Star State. Not that it did any good.

Is this (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTHO92388620080619) an issue of the death penalty, or of state’s rights?

Campos does Chicago, U.S.

For those of you with an interest in the world of international soccer or Mexican pop culture, this quickie story about one-time team Mexico goaltender Jorge Campos Navarette might be of interest.

I personally was taken by Campos' honesty in addressing the increased competition "los Tricolores" feel from the national teams of the United States, despite the rhetoric one often gets from fans of the Mexican teams that makes one think they are still living in the past when Mexico was the dominant nation in this part of the world of "futbol."

And yes, there is an element of self-promotion in my offering up this link here (http://nwi.com/articles/2008/06/20/viva/english_news/docf123163b57188c2c8625746b001bdc5b.txt). So consider reading this story, which was published this week in Viva los Tiempos, a Spanish/English bilingual newspaper supplement based out of Munster, Ind.

-30-

Obama, McCain have long way to go for Latino support

To listen to the campaign propaganda, both Barack Obama and John McCain made serious strides this week toward trying to win a majority of the Latino vote come the Nov. 4 elections.

Both men engaged in private meetings that they say are meant to strengthen their support among this country’s growing Hispanic population. Yet when looking at their actions, both seem more concerned with trying to find a “quick fix” solution toward Latino support, rather than doing anything substantive that would gain them the backing of Hispanic people.

BOTH OF THEM put on stunts that they would like to think are major movements toward gaining the hearts and minds of Latinos – except that Republican McCain’s stunt was his “secret” meeting with Chicago-area Hispanic people, which apparently is merely one of several “secret meetings” he is having across the United States.

After reading an account published by the blatantly partisan Illinois Review, I became all the more convinced I did the right thing in not wasting my time trying to get into the meeting at the Drake Hotel, since it turned into little more than platitudes of support that McCain wants Hispanic people to hear, but not others.

There’s a good reason why. The Illinois Review writer who did bother to cover the hearing (very poorly, I might add) found nothing but reasons to nitpick him and label him as “Juan McCain” for what was perceived as his excessive sympathy for Latinos Supporting a compassionate and realistic measure for immigration law reform gets the red-white-and-green “A” (for Amnesty) label.

That is going to be McCain’s drawback. Anything he does to try to gain Hispanic support is going to kill him among the social conservatives who fear McCain is not as zealous as they are on certain issues, and who actually prefer the Republican Party because of its officials’ willingness to demonize anyone with an ethnic background from a Latin American country.

FROM THE REFERENCE to “private meetings” held across the country, I gather that the McCain campaign strategy is to try to create some sort of word of mouth that the senator from Arizona is not the same type of ogre as some of his partisan allies in Congress.

Perhaps he thinks Latinos will engage in a “whisper” campaign to tell “sus tios y primos y amigos” that they should vote for the Republican presidential dreamer, rather than Obama.

At least Obama’s gesture was somewhat open. He met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and claims the Associated Press reports that everybody he met with is now openly supporting his campaign instead of McCain (even though in the primary, they were some of Hillary R. Clinton’s most strident supporters).

There are two problems with this line of logic.

THE CAUCUS DOES not represent every member of Congress who is Latino. None of the Hispanics who are Republican work with the caucus. And some of the Democrats who usually do work with the caucus did not bother to attend the meeting on Tuesday.

It was not clear whether there were prior commitments, or just some still-lingering bitterness over Clinton’s primary defeat.

The other problem is that there is no guarantee that anyone in the districts back home are going to care much what their member of Congress has to say about this issue.

WHETHER LATINOS CHOOSE to “Back Barack” or stay at home on Election Day is going to be determined by many local factors. This is one area where a traditional political endorsement is virtually meaningless.

It didn’t help matters much that the best Obama could tell the congressmen was that he is in the process of developing a national strategy to deal with Hispanic people.

Any member of the Senate from Chicago (whose population is about one-quarter Latino) who has gone this far into a presidential campaign without having a strategy prepared is guilty of gross neglect.

THIS IS SOMETHING that should have been dealt with a year or so ago. To just be getting to it now – just over four months from Election Day – is absurd.

It’s a good thing for Obama that there is so much hostility among Latinos toward the Republican Party, or else he’d be in serious danger of losing their bloc’s vote. But if he’s going to have a chance to get enough of a Latino turnout to generate enough votes to win the presidential elections, then he’d better have one heck of a national strategy.

That document will be one of the most important actions, if not THE most, made by the Obama campaign for the rest of the ’08 election cycle.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Barack Obama admits he let Democratic primary opponent Hillary R. Clinton outhustle him (http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-06-18-obama-hispanic-caucus_N.htm) when it came to trying to get votes from Hispanic people.

Either John McCain will be blamed by Latinos for his Republican congressional colleagues’ (http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/06/juan-mc-cain-an.html) hostile actions, or he will get trashed by social conservatives for being soft on Hispanic people.

Saul, Elian become “children” of immigration debate

Two youthful names from the past came crawling out of the news woodwork this week, indicating that people are still willing to play politics with the lives and circumstances of Saul Arellano and Elian Gonzalez.

It’s almost as though 9-year-old Saul and 14-year-old Elian are no longer human beings, but rather just stories to be manipulated by people who want to pursue a cause – specifically, the differing stories involving Latinos and immigration.

SO NATURALLY, THEIR separate achievements this week warranted international attention.

With regard to Elian Gonzalez, the worst nightmare of his uncles, aunts and other relatives living in the United States came true – their beloved Elian became a communist.

Specifically, he took the oath that made him a member of the Young Communist Union, in the process pledging his allegiance to the current Cuba regime run by los hermanos Castro.

The propaganda machine that spews out partisan rhetoric in Cuba says Elian made a statement saying he would never betray his country, which is what the hard-core Castro-ites in Cuba would say his mother did back in 1999.

YOU REMEMBER (HOW could you forget?). Elian’s mother, Elisabet Broton was one of the Cubans so anxious to escape the poverty of the Caribbean island nation that she and dozens of others got on board a rickety raft hoping they could make it the 100 or so miles from Havana to the coast of Florida.

But the promise of a wonderful life in the United States wasn’t to be. Like many other floating devices that try to take people across, it capsized.

All aboard were drowned – except Elian, who managed to cling to a floating board and survive long enough to be found by fishermen on Thanksgiving Day, who then took him to Florida, where he was claimed by a distant uncle in Miami.

That provoked the long-running legal battle as federal officials tried to comply with laws that clearly required Elian (a minor) to be sent back to his biological father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who lived in Cuba.

IN THE END, that is what happened, but only because armed law enforcement agents had to use force to get the boy back, as his family was so ardently anti-Fidel Castro that they wanted the rule of law suspended so as to make Fidel look foolish and were stubbornly willing to do anything to resist legal orders to turn the child over to authorities.

Now, Elian is the prize communist. He’s the one who will have his every act watched – for evidence of the superiority of Communist thought by one side and for evidence that he is being “brainwashed” by the other.

What will become of Elian himself? We’ll never know. His life will be nothing more than a cause, regardless of how it turns out. It’s almost like Elian the individual died along with his mother nearly nine years ago. Elian the crusade will live on for decades.

In fact, long after Elian dies, his actions will be worth propaganda material to someone.

SUFFERING A SIMILAR fate is Saul Arellano, who also lost the ability to be with his mother on a regular basis.

At least she didn’t die physically. But mother Elvira is the woman who holed herself up for just over one year, seeking sanctuary in a Chicago church to evade an order that she be deported back to her native Mexico.

Eventually, she came out to do activist work on behalf of reforms in U.S. immigration law, and federal officials got her in California. Within days, she was returned to Tijuana.

What complicated the matter is that she gave birth to her son while staying in the United States. So Saul is a U.S. citizen. More specifically, he’s a Chicagoan. Under the rule of law, he doesn’t have to leave. In fact, it would be a violation of his civil rights if the federal government were to force him out of the country along with his mother.

HE HAS HAD some contact with his mother, visiting her in Mexico (where under Mexican law, he could choose when he turns 18 to be a Mexican citizen if he so desires). But in all likelihood, the two are likely never again going to have a life together as mother and son.

Elvira became a part of the immigration reform cause, and her son became one of her props.

For those wondering what happens to him when he is in the United States, he does have a legal guardian.

The pastor at the Adalberto United Methodist Church (where Elvira hid from immigration authorities for a year) and his wife, a leading Latino activist in Chicago, have custody – with Elvira’s blessing – of Saul.

SO THAT’S WHY Saul gets to spend a summer in Chicago, returning to the neighborhood where he and his mother lived what likely will be the most bizarre year of anyone’s life.

Church officials say he will hang out with friends he made during his year of “sanctuary” and will try to live as normal a summer as any child could.

But Saul isn’t a normal child anymore. He is the personification of the struggle, and he will be used to advance the cause of people who think the U.S. government needs to loosen the restrictions on who can come to this country.

After all, how many normal 9-year-olds do you know of who will spend a summer day at the McHenry County Jail, partaking in a vigil at the place where Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have incarcerated some people who were caught on immigration law violations?

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: In between appearances at immigration rallies, Saul Arellano will try to live (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-deportedactivist-,0,3851924.story) the life of a typical Humboldt Park neighborhood child.

Cuban propaganda would have us believe Elian Gonzalez merely gave his dad a Father’s Day present (http://www.periodico26.cu/english/news_cuba/june2008/elian-ujc061608.html) by officially becoming a part of the Communist Party in Cuba. He actually gave the Castro regime another tool with which to tweak their critics.

Is Dallas a majority Latino/Hispanic town?

Let’s be honest about one point. Whether or not Dallas city officials ever rename a street within their boundaries for United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez is a trivial issue.

The legacy of Chavez (and the contempt to which a segment of this country’s population continues to regard his memory) will not suffer in the least if officials in the Texas city pick another name for Industrial Boulevard.

BUT THE REASON this “issue” has caught my attention in the Midwestern U.S. is that it strikes me as a 21st Century controversy that is going to crop up again and again throughout the southwestern U.S.

Significant-sized Latino populations living in the states that were once part of Mexico (and before that, the Spanish colonies) are going to assert themselves and demand that the pre-English history and culture of the region be acknowledged.

Anglo “majorities” are going to get blunt evidence that they’re not really the majority any more. This incident involving Chavez is just the first of what will be many such incidents in Texas, along with California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado (basically, the whole southwest).

At stake in Dallas is whether to rename the street that runs along the Trinity River. Officials would like to try to spruce up its public image with a scenic new name. They held a recent survey to let people think they had a say in picking a new name, and probably as a sop to the Latino population of Dallas – a Mexican-American influenced name (that of Chavez) was included in the mix.

CITY OFFICIALS PROBABLY never figured that the Spanish-influenced part of the Dallas population was big enough to give that choice significant votes. But it is, and they did.

Now, city officials have the issue on hold for the summer while they figure out how they can ignore support for “Cesar Chavez Boulevard” while minimizing the disgust that will be expressed by the local Mexican-American population.

Now when I wrote a commentary about this issue last week, I got one response from someone who complained that I was exaggerating the significance of the Latino population of Dallas – even though the only thing I did was to quote the U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Specifically, 43.1 percent of Dallas’ 1.23 million population (as of 2006) identified itself as “Hispanic.” Admittedly, that is not a majority. If the white, African-American, Asian and American Indian/Eskimo/Hawaiian segments of the Dallas population were to unite, they would overcome the people with ethnic ties to Latin American countries.

BUT THE SIMPLE fact is that with 43.1 percent of Dallas’ population as “Hispanic,” another 24.2 percent African-American and 2.3 percent Asian, that leaves roughly 30 percent of the Dallas population as what many people would consider “white.”

I differentiate it in such a way because the Census Bureau figures show Dallas with a 52.9 percent “white” population. The difference in figures is because “Hispanic” is not a race, and many Hispanic people identified themselves racially as “white” when they filled out the most recent Census form.

That's not a contradiction, and I'd be willing to bet that the bulk of the 18.9 percent of Dallas' population that identified themselves as "other" were really Hispanic people who were upset that there wasn't a distinct racial category for themselves.

My point?

DALLAS IS LIKE much of the rest of the southwest, where the Spanish influence came first and can never be eradicated – no matter how many delusions are spread by the local populace of white cowboys as heroic figures.

There are even some Latinos of an older generation who realize that the Cisco Kid would have kicked the Lone Ranger’s butt if the two had ever got into a brawl, even if the masked lawman had had help from some John Wayne character.

In coming years, we’re going to get many such cultural incidents, as Anglo establishments are going to have to accept that their region of the country is not what they always wanted to believe it was.

I expect there will be some ugly backlashes, such as in Dallas, where League of United Latin American Citizens member Alberto Ruiz, who is organizing a task force that is pushing for the Chavez street name, said this is a case of local officials not realizing the significant size of Dallas’ Hispanic population.

“THEY DON’T WANT to recognize the real culture of Dallas,” Ruiz told the Dallas Morning News newspaper. “They want a bland, generic, non-inspiring name to overshadow the cultural reality of this city, which is very Mexican and very American.”

Basically, what is going to have to happen is that people living in places like Texas and California are going to have to start regarding their home states as being equivalent of the states of Hawaii and Alaska – where ethnic Polynesian and Aleutian Eskimo populations remain in significant numbers.

Anglos who choose to live in those two isolated states see the ethnic mixture as part of what makes their home state so unique. So it will have to be when it comes to the Spanish and Texas – a land where Mexican and Anglo U.S. influences mix to create a special blend of people different from anyone else on Planet Earth.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The memory of “Cesar Chavez Boulevard” is not going to wither away (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-industrial_17met.ART.State.Edition1.4d8458e.html) in the minds of Hispanic activists in Dallas, not even if they give Chavez’ memory a statue somewhere while renaming their street for something else.

Dallas, Texas, will concede to having some diversity in its population, as it claims to have (http://www.visitdallas.com/visitors/diversity.php) the sixth largest gay community in the United States.

Immigration the instigation of this year’s debate contest

“Illegal immigration” always struck me as being a phrase that makes no sense – sort of like being “a little bit pregnant.” You either are, or you aren’t.

That goes for being pregnant, and for being an immigrant. And since the concept of people being “illegal” just by the notion of their existence is inherently absurd, it ought to be logical that an immigrant is an immigrant – regardless of what false legal status one may want to attach to it.

ANYONE WHO HAS read the commentaries published here should not be surprised I would feel this way. Some might be grossly offended at the thought (although I personally am grossly offended at the thought that anyone is presumptuous enough to think they can declare someone else to be an “illegal” human being).

But such a thought would have fit in with the mix of people who convened in Minnesota this past weekend for the “Great Think-Off.”

Sponsored by the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, the annual contest gives people who revel in the concept of stylish debate and great oratory the chance to wallow in their pleasure. Each year, some “deep” question (“Does God Exist?,” “Should Same Sex Marriages Be Prohibited?” and “Which Is More Valuable, Safety or Freedom?” are among the questions of the past) is chosen for debate.

This year, the question for consideration was, “Does Immigration Strengthen or Threaten the United States?”

THE COMPETITION CULMINATED with a weekend event where four people – two for each side – stated their view. Points were given more for the style with which one expressed their view, rather than the content. So the winner was the guy who quoted from Theodore Roosevelt’s view that, “we have room for but one flag, the American flag. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.”

I’m not about to go through a point-by-point refutation of the winner’s argument.

Much of it is the standard rhetoric of people who want to demonize anyone who through accident of conception elsewhere was not born in the United States (why else bring up the words “Middle Eastern descent” and “terrorist” in the same sentence?), and who can’t accept the fact that the newest newcomers to this country are going through the same time-consuming assimilation process of the past – by which the actual immigrant never truly becomes a part of the nation but his third-generation relatives are fully assimilated.

What encourages me is the notion that the passage of time undermines these arguments.

IN THE SAME way that people used to claim that “those Italians” or “those Irish” (they probably used much cruder slurs than I am comfortable repeating here) would never truly be “American,” I see the day coming when the same will be said for people from Latin American countries.

Further down the road, it will be the people from Middle Eastern countries who will assimilate into the country’s mindset (and sadly enough, there probably will be a few Mexican-Americans among the masses making crude comments about Arabs along the way).

There will be the day when the elements of Latin American culture will become part of the “American Way” of life. Assimilation isn’t totally about someone giving in to the characteristics of society. It also includes society picking up a few traits of the incoming cultures.

It happened before with eastern and southern European cultures coming to the U.S., and will continue again – today and in the future.

IN SOME WAYS, I am encouraged with the “Great Think Off,” where the issue of immigration was at least debated in a civil atmosphere – rather than the raucous rhetoric that can reek of racist thought.

Besides, I know that for every person who is pleased that a “con” won the immigration debate rather than a “pro,” I know the chances are very good that their sense of glee was probably lessened when they learned that in past years, this same contest offered a forum for people to successfully argue “against” banning gay marriage and that “freedom” was more important than “safety.”

But as for God, “yes.” The contest concluded in 1996 that he does exist, although several people insisted on abstaining from the vote that year.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The Great Think Off allowed these four contestants to express their views (http://www.think-off.org/) on the “deep” question of immigration.

A gold medal and a trip to New York Mills, Minn., (located about halfway between Fargo and St. Cloud) were the prize for the debate contest (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jAdxorBOhGD_38LINBs8wMn2D-eQD91AP3HO0) winner.

Mexico gasoline significantly cheaper than U.S.

So how long will be it until we start getting the crackpots of our society complaining that Mexico is undermining the hardworking people who operate gasoline stations in the southwestern United States?

My mind can already hear the complaints coming after they learn that people who live along the U.S./Mexico border have started making special trips to Mexico whenever they need to fill up their tanks with gasoline.

AS IT IS, some are already trying to tell tales of substandard gas being peddled in Mexico, as a way of discouraging southwestern U.S. residents from making the drive through the border crossings to get cheap gasoline.

As someone who used to make the trip from Chicago’s South Side to Indiana in hopes of finding slightly cheaper gas for my car, I can understand the logic – particularly when the savings to motorists are as potentially large as they are today.

Regular unleaded gasoline in San Diego can cost as much as $4.61 per gallon, while crossing the border to buy gas in Tijuana can result in one paying the equivalent of $2.54 per gallon, according to the Union-Tribune newspaper.

For those San Diego-area people who use diesel fuel, making the trip south of the border can result in paying $2.20 per gallon, compared to $5.04 per gallon in the United States.

NOW HOW DO Mexican officials manage to keep prices so significantly lower?

In Mexico, there is no competition among gas stations. No Shell or Amoco or BP, or cheap convenience stores peddling off-brand gasoline. Pemex (Petroleo Mexico) is a government-run utility company that controls oil production, and it supplies all the gas sold by its stations.

So one can say the Mexican taxpayers are subsidizing the cost of gasoline – ensuring that motorists pay a price at the pump less than the market rate.

Now I’m not about to suggest that the U.S. government get involved in selling gasoline to motorists. Anyone who has ever ridden an Amtrak train knows how third-rate the federal government has made intercity train service. I’d hate to see how horrid service would be at a government-run gas station.

BUT IT IS nice to see the Mexican government taking seriously the notion that there ought to be a limit to gas prices. Just last month, Mexican officials approved a $20 million subsidy meant to make up the difference between the price paid by motorists for gas and its actual cost of production.

That was their response to gas prices in Mexico jumping as much as 25 percent during the first few months of this year.

What is most ironic is that the loss of U.S. business is not purely due to U.S. people making the drive into Mexico. Mexican citizens who live near the border and have jobs in the United States used to make a point of buying gasoline for their cars while at work – out of a belief they were somehow getting a superior product because U.S.-blends of gasoline have lower levels of sulfur in the mix.

But with the vast difference, many Mexican citizens are now accepting gasoline from their local gas stations, officials with the Association of Gasoline Station Owners of Tijuana told the Union-Tribune newspaper.

SOME U.S. PEOPLE are trying to fight back by exploiting the belief that U.S.-blended gasoline is a superior product than that sold by Pemex, which still suffers image problems from a public scandal of the 1990s – when federal officials caught local gas station managers selling gasoline that did not meet proper standards.

But ultimately, the ridiculous rates being charged these days for U.S.-blended gasoline are overcoming any concerns, or nationalistic thoughts, people might have. The Union-Tribune found some California car owners who said the Pemex-blend gasoline works just fine, particularly if they mix an occasional additive into their gas tanks.

How outrageous are our gasoline prices these days?

THEY HAVE CALIFORNIANS willing to wait in ridiculous lines, but not at gas stations. Border Patrol officials have noticed an increase in the number of people trying to get back into the country.

Due to the increase and to procedures meant to ensure that Arab terrorists aren’t slipping through the U.S./Mexico border, the return trip can result in a wait of up to two hours at certain times of the day.

One has to wonder how much of that cheaper gas gets burned up while the car sits idle, waiting for border guards to give the okay for the driver to re-enter the United States?

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: People going into Mexico to purchase gasoline had better keep in mind (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20080614-9999-1n14tjgas.html) that they use the Metric system south of the border.

Pemex is experiencing a boost from the skyrocketing gasoline prices afflicting motorists everywhere (http://ktla.trb.com/news/ktla-gas-mexico,0,1305757.story) because the Mexican government is trying to address the issue.

This story is the perfect example of how the news and information business would suffer if newspapers were to wither away. This Associated Press story that has appeared (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hJCO8vbrD6nPzJywPIUuEF7p1q1gD91AGV0O0) in many different places is little more than a re-write of the Union-Tribune story.

Latina wrath aimed at Target

A California-based Latina group wants people to pressure the Target chain of retail stores to remove from their shelves what they consider to be evidence of sexism against the now-suspended presidential dreams of Hillary R. Clinton.

Specifically, they can’t stand a greeting card found in the chain’s stores across the country – one that shows a picture of Clinton serving as the U.S. chief executive, and opens up to a message saying her electoral victory would be a “scarier fate than raising children.”

THE CARD IS one of several being sold by Target stores for Father’s Day, which is Sunday. Activists note they are also upset with DCI Studios, the company that came up with the greeting card design.

Hispanas Organized for Political Equality say the card is “demoralizing and offensive” and should not be sold.

They want potential shoppers to put pressure on Target by calling local store managers and insist that the card be removed from shelves. They also want people to call the retailer’s toll free telephone number to register their complaints.

Corporate officials for Target had no comment on the matter, but officials with the activist group said in a prepared statement released Friday that Target officials were noncommittal about stopping the sale of the cards.

THE LATINA GROUP said they received the following response by e-mail from Target:
“For many years, retailers have featured greeting cards which depict the current holders and candidates for the office of president or vice president of the United States. Target has featured similar greeting cards during several administrations, regardless of political party. I apologize for any disappointment the cards may have caused. Target certainly does not intend to offend our guests with the card assortments we carry. Your comments will be made available in reporting to our buyers.”

So while Target officials are waiting for Sunday to come and go (and take these angry activists with them), there are other happenings that relate to the concerns of the growing Latino population.

HISPANIC “HATE” IN HAWAII?: Hispanic activists in Hawaii say they have experienced a “backlash” since comments a week ago from Honolulu City Council member Rod Tam, when he told a company wanting to do construction on a local university that they could only hire qualified construction workers, not “wetbacks.”

Activists have tried pressuring Tam to issue more than the token apology he has offered to date, but to no avail. Tam says he doesn’t want to talk about the issue any more, and city council leaders say they will not comply with the activist demand that Tam be removed from the city zoning committee.

Hawaii Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President Marie Villa said she has received hate mail and obscene telephone calls since coming out against Tam, and she has even seen bumper stickers on automobiles on the island siding with the councilman against people of Mexican descent.

“I’ve lived here 19 years and we’ve always been able to fit in until last week,” Villa told KITV-TV, the ABC affiliate in Honolulu.

Honolulu itself has about a 3 percent Latino population, but that figure expands to 7 percent when one counts the surrounding towns on the island of Oahu.

WHEN IN DOUBT, DO NOTHING: When it became apparent that Latino interest in renaming Industrial Boulevard for United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez was not going to quietly subside, a Dallas city council committee chose to do nothing.

The committee that was to make a recommendation to the full city council about a new name for the street along the Trinity River spent about an hour listening to debate on Tuesday, then decided to postpone any recommendation.

Some officials had favored renaming the street (which has a seedy image due to a strip of bars, bail bond shops and the city jail) Riverfront Boulevard, and had created a survey to get public support for the new name.

The only problem is that the significant Hispanic population in Dallas (42 percent) preferred another option, naming the street for Chavez. Some city officials are hinting at a compromise of erecting a statue to Chavez along the newly-named-for-something-else street, but no decision is expected until August at the soonest.

AND ON A FINAL NOTE: If the election for U.S. president were held this week, the bulk of Latinos would have voted for Democrat Barack Obama.

A poll commissioned by the Wall Street Journal and NBC showed Obama taking 62 percent of the Latino vote, compared to 38 percent for Republican opponent John McCain.

That coincides with a Gallup Organization survey taken last month that showed a slim majority of Democratic Latinos supporting Obama (52 percent) over Hillary R. Clinton. Of course, those Latinos remained loyal to Clinton to the very end of the primary election season.

All it really means is that the bulk of Latinos are offended enough by the Republican Party that they are wary of McCain. The real question is whether Latinos will stay home in droves on Nov. 4, which would be a significant blow to Obama since he needs Hispanic support more than McCain does to have a chance at presidential victory.

-30-

Latinos aren't brown, they're green (as in money)

When all is said and done, the people in this country who see the growing Latino population as a “brown” menace will lose out to those who see us as green – as in the color of money.

At nearly one-sixth of the U.S. population and growing, we are the potential dominant market of the future, and there are a lot of business interests that will eagerly put aside any qualms they have about ethnicity or race or any of that nonsense so as to sell us their products.

IT’S ALREADY HAPPENING.

This week alone, I saw three reminders of how the Latino market is the wave of the future.

If we really were such an insignificant factor, I couldn’t imagine a restaurant/tavern chain like Bennigan’s bothering to print up Spanish-language versions of their menu.

No, it does not mean that Bennigan’s is altering the menu to include the food of Latin America. It just means they want to be sure that people whose English might be a bit broken can have the option of comprehending exactly what it is they are ordering.

“ENSALADA” FOR “SALAD,” “sopa” for “soup” and ‘postre” for “dessert.” It’s not that radical a concept if you think about it. They want the growing segment of the population to feel comfortable eating out in a Bennigan’s, and this is just a small gesture.

“The U.S. Hispanic community is our country’s fastest-growing segment, and this new menu is just one more way we can welcome those customers,” marketing director Jennifer Gamble said, in a prepared statement.

The new menus were printed up last week, and officials say every restaurant will have copies made available on request.

I have just one question. How long until they turn that obnoxiously peppy “Happy, Happy Birthday” song of theirs into a version “en Español? That will be the day we have fully arrived in the tacky pop culture that comprises this country.

WHO ELSE IS trying to reach the Latina market?

Mia Mariú is a new line of makeup designed with shades and colors meant to compliment the various shades of skin tone found in Hispanic women, which can go from practically white to might-as-well-be black and all shades in between.

Their shades will carry names such as “Tierra India,” “Canela,” “Anis,” “Corazón de Melón” and “Noche de Amor.” Products already are available for sale in San Antonio, and officials are hoping to begin sales soon in places such as Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami.

“Mia Mariú embodies the passion, the feelings and the special warmth that exists within every Latina, regardless of country of origin or generation,” Mia Mariú founder Maria Eugenia Bermudez Price said, in a prepared statement.

“MIA MARIÚ is dedicated to bringing Latinas what they deserve to enhance their beauty, their health and their future,” she said.

Bermudez Price said she seriously tried to take health concerns into account in creating new makeup shades. Citing higher than average rates of diabetes and heart disease among Hispanic people, she noted that she wishes to include a line of nutritional supplements made from ingredients such as cactus – so as to help improve the overall health of the product users.

There is even that city that glorifies all that is tacky about U.S. culture – Las Vegas.

The place once known for attracting entertainers such as Wayne Newton and an over-the-hill Elvis Presley is now using acts such as comedians George Lopez and Carlos Mencia and musicians such as Juanes, Ozomatli and Camila to attract people (and their hard-earned cash) to the casinos to gamble.

“THE STRIP” IS even preparing special shows to perform the weekend of Sept. 12-15 – also known as Mexican Independence Day (which is Sept. 16). Luis Miguel will perform at Caesar’s Palace, while Alejandro Fernandez will play at Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Does anyone think the business interests who operate the casinos and hotels of Las Vegas would do anything if big money wasn’t involved? Do you really believe that so many Latino-themed acts would be playing there, if they weren’t capable of drawing significant crowds?

These things might sound trivial. In fact, they are lesser aspects of life in the United States. Yet the fact that the influence of Latinos is so pervasive that it is spreading even to the minute details is probably the ultimate evidence of how significant a part of this country Hispanic people have become.

-30-

Shh, it's a secret. McCain to meet with 'Latinos'

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain will make his appeals to the growing Latino population this election season as covertly as possible.

Think I’m kidding?

TAKE AN UPCOMING event where McCain plans to meet with Latinos in private. He’s having a fundraiser Wednesday at the luxury Drake Hotel in Chicago. After meeting with the Second City’s business bigshots and soliciting them for campaign contributions, he plans to stay at the hotel and have a second meeting.

That is the one with Hispanic people from across the Chicago area. Before anyone makes a halfwit crack about McCain meeting with the maids and kitchen staff of the hotel, this is a broader group.

Some activists from across the Chicago area are planning to rent buses so they can take loads of people to the hotel on Michigan Avenue and hear a presidential candidate for themselves.

These activists who organized the meeting are the ones who have decided to close it off to the general public, which also means they don’t want any press coverage of McCain’s attempt to appeal to the growing Hispanic population.

THAT IS A mistake. If anything, the only way the Latino population is going to get taken seriously by McCain is if we force him “on the record” as to what he would do for us, should he manage to defeat Democrat Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 elections.

It will be all too easy for McCain to make vague promises, then renege on them or offer up lame gestures of non-support because there will be little, if any, record of what was actually said.

That is exactly what McCain wants.

McCain’s problem in terms of appealing to the growing Latino population is that he is out of step with many of the social conservatives who comprise the base of the modern-day Republican Party.

HE HAS TAKEN some actions that were either sympathetic or not as hostile as those favored by those social conservatives, who are fully in line with the demonization by Republican officials of the Latin American population in the United States that has taken place in recent years.

Anything McCain were to say that would be sympathetic to the interests of people likely to attend next week’s Hispanic-only gathering would offend these social conservatives. And the McCain campaign has decided it needs those social conservatives on their side (or at least not openly hostile toward his existence) if he is to have any chance of defeating Obama.

So it makes sense for McCain to want a “secret” meeting of sorts to make his Hispanic appeal. What doesn’t make sense is why any respectable Latino activist group would go along with such a request.

Of course, when one looks at the people who are organizing the event (or at least the ones reported by the Beacon News newspaper of Aurora, Ill.), we find out the organizers are actually members of their county’s Republican Party, and at least one will be a delegate to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

I DON’T HAVE a problem with these people organizing an event. I only wish they would advertise it honestly.

What they are putting together is not a Hispanic rally to give McCain a chance to reach out to the Latino community. It is really a Republican rally for McCain.

The segment of the Hispanic population that openly identifies with the GOP (which by most polls is no more than one-third of the total Latino population) is trying to pass itself off as the entire Latino community.

In some ways, this rally has the potential to be as ridiculous as taking a survey of a political rally on Miami’s “Calle Ocho” (the symbolic heart of the old-line Cuban exile community) and trying to pass it off as the entirety of Hispanic political empowerment.

I’LL BE HONEST. When I learned of the concept of a McCain-related rally for Hispanic people in the Chicago area, my initial reaction was to want to go with a notebook in hand – even if I had to sneak into the hotel to get past their “ban” on news media coverage.

But the more I think about it, the more I think it would be pointless to waste a Wednesday evening by attending such an event.

What is going to happen is that McCain will make vague statements of support to a group of Latinos who likely were hand picked for their ability to play along with the show that this rally is a legitimate Hispanic political rally.

If I want to find something more honest, I’m going to have to get off my duff and do the legwork by finding the Latino populations – and not just in the inner-city neighborhoods where people look at you funny if you “habla en Ingles.” Hispanic people are everywhere, and view the world according to their surroundings.

IT IS NOT likely that a representative view of the Hispanic community will come from this hearing in a ballroom of a luxury hotel. In fact, there likely isn’t a representative view of Latinos when it comes to the 2008 presidential campaign.

Many of us are wary of Obama, and downright skeptical of McCain’s partisan allies in Congress. Many of us are confused about who to vote for. A significant Latino turnout for McCain could easily overcome the slim lead Obama is showing (the Gallup Organization had Obama leading McCain 48 percent to 42 percent on Wednesday) in recent polls.

The only thing that “secret hearings” such as this one manage to accomplish is to stir up the confusion even more.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Republican presidential hopeful John McCain will make his “secret” (http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/news/999058,2_1_AU11_MCCAIN_S1.article) appeal to the Latino vote when he has a private meeting following a fundraiser in downtown Chicago.

Verification system one of many boulders weighing down McCain

President George W. Bush, the man whom Republicans like to brag got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004 (he didn’t really, but that’s another story), seems determined to ensure that social conservatives look kindly upon him.

In the process, he’s taking actions that are destined to create more political baggage for his potential successor – Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

BUSH IS USING the last year of his presidency to try to erect “The Wall” along the U.S./Mexico border and nothing is happening with regards to reform of the nation’s immigration laws – which currently are so flawed in the way they criminalize people who want to work that they need serious revision.

Now, Bush is taking on his latest action related to the growing immigrant population. He approved an order this week that requires any company wishing to get a federal government contract to verify that any potential employees have the legal papers allowing them to work in the United States.

Previously, only the federal government itself was required to make the check, which is done through use of a program called E-Verify, which supposedly allows an employer to check the Social Security number offered by a potential employee to see if there is any reason to suspect the would-be worker.

Allegedly, this program will help catch people who are using fraudulent social security numbers – either for purposes of avoiding payment of taxes or (as it relates to immigration) because they are non-citizens who are not supposed to be holding permanent or long-term jobs in the United States.

FEDERAL OFFICIALS SAY their action is meant to encourage private business to make similar checks for all employees – not just ones they would use if they happen to get some business with the federal government.

“The federal government should lead by example and not by exhortation,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said, according to the Los Angeles Times. Officials estimate about 69,000 companies currently use E-Verify.

What makes the idea offensive is that it seems intended to single out immigrants, bringing them up for suspicion even if there are no circumstances to justify it. What makes the idea idiotic is that E-Verify is a new program that still has some kinks in it.

Basically, it is far from perfect. Business groups and activists for immigrant rights say there have been many instances where a newcomer to this country who does have the legal ability to have a job in the United States got hit by E-Verify.

EVENTUALLY, CONFUSION WAS cleared up in many cases. But there have been people who lost out on jobs because of this clerical error that only existed for politically partisan reasons.

Federal officials told the Los Angeles Times that 99.5 percent of all people whose records were searched by E-Verify were cleared to work immediately, and that it was only that one-half of a percent that had any complications – which is a percentage that they can live with.

But 0.5 percent still translates into about 17.8 million people – or just a little bit smaller than the combined population of Illinois and Indiana. It’s a significant number of people being hurt so that social conservatives can play politics with the immigration issue.

This mentality is what is going to be Republican McCain’s biggest obstacle to getting a significant share of the vote from Hispanic people who bother to go to the polls on Nov. 4.

TOO MANY LATINOS have seen the way Republicans are willing to demonize their character in an attempt to get votes. Many of those who actually voted for Bush in ’04 (somewhere around 36 percent, which is still a significant number for a Republican) see that vote as a disappointment.

They see Bush as someone who failed to stand up for them when his colleagues in Congress were pushing for immigration reform measures that promoted the spirit of mass deportation and did little to try to make it possible for people already in this country and working productively to remain.

They got sick of hearing anything resembling common sense or compassion toward Hispanic people labeled as “amnesty.” It is going to make many reluctant to think seriously of voting for McCain – even though as a U.S. senator from Arizona he supported measures toward immigration reform that were more sensible than the partisan junk peddled by his Republican colleagues.

Too many people are going to look at McCain’s nominal allies in Congress and figure he’s stained by association. If Democratic opponent Barack Obama can put up even the slightest impression that he understands the Latino plight (and deep down, he is sympathetic to it, even though he’s done a crummy job to date of expressing that thought), he will dominate the Hispanic voter bloc.

PERSONALLY, I WILL find it interesting to see what McCain has to say when he speaks on July 8 to the League of United Latin American Citizens, which plans to take a “highly unscientific” straw poll of its members when they conclude their business July 12.

He’s the keynote speaker of their weeklong convention in Washington, and he’s going to want to distance himself as much as possible from many of the policies of George W. Bush – including actions such as mandatory use of E-Verify.

Basically, if McCain winds up losing the November elections, he’ll be able to look back to weeks like this one, where policies such as this built up such a heavy millstone around his neck that the growing Latino voter bloc (potentially up to 9 percent of the nation’s registered voters) could not take seriously the prospect of him working in the White House.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The cynic in me wonders if a George Bush friend or political ally owns stock (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig10-2008jun10,0,2775632.story) in E-Verify, thereby increasing its profile and profitability with increased use.

Republican John McCain will make a major plea to the growing Latino population for their support (http://www.lulac.org/convention/html/) next month in Washington.

Both of the major political party presidential candidates have their difficulties ahead of them in (http://www.rep-am.com/news/elections/347334.txt) getting the support of Latino voters, but New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (of Mexican ethnicity on his mother’s side of the family) thinks McCain’s problems are so severe that Obama can take a larger-than-usual (http://www.kdbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=8450257&nav=menu608_2_3) share of the Hispanic vote.

Cesar Chavez worthy of Dallas street?

Dallas could soon follow the lead of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, Texas – all of which have streets named for the Chicano activist who founded the United Farm Workers of America.

Cesar Chavez Boulevard could someday be the name of the street now known as Industrial Boulevard, a road known for a strip of taverns, bail-bond shops and the city jail. Local officials are hoping that a new name will be the first step in giving the strip an improved public image.

TO THAT END, local officials actually created a contest, allowing people to feel like they have a say in what new name the road should get.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Cesar Chavez’ moniker received 52 percent of the vote – five other choices combined received the other 48 percent.

Keep in mind that the actual number of votes for “Chavez Boulevard” was higher, but officials made a point of going through the results and weeding out votes from people they suspect cast multiple ballots.

Perhaps this should not be a surprise. Dallas is a city with a 43.1 percent Hispanic share of its 1.19 million overall population. Any new name that reflects something Spanish is going to be popular in such an environment.

Cesar E. Chavez remains the focus of political debate, even 15 years after his death. Photograph provided by Cesar Chavez Foundation.

YET IT SEEMS to have come as a surprise to the Anglo authorities who originally came up with the idea to rename Industrial Boulevard. They seem to favor the name “Riverfront Boulevard” because it runs along the Trinity River.

But that name only came in second in the contest with only about 18 percent of the vote (or about one-third of the officially-recognized vote for “Chavez Boulevard.”)

Now, they’re caught in a position of having to decide whether to snub the interests of people who wanted to use one of their streets to recognize a nationally known Hispanic leader (similar to how Martin Luther King Jr. has streets named after him in cities all across the United States, even if he never actually set foot there during his lifetime).

They’re already telling local news media that the contest was never meant to be a definitive result, but rather just a promotional stunt to let people know that the name would change.

IT WILL BE interesting to see what happens on Tuesday when the city council’s project committee officially endorses a new name for Industrial Boulevard.

The council’s plan commission will study the recommendation later this month, and the full city council is expected to vote to approve whatever is recommended by the committee and commission when they meet June 25.

How ugly will it get in Dallas if local government officials decide to ignore the public sentiment in favor of “Chavez Boulevard,” even though Latino political officials in the city say they think the contest results should be honored?

OF COURSE, THERE’S also the opposite. How ugly will it get if city officials go along with the results and accept “Chavez Boulevard?” Even more than a decade after his death, the memory of Cesar Chavez remains controversial.

In an on-line survey with comments taken by the Dallas Morning News, many people objected to honoring Chavez with anything in Texas. “Communist” and “third world protester” were among the nicer terms used to describe him, although some seem to think that naming the street for him does nothing more than “pay homage to some Mexican” (even though as someone born and raised in California, he’s as American as one can get).

So it will be interesting to see which group Dallas city officials choose to offend. This is a case where their failure to recognize the changing demographics of their city threaten to make themselves look ridiculous no matter what they do.

IF I HAD to place a bet, I expect the Dallas project committee will recommend Riverfront Boulevard, or some name other than that of Chavez. It will be one of those symbolic acts that might not mean much in substance, but packs a visual snub to the community that will not long be forgotten.

There’s just one upside. Municipal governments throughout the years are constantly evolving, as new names replace old ones for buildings and streets. It likely is just a matter of time before Chavez Boulevard exists somewhere in Dallas – perhaps on the one-time Industrial Boulevard.

Or else, the day could come decades from now when Dallas would be the lone outcast without something recognizing the memory of Chavez, and people studying Dallas history will remember the upcoming weeks as a period where the city showed why it is, even by Texas standards, second-rate behind places such as Houston, Austin and San Antonio.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: He wasn’t a Tejano, but many Hispanic people in Dallas would like (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/061008dnmetindustrial_.15e9461b.html) to see a street in their city named for United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez.

The Dallas, Texas population breakdown (http://tinyurl.com/4ywo6h/), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Chavez remains a controversial figure because anything that honors his work on behalf of the Chicano migrant farm workers (http://www.chavezfoundation.org/) is a reminder that a large majority of the U.S. population was once on the wrong side of the issue. Why else has Congress repeatedly refused to go along with proposals to honor his birthday anniversary with a federal holiday?

We're not going anywhere

Two stories that caught my attention while scanning through the many offerings of the Internet. Both relate to the growing Latino population in Florida – a place that was originally a Spanish colony, but which the Anglos now seem to want to believe was founded by themselves.

Colombians are now the third-largest Hispanic group in Florida, behind Cubans and Puerto Ricans. There also are significant numbers of other Latin American ethnicities present in Florida (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/community/news/ucf/orl-lidhispanics108jun09,0,825855.story), and the trend is going to continue for another 40 or so years.

Meanwhile, local law enforcement types are trying to use whatever means they can (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/us/09panhandle.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1213051336-jKZouow48tjMH0zZspy4FA) to harass newcomers, even though immigration is a federal law, and these same local officials would be screaming like crazy if the federal government were to come in and enforce their jurisdictions.

The juxtaposition of these two stories seems significant. The numbers are just too overwhelming. No matter how much people want to complain about a growing Latino influence in this country, the fact is that it is here. It is not going anywhere else. Resistance truly is futile.

-30-

A family affair

I spent time this weekend with the family, including some of the cousins whom I see maybe once or twice a year. During the course of conversation, this year’s U.S. presidential elections came up.

Now I tried to keep my mouth shut, as I was more interested in hearing the views of my relatives – none of whom are political junkie types who are obsessed with the minutia of electoral politics.

WE ALSO ARE a Hispanic family, one with our ethnic origins in Mexico – although all of us present are U.S. citizens by birth, and our focus is purely on this country (I literally have an aunt who at one point went on a diatribe about how “wasteful” foreign aid is when there is so much suffering and problems that exist in this country.)

So what did this one totally unscientific group of people feel on the day that Hillary R. Clinton finally threw in the towel and gave her public support to Barack Obama?

Fear.

“It’s scary, who knows what this guy is,” said one cousin, who kept hammering away at the notion that Obama is of the Muslim religious faith. “His name is Barack Muhammad Obama, something like that,” the cousin said.

WHEN TOLD THAT his name was actually “Barack Hussein Obama Jr.” and that he was only Muslim if one buys into the Islamic belief that a person is automatically the same religious faith as their father – regardless of what they actually practice in their lives – the relative responded by saying, “he’s (Obama) still not one of us.”

I have one cousin who went so far as to say she would vote make a point of voting for Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, which stirred up a quarrel. “He’s just more of George Bush,” one person said. “He didn’t do anything for us.”

Another said, “that was a wasted vote” in 2004.

The consensus among the group, including the person who originally brought up the McCain name, is that not voting in 2008 is a very real option. “There’s nobody who represents what we think,” one said, adding that even Clinton would have been a flawed candidate when representing the interests of the growing Latino population.

“SHE WAS BETTER than nobody, now there’s nobody,” one relative said.

Now the reason I’m keeping names out of this commentary is because none of these people were aware of the possibility they would be quoted, and I did not use a tape recorder or any type of pen and paper to take notes that would indicate that any of this was being preserved.

They thought they were speaking privately and I will let the individuals have their bit of cover. But these conversation snippets are as accurate as I recall them, and this conversation sticks in my mind vividly because it made me aware that despite the months of worth of commentaries I have written about the Obama campaign on this weblog and its sister site, the Chicago Argus, there is still much confusion amongst people as to what Obama stands for.

All of those months of constant coverage from newsgathering organizations around the world have failed to register with a significant portion of the U.S. population.

THAT IS WHAT Obama will have to overcome in coming months if he wants to have a serious shot of winning the presidential elections come Nov. 4.

Various polls indicate a trend – while Hispanic people remained loyal to Clinton all the way to the end of the primary season, most of them will stick with the Democratic Party. Obama will win the Latino vote in November.

Hostility towards the Republican Party is just that solid on account of the efforts of social conservatives to demonize the growing Hispanic population for many of the problems this country faces.

It may not be fair, but McCain is going to get tarred by association.

HE’S GOING TO get the blame for the Republican-led efforts in Congress to erect walls along the U.S./Mexico border and to push for measures that would deport a significant portion of what has become the physical labor workforce of this country, even though his record as a U.S. senator from Arizona includes support for measures that would have been beneficial to Hispanic people.

But the idea that the Latino vote may be smaller than usual because many may just want to stay at home is a real concept – not some paranoid fantasy of Obama fanatics.

Obama is going to have to make a priority of appealing directly to people whose ethnic origins lie in Latin American countries. He’s going to have to reach out and let the potential Latino voter bloc that their views and issues are just as important to him as those of the youth and African-American voters who have been his base to date.

“Every time I hear him talk, it’s all about the blacks, I don’t hear anything about us,” one aunt said.

WHILE I’LL BE the first to concede the racist overtones of that comment (and of much of the conversation), the simple fact is that Obama – if he wants our votes – is going to have to convince a significant number of people to overcome their mindset and realize he can help them.

It may sound wrong that he should have to appeal to people who are inclined to be hostile toward him. But that is the reality of electoral politics. No one – whether Latino or not – ought to owe their vote to any specific candidate or political party.

Candidates are supposed to come to us and make their case for why we should support them. Losing candidates generally are the ones who fail to convince people that they could accomplish some good in public office.

Obama is actually an educator (he was an instructor at University of Chicago Law School), and perhaps he could feed off that mentality a bit in dealing with the Latino vote.

WE ARE A growing segment of the U.S. population who see serious flaws in both of the likely presidential candidates. He needs to teach us why we should think he is a superior option.

You can be assured that McCain’s campaign is going to make its own appeals, although they will have to be tempered to assure he does not lose the bulk of that social conservative vote that appreciates having a demonized Latino population.

Because of that, the interests of the Hispanic population probably are better in the hands of the Democratic candidate. But Obama can’t take the vote for granted, he must take the initiative to make people understand that.

And if Obama can’t do that, then perhaps he doesn’t deserve the Latino vote – even though he got mine in the Feb. 5 Illinois primary and in all likelihood will get it again come Nov. 4.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: My family is hardly unique, as evidenced by the comments of the (http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/general_87485___article.html/obama_hispanic.html) majority Latino population of South Texas.

Viewing the lack of Latino support as a problem comparable to drug addiction? That is Rep. Luis Gutierrez’ view (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/07/AR2008060702154.html) of how Obama should handle the next few months when campaigning for the Hispanic vote.

LULAC wants deciding factor to be Latinos

Likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is going to take a majority of votes cast by Latinos in the Nov. 4 elections, but Republican opponent John McCain wants to think he can take a large enough share to win the election.

Whether McCain does or does not, the potential is great for the Latino vote to be a significant factor in the 2008 presidential campaign. And that is what Hispanic activists are devoted to reminding people later this summer.

THE LEAGUE OF United Latin American Citizens will focus on the presidential campaigns when they hold their national convention in July in Washington, D.C. They want to be sure that McCain and Obama respect the growing Hispanic electorate as they campaign this summer and autumn.

“This election year is a true reflection of the increased mobilization of Latinos,” LULAC President Rosa Rosales said, in a prepared statement. “Each of the presidential nominees is clearly vying for the Latino vote, as our voting power has been a crucial factor in the last decade.”

When it comes to the Hispanic vote, both of the major political party presidential candidates have potential problems.

During the primary, the bulk of Latinos who cast ballots chose the Democratic Party. In most states, large numbers gave their support to the presidential dreams of Hillary R. Clinton – in large part because they remembered her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as a politician who was sympathetic to their concerns.

OBAMA WAS SEEN by many Hispanic people, particularly those working-class people without college educations, as being out of touch with their concerns. They saw him as so preoccupied with getting the youth vote and black vote that he didn’t seem concerned about their lot in life.

McCain, however, has the baggage of the Republican Party, whose members in recent years have been the backers of immigration reform measures that were meant to be punitive to newcomers to this country, and which often singled out people of Latin American ethnic backgrounds.

Many Latinos are going to be skeptical of voting for him, even though his record as a U.S. senator from Arizona includes support for immigration reforms sympathetic to newcomers. Yet McCain can’t brag too loudly about those achievements because he wants the support of the social conservatives who are fully supportive of the GOP’s punitive attitude toward immigrants.

And yes, wanting to believe that many of them are illegal or ought to be illegal is a punitive attitude.

THERE MIGHT BE the attempt by the candidates to just “write off” the Latino vote as not worth the effort it would take to get it. That attitude is what LULAC is determined to fight.

They are pressuring all the candidates to take a stance on issues of concern toward Hispanic people.

Both Obama and Clinton (back when she was still actively campaigning for president) have already provided LULAC with their lists of issues they think are relevant to Hispanic people.

THE FOCUS ON improved access to healthcare for all people (particularly those who cannot afford adequate health insurance) will be a focus of LULAC’s convention.

“I want to stop talking about the outrage of 15 million uninsured Hispanic (people) in this country,” Obama said, in a statement provided to LULAC.

McCain also gave the group a statement of support, saying, “In the end, the American people will recognize that I am ready to act to protect our country, grow our economy and reform our government.”

SO WHAT IS at stake for Hispanic people in the five months preceding the presidential elections? We need to make a point of pressuring the candidates to address our existence. Deciding not to vote on Election Day would be a mistake.

Ultimately, political people decide what people and which issues to give priority to by which groups provide the bulk of votes for their campaigns. If Latinos decide not to vote, it will be seen by political people not as a sign of our disgust with everybody on the ballot, but as a sign that we can be ignored.

Our lack of votes might be interpreted as a sign that we don’t exist.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The League of United Latin American Citizens has a priority of ensuring (http://www.hispanicprwire.com/generarnews.php?l=in&id=11685&cha=10) that every presidential candidate appreciates the potential political power of Hispanic people.

Barack Obama will win the Latino vote on Nov. 4. But if a large percentage of Hispanic (http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080606/OPINION12/806060484/1002/OPINION) people decides to just stay at home instead of voting, it will favor John McCain.

Think it is ridiculous to presume that Obama and McCain wish they could just ignore the (http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d599606ef329afb1091514e4f373088e) Latino presence in this country? Guess again.

"Wetback" is a "legal term?"

I will give Honolulu politico Rod Tam one bit of credit – he was big enough to vote for a resolution censuring himself for making comments during a recent city council meeting that were insulting to Hispanic people.

But too many people seem to be of the belief that a motion to censure that will soon be forgotten is sufficient to resolve the notion that a government official has negative connotations of the people who would be coming to his city to work, just because they are of Spanish-speaking origins.

AT ISSUE IS a slip of the tongue from Tam last month when a city council committee he chairs in Hawaii’s capital was debating proposed construction at West Oahu University.

The perception in Tam’s mind is of a mass of Mexicans coming to the island to get paid for doing shoddy construction work. How else to explain his statement, “they got to be skilled licensed workers. We don’t want any wetbacks basically.”

Tam that night did offer one immediate apology. He slipped and said these people were coming from “New Mexico” (the state) rather than “Mexico” (the country). But it wasn’t until the Hispanic population that has chosen to live in a Polynesian “paradise” started to complain that he agreed to let his city council colleagues censure him.

And in a statement of apology that was released just before the censure motion this week, Tam wrote that he believed the word “wetback” was a “legal term” that he might have misused.

TAM IS ADAMANT that he will not go along with anything else, blatantly refusing to accept the idea that he should meet with Latino activists to try to put this issue behind him.

Honolulu City Council chairwoman Barbara Marshall told a Honolulu television station that she thinks Tam’s response thus far has been adequate, and she does not want to address the issue further.

In one aspect, Tam’s remarks remind me of an incident when I was a reporter who covered the Illinois General Assembly. Once, one of the members of the Illinois House made a crack about “camel jockeys” holding the U.S. hostage when it came to oil.

When I asked him if such a slur was appropriate (many Arabs would find the crack demeaning), he said it was not because it only applied (in his mind) to people who lived in Middle Eastern countries.

TAM HIMSELF WAS quick to apologize to New Mexico residents who might interpret his cracks as a slur, but has no problems engaging in bashing of Mexican citizens who he thinks are not capable of doing quality work.

Now many people have this notion of Hawaii as something of an ethnic melting pot. Indeed the island is a mixture of Asian and white people, and perhaps the reason that likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama originally thought he could go through his campaign as a post-civil rights era kind of candidate is that he grew up in a place where issues were not seen in a clear black vs. white context.

But the island (not surprisingly) has a miniscule Latino population. Only 7.8 percent of the 1.29 million people who live on the Hawaiian islands are Hispanic, and Honolulu itself only has a 3 percent Latino population, although when one adds the suburban areas that make up Honolulu County, the Hispanic population comes to 7 percent.

So it doesn’t shock me that people could grow up there not all that exposed to Latino people. They may wind up getting confused notions of what is, and is not, acceptable.

PERSONALLY, I CAN forgive Tam for the slip of the tongue and use of the word “wetback.” I’m sure that after the backlash he’s enduring now, he’s going to watch his words much more closely.

But the trick in determining how much significance to attach to this incident is to figure out what attitude he’s giving off while watching those words.

Does he truly appreciate that his comments were hurtful?

Or is Tam going to become one of those people who goes through life lambasting the concept of “political correctness” that does not allow him to say things he believes to be truthful – just because someone will get hurt?

TAM TOLD A Honolulu television station he does not want to meet with the Hispanic activist groups on the island to rehash the city council incident.

“I publicly said I made a mistake,” Tam told KITV-TV. “How people may react toward this term, although it is a legal term, I guess I’ve got to be more politically correct.”

It appears it will be the latter route for Tam. Perhaps that is why Hispanic activists are less than convinced that Tam’s additional comments that he wants to engage in “racial understanding projects” in the future are at all sincere.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: My question to people who think Mexican citizens are illegally going to Hawaii to take jobs (http://www.kitv.com/mostpopular/16503208/detail.html) from people (http://www.khon2.com/home/ticker/19554089.html) living in a Polynesian paradise is, “Do you seriously believe they swam across the Pacific Ocean to get there?”

The Latino population figures used in this commentary were valid as of the 2000 Census. The Hispanic Center of Hawaii (http://www.centrohispanohawaii.com/about.htm) believes the true figure of the Hawaiian islands’ Hispanic population has gone up since then – possibly to 9 percent.

Hawaii’s Latino population has become significant enough to warrant its own newspaper and (http://www.hawaiihispanicnews.org/) Internet site.

Here is the breakdown of the (http://www.co.honolulu.hi.us/Council/ccl.htm) Honolulu City Council, whose activities are not usually a focus for people interested in Latino political empowerment.

Obama doesn't need Clinton for Latino vote

Political people are capable of saying the most absurd things, but Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., came up with a whopper this week.

How else to explain her belief that likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama desperately needs Hillary R. Clinton as his vice presidential running mate if he is to have any chance of winning the Latino vote come the Nov. 4 elections.

THE “LADY FROM New York” made her observation during a conference call between Clinton and the Empire State’s congressional delegation, going so far as to tell the New York Daily News that Clinton is, “part of the Hispanic family.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I have never heard of any Latina named “Hillary” who had an Ivy League education. There is little about Hillary herself that would make her a ‘cause celebre’ among Hispanic people.

Now I will not deny that Obama did terribly in taking the Latino vote during the now-complete Democratic presidential primary season. He only took majorities of the Hispanic vote in Illinois and Virginia – losing the support of Latinos everywhere else to Clinton.

His dismal performance in Sunday’s presidential primary in Puerto Rico (he lost by about a 2-1 ratio) showed that Obama was not picking up support as the primaries and caucuses proceeded.

A GALLUP ORGANIZATION poll released this week indicated that the Hispanic vote was (along with older women) one of the most loyal constituencies to Clinton, one of the groups that enabled Hillary to stay in the presidential race all the way to the end of the primary season on Tuesday.

Fifty-one percent of Latinos and 62 percent of Latinas support Clinton, according to the Gallup poll. That comes despite an overall national trend of 52 percent of potential voters backing Obama, compared to 43 percent preferring Hillary.

But this really was a case of Hispanic voters picking the name of an established politico, rather than one who is just beginning his time on the national political scene.

It did not help that Obama, through much of his campaigning, gave off the impression of being more concerned with taking the youth vote and the African-American vote.

THAT NOTION WAS backed up by exit polls taken Sunday in Puerto Rico, where an overwhelming number of voters who had fond memories of the days of Bill Clinton as president voted for Hillary, and those who do not remember those days well choosing to cast ballots for Barack.

If anything, the solid vote for Clinton is a referendum on the way Hispanic people perceive Bill Clinton’s memory, which is more about how tied we have become to the Democratic Party’s establishment. It made many of us willing to accept Hillary.

We don’t think as negatively of Bill Clinton as the social conservatives of this country who are the ones who eagerly wanted him impeached and convicted (instead of impeached and acquitted) back in 1998.

In short, a large share of the Latino vote will go to Obama if he can put up any effort (and he already is starting to make appeals to significant Hispanic populations in Florida and the southwestern U.S.) during the general election campaign.

REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE John McCain thinks his past support for immigration reform measures sympathetic to the concerns of people in this country from Latin America will give him an inroad.

But he has to temper that support if he is to gain the support of those same social conservatives who despise the memory of Bill Clinton. There also is the fact that many Hispanic people who supported George W. Bush’s presidential bid in 2004 feel burned by that vote.

They feel either like Bush let them down by his inability to prevent Republican members of Congress from overwhelmingly pushing for strict immigration rules, or that Republicans in general are hostile to their interests.

Some polls this spring have indicated as few as 8 percent of Hispanic people would consider voting for a Republican for president in the 2008 elections, although most polls indicate McCain is likely to get only about one-third of the Latino vote.

IF THERE IS anything Obama has to be concerned about, it is Latino voter turnout. If he continues to give off an apathetic vibe, he runs the risk of large numbers of Hispanic people deciding not to vote come Nov. 4.

It would hurt him if he took 75 percent of the Hispanic vote, but that share of the vote was at an all-time record low. Obama needs to work to get Latinos enthused about his presence on the ballot. He needs to focus on himself. Hillary Clinton’s presence on the ballot would add nothing toward gaining the votes of people with ethnic ties to Latin American countries.

There is one point where Velázquez is correct – sort of.

SHE POINTS OUT the lack of time (compared to the McCain campaign) for Obama to run a general election campaign to unite the people. The congresswoman thinks a quick choice of Clinton as his running mate is the way to unite them.

She is right that there isn’t much time. He hasn’t been able to spend the past two months pushing the concept of himself as “The Candidate,” so the last thing he needs are distractions. Extended talk of Clinton as a vice president is one of them.

The sooner that Clinton’s supporters accept that she lost the nomination, the sooner the party’s factions can unite, which increases the chances that they can win come November.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., appears to be one of those political people (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24953561/page/2//) who believe the world ends outside (http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2008/06/velazquez-on-obamas-hispanic-p.html) the five boroughs of New York City.

Velázquez’ days in Congress (http://www.house.gov/velazquez/) date back to the beginning (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Nydia_M._Velazquez) of the Clinton Administration.

U.S. culture 'taking over' Mexico?

Every time I hear some nativist halfwit complain that the culture of the United States is drowning in a sea of Spanish and a flood of Mexicans coming across the border, I have to laugh.

The truth is that the “Mexican” and “Latin American” cultures that are so feared are themselves so tainted, by the influence of the United States. Why should we fear people who want to emulate us?

HOW ELSE TO explain the fact that the International House of Pancakes, that U.S.-based chain of restaurants catering in breakfast food (such as pancakes) is a hit in Mexico?

It’s not that the food is all that special. Just about any community that has an I-HOP probably has some restaurant nearby that serves equally special and hearty breakfast meals.

The food is probably better at the local restaurant, which means my guess is that across Mexico, there are restaurants that would serve more satisfying meals than the food served up at the International House of Pancakes.

Yet the International House opened its first Mexican operation in the northern city of Monterrey (only about a one-hour-long airline flight from Houston) and it became a hit.

NOW, THE CHAIN is in Mexico City (the largest population city on the North American continent). The American Statesman newspaper in Austin, Texas, has a Mexico correspondent who reports that it is “The Next Big Thing” in the capital city.

The afternoon non-rush hour wait can be as long as two hours for a table, and reservations are just about required if someone wants to eat there on a weekend. Word is that International House of Pancakes is looking into further Mexican expansion.

All this for a chain of breakfast diners that are really nothing more than copies of the authentic diners that used to be found in virtually every rural U.S. town.

So a Mexican I-HOP is a copy of a copy of a rural diner. There may even be a couple more generations of copying involved in this. Just as a photocopy loses some detail every time it is recopied, I would guess we’re talking about the same loss of detail involved here.

I CERTAINLHY HAVE never seen valet parking on those rare occasions when I have eaten in an International House of Pancakes on this side of the Rio Bravo del Norte/Rio Grande. Yet it can be found in Mexico.

Now my intent here is not to make fun of my Mexican ethnic brethren.

I can appreciate that an I-HOP is something new and there are many people who live in the capital who want to try it once (I’d hope they don’t feel the need to go again).

But it makes me laugh because it is evidence that the great masses of people wishing to come to the United States from Latin American countries come from a base that is already so U.S.-influenced.

COCA-COLA IS A popular drink there (and still mixed with the old formula so that Mexican-made Coke tastes the way it should – not like the Pepsi clone that U.S. Coke has become). Chili’s restaurants in Mexico are considered a fun environment to eat “foreign” foods.

And the idea that Blockbuster video serves an up-scale clientele strikes me as odd because I’m too used to the miniscule selection of videotapes their U.S. stores offer up.

But many of the same brands that play big in the U.S. are just as big in Latin America. If anything, the Mexican nativists ought to be complaining about those “pinches Yanquis” taking over their culture.

WHEN THEY DO, however, they come off sounding as ridiculous as their U.S. isolationist counterparts.

Because, when you think about it, those people who come to this country are really coming here because they want to get the “first generation” of U.S. pop culture, rather than get a disseminated copy in their home countries – where the poverty may be so intense for some that they can’t afford to truly enjoy it.

Besides, how harmful to U.S. interests can a group of people really be if they think it is a big deal to have pancakes with eggs for breakfast?

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: International House of Pancakes as an upscale restaurant? Only in Mexico (http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/mexico/entries/2008/06/02/ihop_goes_upscale_in_mexico_ci.html) would that happen. Be forewarned that the link in the story to the Mexican newspaper “La Reforma” requires you to pay money if you want to read the original story.

Here is one attempt to lay out the differences between the prevailing cultures (http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/culxcomp.html) of the United States and Mexico.

U.S.-based business interests (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060424/24smallbiz.htm) engage in significant financial activity in Mexico.

Meetings not as radical as 'right' wants us to believe

One of the issues that the social conservatives are going to use to beat up on Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations relates to the notion that he’s prepared to hijack Air Force One to Havana so he can have a one-on-one with los hermanos Castro.

Obama has said he would like to have normal relations again between the United States and Cuba, and he hopes that such actions could take place during his time as president – provided he gets elected on Nov. 4.

THE “RIGHT” IS going to claim that the Castros are terrorists and criminals and that we ought to be ostrasizing them until the day the Castros die. We have been doing that for nearly five decades, and it has failed to do much to weaken the rule of Fidel Castro and his younger brother, Raul.

But this is a case where the “right” should not be allowed to get away with passing off their rhetoric as the way the people of the United States think about the issue.

If a new Gallup Organization poll is any indication, Obama’s attitude may have more support than the Republican Party’s activists would like to admit.

In their recent study, the focus was placed primarily on Iran. Should a U.S. president seriously be trying to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a time when relations between the two countries is atrocious?

BUT THE FAMED polling firm also asked a slightly more generic question, one meant to ponder about meeting with any leader of a foreign nation whose views do not strictly coincide with those of the United States (of which Fidel Castro certainly qualifies).

That poll showed 67 percent of people questioned saying they would favor meetings between a U.S. president and the controversial foreign leader, with 32 percent saying they would not want such meetings – and only 1 percent saying they were so vacuous as to have no opinion on the question.

By comparison, when the poll focused specifically on meeting with Ahmadinejad, the number of people who favored such a meeting dropped – but to 59 percent. The bottom line is that a solid majority of people in this country seem to think that we should be maintaining contact with foreign leaders – and not just relying on back channels such as relying on the Swiss government to pass messages between “us” and “them.”

THE ISSUE HASN’T gained as much traction thus far as it will later in the campaign cycle, because Gallup found evidence that people who sympathize with Democrats are much more likely (71 percent) to support the notion of a meeting with Iran’s president, compared to Republicans, where a slim majority (51 percent) opposes the concept.

Basically, Hillary R. Clinton would have gotten a lot of looks wondering if she had gone loony if she had tried to bring this issue up against Obama (for the record, she would like to see normalized relations between the U.S. and Cuba, but she’s not about to expend any political capital to try to make it happen. The issue is a low priority for her).

Republican John McCain is more likely to try to make an issue of this. In fact, he already is trying to blast Obama’s willingness to talk about having meetings with people like Castro or Admadinejad as evidence that he is too inexperienced in the ways of foreign affairs.

BUT IF McCAIN peddles that logic too hard, he may have the bulk of the nation’s population thinking he’s gone loony. Don’t forget the majorities of the population overall that prefer the idea of talks.

What does it say that the people of the United States don’t seem to want us to have an isolationist policy when it comes to foreign affairs? The world is one great big economy (no matter how much that concept disgusts certain social conservatives in this country, it’s true) and the United States has to be a part of it.

It certainly won’t remain at the head of it if it tries to isolate certain countries from being a part. Such tactics would make us look silly, almost like we’re trying to live in our own imaginary world, rather than cope with the real one around us.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The “isolationists” aren’t in the majority anymore. A significant number (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/06/02/americans_favor_meeting_with_t.html) of people want us to have direct contact with the leaders of our so-called enemies. Could they just be people who remember Don Vito Corleone’s motto of, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Read the poll results (http://www.gallup.com/poll/107617/Americans-Favor-President-Meeting-US-Enemies.aspx) for yourself.

Opponents of Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations already are trying to use Cuba against him, as altered photographs (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/orl-capview0108jun01,0,5108508.column) of Fidel Castro allegedly endorsing Obama are being disseminated in Cuban exile neighborhoods in South Florida.

Some reading material for "el tocado"

These are a couple of worthwhile pieces of copy I stumbled across Monday during my rummaging around the Internet. Take them for what they’re worth.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential dreams shouldn’t read too much into the butt-whuppin’ she administered (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/06/what-does-today.html) to Barack Obama in Sunday’s presidential primary in Puerto Rico.

Obama is only mildly touching on the reality of the hostilities confronted by Hispanic (http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/2008/6/2/obama_takes_on_dobbs_limbaugh.htm) people living these days in the United States.

-30-

Obama has a ways to go to get Latino vote

What should we make of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary R. Clinton’s apparently overwhelming victory in the Puerto Rico primary election?

Some are trying to claim it is just a sign that Barack Obama can’t connect with Hispanic people, while others are claiming it is because Clinton favors statehood for Puerto Rico (even though she’s never come out directly and said that).

BUT IN THE mass of information that came out of various sources, there was one tidbit that was all too significant – Obama apparently still has a significant percentage of the Latino vote that doesn’t know what to make of him.

One poll of Puerto Rico voters asked island residents how they perceive the two candidates, and it turns out that roughly five of every six Puerto Rico residents who have an opinion about Obama think “favorably” about him (52 percent to be exact).

Only 10 percent think “unfavorably” about him.

But that leaves another 38 percent of the primary electorate. Those are the people who said they know so little about Obama as to have no opinion, good or bad, about him.

THINK ABOUT THAT. Nearly two of every five Puerto Rican people who bothered to vote in the Democratic primary claimed to not know enough about Obama to take a stance on him.

One might make an argument that these people are just lazy.

How can anyone who thinks they are informed enough to cast a ballot in a presidential primary election not have some opinion about one of the major candidates, especially since the primary elections have been ongoing for five months? I don’t doubt that some Puerto Rican voters came into this thinking that they know who Hillary Clinton is, and they aren’t terribly interested in learning about anybody else.

But some of the blame also has to go to the Obama campaign – which apparently isn’t doing a good enough job of letting potential Hispanic voters know who the candidate is.

IN FACT, THERE is evidence that the Puerto Rico primary is more a referendum on what Latinos (at least those who are Puerto Rican) think of the Clinton legacy. (Remember Bill?)

Exit polls used by CNN showed 80 percent of those Puerto Ricans surveyed think “favorably” of Bill Clinton, and people who like Bill Clinton preferred his wife to Obama by a 78 percent to 22 percent margin.

Of the 15 percent of Puerto Ricans who remember Bill Clinton “unfavorably,” most of them (76 percent) cast ballots for Obama.

So there’s a very good chance that many Puerto Ricans think Obama is probably a nice guy, but Sunday’s vote was their chance to express themselves about Bill and Hillary.

HOW ELSE TO explain the perception among those Puerto Ricans who want their island to become the 51st state that Hillary was the candidate more sympathetic to their concerns?

Neither candidate has come out in favor of statehood, although both have thrown out hints indicating they are not hostile toward the concept.

Obama’s campaign aides made it be known the candidate has no problem with Puerto Rico as a full-fledged state, even though it would be an overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking state (which is what ticks off many of the mainland Anglo types who want to view Puerto Rico as a “foreign” country).

But Hillary Clinton let it be known during her campaigning on the island that she thinks Puerto Rico residents should be allowed to vote during the Nov. 4 general election (in one of the quirks of U.S. election law, Sunday’s primary was the only say the island’s residents will get as to who should be president).

ONCE AGAIN, THIS is a case where Team Obama did not do a good enough job of getting out their views on an issue. Obama himself tried appealing to Puerto Ricans voters by reminding them that he is a native of Hawaii – another island that often feels estranged from the U.S. mainland.

Too bad many Puerto Rican people didn’t seem swayed by the thoughts of a bi-racial man who grew up on a Polynesian-influenced island – what does that really have to do with Puerto Rico?

For what it is worth, most political candidates play it safe when it comes to the Puerto Rico statehood issue – they say they would support whatever the people on the island want.

Well, on Sunday, 60 percent of all those who bothered to vote indicated they support statehood (as opposed to a continuance of commonwealth status or independence). And 82 percent of those people voted for Hillary Clinton.

SO WHAT DOES all this mean for Barack Obama, who after the Democratic National Committee on Saturday deprived Clinton of her best shot at getting the presidential nomination by refusing to give full-fledged status to the Michigan and Florida convention delegations?

He’s going to get the nomination, and he’s going to have to make serious efforts to get the Latino vote. Republican John McCain has delusions of being able to take a significant portion of it, but he’s going to find that a large number of Hispanic voters who backed George W. Bush feel burned by the GOP and its constant demonization people with Latin American ethnicity.

They’re going to vote for the Democrat.

THE FACT THAT so few Puerto Ricans think negatively of Obama sort of coincides with a Gallup Organization poll last month that indicated Hispanic voters were among several groups that were starting to shift toward Obama.

But Barack is going to have to work for those votes. He can’t take them for granted. If he seriously expects a large number of Latinos to vote for him just because he doesn’t have an “R” after his name, he could receive the shock of a lifetime by finding many Hispanic people deciding to put their time to better use on Nov. 4.

They might just stay home.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Most Puerto Ricans who bothered to vote preferred Hillary R. Clinton, but most Puerto Ricans who are registered to vote felt there were better uses (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/01/1093667.aspx) of their time on Sunday - just over 10 percent of registered voters cast ballots in the primary.

Barack Obama would have liked a Puerto Rico primary victory as evidence he is appealing to Hispanic voters, but Clinton needed a victory to help bolster her claims (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/27/news/CB-POL-Puerto-Rico-Primary-Clinton.php) that her campaign has any legitimate claim on the party’s presidential nomination.

Clinton becomes irrelevant to Obama after Tuesday’s final primary elections (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/obama.election/index.html?eref=rss_politics&iref=polticker) in Montana and South Dakota.