Article Published: Sunday, May 25, 2003 - 12:00:00 AM MST By Diane Carman, Special to The Denver Post

Yolando Vallejo didn't care. The Rifle High School student said she never felt like she belonged in school. School seemed irrelevant.

"I had family problems," she said. "I always learned a lot when things happened to me." School was not happening.

So she decided she was going to quit, get a job, do something real.

Then the unexpected happened.

School got real.

Rifle High School Spanish teacher Maria Carrion-Kozak saw some information about a program at the University of Denver Center for Teaching International Relations. She was the adviser for the International Affairs Club. This looked interesting.

Carrion-Kozak is from Venezuela, and, as it turned out, the 20 students who joined the club were all Latinos - some first-generation immigrants from Mexico and El Salvador.

In many ways, the club was a refuge for them. Many were struggling with English, and some were barely passing their courses.

Most knew what it was like to feel isolated and foreign even in their own hometown. In the club, they translated for each other. In the club, they stuck up for each other.

Elizabeth Beindorff, project director for the DU World Affairs Challenge, invited them to participate in a statewide competition for a student project on world hunger.

But International Affairs was just a little club at a rural school with no money. It seemed impossible.

No problem, Beindorff said. She offered to waive the registration fee. She sent the materials and urged them to try.

Carrion-Kozak admits she was freaked.

"I was not prepared for this at all," she said. "I'm a Spanish teacher. I have no background in this."

But the students were eager, so she enlisted Kim Goossens, a school board member, to help with the project, and they went to work.

The kids began doing research after school. None of them had a personal computer at home, so most of the work was done at the homes of Carrion-Kozak and Goossens.

The students identified the 25 hungriest countries in the world and the causes of hunger in each of them. They learned that 1 billion people don't have enough to eat, that nearly half of them are children.

Once the students began to realize the scope of the problem, they mobilized quickly.

They organized a hunger strike at school, asking students to forgo lunch to experience what it's like to be hungry. They urged them to contribute their lunch money for hunger relief. They raised nearly $400.

They volunteered in a soup kitchen. They researched the hunger relief organization Heifer International, and used their money to buy a water buffalo to help starving villagers in the developing world. And they wrote and performed a skit, complete with a video presentation and music produced by a student rock band and the school choir.

Then they held more fundraisers, this time to pay for transportation to Denver for the competition in March at DU.

Despite all their work, they were prepared to get creamed.

Many of their competitors were from tony suburban schools. Some of them were from gifted-and-talented programs. They were just poor Latino kids from Rifle.

They smoked them.

On Thursday, they brought their winning project, "Giving a Face to Hunger," to the World Trade Day business conference in Denver.

In front of a painted cardboard set, wearing handmade costumes and few signs of nerves, the students delivered their poignant, powerful dramatization of the plight of the hungry to a roomful of buttondown business types.

When the students finished, the place erupted. The businessmen and women wiped tears from their eyes and gave them a standing ovation.

It wasn't just the skit.

At a time when a third of Latino students don't finish high school and teachers struggle to make school more compelling than a $6- an-hour job in a fast-food joint, a bunch of brown-faced kids with mediocre grades and limited English skills discovered their own remarkable ability.

"A lot of people didn't believe in us because the club is 100 percent Latino. Then we won," Leidy Ruiz said.

"We proved to ourselves and others that we don't all drop out and that we're smarter than we look," said Vallejo, who admits she's decided to stay in school - and not just because of the sudden acclaim.

Winning the competition was great, she said, but to her something else was more important. She discovered that even a bunch of poor kids from Rifle could make a difference.

"To be able to change even one person's life, that was the best thing."

As she spoke, Carrion-Kozak passed a tissue to Beindorff. The tears were welling up again.

They knew just what she meant.

Diane Carman's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail: dcarman@denverpost.com .

chronicle-tribune.com By KRISTEN HARTY, Minority affairs reporter. kharty@marion.gannett.com

I discovered last week that the world is divided into two sorts of people -- people who can roll their 'r's and people who can't.

I fall into the latter category.

Ray Vasquez was trying not to laugh at me on the first night of Spanish class at the YWCA of Marion. We were going around the table, pronouncing the Spanish vowel sounds and consonant sounds, most of which are very similar to English.

Eventually -- inevitably -- we got to the 'r.'

"Say "errrre," Vasquez said, rolling the sound effortlessly off his tongue.

I already knew I couldn't do it. I know a little French and a little German and used to speak Hebrew pretty fluently. Never could roll a darn 'r.'

So I hesitated, of course. Tried to will my 'r' to roll. Everyone was looking at me and waiting in anticipation.

"ARE," I said. The sound stuck in my throat like an engine that wouldn't start.

Vasquez, who seems to be a very nice man -- pleasant and patient like a good teacher should be -- actually giggled a little bit. I know he couldn't help it.

And truthfully, the class was about evenly split between those who could roll and those who couldn't.

"It's not in your language, so you don't learn how to do it," said Vasquez, a native of Venezuela, who translates and teaches Spanish in a number of Grant County settings. "Don't be afraid to say it wrong because nobody's going to joke about it. This is a learning place."

And anyway, the point of taking the eight-week beginning Spanish class at the YWCA isn't to perfect the language or its pronunciation. The class is designed to give people a little exposure to the Spanish language and culture.

I'm taking it because I always feel ignorant that I don't know the most rudimentary rules of Spanish, and because in Marion there is a pretty good-sized Hispanic population that is growing. It's hard to make friends with people or understand who they are if you don't know anything about their language or culture.

So this is a start, a small effort to expand my horizons just a bit.

And the YWCA class is supposed to be fun, Vasquez said.

"This is the thing I can tell you, Spanish is not difficult to learn," he said. "It's just about patience, perseverance, time and having someone who can help you out."

Sounds like a worthwhile challenge.

As far as learning to roll an 'r,' however, it may be hopeless.

"Say 'carrrrrra,'" Vasquez said.

"CaR-ah," said I. "CaR-ah."

Er....Er...Ugh.

Originally published Sunday, May 25, 2003

Posted on Sun, May. 25, 2003 By Jennifer Lin The Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

In the deep channel of the Delaware River, hulking tankers with names like Agamemnon and Ophelia haul more than a million barrels of crude oil a day from Venezuela, Nigeria, Canada and the North Sea.

Oil tankers dominate the river, but since 9/11, the safety of those vessels along 120 miles of waterway has become the focus of the most intensive port security mission since World War II.

Although Houston and New Orleans handle far more crude, Philadelphia holds a geographic niche, importing and refining more oil than any other East Coast port. Recently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security labeled the Delaware River a "high threat" port.

The biggest fear here is that a terrorist attack on an oil or chemical tanker could shut down the river and interfere with refinery operations that supply the Northeastern states.

The seven refineries in the Philadelphia region process enough crude to meet a third of the oil demands for the vast market from Washington, D.C., to Maine.

"If you damage the capability of the Delaware River system to refine oil, you'd have a significant impact on the overall economy and not just Philadelphia's," said John Veentjer, a former captain overseeing the U.S. Coast Guard in Philadelphia.

Or, as homeland security expert Stephen Gale, with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, put it: An attack here could create "an economic choke point."

Last Tuesday, the nation raised its homeland security warning to "Code Orange." But even with the ongoing state of alert since 9/11, the nation's 361 ports remain dangerously exposed to the threat of terrorist activity.

On the Delaware River, the maritime industry has identified weak points in security. The local Coast Guard station is running more patrols and boarding more vessels. Shippers are developing new ways to track cargo, vessels and crews. And the port authorities, usually rivals, are working as partners to combat terrorism.

But the task of building an effective, tighter security shield, not only for the Delaware River but for all ports, far exceeds the funds available from private and public sources.

The federal government is spending $367 million for security projects - for all 361 U.S. ports.

This month, the homeland security department kicked in another $75 million for "high threat" ports, with $6.4 million promised to Philadelphia for Coast Guard operations as well as grants to the maritime trade.

But even with that extra money, the total federal dollars for port security are well below the $6 billion that the Coast Guard has estimated it will cost to improve security for vessels, terminal facilities and port operations.

Any disruption in the maritime trade on the Delaware River - the 10th-busiest port in the country - could jeopardize more than $19 billion in imports and exports, as well as $1.5 billion in local wages, revenues and taxes, according to local port authorities.

Stretching from the sandy anchorages of the Delaware Bay to the swift, rocky waters off Trenton, the Delaware River port system is one of the most challenging in the country to secure.

In addition to refineries, the waterway has eight major bridges and the nation's second-largest nuclear power station in Salem, N.J. Of the 38 terminals on the river, 14 receive oil or chemical tankers. And recently, military cargo started moving through the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal.

Adding to river traffic is the flotilla of weekend pleasure boats. Small craft speed up and down the river or anchor outside the shipping channel, making it hard to distinguish a possible attacker from a boater dashing to a waterside bar.

"Even though this is a modest-sized port, there is a lot that makes us vulnerable," said Gale, the terrorism expert.

Protecting the oil and chemical tankers that ply the Delaware River is the responsibility of the Coast Guard, whose mission has changed radically since 9/11.

For the Coast Guard, the task of policing the nation's waterways has eclipsed all other missions such as search and rescue operations and drug interdictions, according to a recent report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The result is the Coast Guard is stretched too thin, the GAO said, lacking the manpower, vessels and funds to be all things to all people.

The aging fleet in Philadelphia, including two tugboats, a 175-foot cutter, and a handful of patrol boats, was not designed with homeland security in mind, former Coast Guard officers explain.

"Some of the assets they are working with are pathetic," said Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R., N.J.), chairman of the House subcommittee on Coast Guard and maritime transportation. "There are cutters commissioned in World War II, and while their helicopters may look shiny and new, they have a tremendous number of operational hours on their airframes."

On the Delaware River, the Coast Guard has had to turn to local law enforcement units to help patrol sections of the waterfront and rescue boaters. This winter, it asked the Camden Fire Department not to put its fireboat in dry dock in order to respond to rescues.

"Before 9/11, about 2 percent of our missions were port-security related," said Capt. John Sarubbi, who has headed the Coast Guard's Philadelphia operation since June. "Right after 9/11, that number jumped to 60 percent of what we do on a day-to-day basis."

Sarubbi said the local Coast Guard command has called up more than 100 reservists and stepped up patrols by boat, car and helicopter.

It also started a port security committee to address the terrorism threat, bringing together FBI agents, state troopers, police, and firefighters with river pilots, oil terminal operators, security experts, and port officials.

"If you measure success in terms of the number of patrols you do on the river, it doesn't paint the whole picture," Sarubbi said. "You've got to use information, intelligence... and you have to be partners. That's how I'm approaching it."

Today, every vessel that enters the Delaware River must notify the Coast Guard 96 hours in advance, listing its crew, cargo and previous port calls. Agents for the Coast Guard, FBI and CIA analyze the information to decide which "high interest vessels" the Coast Guard should board and escort to destinations.

Nationally, the Coast Guard has boarded more than 2,000 vessels for security reasons since Sept 11. On the Delaware River, about 90 high-interest vessels, mostly tankers, were boarded in the 20 months since the attacks.

Sarubbi said a boarding team is put on the bridge and in the engine room to gain "positive control" of vessels. This is done, he said, to "make sure a vessel is not taken over by the crew or some unscrupulous individual and used as a weapon."

Terrorists in the Middle East already have shown an interest and capability for striking maritime targets.

On Oct. 12, 2000, a small boat carrying explosives slammed into the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors. Two years later, on Oct. 6, 2002, a French supertanker, the Limburg, was rammed near Yemen, dumping 90,000 barrels of oil.

Fears of a disaster like the Cole or Limburg weigh heavily on the Delaware River port community. Last month, the local Coast Guard command and law enforcement officials walked through what would happen if there was an attack like the Cole bombing on the Delaware River. Two other terrorist drills are scheduled for later this year.

A participant of the first Coast Guard exercise said the drill revealed how easily a terrorist in a small boat could pass suspicion and hit a target.

"A fast boat going down the river - no one would even make a call. It would just be a pleasure boat on the river," the participant said.

In one of the few positive outcomes of 9/11, the specter of terrorism has forced the fractious Delaware River port community to work together.

"We've never had the cooperation that we do now," said William Boles, security manager for the Port of Wilmington. "We're getting along as a region and forgetting about our own turfs."

If there's an attack, he said, "we'll all suffer."

Sat May 24, 2003 09:02 PM ET By Eduardo Orozco

CUSCO, Peru (<a href=reuters.com>Reuters) - Latin America will sign its own death warrant if it joins a planned pan-American free trade deal that is not designed to help the poor, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday.

"Venezuela is on the side of the people and we propose a new integration system that is definitely not the FTAA which, as it has been put forward, is a perverse mechanism that would be a death order for the future of the region," Chavez told Reuters in an interview.

The United States is a strong advocate of the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) pact, which is due to be finalized by 2005 and would facilitate commerce from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

Chavez, who faces ongoing violence at home over his controversial rule and has a tense relationship with Washington, was in the Andean city of Cusco for a summit of the 19-member Rio Group of Latin American nations.

Leaders discussed how to curb social unrest, recharge economies and make Latin America a key trader in a globalized world. Many -- like Chile, which is waiting for Washington to sign a bilateral trade deal -- seek to boost trade with the United States, through bilateral deals or the FTAA.

Critics of the free trade deal say, however, that it will chiefly benefit North America's bigger, industrialized economies and will not help millions of poor Latin Americans.

Chavez proposed instead a social and political pact called the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, named after Simon Bolivar, the 19th century general who struggled in vain to politically unite South America.

"We don't even need anything like Mercosur (a trade bloc grouping Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay), because we can't put the economy first in terms of integration. Political unity needs to come first," he said.

Chavez's opponents, who have organized months of violent protests, accuse him of authoritarian, communist-style rule in the world's No. 5 oil exporting nation. One person was killed and 22 hurt on Saturday when shooting erupted at an anti-Chavez rally in Caracas.

The Venezuelan leader declined to comment on the violence, which came a day after government and opposition negotiators agreed to a pact that could lead to a referendum on his rule.

"I don't know if there will be a recall referendum. It's a possibility if the opposition meets all the constitutional requirements," said Chavez, who has declared his willingness to submit to a referendum. "If there is, I will defeat (the opposition) again. The people will defeat them again."

"The Rio Group countries...are sure that (the agreement) will strengthen the democratic process in our brother nation," the leaders at the summit said in a declaration.