Latino Media Interpret South America’s ‘Left-Turn’ Differently
news.pacificnews.org El Norte Digest Compiled and Edited by Marcelo Ballve, New California Media, Jan 23, 2003
“El Norte” is a weekly report on news and views from the Latino press and communities.
- Latino Media Interpret South America’s ‘Left-Turn’ Differently
- Deportees from U.S. Flooding into Border Area
- Bush’s Affirmative Action Position Attacked by California Latinos
- U.S. Colombians Coalescing Politically, Economically
Latino Media Interpret South America’s ‘Left-Turn’ Differently
With populist presidents inaugurated in both Ecuador and Brazil, major mainstream U.S. newspapers speculated about a continent-wide shift to the left in South America. But Latino editors and analysts said the leaders showed no clear signs yet of breaking with market-friendly policies.
On Jan. 1, Brazil inaugurated Workers’ Party leader Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, who is a former union leader. Since Brazil is Latin America’s largest nation and economy, the country’s elections were watched as a barometer of political thought in the region.
But Brazzil, a Los Angeles-based monthly published for overseas Brazilians, cautions in its January 2003 issue of making too much of the election results. In the cover article, “So this is Lula?” Ted Goertzel of Rutgers University points out that Lula selected a multi-millionaire connected to evangelical Christians as vice president and that Henrique Mereilles, former head of BankBoston, was picked as Central Bank president. “Lula’s government will be one of continuity. … He will easily manage the disappointment of the ideological leftists.”
In Spain’s widely read El País daily, former Uruguayan president José María Sanguinetti writes, “In reality, Latin America is not being pushed by an ideological wave in either direction.”
Guillermo Martinez, writing Jan. 18 in the New York Spanish-language daily El Diario/ La Prensa, says Ecuador’s new president, Lucio Gutierrez was relying principally on the support of indigenous members of his coalition, rather than actively courting any Marxist-inspired faction.
President Gutierrez, a former coup leader and military officer, backtracked already on his opposition to having the U.S. dollar as Ecuador’s currency. Martinez says the new president was also unlikely to adopt the same incendiary class rhetoric used by President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Deportees from U.S. Flooding into Border Area
U.S. homeland security efforts to increase border surveillance and speed up deportation of illegal immigrants are beginning to impact fragile Mexican border cities, which are often the first stop for returned migrants. In one city deportees are overwhelming social service agencies.
Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana have seen sharp increases recently in the number of deportees turning up on city streets, according to Frontera NorteSur, a daily New Mexico-based news service.
Nuevo Laredo’s daily El Mañana newspaper cites figures documenting a dramatic rise in deportees: in January 2001, 296 Mexicans were returned; in 2002, the number was 718; in the first two weeks of January 2003, over 2,000 Mexicans were returned over the bridge linking the city to Texas.
In Tijuana, the daily Frontera newspaper said in mid-2002 that the number of deportees returned to Mexico through the city climbed sharply from low 2001 levels to a flow of 100 deportees per day arriving from San Diego.
In Nuevo Laredo, the Casa del Migrante, an immigrant aid organization, has been overwhelmed by the influx and can no longer house and feed deportees. The city’s Civil Protection Unit was activated to provide emergency housing and help transport migrants home.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has made speedy deportation a hallmark of its ongoing overhaul under the planned Department of Homeland Security. One new measure—called “mandatory surrender”—was approved last year and says that from that date forward, immigrants with “removal” orders handed down against them must turn themselves within 30 days or be prohibited from contesting their deportation. Before, illegal immigrants or visa violators could stave off deportation by appealing to immigration judges.
Bush’s Affirmative Action Position Attacked by California Latinos
In California, where the state’s university system has already abolished using racial criteria in its admissions, the Latino media has blasted the White House for opposing affirmative action at the University of Michigan in a U.S. Supreme Court case.
On the popular LatinoLA web portal, two commentators made the case for affirmative action. Karen Salazar, an undergraduate at UCLA, writes that California is an example of how abolishing affirmative action would lead to the “resegregation” of higher education. She says that while the Black and Latino population in California boomed in high schools, minority students’ representation in the university system declined precipitously since affirmative action was abolished in 1996.
Attorney Sylvia Trujillo, a Harvard and University of California graduate, says she was “outraged” that President Bush implied that universities had somehow “overvalued” the importance of including the perspectives of minorities in the student body.
“Bush is looking for a fight that he didn’t need,” says the La Opinión daily in Los Angeles, with over 600,000 daily readers. In the Jan. 19 editorial, the newspaper said “diversity is a hugely important goal for a teaching institution that operates in a society of inequalities, with a background of racism and discrimination and abysmal economic disparities.”
Raul Caballero, a Texas journalist writing in the same newspaper, highlighted U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s public statements dissenting with the president’s position the day before the Martin Luther King holiday. “(Powell’s dissent) made me feel pain and pride.”
Latino community organizations such as the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund have urged the White House to support affirmative action.
U.S. Colombians Coalescing Politically, Economically
After a decade of heavy immigration, U.S.-based Colombians are beginning to make economic and political ripples in the Northeast and Florida. Colombian businessmen are investing heavily in U.S. real estate, while some are forging ties with other Latinos to launch political careers.
Many Colombians arriving are professionals fleeing the instability and conflict of the 1990s, and their political impact is being felt quickly, both in Colombia and in the United States. In a Jan. 21 report, Miami’s Spanish-language daily El Nuevo Herald says some $5 billion in Colombian capital had been invested in the United States, notably in Miami real estate, during the past five years. The article estimates that there could be over 2 million Colombians in the United States, with 250,000 in South Florida.
The movement in money has been accompanied by some political clout. Juan Carlos Zapata, a Colombian representing a district in the Miami area, was voted into the Florida legislature according to the Nuevo Herald. Zapata has attributed his victory to close ties with the state’s 1 million-strong Cuban community. In Rhode Island there are Colombians on city councils, as well as one representative in the state legislature.
The U.S. Association of Colombian-American Organizations, or NACAO for its syllables in Spanish, plans to meet in September in New York. According to New York Spanish-language daily El Diario/La Prensa, the organization will push for a higher profile for Colombians within U.S. Latino organizations. They also want overseas Colombians to be able to vote for their own representative in their home country’s legislature.