Last month, while the nation's attention was focused on Washington, D.C., and whether Congress would exclude abortion access from its health care reform package, a mirror image of that debate was taking place in Travis County, Texas. As members of Congress debated how to avoid using tax dollars for abortion care, Travis County officials did the exact opposite: They voted to use county tax dollars for abortion care for women living in poverty.
Why were politicians acting so differently in Washin
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Lorraine M. López made her notable debut in 2002 with the story collection "Soy La Avon Lady." Two novels later, she returns to her strength as a master tragicomic storyteller with "Homicide Survivors Picnic" (BkMk Press, $16.95), a book that explores the Latino family's intercultural and interracial experiences in the American South.
Only two of the 10 stories are connected, and two take place in California, but most of the characters are familiar with the same territory -- Georgia, Kentucky
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You’ve been out of work for a year now and you are wondering what’s ahead.
Or you are one of many couples who lost a paycheck and you are trying to get by on one only. Or you are middle-aged and had a good-paying factory job. But there are very few factory jobs today in your Rust Belt city. Or you are black or Latino and a lot of your friends can’t find a job either.
Where are we headed at the start of 2010?
As a number of recent reports point out, the Great Recession still hangs heavily over
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With the departures of the Franciscan Friars from St. Anthony parish on Milwaukee's south side and Father Eleazar Perez from St. Adalbert, the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee is searching for ways to meet the pastoral needs of the largest Latino parishes in the archdiocese, said Father Pat Heppe, the vicar of clergy.
In addition, there's another opening for a Spanish-speaking priest at St. Patrick's in Whitewater, where Father Rafael Rodriguez has been reassigned to the seminary, he said.
"
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Despite my frequently cynical viewpoint and occasional outbursts of rage (always justified, I assure you), I consider myself a fairly optimistic person. But I've just found out that my positive attitude has made me a psychological minority within an ethnic minority.
This is because my fellow Latinos are a little down on the world right now, especially regarding how well we all get along with each other. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that "one year after the election of President Bara
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Not content with its place as the biggest U.S. sporting event of the year, the National Football League wants to make the Super Bowl the most-watched sports event among Hispanics.
The NFL is gearing up to launch a series of Latino-targeted marketing efforts around Feb. 7's Super Bowl XLIV with music and sports events featuring Latin celebrities, and educational and informative programs at the grass-roots level. CBS will televise this year's game from Miami's Dolphin Stadium.
At stake is a grow
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There was that horrible earthquake that devastated Haiti. Last night, Massachusetts and the United States experienced a political earthquake that could be as in many ways as profound with the election of Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley to the U.S. Senate. And today is the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, which means that the Massachusetts debacle will be magnified by media assessments of the President's first year.
The immediate debate in Wash
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As a young teenager in the 1980s, Maggie Burgos was depressed and cutting herself. Burgos, of Rochester, now 36, survived her suicide attempts, but several years later when her oldest daughter, Soraya Lopez, hit her teenage years, Lopez was plagued by the same feelings of depression and loneliness.
Lopez, now 19, said she would isolate herself in her room. "She (Burgos) didn't know how to deal with me being isolated," recalled Lopez.
The two Latina women are now helping lead a local anti-suici
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Eva Guzman made history by becoming the first Latina to be sworn in to the state's high court Monday.
"For this day I have prayed, I have dreamed, and I have worked," Justice Guzman said. "Texas is a great state. America is a wonderful country. Anything is possible. Never give up, set your goals high, dream big."
Prior to her appointment to the Texas Supreme Court, Guzman was an associate justice on the 14th Court of Appeals. She was also recognized by the Hispanic National Bar Association as
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They met 30 years ago, when he was a junior lawyer in the US Justice Department in Washington and she was a George Washington University Law School student with a summer internship in his unit.
Yesterday, Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation’s first black attorney general, swore in Carmen Milagros Ortiz as the first woman and Hispanic US attorney in Massachusetts. The ceremony was held at the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse before hundreds of judges, dignitaries, lawyers, and supporters of Ortiz.
“H
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Posted by HispanicPro on January 14, 2010 at 2:08pm
A new study of state flagship universities says that while the University of Texas has increased minority and low-income student enrollment, it still has a long way to go to reflect the state's changing demographics.
The study by The Education Trust, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., examined the most prestigious public universities because those schools are often the wealthiest, have higher research contributions and train future state leaders.
"Enrollments at flagship state univer
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Posted by HispanicPro on January 14, 2010 at 1:58pm
Conducted by the Pew Research Center between the end of October and the end of November a poll covering several different aspects of race and race relations has shown that while the majority of African-Americans believe that more still needs to be done to address racial discrimination in the U.S., 81 percent to be precise, increasing numbers are optimistic about the future, 53 percent believing the future will be better for them, 44 percent having felt that way in 2007.
Furthermore 39 percent
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Posted by HispanicPro on January 14, 2010 at 1:49pm
MIT must do a better job recruiting and retaining black and Hispanic faculty, who have a significantly more difficult time getting promoted than white and Asian colleagues, according to a frank internal study released today by the university.
In some departments, such as chemistry, mathematics, and nuclear science and engineering, no minorities have been hired in the last two decades, according to the report, which was more than two years in the making.
MIT's first comprehensive study of facul
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A $300,000 federal grant will allow a Forest Grove nonprofit to expand its organic agriculture project and train Latino farmers from throughout Washington and Yamhill counties.
Adelante Mujeres will use the money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to lease 12 acres from a Forest Grove landowner, mentor farmers and expand sales of produce to area farmers markets.
Adelante Mujeres is the sole Oregon recipient of the grant, which is to be distributed over three years.
"Many Latinos grew up
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Once a month, Rosa Lopez lined up with her youngest child in tow for free food at a San Jose charity. Cheerful volunteers gave them grocery bags with bread, soup cans, rice, peanut butter and a few vegetables. Gracias, goodbye, see you next time.
But this dreary hunger routine changed for the better when she met a stocky, middle-age Latino professional who lived nearby. He had come to the charity with novel idea: In a city blessed with sunshine, he wanted to teach poor families like hers how to
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Technology is now in all existing fields of life. The immigration phenomena for long considered as an issue tossed to the back burner of the U.S. political agenda, is no exception. Curiously, now that there is a more tangible effort to advance towards an immigration system overhaul, is when more devices and applications are being used in aid of undocumented immigrants.
From a cell phone that includes a GPS system that guides those sneaking into the U.S. to water reservoirs, so they don’t die de
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The middle is what holds Los Angeles together.
Not too rich, not too poor. Right in the middle of the curve -- a place that doesn't inspire much passion.
But without the middle class, what is Los Angeles?
Imagine a metropolis where all the homes have either iron bars on the windows or walls and guards to keep away the riffraff. A city of castes. Gated communities and gangland, with nothing in between.
In other words, a Third World city.
With our economy in the dumps and public services and
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The back wall of the sanctuary of Iglesia Cristiana Pentecostal Church of Orlando in Pine Hills is lined with the flags of the Hispanic congregation: Puerto Rico, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti and Texas.
The flags speak to the spread of Pentecostalism throughout the world and, in particular, Latin nations. The Pentecostal faith, which holds that the miracles of the Bible are still happening today, is proliferating among Hispanics, many of w
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Less than a year after becoming the first Hispanic to reach the rank of captain in the Lake County Sheriff's Office, Gerry Montalvo has been promoted to major.
Montalvo rise to major was one of several promotions recognized in a sheriff's ceremony at Lake Tech's Institute of Public Safety this month.
Maj. Montalvo, 43, will now oversee the bureaus of criminal investigations, special investigations and uniform patrol.
"I'm very honored by the trust Sheriff Borders has put in me," said Montalvo
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Almost six out of 10 Texas public schoolchildren hail from low-income families, marking a troubling spike in poverty over the last decade, a new state report finds.
The increase coincides with a significant jump in the number of Hispanic students, while fewer Anglo students were enrolled last year than 10 years ago, according to the study by the Texas Education Agency. Schools also are educating many more children whose primary language is not English.
The rapidly changing makeup of the Texas
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