Tag: ethnic media

A Vigorous Defense: Latino Journalists Respond After New Owner of Boston Hispanic Paper Criticizes Hispanic Media

By Mary Thang, EthnicNEWz.org

Latino publishers in Massachusetts, including one that has served Spanish-reading communities for more than 30 years, are angry that the president of Phoenix Media/Communication Group called Hispanic newspapers in the area “not very good.”

Cover of El Mundo’s Jan. 7, 2009, edition (image: ElMundoBoston.com)

Brad Mindich, president of the media group that now owns Spanish-language El Planeta newspaper, told EthnicNEWz.org in an interview last month that “the other Hispanic newspapers published in the area, with due respect, they are not very good.”

In the same interview (by Edwardo A. de Oliveira, who is also a Feet in Two Worlds reporter) Mindich admitted he doesn’t speak Spanish. “I have no idea what they’re saying,” he said in partial response to a question on what caught his attention about El Planeta. El Planeta is the only non-English publication of its new owner, which also publishes the Boston Phoenix and Stuff@Night.
In response to Mindich’s remarks, Spanish-language El Mundo, which has covered Latinos in the Boston area since 1972, published a cover story on his suelta de lengua, or loose tongue, comments.

“For someone who cannot even speak or read Spanish to offer an opinion on editorial content on publications…serving the Latino community comes across as arrogant and condescending – which are the last qualities I want to see in someone controlling a media outlet in my community,” said El Mundo‘s vice president, Alberto Vasallo III, in an open letter that follows the cover story (see the full text of the letter below).

The story quotes Dalia Díaz of Lawrence-based Rumbo, whose articles and photos have been republished on EthnicNEWz.org; Victor Cuenca of Providence en Español in Rhode Island, who is a past interviewee of NEWz; Sergio Rivera of Worcester-based El Vocero Hispano; and Víctor Manuel González Lemus of Siglo 21 of New England.

The four publishers were all offended by Mindich’s remarks.

“We cover our communities in different ways and all with great sacrifice, with much love and not only for commercial purposes” (“Nosotros cubrimos a nuestras comunidades de diferentes formas y todos con mucho sacrificio, con mucho amor y no solamente por asuntos comerciales“), said Díaz, director of Rumbo. (more…)

Madoff, Meet Satyam: India Now Has Its Own Huge Financial Scandal

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

As if the global economic outlook wasn’t bleak enough already, India now has its own financial scandal to add to the bad news.

Ramalingan Raju, Satyam founder and chairman (Reuters)

Ramalingan Raju, Satyam founder and chairman (Reuters)

What’s known as the Satyam scandal — after information technology outsourcing firm Satyam Computer Services — became big news on Jan. 7, when chairman Ramalingam Raju resigned, admitting the company had inflated its profits over several years and falsified accounts and assets.

The company’s shares plummeted 80 percent and sent markets “on a tailspin,” wrote Reuters’ Sumeet Chatterjee, who called the case “India’s biggest corporate scandal in memory.” The Satyam case has become India’s own equivalent of the revelations about Bernard Madoff’s alleged swindle in the U.S.

(more…)

A Brazilian Immigrant Journalist Looks Back at 2008

By Eduardo A. de Oliveira, EthnicNewz and FI2W reporter

For millions of immigrant workers 2008 began with a sour taste in all the mouths they have to feed. Six months into 2007, Congress had drowned their highest hopes by killing the Immigration Reform bill.

For many families there was no choice but to return home – in the Brazilian community of Massachusetts alone there were 10,000 retornados, according to the Brazilian Immigrant Center.

Among those who remained here, much of the rhetoric about the need for immigrants to learn English got stuck in the back of their heads. The consequences were best seen in Framingham, Mass.

During a lottery for seats in an English-as-a-second-language course at Fuller Middle School, 500-plus immigrants competed for 165 seats. Of course the ‘no cost’ policy wooed many. But more than ever, they saw English as the language of their future – whether or not they are documented.

EDUARDO A. de OLIVEIRA

Hairdresser Marta dos Santos smiles upon hearing the news that she is one of 165 immigrants picked for an ESL course at Fuller Middle School. More than 500 people tried to get a seat in the classes. Photo: EDUARDO A. de OLIVEIRA

Despite being an election year, 2008 also served to harden immigrants’ hearts.

In the Republican presidential primary, candidates debated who would be the toughest on deporting undocumented workers. Forget about the melting pot, at that point workers learned that to half of America, all that mattered was their immigration status.

In the end, the Republicans selected a presidential candidate who had a record of trying to help undocumented immigrants. But the workers’ future in the U.S. looked grimmer as gas prices hit $4 per gallon, straining the livelihoods of delivery men, truckers, and taxi drivers.

But David Grabowski, a Health Economist at Harvard Medical School, found something about higher gas prices that was not bad news at all.

“We’ve discovered that for every 10 percent in price increase, there are 2.3 percent fewer fatalities in traffic related accidents. Among teenage drivers, at least 6 percent more lives were spared,” said Grabowski, who compared data from Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), from 1985 to 2006.

In another health-related story, a Dominican doctor used her Boston University credentials to fill a gap left behind by the Massachusetts Health Care Reform law. (more…)

The Year Of The Latino Vote, The Giant That Finally Awoke

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

By Diego Graglia, web editor

Diego Graglia, web editor

Latino political leaders have been touting the potential power of Latino voters for years. Though we knew that demographics would end up proving them right sooner or later, their discourse was starting to sound like they had hired The Boy Who Cried Wolf as a spokesman.

Then, 2008 happened.

The November presidential election became the quinceañera party where the Latino vote was introduced in the grand ballroom of American politics as a powerful voting bloc which can have an important role in deciding a nationwide election. (As we’ve already said before, there are many, extremely varied “Latino votes,” but we use the term here to simplify — though not oversimplify — matters.)

Both exit polls and post-Election Day surveys showed that Latino advocates’ turnout predictions had been fulfilled: over 10 million Latinos voted, as compared with 7.6 million in the 2004 presidential election and over 6 million in 2000. An America’s Voice poll [get the pdf here] claims Latinos were 9 percent of the electorate, “approximately 11 million voters.”

(more…)

New Attack On Hispanic Immigrants In New York Is Again Felt In Ecuador

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

For the second time in less than a month, an Ecuadorean immigrant was savagely attacked in New York by men shouting anti-Hispanic slurs. Once again, as with the death a month ago of Marcelo Lucero, the pain was felt among Hispanics in the United States and in faraway South America. The attack that left José Sucuzhañay brain-dead seems to confirm the rise in hate crimes pro-immigration advocates have been warning about since Lucero’s passing.

Daily News

José Sucuzhañay – Photo: Daily News

José and his brother Romel Sucuzhañay were attacked on a Brooklyn street last weekend by three men who allegedly shouted anti-Hispanic and anti-gay slurs while beating them with a bottle and a baseball bat. The brothers had been walking with their arms around each other.

José, 31, was declared brain-dead Tuesday at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, although his family was keeping him on life support until his parents and two children arrived from Ecuador.

“Today my brother is the victim, but tomorrow it could be your brother, your mother, your father,” another sibling, Diego Sucuzhañay, said Tuesday at a press conference outside the hospital.

According to the New York Daily News,

Diego said he had been talking with his parents in Ecuador by phone, telling them Jose “was okay.” But, he said, now “it’s time to tell them the truth.”

Thousands of miles away, Mercedes Quintuña, the Sucuzhañays’ mother, also spoke to the press.

(more…)

Brazilians Debate Whether Undocumented Housecleaner ‘Betrayed’ Her Boss

By Eduardo A. de Oliveira, EthnicNewz and FI2W reporter

The news on the local Portuguese-language newspaper Brazilian Times

The news on the local Portuguese-language newspaper Brazilian Times

The talk of the town within the “Brazilian corners” of Somerville and Framingham, Massachusetts is whether the Brazilian housecleaner employed by Homeland Security official Lorraine Henderson betrayed her boss by agreeing to record their conversations for immigration authorities. Henderson, the Boston area port director for the Customs and Border Protection Division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was arrested last Saturday for allegedly employing an undocumented Brazilian housecleaner at her home in Salem, Mass.

The controversy in the Brazilian community, which we reported earlier this week, has now made it to the airwaves on Portuguese-language radio in the Bay State.

“Three years ago my boss asked if I had Social Security. I said no. She fired me, but her neighbors kept my services. I would never record a conversation with somebody who gives me a job,” said a listener to a show on WSRO (650 AM), who declined to reveal her name.

“I simply asked my listeners: if a boss treated you well, gave you a job, would you do what this housecleaner did to Henderson?,” said Fausto da Rocha, host of “Brazilian Immigrant Center on the Air” a show broadcast every Monday morning on 1360 AM. (more…)

First-Ever Vietnamese-American Congressman Is Republicans’ New Ethnic Hope

The Times-Picayune

Cao celebrates - Photo: The Times-Picayune

If you were surprised when the first-ever Vietnamese American was elected to Congress a few days ago, you’re not alone.

Many Vietnamese immigrants across the U.S. were also unaware of Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao until his victory this Saturday in a special election in New Orleans. Cao defeated the tainted nine-term Democratic incumbent, William Jefferson, an African American from an overwhelmingly black congressional district.

Not even his fellow Republicans knew that much about Cao, an immigration lawyer from East New Orleans. According to The Washington Post, D.C. party aides had to look up his ads on YouTube to learn how to pronounce his last name. [Here’s one of the ads; the pronunciation is close to “gow.”]

Unknown or not, Cao’s victory seems to have earned him the right to carry the hopes and expectations of both Vietnamese-Americans and Republicans on his shoulders.

(more…)

Bill Richardson’s Real Job: Obama’s “Latino in Chief”

Bill Richardson may not have been appointed secretary of state, but his remarks in Spanish after a brief and ceremonial thank you in English left no doubt that he had in mind a bigger role for himself in the Obama Administration: that of “Latino in Chief.”

“To our Latino community, thank you for your votes. Like he (President-elect Barack Obama) told us, ‘Yes, we can’, and our vote has been our voice,” he said in his very Mexican Spanish. “To the millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean, we have to strengthen the ties that bind us and remember the importance of a united continent.”

[Watch Richardson’s remarks here:]

Those are lofty words for somebody who is supposedly only going to deal with issues of commerce, and not diplomatic relations. But his comments made some believe that he sees himself as a link between Obama — who is said to have limited relations with Latino leaders outside of Illinois — and Latinos everywhere. (more…)

AudioStories

Deepening Economic Crisis Could Be Sending Polish Immigrants Back To Poland

Poles going back to Poland, a trend that was first noticed two years ago, may be getting a boost from the economic crisis in the U.S. Speaking recently on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, FI2W journalist Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska talked about the growing number of Poles who are returning to their home country for economic reasons.

A variety of factors have encouraged reverse migration, chief among them is Poland’s admission into the European Union four years ago. EU membership has opened up work opportunities for Polish citizens in a number of European countries. Ewa, who reports for Nowy Dziennik/The Polish Daily News, also noted that some younger Poles have moved to Poland in the belief that their American education gives them a competitive advantage in Poland’s economy. But she also said that like the U.S., Poland is experiencing an economic slowdown, so the benefits of moving to the Eastern European country may not be as great today as they have been in recent years.

Press play below to listen to Ewa on WNYC or click here to visit the show’s page.

[audio:http://audio.wnyc.org/bl/bl112608epod.mp3]

Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska

Ewa was recently honored by New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. at a Polish-American Heritage Celebration. Thompson hailed Ewa’s “truly impressive record of achievement that augurs a great body of work still to come.”

In Massachusetts, Temple Turns Into Free Health Clinic To Serve Immigrants

By Eduardo A. de Oliveira, EthnicNewz and FI2W reporter

Jaime Viviani is treated at Congregation Beth-El, a Jewish temple in Sudbury, Massachusetts
(Photo: Elizabeth Mendonca/Brazilian Times)

SUDBURY, Mass. — Despite the economic crisis, the Barbosa family will have a healthy holiday this year.

Three generations of the Brazilian clan are undocumented and uninsured. But Alessandra Barbosa knows that if her mother or her daughter ever need health care they can find it at Congregation Beth El, a Sudbury Jewish temple which becomes a walk-in clinic on Tuesday evenings.

In spite of all the talk about how Massachusetts Health Reform has increased access to care, there are those, mostly undocumented immigrants, who are falling through the cracks.

“Last year, we provided care to 515 patients through 753 visits, nearly all the patients ranging in age from 19 to 64,” said Kim Prendergast, resource developer with MetroWest Free Medical Program. “About two-thirds of them were Brazilian and 15 percent, Hispanic.”

What started four years ago as a “band aid” to care for about twenty low-income people has morphed into a reliable source of treatment for forty patients a week. I strolled through the temple last week as nurses rallied language interpreters to help with the majority-immigrant crowd.

(more…)