Tag: La Ruta del Voto Latino

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La Ruta del Voto Latino: Hispanics Find a Voice in New Orleans

Journalist Diego Graglia has been documenting the lives of Latinos during this presidential election year. He recently traveled from New York City to Mexico City, stopping along the way to talk to Latinos in small towns and big cities about the issues that matter to them. For more on La Ruta del Voto Latino/The Road to the Latino Vote visit www.newyorktomexico.com.

In a previous post, Diego Graglia wrote about his visit to New Orleans, where Hispanic Americans had long assimilated into the local mainstream culture, which in effect, made them “invisible.”

While in New Orleans, he interviewed Diane Schnell, news and marketing director of the local Telemundo station, KGLA-TV 42, which has recently launched the city’s first-ever Spanish-language newscast.

In this podcast, Diane talks about how the Latino community is no longer an invisible market in New Orleans, and which presidential candidate is doing more to reach out to New Orleans’ Latinos.

[audio:http://www.jocelyngonzales.net/FI2W/fi2w_laruta_diane.mp3]
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La Ruta del Voto Latino (The Road to the Latino Vote): Milton, Florida

Journalist Diego Graglia has been documenting the lives of Latinos during this presidential election year. He recently traveled from New York City to Mexico City, stopping along the way to talk to Latinos in small towns and big cities about the issues that matter to them. For more on La Ruta del Voto Latino/The Road to the Latino Vote visit www.newyorktomexico.com.

Restaurant owner Gerónimo Barragán saw ten of his employees arrested and deported in February, some to his native Mexico, others to Guatemala. Santa Rosa County, Florida authorities also went to other businesses, looking for people using stolen Social Security numbers. Since the raid, the already small Hispanic community in the Florida Panhandle town of Milton has all but disappeared.

Gerónimo Barragán

In this interview Barragán talks about the raid and his thoughts on the upcoming the election. A committed Baptist, Barragán supports President Bush and may not vote at all.

Listen to the interview with Gerónimo Barragán.

[audio:http://www.jocelyngonzales.net/FI2W/fi2w_laruta_geronimo.mp3]
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La Ruta del Voto Latino (The Road to the Latino Vote): Kinston, North Carolina

Journalist Diego Graglia is documenting the lives of Latinos during this presidential election year as he travels from New York City to Mexico City. For more on La Ruta del Voto Latino-The Road to the Latino Vote, visit www.newyorktomexico.com.

Juvencio Rocha Peralta

Latinos started settling in big numbers in the South about two decades ago. Since then they have changed the face of the region. Here, I visit the small town of Kinston, North Carolina where I meet Juvencio Rocha Peralta. Born in Mexico, he was one of the first migrants to arrive in the area almost three decades ago, and is a longtime community activist in the rural Eastern part of the state. Our conversation focused on issues that concern local Latinos in the 2008 presidential election. Listen to our conversation in this podcast.

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La Ruta del Voto Latino: Marcia Espínola in Siler City, N.C.

Diego Graglia is documenting the lives of Latinos during this presidential election year as he travels from New York City to Mexico City. For more on La Ruta del Voto Latino-The Road to the Latino Vote, visit www.newyorktomexico.com.

Last week, Diego visited small towns in North Carolina to find out what Latinos in rural areas think about the presidential elections and what issues affect them the most. In the South, some of these towns have been changed radically by the arrival of Mexicans and Central Americans -from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador- who work in agriculture, manufacturing and construction.

In Siler City, North Carolina, Diego spoke with Marcia Espínola, associate director of El Vínculo Hispano-The Hispanic Liaison. She talked about what happened in that rural county after a poultry processing plant closed in June and left over 800 people out of a job. Listen to their conversation in this podcast:

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To see photos of Diego Graglia’s road trip, visit the NY-DF Flickr page, and visit his web-page at www.newyorktomexico.com.

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La Ruta del Voto Latino: Manassas, Virginia (the impact of a local immigration law)

Diego Graglia is documenting the lives of Latinos during this presidential election year as he travels from New York City to Mexico City. For more on La Ruta del Voto Latino-The Road to the Latino Vote visit www.newyorktomexico.com.

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On our first day on the road we arrived in Manassas, Virginia, not far from Washington D.C. Our goal was to revisit the intense and controversial debate on immigration that has been taking place there.

A year ago the Prince William County supervisors launched a crackdown on undocumented immigrants. They passed a resolution whose outstanding feature allows local law enforcement to inquire about the immigration status of people they suspect of committing a crime or misdemeanor (even jaywalking.) Officers can also report undocumented immigrants to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation processing.

Since then, the Latino population in the county appears to have plummeted.

As soon as we arrived, I met Teresita Jacinto, a spokeswoman for Mexicanos Sin Fronteras/Mexicans Without Borders. Listen here to a Podcast of my interview with Jacinto.

 

Teresita Jacinto, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, Manassas, Virginia

Teresita Jacinto at 9500 Liberty St., “El Muro de la Calle Libertad.” (More photos here)

I interviewed her in front of what people in Manassas call The Wall — and those supporting immigrants regardless of their status call El Muro de la Calle Libertad (Liberty Street wall). It’s painted on the side of a burnt-down house by Mexican-born owner Gaudencio Fernández. In the wall’s strong message, he calls Prince William County, “the national capital of intolerance.” [Read the full text in this photo.] Unfortunately when we arrived Fernández was on vacation in Mexico.

The wall has been the subject of controversy and the target of attacks. As you’ll read in this story, Fernández has to go to court after his vacation. But I was more concerned with understanding its message.

(more…)

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La Ruta del Voto Latino: Getting Ecuadoran Immigrants to Focus on US Politics

EcuaParade

Sunday Aug. 3 2008, The Ecuador Independence Day Parade in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY. (Photo: Diego Graglia)

At last Sunday’s Ecuadoran Independence Day Parade in Queens, NY representatives of Ecuadoran political parties drew lots of attention, not all of it positive. But at least one community leader at the parade was trying to get people to focus on the US presidential election. As part of our special series La Ruta del Voto Latino – The Road to the Latino Vote, journalist Diego Graglia spoke to Francisco Moya, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. In fact, he’s the first Ecuadoran to be a delegate to a major party convention in the US. In this Podcast, Moya talks about the challenge of getting Ecuadoran immigrants, including those who a US citizens, to pay attention to US politics.

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Ecuadorans are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the New York area. The city’s Department of City Planning says Ecuador is third among the, “largest sources of the foreign-born,” in the borough of Queens, and it is second in The Bronx. There are also large Ecuadoran communities in Somerset and Essex counties in New Jersey and Westchester, NY. Despite their numbers Ecuadorans don’t have much political power, compared to other immigrant groups that have been in New York for decades, like Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.

Diego Graglia is on the road from New York City to Mexico City, talking to Latinos about the issues and the candidates in this year’s presidential election.

To see photos of the parade and Diego Graglia’s road trip, visit the NY-DF Flickr page, and visit his web-page at http://www.newyorktomexico.com/.