by the El Reportero‘s wire services

Guatemala City, August 14 – An Olympic welcome will liven up the streets of this capital today in honor of the members of the national delegation returning from Paris, among them the champion and record holder Adriana Ruano.

Our athletes have written a new page in the sporting history of the country, announced the organizers, and urged not to miss the caravan that will start at 11:45, local time, from the capital’s La Aurora International Airport.

The Guatemalan Olympic Committee detailed that the route will touch emblematic points of the city such as the Plaza Obelisco, Plaza España, Municipalidad de Guatemala, Palacio de los Deportes, Plaza Espíritu Ganador and Avenida Reforma to end at the InterContinental hotel.

The organization also announced, after the welcome, a press conference with the athletes, who will be joined by some who arrived earlier.

On Saturday 17, in the central Plaza de la Constitución, Guatemalans will be able to pay homage to the Olympic Chapines, who will be received on the presidential balcony.

“Our athletes have elevated the name of Guatemala by placing us in a prominent position in the Olympic medal table of Latin America. This is an achievement that fills the entire nation with pride,” said President Bernardo Arévalo.

The Minister of Culture and Sports Liwy Grazioso highlighted, for her part, the importance of the event, while mentioning the government’s commitment to supporting the participants and highlighting their achievements.

“It is essential to recognize the effort of our athletes and their role in carrying our flag to international competitions,” said the minister.

The land of the quetzal, which has participated in the Olympic Games since Helsinki 1952, only had the silver medal of the race walker Erick Barrondo, won 12 years ago, in London 2012.

With the gold of Ruano and the bronze of Jean Pierre Brol, both in shooting, it entered the medal table for the second time and finished in 60th place.

Guatemala was the only country from Central America in the medal table, and in Latin America, it was even placed above Mexico (65), Colombia (66) and Panama (74).

Mexico attacks Israel for its actions in Gaza

The number of dead caused by the war in the Palestinian enclave since Oct. 7 has risen to 39,929, mostly children and women

Mexico urged Israel to stop military operations that cause civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip, especially attacks on schools and important buildings, according to the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).

“A ceasefire and the start of negotiations for a solution to the conflict are urgently needed,” the SRE wrote on its X page.

“The Government of Mexico condemns and regrets that Israeli operations against schools and other essential infrastructure in the Gaza Strip continue,” the statement said.

The Mexican Foreign Ministry noted that “these attacks have cost multiple lives of innocent civilians and are totally contrary to international humanitarian law.”

• Since the start of the escalation on Oct. 7, 2023, there have been numerous attacks on schools, hospitals and other Gazan buildings by the Israel Defense Forces, leaving numerous victims among the Palestinian civilian population.
• The death toll caused by the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip since October 7 has risen to 39,929, mostly children and women. The wounded have risen to 92,240.

by Madeline Mendieta

The 2024 Olympic Games in France have been characterized by countless controversies. A controversial opening ceremony, the participation of some athletes who raised a stir due to their backgrounds, types of chromosomes, excess hormones, statements about food, comfort of the rooms, Christian and Catholic religious people offended by the staging of the first day, even Pope Bergoglio made statements on the matter, among others.

But despite the controversy, athletes from 204 countries have shed blood, sweat and tears in the 32 disciplines that for a couple of weeks have competed for the gold, silver and bronze medals to return triumphantly to their countries and prepare for the following competitions.

Central America participated with more than 40 athletes and according to some experts they have been the best for the region because they have stood out during this Olympic day in sports that are not always conventional.

The region has always had socio-political difficulties that have prevented athletes from having all the conditions that other countries offer them. In addition, it is an area that struggles with extreme poverty, war conflicts, unemployment and violence. However, since the approval of the respective Olympic committees, the region has maintained its participation with some exceptions that have been due to political issues, such was the case of Nicaragua that did not attend the Seoul 1988 games.

Pope Francis said that “to break down prejudices, to promote esteem where there is contempt and distrust, and friendship where there is hatred.” Although the Central America in conflict now only remains in the history books and in the references, there are still many challenges to overcome. Mainly, the budgetary support destined for sports as an option for children to join any discipline.

Panama, according to Forbes magazine, is the country in the region that invests the most with 65.3 million dollars. According to the media Teletica, Costa Rica has a budget for the year 2024 of 12,000 million colones. The newspaper 19 Digital points out that the budget for sports activities in Nicaragua corresponds to C$177,002,000.00 equivalent to 4.83 million dollars. The Salvadoran government’s “Fiscal Transparency” portal indicates that its budget is $31.4 million dollars for this year. Honduras, the newspaper La Prensa pointed out, had a 100 percent increase for this year, which corresponds to L635 million lempiras.

The budgets are not sufficient to cover all the needs of athletes in each country. According to the article written by PhD. Kristin Scardamalia, for the Hispanic Latino Behavioral Health Center of Excellence, “participation in youth gangs is a serious public health problem with important implications for the young people involved.” After the wars in the 80s, the proliferation of youth gang groups was a problem that involved many agents such as the government, religious entities and non-governmental organizations.

One of the factors, in addition to extreme poverty, was the lack of spaces for recreation, sports and studies. The most extreme case has been the maximum security prisons established by the government of El Salvador. Although the demand for sports spaces is still not sufficient, it has been verified that there are opportunities to practice sports, and the levels of violence are decreasing. There is still a need to invest much more in sports education. Public investment requires that its budget be better distributed to the most popular sectors.

Since the first participation in the Olympics, Central America has won 11 medals to date.

Eduardo López, sports columnist for AS (online sports newspaper) summarizes in the following table all the medals obtained by the Central American participation.

Central American medals in the Olympic Games

Guatemala (1 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)

Erick Barrondo | silver | athletics | 20 km walk | London 2012

Jean Pierre Brol | bronze | shooting | men’s trap | Paris 2024

Adriana Ruano | gold | shooting | women’s trap | Paris 2024

Costa Rica (1 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze)

Silvia Poll | silver | swimming | 200m freestyle | Seoul 1988

Claudia Poll | gold | swimming | 200m freestyle | Atlanta 1996

Claudia Poll | bronze | swimming | 200m freestyle | Sydney 2000

Claudia Poll | bronze | swimming | 400m freestyle | Sydney 2000

Panama (2 gold, 2 bronze)

Lloyd LaBeach | bronze | athletics | 100m flat | London 1948

Lloyd LaBeach | bronze | athletics | 200m flat | London 1948

Irving Saladino | gold | athletics | long jump | Beijing 2008

Atheyna Bylon | gold | boxing | women’s 75kg | Paris 2024

This Sunday, Aug. 11, the games ended. The athletes celebrated their own victories and waved the flag so that millions of citizens from every corner of Central America could feel the emotion.

The closing ceremony did not have so many contradictions among the spectators; the organizing committee, together with the creators of the artistic and cultural element, have put as an ingredient what Pope Francis has summarized in his letter issued by the Olympic Games: “May the Olympic Games in Paris be an unmissable occasion for all those who come from all over the world to discover and appreciate each other, to break down prejudices, to promote esteem where there is contempt and distrust, and friendship where there is hatred.”

Sports culture is a culture of peace, of understanding, of union between peoples without distinctions of language or race. Just as the motto of France says: Liberty, equality, fraternity.

See you in four years!

Writer and poet Madeline Mendieta, is daughter of the late Nicaraguan rock guitarist, René ‘Manito’ Mendieta, RIP.

Progressives, Hispanics are not ‘Latinx,’ stop trying to Anglicize our Spanish language  

by Giancarlo Sopo

When Yale professor Cydney Dupree and her colleague analyzed more than two decades worth of political speeches and conducted experiments searching for bias when communicating with racial minorities, they were surprised by what they discovered. According to their report, published this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, conservatives generally addressed whites and minorities similarly, but liberals were likelier to modify their speech and “patronize minorities stereotyped as lower status and less competent.”

Dupree cautioned that although liberals might be “well-intentioned” and “see themselves as allies,” they could be unwittingly contributing to racial division by dumbing down their language. In light of minorities understandably feeling marginalized, journalists, corporations and politicians would be wise to heed the professor’s warning. Instead, they are ignoring it.

One of the most notable examples of corporate America and politicians changing how they speak to ingratiate themselves with minorities is the growing use of “Latinx” as a descriptor for Latinos. What began in the 2000s among activists has now gained currency among marketers, media personalities and progressives. The intentions behind “Latinx” may be benign, but as the son of immigrants who grew up in a community with “English-only” ordinances, I am among the many Americans who consider it an absurd Anglicization of a language that generations struggled to conserve.

Spanish doesn’t need to be changed

Progressives argue that Latinx fixes the gendered nature of Spanish, which they maintain is unfair to women and excludes individuals who do not identify as male or female. It is true that nouns are gendered in Spanish, but it is unclear what, if any, problem this poses to Americans.

English is not grammatically gendered; “Latinos” is inclusive in both languages, and substitutes like “Latin” and “Hispanic” can adequately describe the population that is Latino and nonbinary. Taken to its logical conclusion, a push for gender-neutral Spanish nouns requires dismantling a language spoken by 572 million people across the world.

In my new country, an old debate: My family escaped socialism, now my fellow Democrats think we should move the party in its direction

Yet some maintain that Spanish is insufficiently “woke.” Marketers are now targeting Latinx consumers, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., marked Hispanic Heritage Month by promising in English and Spanish to champion “Latinx families.”

Thanks, but marketing executives and politicians should understand that many of our families do not want to be called Latinx. The fact that the word is controversial makes its usage especially strange, since modern social norms discourage applying loaded terms to minority groups.

As deputy editor of Latino Rebels, Héctor Luis Alamo described Latinx as “the bulldozing of Spanish.”

In a column for the Los Angeles Times, a Hispanic writer noted that millennial media outlets who used it found their pages “flooded with negative reactions, with some calling the term ‘ridiculous,’ ‘stupid’ and ‘offensive.’”

Alejandrina González, a Mexican-American Stanford University student, told me that millennials who view Latinx as liberating have it backwards. “Changing our language is the opposite of empowering,” she said.

Not only is Latinx “laughably incomprehensible to any Spanish speaker without some fluency in English,” as two Latino Swarthmore College students argued in 2015, its use has been formally rejected by the Real Academia Española, the official body of linguists that preserves the language’s integrity. Who knew it was progressive to abrogate foreign grammar standards?

What happened to multiculturalism? 

Rather than making Latinos feel included, progressives are implying the way our families speak is fundamentally inadequate for the United States and progressive American culture. This is offensive to the 85 percent of Hispanics who, like my parents, speak Spanish to their children and whose most treasured heirlooms are often family traditions and memories in Spanish. Mine include the mellifluous sound of the baritone voice of my “abuelo,” mom’s favorite boleros and dad’s military stories.

Has their language joined the ranks of comedian Dave Chapelle, the Betsy Ross flag, and the interminable list of people and things that perturb our politically correct sensibilities?

Ultimately, what Hispanic Americans who take pride in our heritage see in “Latinx” is progressive preening attempting to solve a nonexistent problem at the expense of a beautiful language that Chicanos and other Latinos endured corporal punishment and bigotry to defend. Liberals should also realize it is impossible to reconcile their professed values — like multiculturalism, education and pronoun autonomy — with the peculiar strain of 2019 progressivism that seeks to radically change our language, disregards linguistic practices, and disavows our right to determine how we are described.

Gender-nonconforming Americans should be treated with compassion and respect. If someone wants to be called Latinx, that is fine, but the label should not be forced upon all Latinos. Hispanic Americans face plenty of challenges. The last thing we need are progressives “wokesplaining” how to speak Spanish.

Giancarlo Sopo is a public relations strategist and a 2019 National Review Institute regional fellow in Dallas. Follow him on Twitter: @GiancarloSopo.