by Marvin Ramirez

La Mission home-made: Elenco de La Mission: Erika Alexandra, Jeremy Ray Valdez, Benjamín Bratt, John Amaechi, y Peter Bratt (director)

There is nothing like home-made tamale, says the old saying.

And this also applies to the new Mission-made film, La Missión, which writer and film director Peter Bratt and his brother, Benjamín Bratt (Che, the leading star) – both from the Mission neighborhood, bring to light an exciting scene filmed in this Barrio Latino of San Francisco home of the best taquerías, pupuserías and tajadas con queso in San Francisco.

­As it happened that Bratt grew up around in the neighborhood, “I always dreamed about making a film in our own backyard… it’s really hard to describe into words, but you can smell it, you can hear it, you can feel, there is electricity that I think is … ahhh, the combination of these different cultures that both collide and intermix with each other,” Bratt said at a reception at the Queer Lounge in San Francisco.

La Mission, screened at the Castro Theater, was the opening film for the 52nd San Francisco Film Festival, which bring together three of the most relevant diverse groups in the city: Latinos, gays, and African-North Americans, which as Bratt said during the after-the-film reception, surround and are part of the lives of the Mission District.

It’s a powerful and moving film with that brings to the big screen the daily struggles that take place in the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District. It is a redemptive story of one man’s struggle to unlearn a lifetime of destructive habits.

“La Mission” tells the story of “Che” (Benjamin Bratt), a reformed and respected ex-con and recover1ing alcoholic who has turned his life around and now has a great relationship with his honor student son, Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez).

Che lives for his beloved son, Jesse, his lifelong friends, and his passion for lowrider cars. Che and the “Mission Boyz” salvage junked cars, transforming them into classics.

Benjamín Bratt

But when one day Che dad questions his son’s whereabouts on a particular evening, and confronts him with photos he found of his son posing with a white boy, it interrupts this good relationship, and things change. This makes Che confused and angry, who finds himself struggling with his machismo.

In a violent rage, Che pummels Jesse and throws him out of the house. Lena, an attractive neighbor and a force to be reckoned with, is a woman with a few secrets of her own. Mutual attraction percolates as Lena challenges Che to reconcile the life he thought he had.

“Like the neighborhood in which it’s set, Peter’s film is full of life and has a big wild heart,” Graham Leggat, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society, said in a statement. “We loved it at first sight, not least because of the wonderful way in which it marshals the city’s filmmaking talent, and we can’t imagine a more enjoyable way to open this year’s Festival than with this moving and powerful film.”

Director Peter Bratt, cast members Benjamin Bratt, Erika Alexander, Jeremy Ray Valdez and many members of the film’s local crew to attended the hometown premiere and festivities.

After the film, at 10:30 p.m., the Mission-style Opening Night party kicked off at two historical venues, the iconic Bruno’s Restaurant, and a unique street scene setting within the ruins of the El Capitan Theatre, located at 2389 Mission Street between 19th and 20th Streets.

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 23 – May 7, 2009 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, the Castro Theatre and Landmark’s Clay Theatre in San Francisco; and the Pacific ­Film Archive Theater in Berkeley. (News services and reviews contributed to this report).

­by the El Reportero’s news services

José Angel Córdova

The Mexican health minister, José Angel Cordova, said on TV on April 27, that the number of deaths from, and cases of, swine flu (A/H1N1) was falling in Mexico. This claim is at odds with the action on April 27 of the World Health Organization which increased its state of alert on the outbreak to Level Four, only two notches below its top rating.

Cordova’s statement is the most high-profile claim yet that Mexico is not a failed state and that its government has coped with the swine flu outbreak effectively.

Cuba suspends flights to and from Mexico over flu

Havana – Cuba suspended Tuesday all flights to and from Mexico for 48 hours to prevent spread of the flu virus which has caused 152 deaths in Mexico, including at least 20 from a newly emerging swine flu virus, Cuba’s Public Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer said in a statement.

The Cuban government said earlier Tuesday that no cases of swine fl u had been reported in the country and that there were also no suspected cases, although they increased health surveillance at airports and ports.

“There is indeed a danger, but the country has already undertaken the relevant measures,” said Deputy Public Health Minister Luis Estruch Rancano.

­Summit of the Americas produces success without consensus

The host of this week’s Summit of the Americas, the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, Patrick Manning, was the only signatory to the Declaration of Port of Spain.

In that sense, it was even less successful than the last summit in Mar del Plata in 2005, widely considered an unmitigated failure. In every other respect, however, it was more successful, infused with what Manning described as the “spirit of cooperation”. There was not much substance, but the style provided a marked contrast to 2005. Then Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez hailed the “utter defeat” of the US-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA); this time he grasped the hand of his US peer Barack Obama, even if he did press into his spare hand a copy of Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano’s seminal left-wing polemic.

Cuba – The Spirit of Trinidad

The Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain Trinidad on 17-19 April capped a month of fl urried diplomatic activity on Cuba. At the summit, President Barack Obama played to the crowd, admitting past wrongs in the region and declaring that the US sought “a new beginning with Cuba”. He was, he said, “prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a wide range of issues — from human rights, free speech and democratic reform, to drugs, migration, and economic issues.” Obama also broke the ice with key leftwing regional leaders like Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, thereby creating much needed room for maneuver in the region. Obama has made the fi rst move at little domestic political cost to himself, and fl ew out of Trinidad having kicked the ball fi rmly into Havana’s court. Judging by the mixed hot and cold messages coming out of Havana, the Cubans are unsure how to respond.

by David Bacon

second of two pants Instead of recognizing the reality that immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere will continue to cross into the United States seeking work when their option is abject poverty, sometimes even starvation, the U.S. government has attempted to make holding a job a criminal act.

Responding to a green light from the Department of Homeland Security, some states and local communities have passed measures that go even further. Mississippi passed a bill making it a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job, with jail time of 1-10 years, fines of up to $10,000, and no bail for anyone arrested~ Employers get immunity.

Last summer, in his job then as Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff proposed a rule requiring employers to fire workers who couldn’t correct a mismatch between the Social Security number given to their employer and the SSA database.

The regulation assumed those workers had no valid immigration visa, and therefore no valid Social Security number with 12 million people here without legal immigration status, the regulation would have led to massive firings, bringing many industries and businesses to a halt. Citizens and legal visa holders would have been swept up as well, since the Social Security database is often inaccurate.

While the courts enjoined this particular regulation, the idea of using Social Security numbers to identify and fire millions of work ers is still very much alive in Washington, D.C.

Under Chertoff, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted sweeping workplace raids, arresting and deporting thousands of workers. Many were charged with an additional crime, identity theft, because to get a job, they used a Social Security number belonging to someone else. Workers using those numbers actually deposit money into Social Security funds, and will never collect benefits their contributions paid for.

New Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the big raids need to be reexamined, but she continues to support measures that drive undocumented workers from their jobs and keep employers from hiring them.

During her term as Arizona’s governor, the state legislature passed a law requiring employers to verify the immigration status of every worker through a federal database called E-Verify, even more full of errors than Social Security. They must fire workers whose names get flagged. This is now becoming the model for federal enforcement.

Many of these punitive measures surtaced in proposals for “comprehensive immigration reform’, that were debated in Congress in 2006 and 2007. The comprehensive bills combined criminalization of work for the undocumented with huge guest worker programs.

While those proposals failed in Congress, the Bush administration implemented some of their most draconian provisions by administrative action. Many fear that new proposals for immigration reform being formulated by Congress and the administration will continue these efforts to criminalize work.

(Labor writer David Bacon, author of “I/legal People: How Globalization creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, wrote this commentary for New America Media.)

In other related news:

79 Candles Top Dolores Huerta’s Birthday Cake

by Jon Higuera

Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers who stood shoulder to shoulder with the late César Chávez to help create better working conditions for migrant farm workers, turned 79 on April 10.

Her birthday was observed in various ways, including a message board from the UFW that allowed persons to send public no­tes of congratulations via the Internet.

Born in New Mexico, she was raised in Stockton, Calif. Her activism dates back to 1955 when she co-founded the Sacramento chapter of the Community Service Organization. Seven years later she co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Chávez. It eventually become the UFW.

Throughout the years, the mother of 11 children never slowed her tireless advocacy efforts, which included coordinating the UFW’s successful East Coast table grape boycott in the 1960s.

Chávez once described her character: “She’s absolutely fearless, physically as well as psychologically, and she just can’t stand to see people pushed around.” Hispanic Link.