by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Michigan.— More people live behind bars in the U.S. than in any other country, and this system also punishes the health of the friends and loved ones left behind.

In the first known study of its kind, University of Michigan researchers found that people with a family member or friend in prison suffer worse physical and mental health, more stress and depressive symptoms, and that those symptoms worsen the closer the relationship to the person incarcerated.

The study results could help explain health disparities between minorities and whites, said Daniel Kruger, U-M Research Professor at the School of Public Health and lead researcher on the study. African Americans are both more likely to know someone incarcerated, Kruger said, and they also report feeling closer to the person incarcerated than whites do. “It’s like a double whammy,” he said. Forty-nine percent of blacks reported a friend or relative in prison during the past five years compared to just 20 percent of whites.

Those who knew someone incarcerated had 40 percent more days where poor physical health interfered with their usual activities, including work, and 54 percent more days where poor mental or emotional health interfered with these activities, Kruger said.

Others have examined the health effects of incarceration on inmates and a few studies have investigated the health of children whose mothers are incarcerated. But those studies focused on people already in the system, Kruger said.

“We actually took a representative sample of people in the community and asked them whether they had a friend or relative incarcerated in the last five years,” Kruger said.

“We also included a powerful array of known health predictors as control variables.”

For instance, the researchers considered whether a person smoked tobacco, drank alcohol heavily, was overweight or obese, and had adequate nutrition and physical exercise.

The study consisted of 1288 adults from Flint, Michigan, an urban area with high unemployment and crime rates, and surrounding areas of Genesee County. In the study, 67 percent of respondents were white and 26 percent African American.

“Our study demonstrates that incarceration is not only enormously expensive economically, it also has public health costs and these should be taken into consideration,” Kruger said. “In the last 30 years or so we have seen a more and more punitive system, one where judges no longer have discretion for sentencing.”

Moving towards a rehabilitation model may benefit both the offending individuals and society. “The vast majority ­of people incarcerated are non-violent drug offenders, we should shift oversight of substance use and abuse to the health care sector.”

One out of every 100 adults in the U.S. is in jail or prison, and more than three times as many Blacks and Latinos live in jails or prisons than college dorms, Kruger said.

This particular study looked only at Blacks, not Latinos, because there is not a large enough population of Hispanics in Flint and Genesee County.

The paper, “The Association of Incarceration with Community Health and Racial Health Disparities,” will appear in the April issue of Progress in Community Health Partnerships.

by Marvin Ramírez

Homage to the Prince of Letters L-R: Gisele Icabalzeta (FraterNica), Mike Galo ( ex boxing champion and community relationist), and Gioconda Belli (novelist and poet), during the presentation of her new book. (photo by Marvin J Ramirez)

A Sunday of book reading and poetry. It was an extravagant day of poetry declamation, something that hardly happens anymore in modern times, where one sits quietly and respectfully listens and feels for hours the drama that comes with it.

“It’s something out of series that there are people who are able to stay for two hours listening to poetry,” said Gioconda Belli, a novelist and poet, who is perhaps one of the most respected female writers by Nicaraguans in and out of the motherland, and a strong critic of the administration ­of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, poet Rosario Murillo, She was the special guest at the Marco Literario Dariano at the San Francisco War Memorial on Sunday 19 of April.

Poetry is a growing movement in Nicaragua, land of Rubén Darío, the greatest Latin American poet of all times, who with his unique and sophisticated style, changed the course of the Spanish language.

Darío, born in Metapa, Nicaragua Jan. 18, 1867 – died in the city of Leon Feb. 6, 1916, was the poet who initiated Spanish-American literary movement known as Modernismo (modernism), flourishing at the end of the 19th century. Darío has had the greatest and most lasting influence into 20th century Spanish literature, and journalism. He has been praised as The Prince of Castilian letters, and undisputed father of the modernismo literary movement[1]. Darío is revered as Nicaragua’s greatest diplomat and a leading voice of Central and South America.

And poetry growth is obvious in Granada, Nicaragua – which many historians believe it to be the first city founded by Spaniards in the mainland of the American continent – which is now the cradle of poetry in the world.

Rubén Darío

For five years, poets from many parts of the globe celebrate the Festival International de Poesía in Granada. This year, the event took place from the 16 to 21 of April.

And is this type of movements what astonishes Belli. “It was what I witnessed at el Festival de Poesía in Nicaragua,” so many people in attendance, what makes her believe, Belli said to the approximately 150 people at the Veteran’s auditorium, most of who were from the writer and poet’s homeland, Nicaragua.

Every year, Nicaraguans celebrate in San Francisco the glory of Darío, and this year the event brought Belli as its special feature. She is admired as the queen of letters in Nicaragua, while her writing is taking momentum internationally.

The event brought respected ­figures such as Luis Echegoyén, actor, and retired TV broadcaster, and a hearty poetry lover, who despite being from El Salvador, loves Darío’s poetry work. He interpreted in declamation and drama, one of Darío’s most veneered poems: Los Motivos del Lobo, which made the attendees fall from their chair.

Dr. William Icabalzeta, a Bay Area dentist and member of FraterNica, a nonprofit organization that promotes culture and events for Nicaragua in the Bay Area, caused a storm of emotions on the audience with his declamation of Darío’s La Marcha Triunfal. Some said it almost make them cry.

Belli’s poetry and fiction have been published worldwide. Her first novel, The ­Inhabited Woman, was an international bestseller; her collection of poems, Línea de fuego, won the esteemed Casa de las Americas Prize in 1978.

She is the author of the award-winning The Country Under My Skin and The Scroll of Seduction.

Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand, her latest literary work – which won the prestigious 2008 Biblioteca Breve Prize – was the motive of her visit in San Francisco. She presented her book and signed autographs before and after her presentation, in which she read some of her own poetry and read from the book.

Belli lives in Santa Monica, California, and Managua.

by El Reportero’s news services

Alberto Fujimori

With this conclusion, Alberto Fujimori, the President of Peru from 1991 to 2000 was sentenced to 25 years in prison by Judge César San Martín.

“It is reasonable to infer that such a vast criminal plan, and the institutional compromise that it signified, could only have taken place with the direct participation of the incumbent head of state,” said the former president.

The ruling is unprecedented in Latin America. Fujimori is the first former, elected head of state in the region to be brought to trial and convicted in his own country for serious human rights violations. The conviction was a triumph for the Peruvian judicial system. It could have regional repercussions as a deterrent to authoritarian rule. It is not over yet, however – Fujimori is appealing.

A big year

This year, 2009, is one of those in which Latin America has masses of elections and other votes. Already (this report went to press in early April) Venezuelans and El Salvadoreans have gone to the polls in national elections: Venezuela backed President Hugo Chávez in his request that he (and other executive officials) could be re-elected indefinitely.

El Salvador held municipal and congressional elections in January followed by presidential elections on March15. Before the year is out, Chile, Honduras, Panama and Uruguay will have elected new presidents and Bolivia and Ecuador (almost certainly) re-elected their incumbents. Mexico will have elected a completely new lower house of congress, while Argentina will have voted for a fresh half of the chamber of deputies and replaced (or reaffi rmed) one third of the senate.

Obama extends hands to Chavez, Ortega at summit

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – President Barack Obama offered a spirit of cooperation to America’s hemispheric neighbors at a summit Saturday, listening to complaints about past U.S. meddling and even reaching out to Venezuela’s leftist leader.

While he worked to ease friction between the U.S. and their countries, Obama cautioned leaders at the Summit of the Americas to resist a temptation to blame all their problems on their behemoth neighbor to the north.

“I have a lot to learn and I very much look forward to listening and figuring out how we can work together more effectively,” Obama said.

Obama said he was ready to accept Cuban President Raul Castro’s proposal of talks on issues once off-limits for Cuba, including political prisoners held by the communist government.

While praising America’s initial effort to thaw relations with Havana, the leaders pushed the U.S. to go further and lift the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

As the first full day of meetings began on the two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago Saturday, Obama exchanged handshakes and pats on the back with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who once likened Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, to the devil.­

In front of photographers, Chavez gave Obama a copy of The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, a book by Eduardo Galeano that chronicles U.S. and European economic and political interference in the region.

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 workers 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 “Illegal 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, co-founder 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.