by the El Reportero’s news services

Hugo Chávez

CARAC­AS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will celebrate 10 years in power next week by holding a rare summit with some of his closest leftist allies in Latin America.

Venezuelans will be asked in February whether or not Hugo Chávez should be allowed to run for a third term.

Venezuelans will be asked in February whether or not Hugo Chávez should be allowed to run for a third term.

Attending will be leaders or representatives from a group called the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas, better known as ALBA. Chávez and his allies started the group a few years ago in attempt, they said, to counterbalance United States influence in Latin America.

Chavez announced the gathering Monday on state-run Radio Nacional de Venezuela, commonly called RNV. He called it “an extraordinary summit of ALBA .”

Bolivian President Evo Morales, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit will attend, RNV said on its Web site.

Evo Morales­

­Cuban President Raul Castro will not be there because he is on a trip to Asia, El Universal newspaper said.

Ecuador minister resigns

Sources inside the ruling Acuerdo País (AP) confi rmed on Jan. 29 that the Interior Minister Fernando Bustamente, had resigned in order to run for Congress in the upcoming general elections on April 26. Bustamente is not the only political heavyweight interested in a congressional seat.

Daniel Ortega

Gustavo Larrea, the security minister, is also interested in going into congress and he resigned from the cabinet on Jan. 28. A return to congress for both men would give President Rafael Correa tighter control over the Acuerdo País bloc in the new congress, ensuring that it is made up of a solid base of loyal supporters. This would make the congressional bloc distinct from the broader Acuerdo País movement which, judging from the chaotic party primaries it held on Jan. 25, is far from united behind Correa.

The Brazil bounce

Amid the encircling economic gloom two bullish pieces of data stand out from Brazil. The first is the recovery in bank lending in December. The second is the optimistic forecast from wholesalers about new vehicle sales in 2009.

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by José de la Isla

Aracely Panameño

A Jan. 5 Wall Street Journal story by Susan Schmidt and Maurice Tamman mugged some Latino leaders connected with housing advocacy. Congressional Hispanic Caucus members and CHC’s separate but closely allied nonprofit public policy institute came under close scrutiny for the appearance of an overly close association with troubled mortgage lenders. The article said congressional representatives and the institute received contributions for dubious purposes.

Schmidt and Tamman asserted Congressional Hispanic Caucus members “received ­donations from the lending industry and saw their constituents moving into new homes, pushed for eased lending standards, which led to problems.”

At least $2.3 million in political contributions were made to members of the Hispanic Caucus at the height of the subprime mortgage expansion in 2005.

Countrywide Corp., Washington Mutual, and New Century Financial, Ameriquest Mortgage Corp., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among the companies mentioned that contributed and participated in an internship, research and advocacy program, called Hogar, administered by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

Aracely Panameño, of the Center for Responsible Lending, was said to have attempted to warn Hogar with data about shortcomings in housing lending practices and impacts on Latinos.

The biggest judo chops were saved for California Congressman Joe Baca, the immediate past chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a longtime advocate for opening up first-time homebuyer opportunities.

Roughly 9,200 families in San Bernardino, Calif., Baca’s district, lost homes to foreclosures.

AmeriDream Inc., a nonprofit housing company and an Hogar sponsor, provided a $25,000 charitable contribution in October 2008 to a foundation set up by Baca. Baca backed AmeriDream’s seller-financed down-payment assistance program with money that originated from home builders who made donations to the nonprofit.

The program was out-lawed last year through new housing legislation. Now Baca is cosponsoring a bill to allow similar, but not the same, approach for seller-financed down-payment assistance to low-income Federal Housing Administration borrowers.

The WSJ story’s tone and impression was that of borderline wrongdoing or at least ethically challenged activity. Lapses in good judgment, yes. Coming under the soft, romantic sway of money, probably.

But having Latinos take the brunt of the subprime mess is taking it too far.

There’s no question subprime schemes front-loaded Latino clients, although so far data is unavailable by ethnicity. Nationally 1.5 million homes (not just Hispanic households) were lost and another 2 million families with subprime loans are in danger of losing theirs in the near future.

Esther Aguilera, president of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, told WSJ she was shocked by the story’s conclusions and its accusations. They missed the point about the root causes of the housing crisis and “protections for families from unscrupulous predatory lenders,” she said.

Ed González of the Real ­Estate Associates Latinos in Houston, told me by e-mail that lending fundamentals were clearly compromised during the go-go years. Now, he asks “who/what made the decision to over look or minimize lending guidelines?”

There is plenty of blame to spread around and other aspects to investigate. But, for scapegoating purposes one would have to believe Latinos were turning the dials on world banking vaults and making puts and calls on hedge funds and packaging mortgages on Wall Street for Europe and China.

So trying to hang the jacket on what seems like an “Industrial-Latino Housing complex” is, to say the least, going too far. While it may have uncovered some of those reaching into the cookie jar, they are not the ones who baked the bad batch.

Getting little attention is another damage done by this housing collapse. It is one affecting many families of this generation who will now look at the American Dream thing as just another scam. Hispanic Link.

por la Universidad de Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Michigan — Women on welfare who suffer from social anxiety find it harder to work—and leave welfare—than women without the disorder, according to a new University of Michigan study.

Welfare recipients with social anxiety disorder worked only six of 12 months, compared with about nine months for those who did not suffer from this disorder or from major depression. By comparison women with depression only worked about eight of 12 months.

Social anxiety disorder is a persistent fear of social or performance situations that might involve exposure to unfamiliar people or possible scrutiny by others. This condition, which often remains undetected and untreated, undermines a woman’s ability to become self-sufficient and impedes efforts to reduce welfare costs through return-to-work programs, the U-M researchers said.

“Women with social anxiety disorder are at risk of extreme economic hardship,” said Richard Tolman, a professor in the School of Social Work and the study’s lead author. “These welfare recipients may lose benefits if they fail to enter the work force rapidly and if they exceed time limits for support.”

Tolman and colleagues examined whether social anxiety disorder was an obstacle to successful employment among women receiving welfare. They analyzed data on 609 respondents who completed four annual interviews from nickthe Women’s Employment Study.

More than a third of the women cared for a child younger than age 2 and more than 60 percent lived in poverty in the month before the interview.

Interview questions included measures of social anxiety disorder, other mental health diagnoses, welfare and work status, and other variables.

“Very few of the women in this study received any help for a treatable problem that made it nearly impossible for them to get a job and get off of welfare,” said Joseph Himle, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and School of Social Work.

The findings also highlight that other barriers such as poor physical health of the women and their children, low educational attainment and inadequate transportation remain a concern and are significant obstacles to work for women in this disadvantaged economic group. An accumulation of multiple barriers increases interference with work efforts, the researchers said.

“With unemployment growing rapidly in these tough economic times, people suffering from social anxiety disorder may be at even greater risk,” said James Abelson, a professor of psychiatry. “Social fears may increase their risk of being laid off, and discomfort making phone calls or interviewing will greatly undermine efforts to find new employment.”

In a follow-up study led by Himle, the research team is developing and testing a treatment program specifically designed for ­this disadvantaged population. The researchers hope to increase job success for those whose social anxiety has contributed to their lack of employment.

Since the study focused on women, the researchers do not know if the fi ndings are relevant to low-income men, who are generally denied public welfare benefits in the United States.

The study’s other authors are Deborah Bybee, research scientist, School of Social Work; Jody Hoffman of Ann Arbor Consultation Services; and Michelle Van Etten-Lee, adjunct assistant professor, Department of Psychology.

The findings appear in the current issue of Psychiatric Services.

by James E. García

U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bill Mesta replaces an official picture of outgoing President George W. Bush with that of newly-sworn-in U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. Naval Base January 20, 2009 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.(photo by Brennan Linsley-Pool)

PHOENIX — A local bilingual publication recently featured a cover illustration of Barack Obama with a headline that posed a provocative if indelicate question: “Could he be a Santa Claus for us?”

The “us” referred to the U.S. Latino community.

The short answer to that question is “no.” Latinos will not wake up this year and find a pile of shimmering, gift-wrapped public policy initiatives that will suddenly make everything alright. Politics, like life, doesn’t work that way.

The question that we should ask ourselves is whether Mr. Obama will routinely take into account the needs and interests of Latinos as he pursues his administration’s already crowded agenda?

To that question, I offer­­ an enthusiastic if indelicate “probably.”

I don’t mean to sound cynical. These times demand a certain guarded optimism. For one thing — and I hope you’re sitting down — politicians don’t always keep their promises. Also, running for president is very different than being president. Simply put, you don’t always get what you want.

For the record, here’s some of what Obama pledged to Latino voters during the campaign: more jobs; economic stability; middle class tax cuts; worker protections; a quick end to the Iraq War; greater access to affordable health care; more investment in public education; broader access to higher education; and an immigration reform plan that penalizes employers who hire illegal immigrants and provides millions of undocumented immigrants with a path to citizenship.

If a lot of that sounds like the pledges he made to most of the nation’s voters, there’s a good reason for that: most Latinos are not unlike everyone else. We tend to care about the same basic issues. We just happen to care about some of those issues in slightly different ways.

Consider the following: Latinos are among the least likely to have health insurance.

Our young people quit high school at alarmingly high rates. During economic downturns, Latinos are often the first to lose their jobs and the last to be rehired. The rate of foreclosures among Latino homeowners since 2006 was 6.7 per 1,000 homes as compared to the national average of 4.5 per 1,000, according to a recent report published in the Wall Street Journal. And many of us have relatives who are recent immigrants.

The key to ensuring that the so-called Latino agenda is part of Obama’s White House agenda will depend on our ability to gain and maintain access to the new president.

Obama’s announced nominations to his Cabinet were a good start. U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis and Gov. Bill Richardson were picked to lead the Interior, Labor and Commerce departments respectively, though Richardson has withdrawn his name in the wake of a potential scandal in New Mexico.

Other key Obama moves include the selection of Cecilia Muñoz, one of the smartest policy wonks in Washington, as White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Our access to the president also is secured by the fact that Obama’s team will not soon forget the important role Latinos played in electing the new president.

In Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, states that all went for Bush in 2004, Latino voters helped decide the win for Obama. Nationwide, two-thirds of Latino voters picked Obama over Republican John McCain. Latino voters will account for a growing percentage of overall turnout in years to come.

Latinos have earned a role in White House decisions that will determine our nation’s future. In 2010, will Latino voters look back and say that Obama kept his promises?

To that question, I offer an enthusiastic if indelicate “I hope so.” Hispanic Link.

­(James E. García is a journalist and senior research fellow at the ASU Center for Community Development and Civil Rights. Email: james.garcia@asu.edu). ©2009