­by Mauricio Vela

Bernal Preschool Parents & Supporters Celebrate Cinco de Mayo by releasing seven month feasibility study for New Bernal Preschool/Learning Center.

Over the past eight months, with the financial support provided Supervisor Ammiano’s office, the Bernal Preschool committee with participation and support of parents, community members, childcare experts, elected and appointed officials has examined three options to ensure that Bernal Preschool remains in our Community Hub.

The Bernal Preschool Committee has been fighting for the past 2 1⁄2 years to remain in the Community Hub that has been their home for almost 30 years. Due to the renovation of the library, the library and its supporters have taken this opportunity to evict the Preschool. Preschool parents, with support from Parent Voices, and community supporters have refused to accept the permanent displacement to Paul Revere elementary. Gladys Soto states” We refuse to be pushed out of our home for thirty years after we put in the sweat equity to keep the library open, renovate the playstructure, gymnasium, and Neighborhood Center, and revitalized Cortland Ave. We wanted to create a safety net for our children, youth, and seniors most at risk. We successfully did that and now we’re being asked to leave.”

Based on our findings, the committee prioritized Option “C” which is to utilized 2,700 sq. ft of land within the Bernal Playground. Should this option not be realized then the committee supports Option “A” which is to return to the Library upon completion of the renovation in 2009. The committee will continue to meet with the responsible governing bodies as well with members of the community, and other supporters to create the “political will” and financial support to make our new Preschool/Learning Center a reality.

Building the new preschool addresses the Mission/Bernal short fall of 700 childcare slots. Presently, the Bernal preschool offers 25 slots. By building the new preschool 25 additional slots will be created at the Preschool and an additional 50 will be provided at Paul Revere by the Mission Neighborhood Centers which has offered to take over the space once the Preschool returns to the Hub for an increase of 75 Bernal slots. Over the last five years Bernal Heights has lost Little People’s Workshop Coop and Alfa Day childcare center. Building the new preschool also contributes to the city wide childcare shortfall. Supervisor Ammiano, Daly, and Assemblyman Mark Leno have come out publicly in support of the new Preschool/Learning. The new Preschool/Learning Center will also allow City College to provide parenting classes for the preschool parents, nannies, and stroller moms of the community. Supervisor Ammiano added $1.6 million into the children and senior budget supplemental just introduce by Supervisor Daly on April 24th.

As part of the Preschool’s celebration of Cinco de Mayo, the preschool plans to unvail our findings to the public.

Que Viva Cinco de Mayo!!! Si Se Puede!!

by José de la Isla

HOUSTON — In the early 1980s, Frank Espada set out to capture, through pictures and words, the story about why so many people left their Caribbean homeland and where they went. The result is a traveling gallery of photographs that has toured much of the United States. Now there’s the book, “The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People.”

Espada himself is part of that diaspora. Now 77, he approaches getting the story across at a time when conventional ways have become sclerotic, where not much ofimportance gets through. It takes imagination to get reality out.

The Puerto Rican exodus started at the beginning of the 20th century when the United States acquired the island at the end of the Spanish-American War of 1898. A devastating hurricane hit the island the following year.

By 1901, 5,000 Puerto Ricans had already migrated to Hawaii, lured to do back-breaking, strike-busting work in the sugar industry. The same industry had squeezed Puerto Rico from near self-sufficiency to dependency on sugar as a cash crop. Land tenure increasingly moved into the hands of foreign investors and local elites. These were the catalytic elements to the 50 years of exodus.

People fled to places where security and family wellbeing were a prospect. Sixty communities with 10,000 or more Puerto Ricans exist today on the U.S’ mainland. Among the first destinations were Hawaii and East New York.

The conditions in reaching Hawaii were often horrendous.Those who know about the lives of migrant workers are familiar with the lifecycle of a promised-land myth and hell to pay getting there.

For a few there was escape and renewal. Some jumped ship en route to start life anew in San Francisco, For those who reached the Hawaiian cane fields there were abuses, humiliations and beatings in an existence best described as indentured servitude. Many of the émigrés’ descendants live today along Hawaii’s Kona Coast. Espada’s pages include the face of Santa Rodriguez, who explains she was born 70 years ago and has never been to Puerto Rico “to see where my parents came from.” Yet, “I still feel very Puerto Rican.”

Another descendant, Rodney Morales says, “Me, my sisters, brothers — we grew up in a world where there are not many Puerto Ricans around. My brother’s wife is Hawaiian/Chinese/Haole. My younger sister is married to a black; my older sister is married to a Filipino. Their kids are all mixed up.”

In that sense, so too is the whole world.

On page 40, in the section on East New York, there’s a 1965 photo of Agropino Bonillo in a fedora. The sidebar on the next page tells you he was 57, worked two jobs, lived in a bad-ass apartment house and was mugged on the way home one night. He was dead the next morning.

Several thousand people participated in a candlelight procession through the neighborhood. Where Agropino Bonillo fell, a box filled up quickly with flowers and dollars and coins. The community grief led to a call to action.

On the rest of the page, Frank’s acclaimed poet son Martin writes a literary version of the same facts: “a reminder of the wakes too many and too soon.” A woman “slick in a drizzle of tears” drops some money in the box.

Three weeks later, when a black youngster in New Lots was killed, blacks and Puerto Ricans were pitted in the urban jungle against Italians. Several people were killed.

“Many promises were made but soon forgotten,” Frank wrote about the Agropino Bonillo incident.

This, he suggests, is what led to the urban disturbance. “And the beat goes on,” he concludes.

Frank Espada (www. frankespada.com) was for many years a key activist on the New York civil rights and community development scene. During that era, few events in the formation of a national Latino identity occurred without him. He later moved to San Francisco where he taught photography at the University of California, Berkeley, Extension Program.

Espada’s book is a testament to how art, not only photojournalism, can open up readers’ consciousness to truth. That’s where reality comes from and what makes the beat go on.

[José de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (Archer Books, 2003) writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com. © 2007

­by Frank Gómez

Few U.S. presidents have had second language skills. Does it matter? Beyond appealing to the Hispanic vote in the 2008 elections, is a second language important to our global leadership and competitiveness?

Thomas Jefferson, onetime envoy to France, spoke French well. Did his language skill and understanding of the French people help in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase? We may never know; but since Jefferson no U.S. president has had a command of a second language.

Jimmy Carter, who as Georgia’s governor supported Partners of the Americas programs between Georgia and Costa Rica, spoke limited Spanish. Ronald Reagan was fond of saying “Mi casa es su casa,” and named his home “Rancho del Cielo” (Ranch in the Sky). But he did not speak Spanish. Bill Clinton connected easily with people around the world, sometimes uttering a word or two of Spanish or another language, but he spoke only English.

George W. Bush, raised among Hispanic workers in west Texas oilfields, has convinced some who know no better that he can communicate in Spanish; but after the pleasantries – as his recent Latin American tour illustrated – he is sorely limited.

Enter Bill Richardson, an honest-to-goodness Hispanic candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. With a Mexican mother and a U.S. father who was born in Nicaragua, Richardson was born in Pasadena, Calif., but spent much of his youth in Mexico City with his family. He speaks Spanish and speaks it well.

A second announced candidate in the Democratic primary, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a former Peace Corps volunteer, speaks Spanish fairly well. The question, again, is does it matter?

Richardson says it does. Biculturalism, he believes, is an attribute that enables him to penetrate others’ psyches, to appreciate others’ values and perceptions.

Four times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has negotiated the release of prisoners and confronted “Axis of Evil” bad guys “up close and personal.” Early this year he negotiated a cease fire in the Sudan that allowed people in Darfur to obtain help.

He did not speak Spanish in Korea, Iraq, Syria, Darfur and other places. But with a combination of bonhomie and steely resolve, he has shown an unHoyaparalleled ability to engage tyrants and autocrats and work the will of humanity. He was an extraordinarily effective ambassador to the United Nations, crediting his biculturalism with the ability to cross political and linguistic barriers.

Richardson is a big, slightly overweight, self-deprecating, back-slapping, hand-shaking, joke-making kind of guy who relates to people of any station. He can work a room like nobody’s business, connecting with everyone from waiters to prime ministers. But behind the smile and the warm embraces is a man who communicates effectively across cultures.

A few years ago, Richardson negotiated the release of Cuban political prisoners. At first cold and distant, Castro warmed to him as they discussed baseball. “Baseball diplomacy,” as Richardson calls it, facilitated communication. He found a way – quite beyond his language skills.

Given an increasingly complex and shrinking world, will skill in engaging foreign leaders be recognized as an important attribute for a 21st century president? And can cross-cultural communications be useful within our own increasingly multicultural society? Will language and culture be factors in debates and in the minds of voters?

Bill Richardson is just beginning to get the attention his résumé merits. A Sunday morning talk show pundit predicted recently – a sign of the times – that debates on Spanish language television are going to be part of this election. That may be good for the Hispanic vote, but the United States needs to communicate well internationally to earn the respect of leaders and people around the world. The skills Governor Richardson offers should be taken seriously.

(Frank Gómez is a retired career Foreign Service Officer and former adjunct professor of international relations at New York University.) © 2007.