­by Robert Heuer

Robert Heuer

Latinos were not part of the conversation last April when baseball honored the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s major league debut. But a new book shows Latin America played an indispensable role in this black man’s triumph over prejudice.

In “Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos and the Color Line,” Adrian Burgos Jr. shows why it’s wrong to treat integration as solely an interplay between people white and black. Same goes for the conventional wisdom that baseball suddenly changed in 1947 when this grandson of a Georgia sharecropper took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In fact, a collaboration of whites, blacks and Latinos fostered integration over a long period of time before and after 1947. The seeds for change were planted in the latter 19th century as a transnational circuit took shape linking New York, San Francisco and Chicago with Havana, San Juan and Santo Domingo.

Whites and blacks played against each other in Latin America for the many decades when such exchanges were prohibited on U.S. soil. Two generations of Spanish-speaking major leaguers “tested the limits of racial tolerance” during the 40-year pre-Robinson era. Numerous black and Latino “integration pioneers” endured racist abuse for many years before the battle for equality was finally won.

These topics have been alluded to before, but never as the theme of a book. Burgos — a U.S. Latino History professor at the University of Illinois — is the first baseball historian to tell the integration story in its truly multicultural dimension.

This New York-born Puerto Rican became interested in writing a doctoral dissertation on the subject about 15 years ago when he was a University of Michigan graduate student.

What convinced him was a conversation with a T-shirt vendor at the Society of American Baseball Researchers’ (SABR) first Negro League Conference in 1995. SABR members are hardcore fans with a serious analytical bent. After listening to a number of presentations, Burgos wandered into the market area.

Looking over a T-shirt with logos of Negro League teams, he asked why the New York Cubans were missing. The African-American vendor said the team wasn’t significant.

The Cubans won the 1947 Negro League World Series. And, as Burgos had begun to discover, it was the first team to maximize talents of Latinos whose skin color barred them from the majors.

“The truth is the exact opposite of what this vendor was saying,” Burgos recalls. “The New York Cubans are, in fact, one of the most important Negro League teams. I began to wonder about the criteria by which we remember the Negro Leagues.”

His inquiry unfolded as the Baseball Hall of Fame also researched Negro Leagues. Cooperstown museum offi cials appointed Burgos to a committee set up to determine whether this new information would prove that previously overlooked individuals should qualify for a plaque among the game’s immortals. In 2006, this committee considered a list of 39 people and voted in favor of 17.

Among the inductees were early 20th century Cubans José de la Caridad Méndez and Cristóbal Torriente, as well as Alex Pompez who had been owner of the New York Cubans.

Burgos failed to persuade fellow committee members to induct Orestes “Minnie” Minoso. They said their charge was to consider performance in the Negro Leagues. Minoso’s career began in the Negro Leagues, but his greatest success came in the major leagues.

A two-time All-Star during three Negro League seasons, Minoso became the fi rst “Latin Negro” major leaguer when joining the Cleveland Indians in 1949. The slow pace of integration left him languishing in the minors. After almost winning the 1951 Rookie of the Year award, Minoso became a seven-time All-Star and one of the most popular players in Chicago White Sox history.

Burgos was incredulous this spring to read After Jackie — a new book on integration — that fails to recognize the Cuba-born Minoso as a Chicago team’s first “black” major leaguer. Burgos’ advocacy for the elderly Minoso continues with an upcoming article for a White Sox publication. The title will be “Pioneering Latino Still Awaits Call to Cooperstown.”

A misunderstanding of Minoso’s historical importance is one of myriad examples Burgos finds showing how the baseball media treat Latinos as “perpetual foreigners” with “only a recent history in the game.”Playing America’s Game provides an authoritative account of baseball’s failure to come to terms with the roots of its multicultural future.

You don’t have to read 44 pages of footnotes to know Burgos is onto something. In June, the webzine Black Athlete Sports Network named Playing America’s Game Book of the Month. San Diego Padre vice president Dave Winfield recently invited Burgos to speak at a luncheon highlighting the Latino/African American Negro League connection. Winfield, a Hall of Famer and author of a newly published baseball critique Dropping the Ball, had underlined many passages of Burgos’ book. Burgos recalls: “He told me the book illuminated a history of common struggles that are rarely discussed.”

(Robert Heuer, of Evanston, Ill., has written about baseball’s Latinos for Hispanic Link News Service since 1983. Reach him at rjheuer@comcast.net.) © 2007

by John Flórez

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Some years ago through a newspaper ad, I found a roofing contractor to put a tar roof on an addition to my home. It was a sweltering July day. When I arrived from work, I found the roofing crew, all Mexicans, spreading the hot tar on the flat roof.Seeing them toil in the blazing sun, I climbed the ladder to offer them some cold drinks, and we struck up a conversation. I asked the crew leader how long he had been doing this kind of work. For ten years, he said.

“Ten years? Why don’t you start your own roofing company?”

He replied without hesitation, “Oh no, then I would have to compete with the owner. He gave me this job.”

That’s true loyalty, and an example of the values of a different culture. In previous eras of life in the United States, such loyalty was a value widely upheld.Newcomers help us renew some values we let slip away. In earlier times, we cherished loyalty in relationships, work, neighborhoods — even brand loyalty. No matter where the big market was located, folks shopped at the neighborhood store. In those days, a handshake was all that was needed.

We had neighbors who came from different cultures. We managed not only to accommodate them, but to allow their traditions to enrich our lives.Successful societies such as ours are able to incorporate customs, artifacts and foods from other cultures that please and benefit us while rejecting those we find less enjoyable or detrimental to our way of life. Now IKEA is promoting Swedish meatballs. Many of us will garnish them with salsa instead of ketchup.Besides loyalty, the value so many Mexicans treasure is family. In the United States, oftentimes when we meet people, the first thing we ask is, “What do you do?”

Cultures define what is valued. In the USA, knowing what a person does for a living somehow is important. It seems to be so not only to define who we are, but for our own sense of personal worth.

In the Mexican culture that I know, you aren’t defined by what you do. Rather, the moral person is defined by his or her family and community relationships.

Being somebody is not valued; belonging to something greater than yourself is. While working with the U.S. Department of Labor, I once visited an orange-packing plant in Florida. When I saw all the white men working on permanent jobs running machines and Mexican migrant men and women were hand-packing orange crates, I asked the owner why the Mexicans were not on the steady jobs.

His reply said it all, “We offer the Mexican workers those jobs. It would mean staying here all year, and that would break up the family that has to move on to pick the crops in other states.”

Being part of family can be more important than being somebody.

The United States has prospered because it has been able to take what fi ts into our way of life and reject what does not. To those who fret about losing our way of life because other cultures dilute ours, fear not. History has shown we grow stronger and better.

(John Flórez, the founder of several Hispanic civil rights organizations writes a weekly column for The Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City. E-mail him at jdfl orez@comcast.net.)

by Maira García

The Hispanic middle class will enjoy dramatic growth in the next 10 years with the right financial strategies, contends a new analysis by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute.

TRPI recommends in its report, released July 24, that financial institutions desiring to tap the income and spending power of the nation’s 44 million Hispanics should prepare for the change by adjusting their policies to attract and retain this expanding segment of the community.

The changes include requiring lower minimum balances for checking and saving accounts and offering more cash-based services and new credit scoring methodologies.

Harry Pachón, president and CEO of the University of Southern California-based-think tank emphasizes that its recommendations to the financial industry are substantive and will not necessarily be easy to implement.

But, it assures, the payoff will be great.

“You can start the process of financial literacy and financial rehabilitation now rather than waiting for 10 or 15 years,” Pachón says.

The report states that presently there are about 3.7 million affluent Hispanics nationwide. U.S. Census Bureau data for 2002 shows that 36 percent of Hispanic households had middle-class wealth.

The very existence of the Hispanic middle and upper classes has gone unnoticed in mainstream society, with their image remaining as a poor immigrant group, according to Pachón.

There are many routes to the middle class, he points out. “You get Hispanic entrepreneurs. You have people coming over (emigrating from other countries) with money already or an education. You get people with educational capital rather than monetary capital. Then you get job mobility of Latinos occurring.”

He says that ruling out immigrants and first-generation Hispanics as having the ability to move into the middle class would be wrong.

“The mobility of these two sectors has been overlooked by many,” he says. “Even the mobility of the undocumented has been overlooked.”

Contacted by Hispanic Link News Service, Rogelio Saenz, a sociology professor at Texas A&M University, compares incomes of native and foreign-born Hispanics to an hourglass figure. About 60 percent of all Hispanics whose income is $25,000 or less are foreign born. Those earning more than $25,000 are mostly native born. Hispanics earning above $250,000 tend to be well-educated immigrants.

The report notes that half of wealthy Hispanics are foreign born.

Saenz concurs the key for Hispanics to move up the socioeconomic ladder is education, stressing that the current system has to incorporate some changes.

“Something I think that is very important is at a very early, young age, you begin linking up people in the community — for example successful professional Latinos that work alongside schools where you have the role models that poor Latino children could have access to,” he says.

He suggests such priority programs as ones where role models would teach youths about financial responsibility.

The report is available at www.trpi.org.

(Maira García is a reporter with Hispanic Link News Service in Washington, D.C. Reach her care of editor@hispaniclink.org.) © 2007

by José de la Isla

­José de la Isla­

HOUSTON- On a cross-country road trip more than three decades ago, I visited the Jackson County museum in Oregon. I remember one display in particular about the Chinese community there.

An exhibit card apologized for the forced removal and intimidation of its Chinese citizens. That community acknowledged the racist attitudes and behaviors of the late 1800s, later legislated into the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

In this part of Oregon, Chinese were quickly supplanting white miners. The Chinese often worked played-out gold mines sold to them by white miners and some worked deserted diggings after the easy-to-obtain gold had played out. What seems to have mattered was the number of Chinese.

Local attitudes grew harsh, later severe, unjust, and even murderous. The editor of Jacksonville’s Oregon Sentinel reflected the white attitudes of 1866: “These people bring nothing with them to our shores, they add nothing to the permanent wealth of this country.”

Just as working-class immigrants today, in the 1870s the Chinese laborers in southwest Oregon worked in laundries, as packers and cooks.

Jackson County had high numbers of Chinese residents during the peak mining years, but caucasians remained the region’s overwhelming majority. It had 4,778 residents in 1870. Of that number, 634 were Chinese. In 1900, with a population of 13,698, the County retained only 43 Chinese residents.

From the Pacific Coast to the Rocky Mountains, thousands of Chinese were “violently herded onto railroad cars, steamers or logging rafts, marched out of town or killed,” Jean Pfaelzer explains in her new book,  “Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans”

If not a war, what do you call it? A pogrom? Ethnic cleansing?

The Chinese people had an extraordinary record of responding to persecution with boycotts, petitions, lawsuits and demands for reparations. Lesser known, but extremely important, more than 7,000 lawsuits were won against persecution after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

In one lawsuit, Wing Hing v City of Eureka (Calif.), 53 Chinese men and women asserted the city had a duty to protect its residents and demanded reparations and financial compensation for the violence that drove them out in 1885.

What happened back then should be cautionary history to us today. It should remind us of philosopher George Santayana’s words, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

By fighting back through the courts, undocumented immigrants, facing similar pogrom-like persecutions, won in court this month against Hazleton, Pa., a town 100 miles north from Philadelphia. U.S. District Judge James Munley struck down as unconstitutional the local law designed to fine businesses that hire undocumented immigrants and penalizes landlords who rent rooms to them.

The ruling deals a blow to similar laws passed by other towns and cities across the country. The attempt to drive residents out did not succeed because the legal process showed these approaches are inconsistent with “the American way.”

Elsewhere, anti-immigrant violence appears to have increased in recent months. In San Diego, Minutemen harassed Latino immigrants and human rights activists, Minuteman Kiani García maced a man in the face during a violent confrontation outside a Catholic church’s day labor center. In Kentucky, two convicted Klansmen savagely beat a teenage boy of Panamanian descent at a county fair. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit in the victim’s behalf.

The SPLC has documented a 40 percent increase of hate groups since 2000, fueled by anti-immigration furor aimed mainly at Latinos.

We can’t wait 120 years, as was the case of the Chinese, to have top-most in our minds what it means. Hateful communities arise when hateful acts are tolerated.

George Santayana is known for warning us not just about repeating our mistakes. He also wrote, “Our character is an omen of our destiny.”

We gotta clean up our act.

[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.]

by Elisabeth Pinio

A black and white painting of HIroshi Sugimoto at the De Young Museum

Hiroshi Sugimoto, famed for his memorable black-and-white photographs exploring themes of time, memory, dreams and history is holding an exhibition at De Young Museum in San Francisco.

With a large-format camera, Sugimoto produces powerful, detailed images with saturated with light and space. The first major study of his work, the exhibition includes Dioramas, depictions of natural history; Movie Theaters, architectural images of cinemas; and Sea of Buddha, photographs of Buddhist sculptures.

This exhibition began July 14 and will continue through September 30. Hurry or you’ll miss the opportunity to view Sugimoto’s artistic brilliance. De Young Museum is located at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, in San Francisco’s legendary Golden Gate Park.

Star-studded performance to benefit local AIDS service agencies

The Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation (REAF) will hold one of their “Help is on the Way” performance events to raise money for Bay Area AIDS service provider agencies-Aguilas, AIDS Legal Referral Panel, Maitri, STOP AIDS Project and Vital Life Services, Oakland.

This event will feature performances by Lucy Lawless, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Phoebe Snow, Shaun Cassidy, Joey McIntyre and B.D. Wong.

Help is on the Way XIII will take place Sunday, August 5, at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. For tickets call (415) 273-1620. For more information, visit www.reaf.org.

Metaphors as Possible Solutions, community screening by El Grito de la Mision

El Grito de la Mision welcomes the public to celebrate the premiere of M.A.P.S: Metaphors as Possible Solutions. Southern Exposure’s Artists in Education Program presents their 12th Annual Mission Voices Summer, a summer collaboration program involving several local organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco. M.A.P.S. is a film project encouraging youth to explore San Francisco neighborhoods and each other, while learning to create imagery and address social issues, on both a local and global scale.

Students create collaborative projects referencing a variety of film genres, which supports community building and allows the students to creatively express themselves.

The screening of M.A.P.S.: Metaphors as Possible Solutions will take place at the Roxie New College Film Center on Saturday, August 18, at 2 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

World-class pianist Jorge Federico Osorio comes to the Bay Area

San José’s Mexican Heritage Plaza and the Steinway Society the Bay Area proudly present internationally prominent pianist Jorge Federico Osorio, from Mexico City. He will perform famous classical pieces by Mexican composer Manuel María Ponce Cuéllar, Spanish composer Enrique Granados, and French/Polish composer Frédéric Chopin.

This historic event will take place at the Mexican Heritage Plaza on Saturday, September 8, at 7 p.m. Ticket prices are $50 for VIP, which include a post-concert reception with the artist, $15 for individual tickets and $35 for a family or group of four. Groups may add individual tickets, each additional ticket for $10. For more information, or to purchase tickets, call 800-MHC-VIVA or (408) 928-5500, or visit www.mhcviva.org or Steinway Society the Bay Area, www.steinwaythebayarea.com.