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

by Cindy Von Quednow

John Trasviña

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Latino organizational, political and community leaders and activists gathered here from throughout the nation Jan. 19 to share in shaping their State of the Union statement for some 50 million Hispanics now residing in the United States. A few hundred participants spent the better part of the day listening and contributing to the second annual Hispanic roundtable on law, policy and civil rights at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill.

­The event was hosted by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

Members of those three and numerous other organizations came together to define and refine the issues most affecting the burgeoning Latino community nationwide as a new Congress that Latinos helped choose is being seated and a new president whom Hispanics helped elect moves into the White House.

In excess of nine million Hispanics voted Nov. 4, a million more than in the 2004 presidential election.

Two-thirds of them cast their ballots for Barack Obama.

Conclave speakers focused on how the Latino community can work with the dramatically altered national political leadership to accomplish its essential goals.

“We all have a duty and we must work with each other and the new administration to make our agenda a reality,” said John Trasviña, president and general counsel of MALDEF, who opened up the event.

To accomplish certain aspirations such as a truly compassionate, comprehensive immigration reform plan, Trasviña acknowledged, will require well-organized, unifi ed efforts by the large and diverse Latino population. “We have a number of things we have to accomplish,” he said, emphasizing, “We need to push the Latino agenda forward now.”

María Elena Salinas, co-anchor of Noticiero Univisión, moderated a discussion, about the priorities under the Obama administration and the incoming Congress.

Contributing expertise were Ben Luján from New Mexico, the lone newly elected member to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; Rosa Rosales, president of LULAC, Simon Rosenberg, president of New Democrat Network, and Trasviña.

In addition to immigration, they pressed on such issues as affordable health care, renewable energy, jobs and availability to advancing technology for Latino students.

“If we keep doing what we’re doing now, our kids are going to have even fewer opportunities than we had,” said Luján, who also stressed the need for energy independence.

Guests broke into panels expanding on improving educational access and quality, countering growing hate-crime activity against Latinos and immigrants, and addressing the impact of the economic recession on millions of Hispanic families.

Kansas State Representative Delia García and representatives from NCLR, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Anti-Defamation League and the Maryland Department of Labor shared strategy pro­posals, including creating greater national awareness of the problem’s Hispanic dimensions and inviting broader support from all segments of society.

“This is not a Latino issue. This is an American issue,” explained Clarissa Martínez De Castro, director of immigration and national campaigns at NCLR.

Thomas E. Pérez, Secretary of the Department of Labor in Maryland, stressed, “Hate does not exist in a vacuum. Crime does not occur in a vacuum.”How to mobilize Hispanics nationwide to capitalize on a positive, new national mind set drew focus in the special segment, “2009: Taking Back the Message to the Latino Community.” Their consensus message: Federal cooperation and community strength offer much to look forward to in the upcoming year, but not without obstacles.

It featured challenges by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and U.S. Senator Robert Menéndez (D-N.J.). “Never before has the state of the Latino union been so close to the state of the nation,” said Villaraigosa. “We have an administration that is willing to face our reality.”

Among summary speakers were U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), pioneer farm labor organizer Dolores Huerta, LULAC’s Texasbased president Rosa Rosales and ’08 Voto Latino coordinator María Teresa Petersen. Each one closed with a single beseeching word: “Adelante”…”En- gage”…”Organize”…”Act.”

(Cindy Von Quednow covered Inauguration Week events for Hispanic Link News Service. Email: vonquizu@gmail.com).

­

by Jackie Gúzmán

The Last Supper of Chicano Heroes: Selected Works of José Antonio Burciaga, edited by Mimi R. Gladstein and Daniel Chacón, is one of the best books I have read in a long, long time. The entries into this retrospective deserve a reading between the lines.

José Antonio Burciaga is one of the important voices of Chicano literature. Burciaga was also a muralist and creator of memorable pictorial commentary. He was a poet, a humorist, a satirist, a cartoonist and mostly a humanist. An early and frequent contributor to Hispanic Link, Burciaga died of cancer on Oct. 7, 1996.

He was unique in how he treated cultural differences and difficulties, including the inequities he revealed through humor, art, and deceptively simple prose. In this book Burciaga tells us through anecdotes his Chicano heritage and how it ripples in from Mexico. He tells about growing up between the proverbial two cultures and languages. Gladstein and Chacon address Burciaga’s importance to Chicano letters. That alone puts this book on a collector’s shelf, to visit and revisit some of his original thought in Latino literature.

Burciaga stretches that rubber band, also. With the turn of a phrase, he takes us into those creative and spiritual depths that get a rise or a laugh from us. In his essay, “What’s in a Spanish Name?” he describes the pronunciation mistakes that we would like to pretend aren’t common. How about polamas when trying to say palomas or numberos for – you get the picture. It isn’t beyond him to make fun of our everyday foibles. Very little, if anything, is so sacrosanct we ought not joke about it. There too is a quality of Burciaga. His humor and truths may sting. But they don’t injure.

The Last Supper book can make the reader laugh from beginning to end as it delves into reality and fantasy.The cartoon collection is evidence of Burciaga’s imaginative ways to characterize Chicano culture. Included is a picture of the book’s namesake mural, “Last Supper of Chicano Heroes,” a DaVinci impression,with Diego Rivera- or José Clemente Orozco-like insertions of the iconic heroe from Latino history.

Pachuco stories aren’t left out. In “Pachucos and the Taxicab Brigade,” Burciaga talks about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans targeted as gangsters. His poetry and art give the reader an unquenching look into what his work was like and why it is remembered. Left to the next generation of writers who discover Burciaga is to place his life in relation to what else was going on in the nation’s culture and the arts. What used to be Chicano morphed into Latino later, and then becomes mainstream. Transnational. Transcultural. Transcendantal,even.

(University of Arizona Press: paperback, 38 illustrations, $16.95. 208 pages.) Hispanic Link.

by José de la Isla

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 Journal 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 home-buyer 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 outlawed 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, romanticsway 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 unscrupu lous predatory lenders,” she said.

Ed Gonzáles 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 overlook 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.

[José de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. He is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (Archer Books). E-mail
joseisla3@yahoo.com.] ©2008

by Ricardo Chavira

After 50 years of revolutionary rule, Cubans are still waiting for the one thing that matters most: economic security. While they enjoy free health care and higher education, millions of Cubans endure the grim hardship imposed by salaries of less than 30 dollars a month.

Traditional analysts and exile activists will tell you that Cubans above all yearn for democracy and full respect for human rights, and that assessing Cuba in simple economic terms is wrongheaded.

Certainly political freedom does matter. However, it’s far less pressing for most Cubans than the day-to-day struggle to make ends meet. That has never been truer than today. It could well be the ultimate standard by which the revolution’s success or failure is eventually judged.

I reached this conclusion after 20 years of travel to Cuba and conversations with hundreds of its residents.During most of this time Cuba has endured an economic calamity. Its tenuous recovery is now seriously threatened by the global financial crisis.

Because the Cuba debate is so intensely politicized,I was surprised during my first trip in 1989 to find most Cubans preoccupied with their personal economic plight. The same day I attended an event at which Fidel Castro vowed to preserve socialism, a teacher quietly complained to me he did not earn enough to provide for his family. He brushed off questions about revolutionary politics, pressing on the possibilities of making a new life in Spain or the United States.

In August 1993 Cuba was fully in the depths of its euphemistically named “Special Period in Peacetime,” the near-collapse of the system after Soviet aid ended. The government offi cials I met were shaken.They expressed grave concern about their country’s future. Food and other basic necessities were in alarmingly short supply and blackouts lasted most of the day. A senior bureaucrat and her husband invited me over for dinner, a lone avocado adorned with lettuce.

Over the next several years I witnessed Cuba’s agonizing climb away from the precipice. But its people, not unlike millions of others throughout the Caribbean and Latin America,have never attained liberation from the torment of not having enough.

Cuba’s poverty is less dire, for example, than that which prevails in Haiti or Honduras. Its 11.4 million residents aren’t starving or homeless. They are generally grateful for universal medical attention and education. Still, those advances do nothing to alleviate the stress caused by a dire housing shortage and chronically existing on too little.

Government rationing and subsidies are supposed to make for a decent standard of living. The reality is considerably different. Pay, for reasons never clear to me,is simply too paltry to cover the cost of living. The price of cooking oil, meat, produce, clothes, shoes among others items is prohibitive.A pound of powdered milk,for example, can cost two dollars. Cars and vacations to nearby resorts are out of the question for most.

Those with relatives elsewhere have the relief of remittances. Even they and many more pilfer from where they work. Food, beverages, clothes and anything else that has a black market buyer fi nds its way from the workplace to the street.

Recently Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura acknowledged in understatement that Cuba was confronting “very diffi cult”economic times. That’s hardly news to Cubans I know. They are nurturing the hope that Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama will overcome half a century of hostility,meet and pave the way for a relationship that includes economic betterment for the island.

“We want political change that will bring with it improvement in the standard of living,” one Havana native tells me, speaking for multitude. “It’s not really possible for us to continue on as we have.” Hispanic Link.

(Ricardo Chavira, a former foreign correspondent who covered Cuba, last visited the island in 2008 and continues to have contact there. He teaches journalism and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Irvine and California State University,Fullerton. E-mail: ricardo.chavira50@yahoo.com)
©2009

by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — When Lamont Christian returned from war, he often felt angry, afraid and unworthy. Years later, Christian found himself living in a homeless shelter, a sign that time had not healed his emotional wounds.

He went to the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System for help, and there, he learned the root of his problems: he was suffering from depression,post-traumatic stress disorder and anger management problems. Now, he wants others to learn from his experience.

“If I had a message to give to veterans who are coming out of the military now or even veterans who have been out for a long period of time, it’s that nothing is going to happen in your life unless you go and get the help you need,” he says.

Christian is a veteran of Vietnam, but his experience holds true for soldiers returning from current battlegrounds as well.

Nearly a third of veterans who are treated at Veterans Affairs health care centers have significant depressive symptoms, and about 13 percent have clinically diagnosed depression, says Marcia Valenstein, M.D., clinical psychiatrist with the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and associate professor of psychiatry with the University of Michigan Health System.

Depression is a “very potent” risk factor for suicide among people receiving treatment for depression at the VA, she notes, with a suicide rate that is three times higher than that of the overall VA patient population.

Such high rates led Valenstein and her colleagues to study the best time to provide intensive interventions to veterans with depression to prevent suicide. In a study just published by the Journal of Affective Disorders, the researchers found that veterans with depression were at highest risk for suicide in the 12 weeks after they were hospitalized for psychiatric conditions.

“This finding highlights the need for very close followup for patients who are discharged from our inpatient services because this is a particularly vulnerable time for them,” says Valenstein,a core investigator with the Serious Mental Illness Treatment Research and Evaluation Center at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

Current government recommendations have focused on providing intensive follow up for patients following all new antidepressant starts. More attention needs to be paid to the highest-risk periods that follow psychiatric hospitalization, Valenstein says. “Health systems with limited resources should focus their efforts on this time period to have the greatest impact on suicide prevention.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs has made mental health issues a priority,Valenstein notes. VA health centers have received more than $300 million for expansion of suicide prevention and other mental health services from the Veterans Health Administration.

Note: The views expressed in the study are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs.