On a day like today, May 5, Nicaraguan businessman José Zacarías Guerra dies

May 6, 2021

José Zacarías Guerra Rivas was born on Nov. 5, 1859, in Managua, Nicaragua, the son of Benjamin Guerra Bellarte and Dolores Fitoria Rivas, who died when he was just a baby, remaining in the care of his aunt Mercedes Rivas de Murillo.

Dolores was a single mother, because Benjamin did not establish a close affective relationship, the Guerra and Rivas families were native to Managua, well known and of good economic position, details the writer Francisco Bautista Lara.

Zacarías had a wealthy life, he belonged to one of the most distinguished families, his father was a minister during the government of Roberto Sacasa, he remarried Rosa Camacho and had three children: Rosa, Mercedes and Mariano Guerra.

In 1896 his father died, leaving him an inheritance which he knew how to manage very well; Zacarías stopped living with his paternal family and only bought some properties.

Zacarías was hard-working and extremely thrifty, very not sociable, he lived alone, he did not allow visitors, in addition he did not have any vice or luxuries in the house, and he had almost no contact with his relatives.

One of his properties was a 120-acre coffee farm located in El Crucero, from which he obtained a large income, by 1907, Zacarías gained a reputation for being tight-fisted.

In 1909 he wrote his will, he did not want to hire any lawyer, because he said that they charged too much, the will was given to Dr. Modesto Barrios, so that he could deliver it in turn to the district judge, and that it be read after his death.

José never got married, nor did he have children, but during his childhood there was a girl that he liked so much, but that he never saw again.

In 1913 his nephew Benjamín José Guerra (son of his half brother Mariano Guerra) was born, and although José was classified as tight-fisted, his nephew when holding a ring that shone on his finger, took off the garment and gave it to him, the report details “Zacarías Guerra and his nephew Benjamin: I was not the father of one, I will be of many”.

The health of Zacarías Guerra began to complicate because of diabetes, but for not spending on doctors, he resorted to home remedies, which did not relieve him, finally he died on May 5, 1914, at the age of 55 years, he was buried in the San Pedro de Managua Cemetery.

On May 9 his will was read, the man described as tight-fisted, he left most of his fortune for the construction of a home for orphans and low-income children, C $ 5,000 Córdobas for his aunt Mercedes, to whom he had a great affection and for his sister Rosa; the administrator of his estate was Dr. Rafael Cabrera.

The news spread like wildfire, people were surprised, and those who made fun of him went to put flowers on his grave and gave speeches in gratitude for his noble work.

Part of his will read:

“I want these properties to be sold at public auction by posting notices in the newspapers so that they sell better, since it is my only wish that my capital is invested in an asylum or house for orphaned children, being able to start establishing it in my largest house which is on 5ª Calle Norte number 84. I protest that my will is contrary or they want to annul it under any pretext, damn it a thousand times ”.

In June 1914, in honor of him, the Hospicio Zacarías Guerra was founded, whose board of directors was Monsignor José Antonio Lezcano, Salvador Castillo and Juan Zelaya.

With the sale of the war assets, the construction of an asylum began on some land of a 100-block estate, but when it was finished, it was not to the taste of the Government and they moved to another house, but in 1931 the earthquake occurred that destroyed the capital, and the Hospicio functioned the following year, after several years without a defined place for the home, during the government of Luis Somoza, the Hogar Zacarías Guerra was built for the Colonia Centroamerica, and in 1963, the Hogar opened its doors, the board of directors was made up of: Isabel Urcuyo de Somoza, Ing. Fernando Montiel, Dr. Fernando Medina, Dr. José Antonio Tijerino, Gonzalo Torres, Pastora Pérez Cano and Pilar Altamirano.

Currently the Hogar Zacarías Guerra is dedicated to helping many young people at risk and with limited resources, they are taught education, music, sports and different work disciplines.

In 2013 the novel “Manantial” was published, based on Zacarías Guerra, by the Nicaraguan writer Francisco Bautista Lara.

Little is known about Zacarías’ relatives, his two sisters Mercedes and Rosa did not have children, but his younger brother Mariano had five, was vice mayor of Managua and was part of the board of directors of Hogar Zacarías Guerra, but later, he had problems of debt and fell financially, lost his home in the 1931 earthquake and died the following year, details El Nuevo Diario in its report: “Zacarías Guerra, his family and rebellion.”

Harley Ezel

‘My Park Moment’ photo contest you will want to be part of

May 6, 2021

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

San Francisco, CA and New York, NY (April 14, 2021) — The Partnership for the Presidio, in collaboration with non-profit Photoville, announces a call for entries to its My Park Moment photo contest, an opportunity for anyone to submit a photo of their favorite park experience anywhere in the world. From April 14 to May 28, amateur and professional photographers alike are invited to submit images that show personal experiences in local and national parks: from a family picnic, to a walk in the Presidio, to a visit to Alcatraz or a trip to Yosemite.

A selection committee of artists, educators, and non-profit leaders will choose 400 photos to display outdoors in a dynamic, large-format show in the Presidio of San Francisco, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is one of the most visited national parks in the country. The free show starts in September 2021 as a lead-up to the opening of the Presidio Tunnel Tops in Spring 2022. The show will take place at locations surrounding the future Presidio Tunnel Tops area, where visitors can see the progress on the new trails, overlooks, and play areas while enjoying the show.

“The Partnership for the Presidio holds the value that parks belong to all of us. Parks are a shared treasure that bring us together, no matter our background or point of view,” said Michael Boland, Chief Park Development and Visitor Engagement Officer for the Presidio Trust. “My Park Moment creates a place for people to share their park disidentestory and to celebrate the many moments to come at Presidio Tunnel Tops.”

The My Park Moment photo contest has several categories: Community Snapshot (Adult), Community Snapshot (Youth), and the Visual Story Award (Adult), which will award four photographers with a $2,500 cash prize for their multi-photo series.

Read more about the opportunities and how to submit at PresidioTunnelTops.gov/my-park-moment.

Arturo Sandoval solidarizes with dissidentas

May 6, 2021

by Arturo Sandoval

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, is a Cuban plastic artist, dissident and leader of the San Isidro Movement, a group of Cuban artists, journalists and academics formed in 2018 to protest against the government’s censorship of artistic expression in Cuba, for a long time he has been imprisoned, harassed and constantly threatened by the Cuban dictatorship, recently his works of art were confiscated with impunity and destroyed and at the moment he is on a hunger and thirst strike for more than a week, in protest against the abuses and lack of human rights in Cuba. His life is in danger right now.

This is my message to him:

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara: I want to see you too, give you a hug and tell you how much I admire and respect you.

Dear Luis, today more than ever we need you alive, lucid and vigorous as you have always been, if you die you will do the dictatorship a favor, and they will remove a great obstacle to continue doing their atrocities.

We appreciate your courage and your convictions, but in this decisive moment for Cuba, your life, your word and your leadership are very necessary.

We beg you to give up your hunger and thirst strike.

Your LIFE is extremely valuable, and THE COUNTRY needs you greatly.

They’re censoring us up to our elbows

May 6, 2021

N O T E F R O M

T H E E D I T O R

D e a r r e a d e r s :

We are witnessing an unprecedented censorship, never seen before in the history of the United States, where private individuals with biased agendas and special interests control what you can say through privately-owned internet platforms called social media – which is today the vehicle for expressing ourselves.

Private individuals have usurped our rights to express ideas and political views, by censuring and banning those who express and expose views contrary to the official discourse and and those of the platform owners personal, biased beliefs. It reminds me of China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cuba, where the principle of liberty – and free speech – do not exist beyond a text on paper, and only those views coming from the government are accepted.

In the United States, The Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment in response to two centuries of state-sponsored religious conflict and oppression in America, and with a keen understanding of the religious persecution in European nations resulting from official state religions and religious wars.

Our country has been the standard and role model of Liberty in the so-called democratic world of nations. But today, without any public hearings and competent legal guards, behind close doors and without unbiased scrutiny, those individuals – owners of the internet platforms – are doing and undoing our First Amendment rights as they please.

The 1st and 14th Institute, founded by a group of bipartisan current and former Silicon Valley tech executives that are concerned about free speech in the United States, issued the following statement regarding May 5’s decision by Facebook’s Oversight Board to continue the company’s ban on former President Trump.

“If inflammatory false content alone should cause a user to be banned, then much of today’s political speech would therefore need to be blocked and politicians banned since their speech is regularly inflammatory and often labels opponents as evil people who deserve any harm they receive,” said Mike Matthys, co-founder of the 1st and 14th Institute. “There are numerous examples of such speech by members of both political parties that could be indirectly linked to future violent actions such as street riots, assassination threats, and arson.”

“People who agree with banning former President Trump because they dislike his speech and political ideas should remember the Berkeley Free Speech movement of the 1960s when liberals fought for free speech and their rights to demonstrate in public,” Matthys said. “While censorship targets conservative persons today, it may target liberal persons in the future as the US government has in the past.”

14 surprising ways garlic improves your health (plus garlic tea recipe)

May 6, 2021

by Joanne Washburn

Not a fan of garlic? You’re missing out. Sure, its strong, pungent scent and flavor can take some getting used to, but the sulfur compounds that give garlic its unpleasant characteristics are also responsible for its many health benefits.

T h e a m a z i n g health benefits of garlic

Here are 14 good reasons to add garlic to your diet:

G a r l i c h e l p s treat colds – Garlic can relieve symptoms of the common cold pretty quickly. It can also lower your risk of catching a cold in the first place. A 2014 study showed that people who took a garlic tablet every day for three months had fewer bouts of the cold than people who took a placebo.

Garlic lowers blood pressure – Garlic helps blood flow more easily through your body. According to a 2014 report, aged garlic extract can lower blood pressure in people with hypertension. Health experts recommend eating at least four cloves of garlic per day to enjoy this benefit.

Garlic lowers choles terol levels – Raw garlic is rich in a sulfur compound called allicin, which helps lower cholesterol levels and prevent the oxidation o f b a d c h o l e s t e r o l . Oxidized LDL cholesterol c a n i n c r e a s e y o u r risk of heart disease.

Garlic can prevent neurodegenerative disease – Garlic contains a powerful antioxidant known as S-allyl cysteine (SAC), which can protect your brain cells from oxidative stress and inflammation. Chronic inflammation can raise your risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s a n d P a r k i n s o n ’ s .

Garlic aids in detoxification – Eating foods contaminated with heavy metals like lead can damage filtering organs like your kidneys and liver. Luckily, garlic helps rid your body of lead and protects against organ toxicity.

Garlic helps heal wounds – Natural healers use garlic to treat wounds and prevent them from getting infected. For fast healing, place a poultice made from crushed garlic cloves on your wound.

Change it several times a day and continue applying the garlic poultice until your wound visibly improves.

Garlic helps maintain strong bones –

Garlic helps increase the levels of a hormone called estrogen. Menopausal women tend to have low estrogen levels that puts them at risk of osteoarthritis and bone loss.

Garlic improves digestion – Eating raw garlic cloves every day as part of a healthy diet can help ease digestive problems like diarrhea, colitis and intestinal gas. Garlic can also dispel worms and destroy harmful bacteria lurking in your gut.

Garlic strengthens the immune system – The phytonutrients in garlic can help boost your immunity and fight oxidative stress, which can damage your cells and trigger premature aging.

Garlic helps control blood sugar levels – There is some evidence that eating raw garlic cloves may help lower your blood sugar levels. Diabetics can greatly benefit from eating garlic.

Garlic helps prevent infections – Garlic can prevent the growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a rod-shaped bacterium that causes urinary tract infections (UTIs) and kidney infections. Research indicates that garlic can also inhibit the growth of Escherichia coli, Helicobacter pylori and Candida albicans.

Garlic promotes weight loss – Some animal studies have shown that garlic can stimulate the body to burn more fat. Garlic can also “turn off” the genes involved in the formation of fat cells.

Garlic can relieve asthma – Boiled garlic cloves are a natural remedy for asthma. To ease your symptoms, drink a glass of milk with three boiled garlic cloves each night before bed.

Garlic helps treat acne – Garlic’s antibacterial properties can help treat skin conditions like acne. To treat acne, rub a piece of freshly cut garlic on your pimples. If your skin is sensitive, you can coat the garlic first in a mild carrier oil, such as jojoba or coconut oil, to minimize garlic’s sting. Natural News.

Migrants continue crossing the southern border

May 6, 2021

They face robbery, extortion and kidnapping, often at the hands of officials

by Mexico News Daily

Almost a month ago the federal government announced a temporary closure of the southern border to nonessential traffic. This week, the White House announced that Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala would deploy troops “to make crossing the borders more difficult.”

Yet migrants continue to stream into the country en route to the United States. According to a report published Wednesday by The Guardian, Central American migrants were crossing into Mexico on a recent morning at Frontera Corozal, a remote border town on the Usumacinta River in Chiapas, without having to show documents to anyone.

The newspaper said the situation “looked like business as usual,” noting that groups of men, women and children were disembarking from boats onto Mexican soil before getting into taxis and speeding past an immigration office to a crossroads. There they boarded vans for the next leg of their journey north: an approximately 150-kilometer trip to the town of Palenque, Chiapas.

There are police checkpoints on the Frontera Corozal-Palenque highway, but according to migrants, they were able to pass by paying — or were robbed by the officers they encountered.

“They’ve taken our money, and now we’re dead broke,” 27-year-old Christian, part of a group of Honduran construction workers, told The Guardian.

“And now we have to deal with the military. We need to figure out how we get north. We are always fighting and figuring out a way to get there.”

Shortly after he took office in late 2018, President López Obrador pledged to clean up Mexico’s immigration and customs forces, which he said were “rotten to the core.” He also vowed that his administration would treat migrants with respect and give them protection.

But human rights activists say that soldiers, police officers and immigration officials continue to commit crimes against migrants, including robbery, extortion and kidnapping.

“It’s a cartel,” said Gabriel Romero, director of a migrant shelter near Mexico’s border with Guatemala. “They [the authorities] are acting in cahoots with [smugglers] … with taxi and bus drivers. It’s a network taking advantage of migrants,” he said.

Still, migrants fleeing poverty and violence in countries such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are prepared to risk their lives in their quest to reach the United States.

Even increased enforcement — the government deployed the National Guard in 2019 to stem migration flows and thus appease then United States president Donald Trump — failed to stop Central Americans and people from more distant countries, including Haiti, Cuba and even African nations, from attempting to reach the United States via a long journey that includes crossing Mexico’s southern border.

Crackdowns instead have forced migrants to take riskier, more remote routes to enter and travel through Mexico. They are consequently exposed to an even greater risk of becoming victims of crimes such as robbery, rape, abduction and murder.

The latest crackdown on migrants may be even less effective in stopping the flows of people, according to Tonatiuh Guillén, a former chief of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute who resigned in 2019 after the federal government buckled in the face of Trump’s threat to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican goods if the country didn’t do more to curb migration.

Mexicans are heading to US again: massive increase in migration recorded

May 6, 2021

If trend continues, US authorities could see highest number since 2008

by Mexico News Daily

Mexicans are attempting to cross illegally into the United States in numbers not seen for more than a decade. Some 147,000 Mexicans were detained by U.S. border agents in the first three months of the year, a figure equivalent to two-thirds of all arrests of Mexicans by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in 2020.

If the trend continues, almost 590,000 Mexicans will be intercepted by the CBP this year, which would be the highest number since 2008, when more than 600,000 were detained.

The spike in the number of Mexicans trying to enter the U.S. without going through official immigration channels comes after years of decreases in migration flows across the northern border. In 2017 — for the first time ever — the number of Mexicans returning home from the United States exceeded the number of Mexicans heading north.

Migration expert Eunice Rendón told the newspaper Milenio that CBP arrests of Mexicans last month were more than four times higher than the level seen in recent years.

“In March, for example, border patrol captured 171,000 people, of whom 68,000 were Mexicans. … What we have seen in other years is [the detention of] 15,000 Mexicans [per month],” she said.

Rendón attributed the surge to economic factors related to the coronavirus pandemic as well as displacement caused by violence.

In the almost 2 1/2 years since President López Obrador took office, about 776,000 Mexicans have been detained by the CBP, meaning that arrests during the six-year term of the current government are on track to exceed the number recorded during the 2012–2018 presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, during which about 1.15 million Mexicans were intercepted.

Writing in the newspaper El Universal, columnist León Krauze noted that López Obrador said in a 2019 interview with the news agency Bloomberg that his “dream” was to reach a point in his presidency at which there would be no need for Mexicans to migrate to the United States because they had work and could be happy where they were born.

Not o n ly has the president not achieved that goal but the migration of Mexicans has, in fact, increased, he wrote.

“About four of every 10 migrants detained on the [United States] southern border in recent weeks are of Mexican origin,” Krauze wrote, adding that “the grave trend” threatens to undo gains made over the past decade during which migration of Mexicans to the U.S. recorded negative numbers.

The columnist said there was no detailed study about the new wave of Mexican migration to the United States but contended that the causes are the same as those that drive other people in the region. Krauze cited insecurity, poverty, lack of work opportunities and climate changes as migration push factors.

“The consequences of the pandemic have been particularly harsh in Mexico, where the government has failed in the containment of the health emergency and in the management of the economic crisis. The explosion in poverty in the country has the same consequence as always: the people go to where there is … the possibility to survive,” he wrote.

The journalist asserted that López Obrador needs to urgently respond to the growing migration phenomenon, which has also been encouraged by the departure of former U.S. president Donald Trump, who enacted harsh immigration policies, and the arrival in the White House of current President Joe Biden, who rolled back some of his predecessor’s policies even as he simultaneously told migrants not to come to the U.S.

Krauze added that 2021 data shows that the government is failing in what López Obrador described as its responsibility to guarantee security, employment and well-being for the Mexican people so that they don’t have to leave their homes and seek a better life elsewhere.

“ T h e r e i s s t i l l t i m e t o r e c tify [the situation],” he wrote.

S o u rc e : Mi l e n i o (sp), El Universal (sp)

Former Puerto Rico Governor Carlos Romero Barceló diez

May 6, 2021

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Former Governor Carlos Romero Barceló, the tough statesman leader who for more than 50 years was on the front lines of the battle for statehood from the three most relevant elective positions in Puerto Rico’s politics and who, until his last day of health, continued to preach with his A characteristic passion for the annexation of the island to the United States, he died today at the age of 88, his family reported. “At 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 2, 2021, by the hand of my mother, my son Cristopher and I, my father passed away. We appreciate all the prayers that were kept throughout this process. We ask for a little time to assimilate everything and we will soon be offering more information ¨, expressed his daughter, Melinda Romero, in a press release.

Romero had been hospitalized on Sunday, March 14, due to an infection, Melinda reported at the time. That same week, it was reported that the former governor had been diagnosed with an infection by two bacteria in his blood, including “enterococcus.” His condition was described as “delicate.”

In Sunday’s communication, no additional details were given about the death of the former governor, and whether he responded to the complications of the past months.

Coming from a lineage with deep roots in Puerto Rican politics since the beginning of the 20th century, Romero Barceló spent 24 years in the three most important positions in Puerto Rican politics. He was mayor of San Juan from 1969 to 1977, governor from 1977 to 1985, and years after he was presumed politically dead, he returned as resident commissioner from 1993 to 2001.

Along the way, he became one of the greatest icons of the annexation movement, along with José Celso Barbosa