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http://aztlannet-news-blog.blogspot.com/2006/11/martes-nov-28-2006-aztlan-americas.html
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http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1128latinodiversity.html
Nov. 28, 2006 12:00 AM
Guatemalans: New face of Valley Latinos
By Yvonne Wingett
Email= yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-4712.
Staff reporter Matt Dempsey contributed to this article.
Guatemalans are changing the makeup of the Valley's Latino community, leading an influx of immigrants from Central and South America that is diversifying neighborhoods, classrooms and construction sites.
Mexicans are still dominant, but thousands of Latin Americans are moving to metropolitan Phoenix from home countries and other parts of the United States, lured by jobs, affordability and safety.
Guatemala and Honduras recently opened consulates in Phoenix to serve the growing groups. El Salvador could open a second Arizona office in Phoenix next year. Earlier this month, Peru brought a mobile consulate to the Valley to serve its citizens.
The Guatemalan government estimates that 30,000 to 35,000 Guatemaltecos live in Arizona, mostly in the Valley. More are coming each month, officials said, often to escape civil and political instability and to join families and find work in the U.S.
Sitting under a picture of Mayan ruins in her Mesa restaurant, Rosalba Ruano, 43, explained her way of gauging the growth of the Valley's Guatemalan community. The Spanish accents of laborers, lawyers and business owners who order heaping plates of steak, rice and fried bananas remind her of home in eastern Guatemala. She doesn't have to explain the traditional dishes. And rarely do customers ask for hot sauce: Guatemalan food isn't spicy.
"We used to think we were the only ones," Ruano said. "We see lots of them now, everywhere."
Growing in Arizona
Guatemala has been plagued by social, ethical and political divisions as well as decades of brutal civil war and international intervention. Most Guatemalans are indigenous, of native Indian descent, and live in rural areas, where poverty is rampant. Since the country's independence from Spain in 1821, experts say, Guatemala has been run by a wealthy minority that has discriminated against the indigenous Mayan languages and culture, which has made people want to leave.
The Valley is a new destination for Guatemalans. By the Guatemalan government's count, about 1.3 million, or 10 percent of their countrymen, live in the U.S. In the past, Guatemalan immigrants settled in California and Texas, said Cecilia Menjívar, an Arizona State University sociology professor who studies Central American migration.
The census counted 1,578 Guatemalans living in Arizona in 1990. Many had come to the U.S. to flee the country's 36-year civil war, experts say, which ended in 1996 and claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Some have applied for political asylum. The 2000 census reported that just 5,783 Guatemalans lived in Arizona, though the consulate's estimate is six times that.
Demographers and consulate officials said the census undercounts the community partly because immigrants fear that their personal data will be shared with immigration officials and that some identify themselves as Mexican to better blend into the community.
The consulate also reports that it has helped about 50,000 people, including undocumented immigrants at detention centers, since it opened a small office in December 2005 on Seventh Street south of Camelback Road. "Guatemalans used to use Arizona as just a bridge, a point of entry," said Oscar Padilla Lam, consul general of Guatemala for Phoenix. "It's affordable, and there are jobs they can find. So they stayed."
Making Valley home
Osman Lopez, 23, hunched over a plate of traditional Guatemalan eggs and beans and traced his path to the Valley. Two years ago, he left his hometown in Huehuetenango, a mountainous coffee-growing region in northwestern Guatemala. Lopez wanted to join uncles and cousins in the U.S., find work, and send money home.
He paid a coyote to help him cross into the U.S. through Altar, Sonora, and he found construction work in North Carolina. One year ago, he moved to Mesa. He'd heard that work was everywhere and that the pay was pretty good.
"I came out of necessity," Lopez said. "I like the weather. The Guatemalans are growing here. It's (the population is) still small but growing. It feels like home."
Thousands of Guatemalans and Central Americans in the Valley work in the roofing trade, one of the hardest and most dangerous jobs in the construction industry. "These people are part of the crews whenever we meet with Mexican laborers," said Carlos Flores Vizcarra, Mexican consul general in Phoenix. "They are following the same path of Mexican immigrants. Besides construction, besides agriculture . . . they are taking posts in service: hotels, janitorial and working in the kitchens."
Guatemalans often face additional challenges with language and culture, said Padilla Lam, Guatemala's consul general. Spanish is the country's official language, but at least 22 other languages, mostly Mayan, are spoken.
"They have to learn Spanish, then they have to learn English," he said. Oftentimes, he added, Guatemalans on job sites pretend to be Mexican, fearing discrimination. Mexicans have a longer presence in the Valley, so some Guatemalans believe that supervisors favor them, he said.
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http://test.denverpost.com/news/ci_4731834
Article Last Updated:11/27/2006 11:48:56 PM MST
Dems won over Latino voters, study says
By Elizabeth Aguilera / Denver Post Staff Writer
Email= eaguilera@denverpost.com or 303-954-1372
Latino voters leaned heavily Democratic in the recent midterm elections, indicating the heated debate over immigration reform may have cost Republicans support in some key races, an analysis released Monday indicates.
A study of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center showed 69 percent of Latino voters supported Democrats, up from 58 percent in 2004. That compares with a 6 percentage- point increase in Democratic support among white voters.
"It's about more than just the immigration issue; it's about how some Republicans talk about the issue," said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. "They left the impression that it wasn't just about immigration but that (the Latino) community was being targeted in the same way the gay community was targeted in 2004."
Some, however, questioned whether the study exaggerated the impact of immigration on the Democrats' wins Nov. 7.
For instance, the Willie C. Velazquez Institute concluded that 64 percent of Latino voters supported Democrats in 2004. That would translate to only a 5 to 6 percentage-point increase this year, said Anna Sampaio, political science professor at the University of Colorado at Denver.
"There is a lot to be excited about with the Latino vote, but we can't jump to these huge conclusions," Sampaio said. "Latino voters behaved like everybody else behaved. Latinos considered immigration an important issue, but it seems the driving issue was the war in Iraq."
It's difficult to pinpoint one issue responsible for an increase in voting a certain way for any group, said Bob Loevy, professor of political science at Colorado College.
While immigration influenced Latino voters, the Iraq war and economic inequality were reasons voters swung left overall, Loevy said.
"I'm sure Hispanics also voted against the administration on those issues," he said.
According to Pew's analysis, Republicans won in eight of the 12 congressional races where Latinos might have affected the outcome because they made up more than 10 percent of the eligible voters. The four districts that went to Democrats included Colorado's closely contested 7th Congressional District, which has 16 percent eligible Latino voters.
Democrat Ed Perl mutter won that seat, previously held by Republican Bob Beauprez, with 55 percent of the vote.
The National Council of La Raza did an election eve poll and found that 51 percent of likely Latino voters said immigration was the most important issue or one of the most important issues shaping their vote, said Clarissa Martinez, director of state policy and advocacy for the council. In July, the Pew Hispanic Center found the same sentiment.
Immigration was a factor for independent voter Martha Rubi, publisher of Paginas Amarillas de Colorado.
"I do not support illegal immigration, but the new penalties are tough on employers when it's not their fault," she said of legislation passed by Colorado lawmakers this summer. "I saw a lack of awareness and sensitivity to the topic and misrepresentation of the issue."
Jeff Martinez of Denver changed his affiliation from Republican to independent earlier this year.
Iraq, the squeezing of the middle class and immigration were all factors for Martinez when he cast his vote.
"The stereotypes and dark imagery that they lent to immigrants was disturbing. Certainly when you have to make that mark, (the ads) impact how you vote as a Latino proud of your heritage," he said. "Immigration was a big issue, but it ultimately came down to the Republicans having the helm for a lot of years and they didn't do anything to help middle America."
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http://latinalista.blogspot.com/2006/11/latino-voting-power-results-are-in.html
Monday, November 27, 2006
Latino Voting Power - The Results are In
Blogged by Marisa Treviño
Email= mtrevino@airmail.net
Did Latinos wield considerable voting strength in this month's election, or not?
Were Latinos the pivotal factor in deciding who kept the congressional office or who was sent packing?
Should Democrats be indebted to Latinos for winning their elections?
No, yes, maybe.
(Source: US Consulate Milan)
The latest Pew Hispanic Center factsheet titled Latinos and the 2006 Mid-term Election attempt to make sense of the national exit poll data.
Though the report admits that it's impossible to exactly say just how significant was the Latino voter turnout, there are a few crystal points:
Latinos voted heavily in favor of Democratic candidates. According to the factsheet:
The 2006 national exit poll showed that in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives 69% of Latinos voted for Democrats and 30% for Republicans. An analysis of exit polls in Senate and gubernatorial races around the country that produced a national estimate revealed essentially the same partisan preference. Meanwhile, exit polls conducted in eight states with large Hispanic populations by the William C. Velazquez Institute, a non-partisan think tank, estimated that Latino voters favored Democrats 67% to 29% in congressional races nationwide.
Overall, there was an 11 percent swing towards the Democrats.
Yet, Democrats shouldn't get too comfortable in thinking Latinos will blindly support them either.
The 2006 National Exit Poll revealed that among Hispanic voters, 69 percent voted Democrat while 30 percent voted Republican. Among white voters, 47 percent voted Democrat while 51 percent voted Republican. Only Black voters almost thoroughly support Democrats with 89 percent voting for them and 10 percent voting Republican.
If ever there was evidence that Latino voters look beyond party lines to the actual issue, these numbers appear to show it — and underscore the greater strength that Latino voters already possesses:
The capacity to think and reason instead of blindly following the crowd.
posted by Marisa Treviño @ 9:48 PM
Latinos and the 2006 Mid-term Elections
http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/26.pdf
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http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?id=50204&cat=Politics+News&more=%2Fpolitics%2F
November 27, 2006
Pew: Hispanic Mind Hard to Read in Mid-Term Voting
A fact sheet from the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center reviewing voting in this month's mid-term elections finds it difficult to draw any definite conclusions about the Hispanic vote, no matter what pundits may claim.
The one clear trend, illustrated both by the 2006 national exit poll and through independent exit polling by the William C. Velazquez Institute in eight states with large Hispanic populations, is that Hispanic voters definitely favored Democratic congressional candidates. The national poll found a 69 percent/30 percent split for Democrats, while Velazquez noted a 67/29 split. Both show a smaller percentage of Hispanic voters favoring Republicans than the 44 percent who reportedly voted to re-elect President Bush in 2004 (although Pew prefers its own 2004 analysis that showed only 40 percent of Hispanics voted for George W. Bush).
"Does that mean the Latinos who flirted with the Republican Party are now firmly back in the Democratic camp?" the factsheet asks. "Or is it possible that Latino voters behaved like the rest of the electorate and simply rode a Democratic wave?"
The numbers, which exceed the swing seen among Anglo voters, ultimately suggest that "something distinctive" did occur among Hispanic voters.
Adding to the difficulty of making hard-and-fast determinations, Pew notes that some individual Republican winners did much better among Hispanic voters than did their party, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (39 percent of the Hispanic vote), Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (37 percent) and Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (44 percent).
Many Hispanics split their ballots, Pew surmises, noting that in Arizona 67 percent of Hispanics voted to re-elect Gov. Janet Napolitano while 41 percent voted to re-elect Senate incumbent Jon Kyl, a Republican.
Mr. Kyl's victory points out another unusual aspect of parsing the Hispanic vote – how immigration affected it. Mr. Kyl favors tougher immigration enforcement and clearly opposed efforts for an amnesty for undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. And yet conventional wisdom is that Hispanics as a bloc voted against candidates, or parties, that favored a more punitive approach.
Arizona offers another counter-intuitive example, Pew notes. Some 48 percent of Hispanic voters there backed a successful measure making English the state's official language.
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http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?id=50292&cat=Today's+Most+Popular+Stories&more=/news/newspopular.asp
November 27, 2006
Illegal Immigrant Laws Challenged
Eunice Moscoso
Washington --- As local governments across the United States enact tough ordinances to fight illegal immigration, the American Civil Liberties Union is leading a charge to fight the measures in court.
The national civil rights group has joined Hispanic organizations in suing several localities, saying the laws are unconstitutional and conflict with state and federal immigration and housing statutes. Most of the ordinances -- including one proposed for Cherokee County -- target landlords who rent to illegal immigrants or businesses who hire them.
"These ordinances promote and encourage discrimination … [and] heighten suspicion about anyone who looks or sounds foreign," said Vic Walczak, legal director of the ACLU in Pennsylvania, where one of the most restrictive ordinances was approved in the small city of Hazleton.
The ACLU, together with other groups, challenged the Hazleton ordinance in court. It requires renters to register with city hall so officials can make background checks on them. Landlords renting to people who have not registered face penalties of $1,000 a day. In addition, businesses found to be employing illegal immigrants could lose their business permit for five years for a first offense and 10 years for a second.
Last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Hazleton ordinance and later extended the order. A trial is expected early next year.
The ACLU claimed another preliminary success this month when a federal judge issued a restraining order against an ordinance in Escondido, Calif., that gives landlords 10 business days to evict tenants found to be illegal immigrants. Landlords who fail to comply could face a variety of penalties, including fines up to $1,000 a day, six months in jail, or suspension of their business license. The judge put the measure on hold until a preliminary injunction is considered.
The main groups joining the ACLU in the lawsuits are the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The ACLU has challenged immigration ordinances in Riverside, N.J., and Valley Park, Mo., and is considering a challenge to an ordinance passed earlier this month in Farmers Branch, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The measure includes fines for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and establishes English as the town's official language.
Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement that the ordinance "puts landlords between a rock and a hard place, as unpaid immigration agents of the city of Farmers Branch."
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national group that supports lower levels of immigration and backs the city ordinances, said the legal setbacks are minor and predicted that the towns will prevail as the issue works its way through the courts. FAIR has provided legal assistance to Hazleton and other towns and cities in crafting the laws to withstand court challenges. Mehlman said the measures reflect a growing frustration that the federal government has failed to stop the tide of illegal immigration and that local communities are footing the bill.
"Local governments have to provide the education, the health care, all the human services. They have to deal with the crime, with housing issues," he said. "It's reached a point where ... they can't sit around and wait for the federal government to get off the dime and do something."
But Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said many of the city ordinances will likely be overturned in court, but that it could take several years. Turley said the measures are too imprecise, often including ambiguous definitions of who is an illegal resident. For example, they could affect include immigrants who are in a grace period whie waiting for a review of their immigration status, he said.
In addition, there are questions about the ordinances contradicting or interfering with federal authority on immigration and housing, he said.
"If little towns like Hazleton can create their own de-facto immigration agencies, you could have a patchwork of hundreds of different laws related to immigration," he said.
Mehlman, however, said the ordinances deal with areas that cities routinely regulate, such as how business and leases are conducted. "This is what the ACLU and other groups raise money for, to make sure the immigration laws don't get enforced," he said.
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http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?id=50293&cat=Headlines&more=/news/more-news.asp
November 27, 2006
'Network Neutrality' Could Hobble Initiative
By Brent Wilkes
The global Internet infrastructure is commonly referred to as the "information superhighway." And for good reason.
Like any highway needing to accommodate growth in traffic by building more lanes, Internet service providers in the past decade have invested hundreds of billions of dollars to build ever-faster lanes on the Internet. Today, we can enjoy downloads of the richest and most robust content in a matter of seconds. Never has a communications revolution occurred on such a grand scale.
For Hispanic Americans and others, this is a significant development. With the rapid deployment of new broadband networks last year, English-speaking Hispanics increased their subscription to broadband services by 46 percent.
As we move into an era in which Internet speeds will approach a gigabyte per second, everyone seems to be laying some claim to the real estate. But, in the Internet land rush, the coup de grace is a proposal known as "network neutrality." Advanced by Internet behemoths such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, network neutrality would outlaw the ability of any broadband service provider to offer a new service -- unless it offers the giant Internet companies the same bandwidth, for free, for their own commercial purposes.
We've seen this kind of argument before. Earlier this decade, Microsoft and its cohorts warned in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission that "network operators will implement restrictions designed to block or impair access to innovative content, services, and devices on the broadband network," but that appeared to be little more than saber-rattling; the alleged interference never materialized.
More recently, one cable company was attacked for allegedly blocking access to Craigslist, the highly popular Web site connecting users with something to offer with those in the market for goods and services. This charge was held up as Exhibit A by network-neutrality evangelists. But Craigslist CEO Craig Newmark acknowledged that critics had lashed out before they understood the basic facts of the temporary outage: a bug in the software of a third-party vendor was the culprit, not the alleged malfeasance of the cable broadband provider. Increasingly stripped of the ability to invoke these phantom bogeymen, the rhetoric of network-neutrality advocates has lost much of its urgency.
But there is a compelling reason to take pause before enacting such sweeping new regulations of the Internet. Indeed, network-neutrality regulations could inadvertently lead to a significant widening of the digital divide by slowing the penetration of advanced broadband technologies into Hispanic and other under-served minority communities. Broadband providers will not be able to convince investors to fork over billions of dollars to roll out advanced services to all communities if, the minute they do, Google and Microsoft get an unrestricted free ride on the increased bandwidth to offer competing products while consumers and broadband providers are left to foot the bill.
Rather than expanding Internet opportunities, network neutrality could sharply curtail them. For instance, imagine a broadband-enabled education program targeted at working parents that could simultaneously stream live video lectures, course materials, and interactive discussion with students around the country. Giant Internet corporations would say that same massive bandwidth must be available without charge to every college and university in the country, or none at all.
Or, imagine a next-generation search engine that would integrate content with searching, automatically delivering bandwidth-rich content tailored to a specific query. Partnerships among bandwidth and content providers are anathema to the giant Internet corporations, which instead would bar such innovative arrangements and demand that the bandwidth be given instead to them, for free.
Network-neutrality rules also would slow down growth of new competitive broadband services by outlawing the ability of an entrepreneur to raise needed capital for a new wireless broadband network by partnering with an Internet content provider -- not too different from what Google has arranged with EarthLink in San Francisco.
Experts predict that Internet data traffic will increase 500-fold by 2020 as demand increases for multimedia applications. Bernstein Research and other investment advisers estimate that deploying ultra-high-speed networks capable of handling this traffic will require an investment of up to $400 billion. But investors won't invest, innovators won't partner and new services won't emerge, if the government mandates that incumbent Internet bigwigs be guaranteed the same business arrangements, at no cost to them, regardless of the inherent value of the service they seek to bring to the market.
Regulatory restraint has fostered the growth of today's Internet, and it should govern in the development of tomorrow's Internet as well. We don't need sweeping new government regulation when there's not a scintilla of evidence that market forces won't keep the Internet as open and accessible to diverse viewpoints as it has always been. Policy makers need to be especially careful not to pass new regulations at the behest of powerful corporations that may have unintended consequences for the American consumer and choke the entrepreneurial energy so fundamental to the growth and vibrancy of the Internet.
Source: Copyright 2006 San Jose Mercury News.
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http://elpasotimes.com/breakingnews/ci_4729704
Article Launched:11/27/2006 @03:26 PM MST
Homeless man found dead on West Side
Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
The body of a homeless man was discovered at about 11 a.m. today under an overpass at Interstate 10 by Trans Mountain Road on the West Side, El Paso police said.
There were no signs of foul play and it is believed the man, who is between 45 and 55 years old, died of natural causes, police spokesman Javier Sambrano said
It appeared the body had been at the site for some time. An autopsy will be done to determine the cause of death. The man, whose name was not released, was found by another homeless person, police said.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061128/ap_on_el_pr/biden2008
Mon November 27, 2006 PM
Biden: Blame immigration woes on Mexico
By Jim Davenport, Associated Press Writer
Columbia, S.C. - Sen. Joe Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's incoming chairman, wants to get tough with Mexico, calling it an "erstwhile democracy" with a "corrupt system" responsible for illegal immigration and drug problems in the U.S.
Biden, D-Del., was in Columbia on Monday in his first postelection trip to this first-in-the-South presidential primary state as he continues to line up support for his presidential bid. During a question-and-answer session before more than 230 Columbia Rotary Club members, Biden was asked about immigration problems. Biden, who favors tightening the U.S.-Mexico border with fences, said immigration is driven by money in low-wage Mexico.
"Mexico is a country that is an erstwhile democracy where they have the greatest disparity of wealth," Biden said. "It is one of the wealthiest countries in the hemisphere and because of a corrupt system that exists in Mexico, there is the 1 percent of the population at the top, a very small middle class and the rest is abject poverty."
Unless the political dynamics change in Mexico and U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants are punished, illegal immigration won't stop. "All the rest is window dressing," he said.
An even bigger problem are illegal drugs "coming up through corrupt Mexico," he said. "People are driving across that border with tons, tons — hear me — tons of everything from byproducts for methamphetamines, to cocaine, to heroine."
Covering a variety of topics, Biden kept most of the crowd in their seats for an hour — twice as long as scheduled.
"I warn all of you, all of you making more than a million bucks — I hope you all are — I'm taking away your tax cut," Biden said. "I'm not joking."
The extra revenue would generate $75 billion a year and pay for a backlog in national security and local law enforcement programs, Biden said.
Biden's appeal for bipartisanship captured Bruce Rippeteau, a former Rotary president who says he's in the Genghis Khan wing of the Republican Party. He "was saying some important things in a nonpolitical way," Rippeteau said.
"I want to compliment him about what he didn't say," Wilson said. "He never one time mentioned weapons of mass destruction."
Biden will lead the Foreign Relations panel because Republicans around the nation lost seats in the Nov. 7 elections. That tide didn't reach Republican-dominated South Carolina, where the GOP maintained its four U.S. House seats and Democrats kept their two.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061128/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/nicaragua_us
Mon Nov 27, 2006 @7:21 PM ET
U.S. seeks relationship with Ortega
San Salvador, El Salvador - A senior State Department official said Monday the United States will seek to forge a solid working relationship with Nicaragua's President-elect Daniel Ortega.
Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, stopping in El Salvador before heading to neighboring Nicaragua, said Washington hopes to develop an "open and fruitful" liaison with Ortega's government.
"We are going to do everything possible to develop a respectful relationship," said Shannon, who planned to meet with Ortega and outgoing Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos.
Before Nicaragua's Nov. 5 presidential election, U.S. officials had suggested U.S. aid to the Central American country could be cut off if Ortega won. But in the weeks since the leader of the leftist Sandinista party won the vote, U.S. officials have adopted a wait-and-see approach to the incoming government.
Ortega, who takes office Jan. 10, has insisted he is a changed man since his first stint in the Nicaraguan presidency and is willing to work with the U.S. government and international lenders such as the International Monetary Fund, which once accused him of promoting "savage capitalism."
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Ortega was part of the junta that took power in Nicaragua in 1979, when the Sandinistas overthrew the hated dictator Anastasio Somoza. Under his rule, Nicaragua descended into economic chaos under radical economic policies that included property seizures.
U.S. officials helped finance a guerrilla war against Ortega's Cuban- and Soviet-backed government during the 1980s.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061128/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_poll_1
Mon Nov 27, 2006 @10:17 PM ET
Poll finds most Mexicans oppose protest
Mexico City - Most Mexicans disapprove of plans by Mexico's main leftist party to disrupt Friday's swearing-in ceremony of President-elect Felipe Calderon, according to a poll released Monday.
The poll, published in the El Universal newspaper, found 64 percent of those surveyed disapproved of a blockade by the leftist Democratic Revolution Party of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador while 26 percent favored the protest.
The figure indicated that even many of those who voted for Lopez Obrador disapprove of the action. Lopez Obrador is protesting official results showing him with 35 percent of the vote on July 2, just behind Calderon.
Lopez Obrador claims fraud and dirty campaign tactics were responsible for Calderon's narrow victory. Lopez Obrador's supporters have vowed to block the inauguration of Calderon but have not specified how they plan to do so. Lopez Obrador has sworn himself in as Mexico's "legitimate" president and set up a parallel government whose main mission is to impede Calderon's administration.
Pollsters conducted 1,010 face-to-face interviews across Mexico from Nov. 18-23. The poll had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061125/ts_afp/uspoliticsmilitarygatesnicaragua_061125093707
A Cold War hawk, Gates advocated bombing Nicaragua by Maxim Kniazkov
Sat Nov 25, 2006 @4:40 AM ET
Washington (AFP) - The man nominated by President George W. Bush to be the next US secretary of defense recommended in the 1980s overt military action against Nicaragua, including air strikes and a naval quarantine of its ports, according to a document made public here.
Former top US spymaster Robert Gates outlines these proposals -- and his general views on confronting threats around the world -- in a December 14, 1984, memorandum to his boss, then- Central Intelligence Agency director William Casey, that was released Friday by the National Security Archive.
Gates was tapped by Bush to replace defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the wake of the November 7 election, in which Republicans, facing voter discontent over the war in Iraq, lost control of Congress to Democrats.
The president has described his pick as "an agent of change" at the Pentagon. But the declassified memorandum shows Gates to be a proponent of a no-holds-barred approach to foreign policy, advocate of covert and overt military action with little appetite for diplomatic niceties.
The document begins with a bitter overview of US foreign policy setbacks in Cuba, Vietnam and Angola and complains that "half measures, half-heartedly applied, will have the same result in Nicaragua."
Acknowledging the covert US aid to Nicaraguan "contras" was not having the desired effect, Gates writes that the US goal should now be "overtly to try to bring down the regime" led by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.
Ortega, who was voted out of power in Nicaragua in 1990, won the presidential post back earlier this month. But in 1984, Gates proposed a four-point plan to wipe out what he described as "a second Cuba in Central America."
It called for launching US air strikes "to destroy a considerable portion of Nicaragua's military build-up," particularly tanks and helicopters. These air raids were to be accompanied by a verbal warning to Cuba and the Soviet Union that the United States would not allow any more deliveries of such weapons to Managua.
To make good on this promise, Washington was to consider tougher economic sanctions against the Sandinista regime, possibly including a naval blockade of its ports, according to Gates, then deputy director of the CIA.
The plan also recommended switching US diplomatic recognition from the government in Managua to "a government in exile" and giving that government US "military assistance, funds, propaganda support and so forth."
There is no evidence the Gates plan had ever been acted upon by the administration of president Ronald Reagan. But his memorandum allows a rare glimpse of his political philosophy and views on use of military power.
In his writings, Gates comes off as an apparent supporter of what would later become known as "the Powell Doctrine," a concept put together by then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later secretary of state Colin Powell. The doctrine, which draws heavily from lessons of the Vietnam War, recommends either using overwhelming military force in reaching US objectives or, lacking a national consensus, refraining from any military involvement.
In line with this thinking, Gates warns his boss that "half measures will not even produce half successes" in Central America.
"If we have decided totally to abandon the Monroe Doctrine, if in the 1980s taking strong actions to protect our interests despite the hail of criticism is too difficult," the CIA spymaster writes angrily, "then we ought to save political capital in Washington, acknowledge our helplessness and stop wasting everybody's time."
The Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed in 1823 by president James Monroe, established the Western Hemisphere as a zone of special US interest in the aftermath of the break-up of the Spanish colonial empire.
Gates's nomination is to be approved by the Senate, and the Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled a hearing into the matter for December 5.
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http://www.workers.org/2006/us/native-immigration-1130/
Published Nov 22, 2006 12:34 AM
A Native view of immigration
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The following talk was given by Mahtowin Munro, a member of the Lakota Nation and co-leader of United American Indians of New England (UAINE), at a Nov. 18 Boston Workers World Party forum entitled “The Struggle for Indigenous sovereignty and immigrant rights.”
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I am going to be talking about immigration tonight from a North American Native viewpoint. Many of us who are Native to this country have been outraged as our sisters and brothers from Mexico, Central America and South America have come under increasing attack by the right wing. We are deeply alarmed by the existence of white vigilante groups such as the Minutemen, and by the stated intention of the U.S. government to build a wall separating the U.S. from Mexico.
As Indigenous peoples, we have no borders. We know that our sisters and brothers from Mexico, Central America and South America have always been here and always will be.
The immigrant nation that is the U.S. has a short memory and is in denial of its historical facts. This government is descended from immigrants who came here and took our lands and resources, either by force, coercion or dishonesty, and banned the religions, languages and cultures of the original Indigenous peoples of this continent.
In the various discussions of so-called “illegal immigrants,” one historical fact is always overlooked: America’s own holocaust directed against African and Native people, carried out by uninvited foreigners who came to these shores and took everything they could. Surely the deaths of tens of millions of Native and African people at the hands of marauding, manipulative European immigrants during a 400-year span should be worth bearing in mind.
U.S. history brims over with brutal, bloody instances of inhuman European immigrant actions that are far removed from the basic aspirations so often associated with today’s immigrants. The undocumented workers today in this country dream of a better life and seek to escape the poverty and repression engendered by U.S. imperialism. Unlike the earlier immigrants and the perpetual forces they set into motion, I highly doubt that today’s immigrants are plotting to seize others’ property, kill babies and earn bounties based on body parts brought back from raids.
Consider that, in the late 1630s, the British wiped out nearly every man, woman and child of the powerful Pequot tribe of southern New England in retaliation for conflicts arising out of fur-trade struggles. A few years later, Dutch authorities in charge of the settlement of “New Netherland” on the island of Manhattan carried out nighttime raids against the local Indigenous people, where infants were torn from their mothers’ breasts and hacked to pieces in the presence of their parents. Legislation approved in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England in the 1700s authorized bounty payments for scalps or heads of Indians, young and old.
As it turns out, the immigrant authorities were just beginning their efforts to obliterate “the savages,” as American history chronicles.
Some of the best-known names in American history are dripping with prejudice and arrogance aimed at Native people. Not only did Thomas Jefferson—a holder of hundreds of Black men, women, and children—live a life of ease on his great plantation as a result of that slave labor. He also was convinced that the best solution in dealing with Native peoples was to drive all of us west of the Mississippi.
The war-hero president, Andrew Jackson, was one of the most despicable Indian-haters on record. He made no bones about his racism and championed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the Cherokee and other southeastern Native peoples from their homes and caused thousands of them to die on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.
The 19th century in particular is rife with accounts of the foreign intruders’ invasions of Indian country, especially in the Southeast and West, and the carnage that resulted. The December 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee of over 300 unarmed Lakota children, women and men by the U.S. Army is perhaps the best-known of what were countless massacres carried out by the immigrants and their army.
The wholesale abuse of Native peoples continues to this day, and it springs from the same destructive capitalist practices that were brought here by foreigners long ago.
As I listen to some people call other people “illegal” immigrants, I often wonder: How could it possibly be that their ancestors were considered to be “legal” while so many immigrants now are considered “illegal”?
These comparisons between past and present miss a crucial point. So few restrictions existed on immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries that there was no such thing as “illegal immigration.”
For instance, the government excluded less than 1 percent of the 25 million European immigrants who landed at Ellis Island before World War I, and those mostly for health reasons.
We begin with a simple fact: We Native peoples had no immigration policies. When the Europeans began arriving and stealing our land from us and massacring our people, we did not have them take a citizenship test. We did not have them pass through Ellis Island. We did not have quotas for how many could come into the country. So, when did the U.S. begin to have immigration policies, and what were those policies?
For many years, whiteness was the prerequisite for citizenship. The first naturalization law in the United States, the 1790 Naturalization Act, restricted naturalization to “free white persons” of “good moral character” once they had resided in the country for a specified period of time.
The next significant change in the scope of naturalization law came following the Civil War in 1870 when the law was broadened to allow African Americans, whose ancestors had been forced to immigrate here in slave ships, to become naturalized citizens.
During the 1800s, male Chinese immigrants were excluded from citizenship but not from living in the United States, because their labor was needed by the big railroads. Female Chinese immigration was severely curtailed. Congress in 1882 passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was a virtual ban on further Chinese immigration. The Chinese immigration ban was not repealed until the 1940s. In the early 1900s, Japanese immigration was limited as well, but the Japanese government continued to give passports to the Territory of Hawaii, where many Japanese resided. (At that time, Hawaii was not yet a U.S. state.) Once in Hawaii, it was easy for Japanese to continue on to settlements on the West Coast, if they so desired.
An 1882 law banned the entry of “lunatics” and infectious disease carriers. After President William McKinley was assassinated by a second-generation immigrant anarchist, Congress enacted in 1901 the Anarchist Exclusion Act to exclude known anarchist agitators. A literacy requirement was added in the Immigration Act of 1917.
During the 1920s, the U.S. Congress established national quotas on immigration. The quotas were based on the number of foreign-born residents of each nationality who were already living in the United States.
In 1924, the Johnson-Reid Immigration Act limited the numbers of southern European immigrants. Italians were considered not “white” enough and an anarchist menace. The numbers of Eastern Europeans were also limited because Jews, who made up a large part of those leaving that area, were not “white” enough and were considered to be a Bolshevik menace.
I should mention that we Native people were “naturalized” and “granted” citizenship by the U.S. government in 1924.
In 1932 President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the State Department essentially shut down immigration during the Great Depression.
In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act revised the quota system again. This act removed overt racial barriers to citizenship but solidified inequalities. Most of the quota allocation went to immigrants from Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany who already had relatives in the United States.
This law was also particularly aimed at preventing socialist, communist or other progressive immigrants from entering the country. The anti-”subversive” features of this law are still in force.
During all these years, the entire Western Hemisphere, including Mexico, was exempted from immigration regulations. That changed in 1965 with the Hart-Cellar Act, which abolished the system of national-origin quotas.
A last-minute political compromise introduced, for the very first time, quotas for Mexico and the rest of the Western Hemisphere. This law racialized “illegal aliens.” A hierarchy of those deemed worthy and those deemed unworthy of becoming an “American” became increasingly deeply rooted.
Several pieces of legislation signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996 marked a turn towards harsher policies for both legal and “illegal” immigrants. These acts vastly increased the categories for which immigrants, including green card holders, can be deported. As a result, well over 1 million individuals have been deported since 1996.
In short, the notion of “illegal aliens” is a construct, an invention of the racist U.S. ruling class. The dominant powers for centuries codified Indigenous, African, Chinese and other people as essentially not “American.” The revolting use of the word “illegal” as a noun is a linguistic way of dehumanizing people and reducing individuals to their alleged infractions against the law.
I do not have time tonight to discuss the details of the economic and social conditions created by U.S. imperialism and neoliberalism that have forced our sisters and brothers from Mexico and many other countries to come to the U.S.
The United States is the true culprit in this situation through the robbery of the Mexican people, which began with the theft of their land and has continued with economic policies like NAFTA, which have destroyed the economy that sustained thousands of families, forcing them into exile and particularly into emigrating to the U.S.
As an aside, I want to explain what I mean when I say that the U.S. government stole land from the Mexican people, because this is rarely discussed in school or anywhere else. First of all, the land of course belongs rightfully to Indigenous peoples. Later, the various colonial governments claimed territory.
The “Mexican Cession” is a historical name for the region of the present-day southwestern United States that was ceded to the U.S. by Mexico in 1848 under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo following the Mexican-American War. The cession of this territory from Mexico was a condition for the end of the war, as U.S. troops occupied Mexico City and Mexico risked being completely annexed by the U.S.
The United States also paid the paltry sum of $15 million for the land, which was the same amount it had offered for the land prior to the war. Under great duress, Mexico was forced to accept the offer.
The region of the 1848 “Mexican Cession” includes all of the present-day states of California, Nevada and Utah, as well as portions of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. Note that the United States had already claimed the huge area of Texas in its Texas Annexation of 1845.
So we see that the U.S. literally stole millions of acres of land from the Mexican people, then established arbitrary borders such as the Rio Grande, and now hunts down those who dare to cross those borders.
The U.S. government has now escalated its war against the Mexican people, whether they are in Mexico or in its Diaspora, by approving $2.2 billion to begin construction of what is to be a $6 billion apartheid wall between the two countries.
At the same time, massive raids are being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. In cities across the country, ICE is trying to push immigrant workers further underground and scare them away from organizing and fighting for their rights.
Local and state governments, most notably in Pennsylvania and Arizona, have been passing vicious anti-immigrant legislation. I just read on the Internet the other night that the Bush administration and the Justice Department now claim the right to hold any non-U.S. citizen indefinitely, without the right to a trial in a civilian court.
In recent years, we have also seen how attacks against even documented immigrants, particularly Muslims, have been carried out under the guise of “homeland security.”
So all in all, there is a calculated attempt to create a thoroughly intimidating and threatening climate for immigrant workers, especially the undocumented.
Further, racists continue to push their “English-only” campaigns and to oppose bilingual education. I feel outraged by these “English-only” campaigns. Is English the Native language of this country? Generations of Native people were beaten for speaking their Indigenous languages and forced to learn English. Instead of English-only, maybe we should be insisting that people speak Mayan or Cherokee or Wampanoag.
Well, things were looking pretty bleak for a while. It had appeared that the capitalist ruling class and its representatives in the U.S. government had the upper hand completely, and that the mass struggle was dormant.
But then came the magnificent immigrant rights demonstrations of last spring. These were led by workers from Mexico and Central America and South America, but they were joined by Caribbean, Asian, African and other allies. This development shook the ruling class. It frightened and deeply worried them. It gave a glimpse, even in the midst of periods of reaction, of the crucial struggles that are on the horizon.
Step by step, day by day, this movement will grow. The government can pass anti-immigrant laws but those laws will be repealed in the streets. It was the earlier heroic struggles of immigrants in the U.S. that led to the historic International Women’s Day as well as May Day. Without a doubt, immigrants will make that kind of history again.
Let’s ask some basic questions here: Why does the U.S. need immigrant workers? This country depends on immigrants being the most exploited workers, the ones who work in sweatshops and keep the luxury hotels running.
Without immigrant labor, the economy would collapse. So why the witch hunt? To drive immigrants further underground and to manipulate this reserve army of labor. The corporations want to super-exploit immigrant workers. They just don’t want to be responsible for paying them the value of their labor or for providing benefits, services and basic democratic rights.
The corporations and the government are using the anti-immigrant legislation to mask the truth about the crisis looming for U.S. workers and the huge financial debt of the government.
This criminalization is also aimed at the rising tide of change developing throughout Latin and South America, from Venezuela to Oaxaca and Chiapas, a tide of resistance like that of the people of Cuba to U.S. global policies.
Capitalism thrives on the scapegoating of certain groups of people, which they use to try and divide us as workers. They want to keep us divided amongst each other because they want to prevent us from uniting to fight back against their bloody-handed system.
This is not the first time that immigrants have been scapegoated. Irish immigrants of the mid-1800s were vilified. During the 1800s, Chinese workers in the western part of the U.S. were subject to the most virulent racism, including lynching, and endured the most brutal working conditions.
From World War I until the 1920s, the government conducted anti-Jewish and anti-Italian reactionary attacks, including the Palmer Raids. Former President Theodore Roosevelt and many other prominent citizens of his era proclaimed their fears that the Anglo-Saxon was an endangered species due to immigration and to higher birth rates among the immigrants.
On the West Coast, Japanese immigrants were interned in concentration camps during World War II, and there were widespread police attacks on Chican@ youth in California during the same era.
The current attacks against immigrants must be seen as attacks on all workers. This current assault on immigrants is just another tactic—like racism, homophobia and sexism—that the ruling class uses to pit workers against each other. The only winners when this happens are the bosses.
Native people have dealt for centuries with the terrorism of the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and other colonizing governments. I urge all of you here tonight to consider the knowledge that we have gained during that time. If we had unified early on, worked together rather than as separate nations, we may have prevailed and pushed the Europeans right back into the Atlantic Ocean.
When we unite struggles, when we build a movement, we must have sensitivity for each other’s struggles. We must respect the right to self-determination of all oppressed nations. That means, for example, that only Indigenous peoples can decide what our goals are in the struggle and how we should best fight to achieve those goals. But others can help and support us while having respect for our leadership, and this is what happens at National Day of Mourning. And we cannot subordinate the fight against racism to any other struggle. That is at least in part why today’s antiwar summit in Harlem is so important.
At the same time, while we are involved in the struggle, we learn about each other, and learn to trust each other, and become internationalist in our outlook.
That is the kind of unity perspective we will bring to the streets on December 1. That is the kind of unity perspective that we bring to the antiwar movement—and I want everyone now to mark the date of March 17 in your brain, because that will be an international day of action for the fourth anniversary of the U.S. war against the people of Iraq.
The things we seek, such as self-determination and sovereignty for the oppressed, an end to killer cops and racism and war and the oppression of LGBTQ people, full rights for disabled people, jobs and education, can never be fully realized under capitalism, a system that is centered on exploiting people and resources and making a profit.
Reforms help a little, but we need a whole lot more than reforms. We don’t need a little less police brutality; we must put an end to it! We don’t need a little more money in our minimum wage paychecks; we need a living wage, and free healthcare, and affordable housing for all! Youth and students shouldn’t have to join the Army to be all that they can be; they need a real future! Rather than reforms, what we need is to commit ourselves to making a revolution together!
We cannot allow ourselves to be fooled by the elections. We have been told for decades that we must put our faith in the bourgeois elections and in the Democratic Party, which supposedly will show us the kinder, gentler face of capitalism.
Didn’t the Democrats vote for this war, and all the other wars? Wasn’t it Bill Clinton and the other Democrats who happily gutted programs such as welfare, food stamps, college education grants and so many others?
Have the Democrats freed Mumia Abu-Jamal or Leonard Peltier? The Democrats represent the same class interests of the big bosses and corporations as the Republicans do. Regardless of who has won an election, millions around the world will continue to live in misery because of U.S. imperialism.
And if we really want a revolution, the history of Chile and other countries has taught us clearly that the ruling class will never just quietly give up power based on elections; at some point, there’s going to be a fight.
The Democrats and Republicans alike have both feet squarely planted in the luxury liner of the big corporations and the filthy rich. I can picture them, out on their fancy cruise ship, living the high life, drinking champagne and eating oysters.
Meanwhile, all us poor and working and oppressed people are in a simple birch-bark canoe together. We look over, and we can see that their ship is named the Titanic. We know it is going to sink, baby. When they get little leaky holes in their ship, the rich get afraid and desperate, and throw more and more stones to try and sink our canoe.
Now, our bark canoe may not be as fancy as the Titanic, but it is sturdy, we have really made it well, and there is room for all of us on it. Every now and then, somebody tries to have one foot in the Titanic, and one foot in the canoe. The boats go their separate ways, and that person falls into the water and drowns. We all have to choose one boat or the other, the Titanic or the canoe. Which one will you choose?
Sisters and brothers, the map of the world is colored with the patterns of our ancestors’ spilled blood. I believe that someday we can make a new map of the world together, a map that does not have borders among workers. Ultimately we will take back everything that is rightfully ours, everything that was stolen from us and built by the blood and sweat of our ancestors.
But in order to do that, we must be highly organized and have a plan of action, because the ruling class knows perfectly well how to join ranks against us. What is required is a new movement of unity, solidarity and resistance in all parts of the world. Workers World Party is and will continue to be in the forefront of that new movement and we invite you to join us.
Our future, and the very future of our Mother Earth, requires us to struggle toward a socialist future. The threats to life in this country and around the globe demand from all of us a new way of thinking, acting and being. We must come together in unity to fight against this vicious government and the corporations that control it. Together, we can build a new movement, the likes of which this country has never seen before!
Sisters and brothers, this is OUR world. Let’s work together to take it back!
Free Leonard! Free Mumia! Ho!
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http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=fb9ff1320023380008a9543e7ddcd071
Latino Candidates Make History on National, State, Local Levels
Vida en el Valle, News Report, Juan Esparza, Nov 21, 2006
FRESNO -- Assembly Speaker Fabián Núñez already knew that voters in his Los Ángeles district would re-elect him Tues. Nov. 7 because he had the luxury of running unopposed.
The 39-year-old Núñez, however, reacted with delight at election results that showed the five state bond measures pass, Democrats hold on to their state seats, and a Democratic tidal wave throughout the country that also bode well for Latino candidates.
"We held on to our seats," said Núñez during a telephone interview the Friday following the election.
Although Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante lost the Insurance Commissioner race to Silicon Valley millionaire Steve Poizner and Angelides was swept aside by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Núñez pointed out that the successes of state Sen. Debra Bowen.
Appointed Republican incumbent Bruce McPherson, said Núñez, was a "very well-liked man" but lost the Secretary of State post to Bowen. Plus, Republican Tom McClintock, who earned respect from conservative Republicans during the recall election, failed in his bid for Bustamante's old seat, falling to John Garamendi.
Núnez believes California can set an example for the rest of the country with its bipartisanship relation between a Republican governor and a Democrat-controlled state Senate and Assembly.
"Voters don't want us digging in our heels," said Núñez. "They want government to solve problems. That is why they decided to give the power of the government to the Democrats."
Núñez said the Assembly Republicans' election of Clovis' Mike Villanes, a noted conservative, as their leader shouldn't pose a problem if he is willing to work with Schwarzenegger and Democrats.
"I hope he signs on to the same agenda," said Núñez. "He can be conservative as long as he's willing to get things done."
Latinos make a difference
Election Day resulted in key wins on the national level for several Latinos. First, Sen. Robert Menéndez, a Democrat who was appointed to the New Jersey seat, held off a strong challenge from Republican Thomas Kean Jr. to win his first full term.
Meanwhile, the new House of Representatives will have 23 Latinos: 19 Democrats and three Republicans (a runoff in Texas pits incumbent Republican Henry Bonilla against former Congressman Ciro Rodríguez).
In New México, Bill Richardson — who is being considered as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2008 — won re-election as governor.
California had a net loss of one Latino in the state Legislature, but Latinos gained seats on state Legislatures elsewhere, according to an analysis by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO).
Setback in Arizona
In Arizona, about half of the Latinos who voted supported a successful ballot measure that makes English the state's official language. The measure also requires that government functions be conducted in English. Immigrant rights advocates said Latino support for the measure isn't a swipe against immigrants, but rather reflects a feeling that people ought to speak English in the U.S.
"Even the immigrants who can't vote know they have to speak English to prosper,' said Lydia Guzmán, chairwoman for the Coalition for Latino Political Action.
Close races in California
In addition to Nicole Parra's close win over Danny Gilmore in the San Joaquín Valley's 30th Assembly District, there were a couple of other close races involving Latino candidates.
Former Assemblymember Lou Correa was locked in a close race against Assemblymember Lynn Daucher in the 34th state Senate race. With absentee ballots still remaining to be counted, Daucher had 40,433 votes to Correa's 50,072.
Meanwhile, Assemblymember Bonnie García, R-Cathedral City, squeaked past challenger Steve Clute, 28,010 votes to 26,875.
Incumbents who won re-election to the state Senate included Dean Flórez, Gilbert Cedillo, Gloria Romero and Denise Moreno Ducheny, all Democrats.
Elected to the state Senate were Alex Padilla, Jenny Oropeza, Ron Calderón and Gloria Negrete McLeod. Also winning seats on the state Assembly were incumbents Alberto Torrico, Joe Coto, Juan Arámbula, Pedro Nava, Fabián Núñez, Héctor De La Torre, and Lori Rae Saldaña.
Also elected for the first time were Richard Alarcón, Kevin De León, Tony Mendoza, Ed Hernández, Charles M. Calderón, Nell Soto, José Solorio, and Mary Salas.
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