Youth Charged With More Attacks on Latinos: NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/nyregion/29patchogue.html?hp

Pool photos by Ed Betz

Seven defendants in the slaying of an Ecuadorean man in Patchogue, N.Y., have been accused of attacks on other Latinos. Five of the accused — Nicholas Hausch, Christopher Overton, Jordan Dasch, Anthony Hartford and Jose Pacheco, from left — pleaded not guilty on Wednesday. Prosecutors said they believed that other teenagers were also involved in the attacks, but have not been identified by their victims.

Youth Charged With More Attacks on Latinos

By ANNE BARNARD

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — When Suffolk County prosecutors charged seven teenagers in the deadly assault on Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, in Patchogue, on Long Island, last November, one of the more disturbing accusations was that they engaged in a regular and violent pastime: hunting for Hispanics to attack.

On Wednesday, the prosecutors painted a newly detailed picture of what they said was a yearlong rampage by some of the teenagers, announcing new indictments that accuse the seven defendants in the fatal attack of assaulting or attempting to assault a total of eight other Latino men.

Prosecutors believe that many more teenagers — they are not sure how many — were involved in attacks on Hispanics in and around Patchogue, and are still at large. Investigators believe that there is a separate group of teenagers who roam Patchogue on bicycles attacking Latinos, according to a law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

"There is a lot of work still to be done," District Attorney Thomas J. Spota said, "to ensure the safety of all the people who choose to call Suffolk County home."

Five of the defendants — Christopher Overton, Anthony Hartford, Jose Pacheco, Jordan Dasch and Nicholas Hausch — pleaded not guilty in Suffolk County Criminal Court. The other two, Kevin Shea and Jeffrey Conroy, are expected to plead not guilty at arraignments next week. Not all of the defendants are charged in each case.

Jose Perez, a lawyer for LatinoJustice P.R.L.D.E.F., an advocacy group, said the new cases were "the tip of the iceberg" in a pattern of violence against Hispanics, and show that a more aggressive police response to earlier attacks could have prevented Mr. Lucero's death.

After Mr. Lucero died, many other immigrants came forward to describe attacks. Some had never been reported; others were reported to police at the time, but no one was arrested, in part because language barriers made communication difficult, Mr. Spota said.

Investigators who were searching for new suspects showed more than 20 victims photographs of more than 20 of the defendants' friends and acquaintances, but none were identified as assailants by any of the victims, the law enforcement official said.

In one of the new indictments, Mr. Pacheco and Mr. Conroy, who is accused of fatally stabbing Mr. Lucero on Nov. 8, were charged with beating Carlos Orellana on July 14, 2008.

Mr. Orellana was one of 11 Latino men who gave detailed accounts of 13 similar attacks to The New York Times for an article published this month. The cases reported in the article are now under investigation, a law enforcement official said.

On June 24, 2008, prosecutors said, a group of teenagers attacked Robert Zumba, kicked him and restrained his arms while Mr. Conroy lunged at him with a knife, cutting him.

Another man, Jose Hernandez, was attacked three times in a week in December 2007 by members of the group, prosecutors said. In one incident, they said, Mr. Conroy held a pipe in one hand and smacked it against his other palm, saying "We're going to kill you."

Lawyers for the defendants questioned how the victims could have identified their clients after so long, and suggested that prosecutors were pinning every possible assault on them.

Mr. Spota said prosecutors had considered the possibility that victims only thought they recognized the defendants because they had seen them in media coverage, and were careful to seek corroborating evidence.

The law enforcement official said that photo lineups were used to identify the suspects. In one case, Mr. Hartford, Mr. Hausch and Mr. Dasch are charged with attacking a man prosecutors identified as Petronila Fuentes Diaz on the night that Mr. Lucero was killed. A baseball cap that Mr. Diaz reported missing was found in Mr. Dasch's car, the official said.

One of the challenges, the official said, was getting teenagers who may have known of the regular attacks to come forward. A few cooperated "reluctantly" with the investigation, recounting how some of the defendants bragged of certain attacks, the official said, but "they were resentful that their friends had been caught."

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Opinion Briefing: Latin America’s Leftists: GALLUP

http://www.gallup.com/poll/113902/Opinion-Briefing-Latin-America-Leftists.aspx

January 21, 2009

Opinion Briefing: Latin America's Leftists

U.S. should respect region's political leanings, promote accountability

• Multi-country
• Business and Economy
• Governance
• Leadership
• Americas
• Latin America

by Steve Crabtree and Jesus Rios

Issue at Hand: Strengthening U.S. alliances with Latin American countries in light of the region's increasingly leftist politics.

As in other regions around the world, the United States currently has strained relations with several of Latin America's leaders and an image problem among many of its populations. The perceived failure in the 1990s of "Washington Consensus" prescriptions for market-driven reforms set the stage for a leftward shift in the region. The flag-bearer for this trend has been Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who over the past few years has fed Latin Americans a steady diet of anti-U.S. rhetoric, regularly calling for resistance against the U.S. "empire."

Obama's Stance: Barack Obama's general approach to Latin America seems to be one of cautious engagement. During last year's presidential campaign, Obama criticized the Bush administration's "negligent" policy toward Latin America, saying it is one reason "demagogues" like Chavez have been successful in the region. Obama has indicated he is willing to open a dialogue with such U.S. adversaries as Chavez and Cuba's President Raul Castro -- but he has also opposed the proposed U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, citing ongoing violence against Colombian labor leaders.

Latin Americans' Perspective: First, it's important to distinguish between Chavez's polemics and the general leftist sentiment that holds sway in most Latin American countries. Any U.S. policy toward Latin America needs to recognize that "socialism" is not a dirty word in the region -- though Chavez's conception of it is controversial.

In 2008, Gallup asked the following two questions in 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean:

• Nowadays, people in this country talk a lot about socialism and capitalism. How would you consider yourself? Would you say you are 1) more socialist than capitalist or 2) more capitalist than socialist?
• And how about this country these days? Would you say it is 1) more socialist than capitalist or 2) more capitalist than socialist?

By dividing the percentage of residents in each country who choose socialism by the percentage who choose capitalism, we get a single odds ratio describing the population's overall position and their view of their country's overall position. A ratio of 2.52 to 1, for example, means that residents are about 2½ times as likely to lean toward socialism as they are to lean toward capitalism. Figures below 1.0, on the other hand, imply that the population leans more toward capitalism than socialism overall. The same calculations were applied to residents' ratings of their country's position in the right column in the following table.

The only two countries surveyed whose residents are more likely to describe themselves as capitalist than socialist are Panama and Mexico. But perhaps the more important point is that in every country but one, residents are more likely to describe themselves as socialist than they are to say the same about their country. The sole exception is Venezuela -- not because Venezuelans don't describe themselves as socialist, but because they are just as likely to view their country that way. Overall, these results imply that, given the choice, most Latin American populations would move their countries further to the left than they currently are.

However, the socialism most Latin Americans have in mind does not necessarily correspond to the "strongman" approach Chavez has pursued. Even those who say they lean toward socialism are more likely to disapprove (42%) than approve (30%) of Chavez's leadership. In fact, in most Latin American nations, residents are far more likely to agree that their country is heading toward "a better democracy" than to say it is heading toward "a socialist revolution."

What's more, there's little evidence that Chavez has poisoned the United States' image throughout the region. It's true that in South America and Mexico (though not Central America) residents of most countries polled in 2008 were more likely to disapprove than approve of U.S. leadership. However, this is not necessarily evidence of a "Chavez effect" given the prevalence of anti-American sentiment in most global regions.

Obama -- a left-wing leader who happens to be nonwhite -- presents a completely different figure from George W. Bush; this fact alone will likely improve perceptions of U.S. leadership in Latin America. Asked in 2008 whom they preferred to see win the U.S.. election, the median level of support for Obama among Latin American countries was about three times as high as that for John McCain.

What's more, as noted previously, Venezuela's leadership didn't fare well in Latin Americans' ratings either. Among South American countries for which data are available, only in Uruguay and Venezuela itself were respondents more likely to say they approved of Venezuela's leadership than that of the United States. In Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, they were significantly less likely to do so.

Policy Implications: The prominence of Chavez and other populist leaders is as much a symptom as it is a cause of Latin America's leftward tilt. Obviously, the kind of blatant disregard for democratic checks and balances that Chavez has been accused of should meet with disapproval and penalty from the United States. But there is also a need to recognize that Latin Americans may be more willing than U.S. residents to provide more powers over to their governments in return for promises of economic security -- that this isn't a condition being forced on them, it is grounded in the legitimacy of public support. The trick is to always be cognizant of this line, respecting Latin Americans' social and political preferences while pushing for transparency and accountability in the region's leftist regimes.

Survey Methods

Results from Latin America are based on face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,000 adults, aged 15 and older, conducted August 2008-October, 2008. For results based on these total samples, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

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Comment: Take it for what it is worth... with a grain of salt and a granule of sugar.

 

Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
Key Link: http://www.NetworkAztlan.com

Immigrants becoming targets of attacks: by Ramona E. Romero ~ HNBA

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/20090125_Immigrants_becoming_targets_of_attacks.html

FERNANDO VERGARA / Associated Press

Relatives of Jose Sucuzhañay carry his coffin draped with Ecuador's flag during his funeral in Cuenca, Ecuador, last month. The real estate broker, 31, was beaten to death in Brooklyn. An FBI report details a surge in anti-Latino violence since 2003.

 

Posted on Sun, Jan. 25, 2009 Immigrants becoming targets of attacks Ramona E. Romero > is national president of the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA)   > Cristóbal Joshua Alex > is cochair of HNBA's civil rights section   > It has happened again.   > In early December, less than a month after seven teenagers brutally attacked and killed Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue, N.Y., a group of three assailants beat Jose Sucuzhañay in Brooklyn while shouting anti-Latino and antigay epithets. Three days later, Sucuzhañay, a real estate entrepreneur, became the latest Hispanic to die at the hands of attackers motivated by anti-immigrant bias and hatred.   > According to a recent FBI report on hate crimes, there has been a 40 percent surge in anti-Latino violence since 2003. Organizations that track hate crimes paint an even grimmer picture. The Southern Poverty Law Center is now tracking 888 organizations that it classifies as hate groups - including the Federation for American Immigration Reform - a rise of almost 50 percent since 2000.   > Why is this happening?   > The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports that white supremacists and other extremist groups are using the immigration debate to increase their membership and incite violence against Latinos. As the ADL has noted, "the demonization of immigrants has . . . created a toxic environment in which hateful rhetoric targeting immigrants has become routine." As was the case in the death of Lucero and Sucuzhañay, that rhetoric enables those so inclined to declare open season against Hispanics.   > Perhaps the starkest example of the link between policy debate and anti-Latino incidents is that of Suffolk County, where Lucero was lynched. The county executive, Steve Levy, is vocally anti-immigrant. He has appeared on Lou Dobbs to spread his message and, after Lucero's death, complained that the killing would be a "one-day story" had it happened elsewhere.   > Sadly, these incidents are happening elsewhere, including Schuylkill County in Pennsylvania.   > In July, Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala was attacked and killed by teens in Shenandoah. After the deadly attack, one of the perpetrators reportedly warned: "You tell your [expletive] Mexican friends to get the [expletive] out of Shenandoah . . ."   > Other parts of the country are seeing a rise in violence as well.   > In 2006, a Latino teenager was beaten and sodomized in Spring, Texas. One of his assailants was a skinhead etched with Nazi tattoos who had perpetrated at least one other attack against a Latino. That same year, Serafin Negrete, a 32-year-old Mexican immigrant, was killed in Prince William County, Va., by local teenagers engaged in "amigo shopping" - their term for attacks and robberies targeting Latinos.   > These attacks have occurred in environments where the immigration debate is heated.   > Shenandoah, where Ramirez was killed, is only minutes away from Hazleton, Pa., now infamous for its anti-immigrant ordinances. Prince William County has also adopted local anti-immigrant laws and enforcement policies. And the immigration debate rages daily in border states such as Texas.   > Our national leaders' failure to enact immigration reform has left a vacuum that many states and municipalities seek to fill by introducing anti-immigrant ordinances that create tensions between Latinos and their neighbors. In Pennsylvania alone, there have been at least 18 proposals for anti-immigrant state laws, as well as for numerous municipal ordinances.   > We predict that violence against Latinos will continue to escalate and more lives will be lost unless Congress addresses our broken immigration policy. We realize that there are many serious challenges competing for our leaders' attention. But we cannot continue to put immigration reform on the back burner while immigrants and citizens who look like immigrants are attacked and families are torn apart.   > As President Obama has said, "If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost." As the incidents of hate crimes increase, many Latinos are losing trust in our government's willingness and ability to protect us.   > Ours is a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. As our country navigates this time of crisis, neither our government nor the citizenry can stand by and allow those who rely on fear mongering to control the debate. Let's honor the best of our traditions and stand up for victims like Sucuzhañay, Lucero and Ramirez by recognizing that fair and sensible immigration reform is essential to both the security of our borders and the general welfare of the people..   > Contact Ramona E. Romero at president@hnba.com.     >

Find this article at: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/20090125_Immigrants_becoming_targets_of_attacks.html

 

Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
Key Link: http://www.NetworkAztlan.com

Lecture examines Obama's Latino appeal: Connecticut Student Paper

http://media.www.dailycampus.com/media/storage/paper340/news/2009/01/23/Focus/Lecture.Examines.Obamas.Latino.Appeal-3595642.shtml

Lecture examines Obama's Latino appeal: Connecticut Student Paper

Paresh Jha

Issue date: 1/23/09 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Carolyn Wilke

Media Credit: Carolyn Wilke

Professor Venator Santiago speaks about Obama's impact on Latinos on Thursday evening.

One would be hard pressed to flip through the channels on television and not find something Obama-related these days. The newly sworn in president may have a symbolic importance to the black community, but what about Obama's effect on other cultural groups? Last evening, UConn Political Science Professor, Venator Santiago spoke about Obama's impact on Latinos around the country, Latino involvement in the election and more at the Puerto Rican and Latin-American Cultural Center.

Santiago arrived at the center still reeling from his trip to Washington to witness the inauguration. He started off with a tidbit about attending one of the inaugural balls, where he got to see a lot of interesting people. "I hung out with J.Lo and her husband," he said, beaming. After that jovial anecdote, he addressed the matters that the listeners were anticipating.

The first noteworthy point was about the Latino vote across the nation in comparison to the last election.

"The Latino vote was still at about eight percent of the population. That means there was no change from the amount of people who voted last time." He continued to say the difference that Latinos made had to do with the proportions that voted differently. Certain demographics of the population were swayed to the Democratic ticket and proved to be instrumental in helping President Obama win certain states. The states that Santiago mentioned in particular were New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and even California.

The next point he addressed was the number of Latinos that were selected for Obama's cabinet and staff. Aside from Bill Richardson's withdrawal from consideration for secretary of commerce, Santiago stressed that Latinos still have a notable presence in Obama's team.

The appointment of Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar as secretary of the interior and Hilda Solís as secretary of labor is definitely a point of pride for the Latino community.

"The problem arises in the Senate since these individuals have moved up out of the Senate," he said, meaning that the Latino presence in the Senate has dwindled.

The rest of the discussion was more of a casual talk about other Latino politicians, the state of Cuba and Puerto Rico's statehood. The modest but extremely interested crowd participated enthusiastically when it came to the many different facets of Latino culture and were definitely drawn to the professor's charismatic and informal speech. Some of Santiago's final remarks on Obama's future were interesting as well. "Expect a more tolerant and less corrupt administration that should keep the door open for more punitive positions. In other words, he will move away from the Bush administration but keep the door open for [some of the previous institution's] stricter policies."

Angie Logreno, a 4th-semester music major, had this to say on the evening: "He was very knowledgeable and insightful. It is very important to be aware of what our [Latino] politics are and keeping track of the government."

Note: The Daily Campus has had continuous daily publication for over 50 years and has recently celebrated its 110th anniversary. In the 1970s, the University of Connecticut Board of Trustees granted The Connecticut Daily Campus its independence from the Associated Student Government and created the newspaper it is today.

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Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
Key Link: http://www.NetworkAztlan.com