Immigration Sweeps Stir Protests in So. California
El Norte Digest
NCM, Compiled and edited by Marcelo Ballve, Posted: Jun 12, 2003
Traducción al Español
Immigration Sweeps Stir Protests in So. California
In a push to detain and deport undocumented migrants, federal agents carried out immigration sweeps in residential neighborhoods and on public transportation in Southern California, triggering protests by Latinos.
On June 12, Los Angeles Spanish-language daily La Opinión carried a front-page item on detentions in the city of San Juan Capistrano, where more than 400 people gathered at a local church to denounce the crackdown. They also asked a federal immigration official who was present to halt the sweeps.
In the last week, U.S. agents arrested and detained at least 20 people from city streets, according to the Mexican Consul Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro in nearby Santa Ana.
In San Diego, immigrant rights groups were enraged that federal immigration agents were combing residential neighborhoods for undocumented migrants and also were boarding public transportation to ask people for their papers, according to left-leaning Mexico City daily La Jornada in its June 2 edition. Christian Ramírez of the American Friends Service Committee told the paper his group had received reports of 45 such raids.
Until recently, U.S. authorities said they focused on deporting migrants with criminal records and halting human smuggling. But La Jornada cited U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Raúl Villarreal, who said the expanded immigration raids were part of the new strategy under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Latino rights groups also complain of racial profiling in a wave of immigration raids in Southern California airports since Sept. 11, saying that passengers with a Latino appearance were targeted.
Pressure on Water Builds in California Fields
In California's Central Valley, one key water district that covers an area nearly the size of Rhode Island faces such intense pressure on its water resources that civic leaders fear farm towns may fade away, reports Fresno bilingual weekly Vida en el Valle.
A June 11 editorial by the paper's editor Juan Esparza Loera described the dire economic situation in cities such as Mendota, Huron and San Joaquín, affected by a plan to retire farmland from production to save water. Less than expected water deliveries already have placed pressure on farms in the district, where unemployment hovers around 30 percent, the paper said.
The Westlands Water District, encompassing prime farmland in the Central Valley, plans to take 200,000 acres out of production because of inefficient irrigation, Vida en el Valle reported.
Local leaders say insufficient money is being allocated as compensation, and that the U.S. government backed out of promises to build a drainage system and so should offer aid, Vida en el Valle reports.
The plan's critics say migrant farmworkers will feel the impact first and
will join theranks of the unemployed or leave the area.
Since local economies depend on migrant field workers and their cash, the region is in trouble. "You will see a number of vacant business facilities in our business district and many more throughout the city," Mendota Chamber of Commerce President Anthony Martínez was quoted as saying.
New York Latino Columnist Takes Aim at Lula
A prominent New York City Latino columnist took aim at Brazil's popular new president, predicting that the unbridled enthusiasm with which progressives throughout the Americas now applaud him will soon fade away.
While President Luiz Inacio da Silva, or Lula, is a former trade union leader and nominally a leftist who makes social justice his priority, he has promised the world and delivered nothing in his first six months in office, wrote Vicky Pelaez, a left-leaning columnist at El Diario/La Prensa, the city-oldest Spanish-language daily.
Lula's zero-hunger program has so far amounted to nothing, and the left wing of his party seethes at his pro- free market fiscal reforms, she wrote in the June 10 column. While President Lula has been cozying up to the world's richest countries at the recent G-8 summit in Europe, Brazil's huge landless movement has also restarted its protests and land takeovers.
Most of Brazil's 170 million people still support Lula, but Pelaez said graffiti has started popping up in violence-ridden Brazilian slums accusing him of having sold out.
"Let's not lie to ourselves," she wrote. "Let's accept that the rightward drift of Lula is very clear and that he is doing what (former Spanish president) Felipe Gonzales did in Spain, where a leftist applied right-wing policies more efficiently than the right ever could."
Chicago Puerto Ricans Need Unity, Memory
The large Puerto Rican population in Chicago -- often overshadowed by the 1 million-strong Puerto Rican community in New York -- must strive to preserve its history and identity by building scholarly and historical institutions and by fighting to stay in its traditional neighborhoods. Those were the main themes traced by DePaul University Puerto Rican scholar Marixsa Alicea at a conference entitled "Meeting of a People: Puerto Ricans Recount their History in Chicago," according to a June 5 feature article by Chicago Spanish-language weekly Éxito.
The history of Puerto Ricans in Chicago could be summed up by one process: their constant migrations from neighborhood to neighborhood as they are pushed out by wealthier residents who brought higher rents, Alicea was quoted as saying.
The 2000 U.S. Census counted 158,000 Puerto Ricans in Illinois, the overwhelming majority in Chicago. Currently, the traditionally Puerto Rican neighborhood of Humboldt Park faces gentrification pressure, with many families moving to western suburbs, the Éxito article said.
Alicea said these forced movements "interrupt and tear apart" Puerto Rican communities made up by networks of families and friends and undermine the viability of Puerto Rican small businesses. But she said Puerto Ricans were now beginning to organize effectively to resist further gentrification.
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