Hispanic interns try to diversify audience for bird watching

*This is about shortening distances. It’s a long way from a knee-jerk “¿Andas mirando pajaritos?” to traveling the length of the western seaboard, birdwatching, making the country’s national parks accessible to U.S. Latino culture. I love the “they did what?” quality of this story. Two Latino interns learned to bird watch, to get more Latinos into birdwatching. Why not? Then again, they spent government money on this?VL

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By Charles Wohlforth, Alaska Dispatch News

Christian McWilliams and Jean Rodriguez got amazing internships. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hired them to go on a 10-week bird watching journey up the West Coast and in Alaska during the spring migration.

First they needed training — to learn to identify birds.

McWilliams and Rodriguez were not hired for their birding ability. The federal agency and a nonprofit group that recruited them wanted Spanish speakers who could spread appreciation for birds to members of Latino communities who, statistics show, use refuges and parks at percentages far below their numbers in the population as a whole. The agencies’ goal is to bring minorities to birding.

Read more NewsTaco stories on Facebook. >> 

“We’re trying to put a new face to this birding culture, trying to relate younger people and people who didn’t grow up connected to nature . . . READ MORE

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[Photo courtesy of Alaska Dispatch News]

Suggested reading

Originally published in 1928, and written by journalist Daniel Venegas, Don Chipote is an unknown classic of American literature, dealing with the phenomenon that has made this nation great: immigration. It is the bittersweet tale of a greenhorn who abandons his plot of land (and a shack full of children) in Mexico to come to the United States and sweep the gold up from the streets. Together with his faithful companions, a tramp named Pluticarpio and a dog called Suffering Hunger, Don Chipote (whose name means “bump on the head”) stumbles from one misadventure to another.

Along the way, we learn what the Southwest was like during the 1920s: how Mexican laborers were treated like beasts of burden, and how they became targets for every shyster and lowlife looking to make a quick buck. The author, himself a former immigrant laborer, spins his tale using the Chicano vernacular of that time. Full of folklore and local color, this is a must-read for scholars, students and those interested in the historical and economic roots—as well as with the humor—of the Southwestern Hispanic community. Ethriam Cash Brammer, a young poet and scholar, provides a faithful English translation, while Dr. Nicolás Kanellos offers an accessible, well-documented introduction to this important novel he discovered in 1984.

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