NewsTaco

By Kent Hoover, Austin Business Journal

Celebrity advocates are common on Capitol Hill, but actressEva Longoria was more than just a pretty face at a Senate hearing on “Strengthening the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem for Minority Women.” The “Desperate Housewives” star not only is an entrepreneur herself — Longoria owns two restaurants and manages her own production company — she’s also launched a foundation to help other Latinas start and grow their own businesses.

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[Photo by Barack Obama]

By Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times

A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Thursday proposed adding an American Latino Museum to the National Mall, saying it’s time to recognize the growing public role and power of the Hispanic population in the U.S.

The bill would designate the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building — the red, original Smithsonian building known colloquially in Washington as “the castle” — as the site of the new museum.

The museum would have to be built through private funds.

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By Delaney Hall, Laitno USA

Meet the Garza sisters. Playing Tex-Mex Conjunto music publicly used to be the sole domain of men…till sisters Lala and Marcella took up the accordion and the drums. They’re back on the scene after many years. Delaney Hall brings us this story from Stories from Deep in the Heart.

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This article was first published in Latino USA.

Delaney Hall is a radio producer and multimedia reporter in Austin, TX. She’s the lead producer of the Austin Music Map, a community documentary project based at KUTX and produced in collaboration with the Association of Independents in Radio and Zeega.

[Photo courtesy Latino USA]

By Nadine Natour, NBCLatino

This is the second installment of Latinas empowering other Latinas to succeed in honor of Women’s History Month. 

For ten high school girls enrolled in the photography program Las Fotos Project, the summer of 2012 was a lesson in disguise.

Rather then a host of drowsy days spent on the sidewalks of Los Angeles, they traipsed through the San Gabriel Mountains and snapped photos of rocky cliffs and lazy rivers, lilies in full bloom and vistas of the California landscape.

The group then used the same film to capture scenes in their community, edited the double exposure photographs and wrote poems to accompany the art. Finally, the girls published a bookfeaturing the photographs and presented it at a public exhibition which they personally marketed.

Founded by freelance photographer Eric Ibarra, Las Fotos Project helps its young Latina members build their photography skills and their confidence.“The program is such a unique setup,” says the 28-year-old Ibarra, who launched the club three years ago after he noticed a lack of extracurricular opportunities in the area for young girls. “They learn all these life skills almost without realizing it.”

Ibarra partners with Los Angeles organizations to find Latinas aged 11-17 who could most benefit from the experience. The girls, who often come from low-income or middle-income communities, then enroll in ten-week classes where they’re quickly taught the basics and given a personal point-and-shoot camera.

Las Fotos mentors help the students brainstorm possible field projects, with the freedom to choose any theme or landscape near the Boyle Heights headquarters. Every project ends with a community exhibit, photo book or mini-documentary.

Lizbeth Rojas, now a student at Loyola Marymount University,  joined the group at 17 and suggested the San Gabriel trip for their summer project. She says it gave her a different perspective on her East Los Angeles neighborhood.

“We feel like we have to live in a place where it has to be busy but being in the mountains is different,” says Rojas, who ultimately led the trip. “I was able to notice things. It gave me another view of the world.”Another member of the group, Ana Cortes, created a photograph of a craggy mountain scape over the facade of the East Los Angeles Municipal Courts. She captioned the photo: “We owe nature justice!”

“I took a picture of the courts because I’ve always been into law and law enforcement,” says Ana, now a freshman studying criminal justice at California State University, Los Angeles.

Cortes joined the group at 17, never having handled a film camera. She says the group made her feel more confident and stood in marked contrast to her experience at her high school.

“At school, everyone’s judging everyone ,” says Cortes. But the project, she says, was “totally different. I was shy at first but it was fun and you just felt welcome.”

The various field projects offer the students a chance to explore their community but, more often, they wind up exploring their inner selves. For one assignment, the girls were told to take photos of the most inspiring person in their life. They then fashioned the photo series into a revealing video documentary.

Las Fotos Project maintains a roster of around sixteen girls at a time, in several California locations as well as a project in Guatemala. According to Ibarra, the girls can remain in the program once they pass the 17-year-old age limit, but many go on to attend college or find work elsewhere.

Though she has aged out of the program, Ana Cortes says she still retains a love of photography. She said she plans to take photos and create a scrapbook of her family, friends and memorable events.

“It was my own idea, something to keep all the nice memories I’ve had,” says Cortes. “I’ll do it just for fun, just for me.”

This article was first published in NBCLatino.

[Photo by ric Ibarra/Las Fotos Project]

By Salud Today

Latinas who have an abnormal mammogram result take 33 days longer to reach definitive diagnosis of breast cancer than non-Hispanic white women, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Such a time delay can have a critical impact on tumor size, stage at diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, and survival of subsequent breast cancer.

For this study, published online in SpringerPlus in March 2013, IHPR researchers worked with partners in the federally funded Redes En Acción: The National Latino Cancer Network to evaluate the differences in time to diagnosis of breast cancer among 186 Latinas and 74 non-Hispanic whites who received an abnormal mammogram result in six U.S. cities.

Analysis showed that Latinas’ median time to definitive diagnosis of breast cancer was 60 days, compared to just 27 days for non-Hispanic white women.

“This long delay puts Latinas at greater risk of being diagnosed with larger tumors and more advanced-stage breast cancer, which can affect prognosis,” said Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H., the study’s corresponding author, director of the IHPR, and Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Medicine at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Given this delay and that cancer now is the leading cause of Latino death, this study also signals a greater need for ethnically and culturally appropriate interventions to facilitate Latinas’ successful entry into, and progression through, the cancer care system, Dr. Ramirez said.

Dr. Ramirez’ team recently found that extra support for patients, called “patient navigation,” can lead to faster diagnosis for Latinas after an abnormal mammogram result.

In that study, published in Cancer, women who received help from trained patient navigators had significantly shorter time delays between an abnormal mammogram and definitive diagnosis—whether positive or negative for breast cancer—than those who did not receive navigation. Services provided by navigators included culturally-sensitive support and help overcoming barriers related to transportation, child care, insurance, language and more.

This article was first published in Salud Today.

[Photo courtesy Salud Today]

By Sam Quiñones, A Reporter’s Blog

Mexican Mafia member Rafael “Cisco” Munoz-Gonzalez was sentenced to life in prison today.

Munoz-Gonzalez was tried on charges that he’d controlled the Puente 13 street gang, ordering gang members to tax local drug dealers in the La Puente area, sell methamphetamine, and attack rivals and even one cooperating witness, who was stabbed 22 times in a jail lockup — all this according to a US Attorney’s report.

His brother, Cesar, was also sentenced to life in prison for running Puente 13 and giving orders on behalf of Cisco, who was locked up until 2008.

The Mexican Mafia prison gang has run its drug-dealer taxation/extortion scheme since the early 1990s. The scheme is as close as Southern California has come to a regional organized crime system.

Truth is, though, it’s not that organized. It’s remarkable that these guys can control Southern Califonria Latino street gangs from prison. The system has broken up the SoCal gang world into little fiefdoms. But it is far from perfect, communication between maximum-security prison cells and the streets being shaky at best.

That and the greed and conniving of Eme members often leads to feuding, plotting, death decrees and betrayal of the kind that would give Shakespeare fodder for a dozen more tragedies.

Cisco Munoz-Gonzalez was part of an earlier Mexican Mafia soap opera. He and Ralph “Perico” Rocha, also an Eme member, were allegedly feuding with the associates of then-influential Eme member, Jacques “Jacko” Padilla, who ran Azusa 13 from his maximum-security cell at Corcoran State Prison.

Rocha and Munoz were supposedly collecting taxes from dealers in Azusa.

Padilla’s wife and liaison to the streets, Delores “Lola” Llantada, went to war with the two carnales. Women liaisons with jailed Eme members have enormous shot-calling power across Southern California. On a couple occasions, I’ve thought they were as powerful as the local mayor.

But this was the first example I’m aware of in which a woman actually ordered hits.

Anyway, a big RICO case came down, brought against Llantada and others in her crew.

Llantada and her cohorts are now doing lengthy prison terms. Padilla has since dropped out of the Eme, and is a genial chap, as I found when I interviewed him a couple years ago.

Now the brothers Munoz-Gonzalez are going away forever.

As the world turns, Mexican Mafia style.

This article was first published in A Reporter’s Blog.

[Photos courtesy A Reporter's Blog]

By Salud Today

About 40% of Latinas have two or more risk factors for having a heart attack, according to a recent study.

But fewer than half of Latinas recognize the typical heart attack symptoms of chest pain, shortness of breath, and pain that spreads to the shoulders, neck or arms, according to the American Heart Association.

So the Haga La Llamada, ¡No Pierda Tiempo! campaign, based on the HHS Office of Women’s Health’s successful “Make the Call, Don’t Miss a Beat” campaign, aims to educate, engage and empower Latinas and their families to learn the seven most common symptoms of a heart attack and encourage them to call 9-1-1 as soon as they experience one or more of the following heart attack symptoms:

• Chest pain, discomfort, pressure or squeezing
• Shortness of breath
• Nausea
• Light-headedness or sudden dizziness
• Unusual upper body pain, or discomfort in one or both arms, back, shoulder, neck, jaw, or upper part of the stomach
• Unusual fatigue
• Breaking out in a cold sweat

You’re also invited to join @HHSLatino for a bilingual Twitter Chat on Latino heart health at 2 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 28. Use #CorazonChat to follow the conversation and submit questions ahead of time. The chat also involves @WomensHealth, @SaludDLaMujer, @American_Heart, @MinorityHealth, @US_FDA, and@FDAenEspanol.

Find other resources in Spanish that contain the seven symptoms here or here.

This article was first published in Salud Today.

[Photo courtesy Salud Today]

By Andrew Zajac & Hans Nichols, Bloomberg

Edith Ramirez, a campaign official for President Barack Obama and one of his law school classmates, will be named as head the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, where she has been a commissioner for almost three years, according to a White House official.

Ramirez, 44, an intellectual property lawyer, served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 and 1991 when Obama was its president. In 2008, Ramirez, who is Mexican-American and bilingual, was the Obama campaign’s Latino outreach director in California. She has been on the commission since April 2010.

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[Photo courtesy law.harvard.edu]

By Viviana Hurtado, The Wise Latina Club

In 1965, 25,000 people marched to Montgomery, Alabama to help pass the Voting Rights Act. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court, including Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, heard arguments on a section of this historic legislation with their decision having a big impact on the Latino vote.

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[Photo by Mrs. Gemstone]

By Elaine Ayala, San Antonio Express-News

62 percent of all the degrees earned annually by Hispanics are earned by Latinas.

Why have Latinos fallen behind? It’s complicated but, in part, the rising costs of higher education are colliding with higher divorce rates and the ever-present machismo.

In this climate, boys feel more pressure to stop going to school (where they’re spending or borrowing money) and start working.

Click on picture to read full story.

[Photo by America Redefined]

By Kacy Capobres, Fox News Latino

Sarai Sierra, a 33-year-old wife and mother, has not been heard from since Jan. 21, the day she was set to return home from a three-week-long trip to Turkey. Sierra, who is Puerto Rican, was traveling alone.

Click on picture to read story.

[Photo courtesy andiuru]

By Stephanie Nolasco, Fox News Latino

A recent report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals binge drinking is a major issue among women and young girls. Between the years 2001-2005 alone, more than half of the average 23,000 yearly deaths among women were due to excessive drinking.

Click on picture to read story.

[Photo by Tor Lindstrand]

By Bryan Llenas, Fox News Latino

Click on picture to read story.

[Photo by Minnesota National Guard]

By Hilda Solis, U. S. Secretary of Labor

It has been an honor to be your secretary of labor. Today, as I prepared to say farewell, I decided that I wanted to share my experience through journeys, and through beginnings and endings, because that reflects what’s in my mind, and more importantly, what is in my heart at this present moment.

Thirty-two years ago—after only a year in Washington—I left my job in President Carter’s administration. Wanting to say something meaningful about what I learned as that job was ending, I wrote a letter to incoming President Regan that appeared in the Hispanic Link News Service.  I had forgotten all about it until a recent reprint by Hispanic Link.

In the letter, I told President Reagan about what I did in the White House, and why I thought it was important.  I also told him a little about myself, including the story of how I got that job.

While I was in graduate school, I filled out dozens of applications for internship positions at every level of government. Almost as a lark, I also sent a letter to the White House.  A staffer for President Carter read my résumé and called my parents’ home in La Puente, California. I was outside in our vegetable garden when my father hollered out to me: “Phone call for you. Someone who claims he’s from the Casa Blanca.”

I ran so fast that I knocked over a table lamp and shattered it. My mother, whom I love dearly, can attest to the truth of that story, and to this day, she still tells my husband how much she liked that lamp.

I’m sharing this story not just because it is about my coming to Washington for the first time—and leaving Washington for the first time—but, rather, it reflects my continuous, lifelong passion, and obvious excitement, for public service.

It’s the same passion that I share with my colleagues at the Labor Department.  We don’t do what we do for the money, or the glory; we do it because public service is the very best way to make your own, unique contribution to the world.  Leaders may change, circumstances may change, but our service must be constant. It forms an unbreakable bond between ourselves and our communities, our country and the people we care about.

We are all on a journey of service.  Yesterday, in an outstanding inaugural speech that mentioned Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall, the president gave us a map for that journey of service.  He said it is our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began and to make the values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American.

We know that there will be challenges on this journey—there always are.  But there is also a true path.  And we’ve been on that path for the past four years at the U.S. Department of Labor.

During that time, we have done more for more of our nation’s working families.

• We have funded more job training programs that have enhanced the skills of more than 1.7 million people.
• We have conducted more wage and hour investigations and collected more back wages for more than 300,000 people.
• We modernized Unemployment Insurance benefits so that it could provide a lifeline to more people.
• And—quite simply—and I say this with pride, satisfaction and immense gratitude: we have saved more workers’ lives.

Our record of achievement has been remarkable.  But there is still so much more we have to do. And I’m counting on the colleagues I leave behind to do it.  And to do more.

It is incredibly hard for me to say goodbye.  I struggled with this decision for a long time, but I am guided by the words of a poem I studied in La Puente High School called “Four Quartets” by T.S. Elliot, and here’s my favorite line:

“To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.“

Today is really a beginning for me.

This article was first published in Work in Progress, Department of Labor Blog.

[Photos by The White House,  US Department of Labor]