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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]

By Monica Langley, The Wall Street Journal

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[Photo courtesy demconvention.com]

By Bryan Llenas, Fox News Latino

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[Photo by US Department of Labor]

From the textmex obsessed imagination of Memo Nericcio

San Diego State University alum* Raquel Welch (née Jo Raquel Tejada), star of One Million Years B.C., and a regular on the Textmex Galleryblog appears here on the left. I love the way Wikipedia chronicles her memorable film work: “One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film in DeLuxe Color starring Raquel Welch and John Richardson, set in a fictional age of cavemen and dinosaurs. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions, and was a remake of the 1940 Hollywood film One Million B.C.. It recreates many of the scenes of that film (such as one in which an allosaurus attacks a tree full of children). It was marketed with the taglines “Travel back through time and space to the edge of man’s beginnings…discover a savage world whose only law was lust!” and “This is the way it was”. Location scenes were filmed on the Canary Islands in the middle of winter, in late 1965. The film was released in the United States in 1967.[2] ¶Like the original film, this remake is largely ahistorical. It portrays dinosaurs and humans living together, whereas, according to the geologic time scale, the last dinosaurs became extinct roughly 65 million years BC, and Homo sapiens (modern humans) did not exist until about 200,000 years BC. Ray Harryhausen, who animated all of the dinosaur attacks using his famous stop motion technique, has stated that he did not make One Million Years B.C. for “professors” who in his opinion “probably don’t go to see these kinds of movies anyway” (this was a comment he made for the DVD of the 1933 version of King Kong).”

Here’s an interview with Welch on her work on the movie:

This article was first published in textmex galleryblog.

William Anthony Nericcio, aka “Memo,” is the Director of San Diego State University’s ever-evolving MALAS program (The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences)–a dynamic, interdisciplinary, cultural studies graduate program located near the U.S./Mexico border. Nericcio also serves on the faculties of the Chicana/o Studies Department, the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of English and Comparative Literature at SDSU.

By Griselda Nevarez, Voxxi

Lily Eskelsen went from working in a school cafeteria to becoming a top leader at the nation’s largest advocacy group for public education.

She is currently the vice president of the National Education Association and is gearing up to compete for the NEA’s president seat. She will announce her candidacy for president at the group’s annual convention, which will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, from June 26–July 6.

If she is elected president by the NEA’s 3.2 million members, she will become the organization’s first Hispanic president. That position would also give her an even more powerful voice to advocate for Latino students.

Lily Eskelsen’s story of how she got to the NEA is filled with stories of people, especially of former students, who made an impact in her life. She recently shared her story with VOXXI.

She began by speaking about her upbringing. Her maternal grandfather is from Nicaragua, her mother is from Panama and her father served in the U.S. Army. Growing up in a military family, Eskelsen and her five siblings moved every two to three years until her father retired and they moved to Utah.

“When people ask me, ‘Where did you grow up?’ I say alphabetically or chronologically?” she said laughing.

Eskelsen’s career as an educator began when she worked as a “lunch lady” for a school cafeteria. She took that job right after graduating from high school and getting married to Ruel, who passed away in 2011 and with whom she had two sons.

Eskelsen worked in the school cafeteria for a few months before becoming an aide for a kindergarten teacher at the school. She recalled playing her guitar and singing songs with the students. A year later, when she was about to turn 20 years old, she was encouraged by the kindergarten teacher to go to college and become a teacher herself.

“That was the first time in my life an adult told me I should go to college,” she told VOXXI.

Eskelsen’s parents never went to college. In fact, her mother finished high school, but her father never completed high school. For her parents, college wasn’t something they thought of for their children.

“It wasn’t that they were against it,” Eskelsen explained. “It just wasn’t part of their history, it wasn’t part of their family.”

Lily Eskelsen on Latino education

Lily Eskelsen makes it through college

Motivated by the kindergarten teacher to go to college, Lily Eskelsen made the decision to enroll at the University of Utah. Her husband, an Army veteran, also joined her and used his G.I. Bill benefits to help pay for part of his tuition. The couple also used loans and Pell grants to cover the tuition cost. And on the weekends, they raised more money by singing in Salt Lake City bars.

Eskelsen and her husband already had their first child, Jeremy, by the time they began attending the University of Utah. She recalled pushing her son in a stroller around the university campus until her husband was out of class. She would then hand him the stroller and rush to her class. They did that for four years until they both graduated.

While most would see juggling college and being a mother as a tough task, Eskelsen describes the experience as being “probably the happiest time of my life.”

Upon graduating magna cum laude and earning a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Utah, she went back to school to earn a master’s degree in instructional technology. After that, she worked for nine years as a teacher at Orchard Elementary School in Salt Lake City before being named the Utah Teacher of the Year in 1989. A year later, she was elected president of the Utah Education Association.

Why Lily Eskelsen wasn’t taught Spanish growing up

Lily Eskelsen spent most of her teaching career working at a one-room shelter school in the middle-class suburbs of Salt Lake City. She worked there for 20 years.

Seeing that some of the students at that school were Hispanic and spoke Spanish, Eskelsen asked her mother, who emigrated to the United States from Panama in the 1950s when she got married, why she was never taught Spanish.

With tears in her eyes, her mother said there weren’t many people who spoke Spanish when she first arrived in the U.S. She said people stared at her and looked angry whenever she spoke the language in public places.

“I will not have my children speak Spanish, because I don’t want people to be angry at my children,” Eskelsen recalled her mother telling her.

That day, her mother told her she regretted not teaching her Spanish and encouraged her to learn the language. Eskelsen heeded her mother’s advice.

8-year-old boy makes impact in Lily Eskelsen’s life

One of the ways Lily Eskelsen learned Spanish is through an 8-year-old boy named Julio, whom she met while teaching at the shelter school. She described Julio as being poor and as someone who was “very angry” at his situation. His anger led him to have bad behavior in class and to be aggressive toward the other children at the shelter.

During the same time that Eskelsen met Julio, she was taking night classes to learn Spanish at a local high school. She was working on her Spanish homework one day, while she was on recess duty, when she asked Julio to help her with her homework. He agreed and spent months helping her learn Spanish after that.

Slowly, Julio began opening up and helping Eskelsen in class with the younger students.

“All of a sudden he was the teacher …  and one day I said to him, ‘You should go to college and be a teacher,’” she said. “I said it just the way the kindergarten teacher had said it to me.”

Eskelsen said Julio laughed and replied, “I ain’t gonna be no teacher. When I go to college, I’m going to be a luchador. I’m going to be a wrestler with the World Wrestling Federation.”

“I laughed and then I got tears in my eyes, because I realized he said, ‘When I go to college,’” Eskelsen said pointing out that this is the mindset all students should have regardless of their background.

Julio is now in his early 20s. Eskelsen didn’t keep in contact with him and doesn’t know if he made it to college.

“All I know is that I planted this little seed in his head and got him to say, ‘When I go to college,’” she said.

Lily Eskelsen on Global Campaign for Education

Latino students need role models

Lily Eskelsen often tells the story of Julio to highlight how the lack of encouragement to go to college coupled with not having enough role models are some of the most pressing issues Latino students are facing.

“We need to highlight those role models, because there’s nothing more powerful to a child than to see someone who looks like them, sounds like them, has a last name like them … and is successful,” she told VOXXI.

Seeing successful Hispanic role models, she added, would also help Latino students get excited about the possibilities instead of the probabilities, which she said “are not on our side.”

Compared to average students, Latino students have lower probabilities of finishing high school, going on to college, graduating from college and making as much money. Eskelsen said part of the reason why this is occurring is because the existing public school system is not designed to help Latino students succeed.

In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Lily Eskelsen to the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, a national commission whose goal is to address this and other issues that make it difficult for Latino students to succeed.

The 30-member commission is working on creating better programs for English-language learners, finding ways to train teachers in cultural competency and making college more affordable. Another critical issue the group is tackling is doing away with standardize tests that students must take to get into college. Lily Eskelsen argues that such tests have “a cultural bias” and tell little about a student’s capabilities of making it through college.

She added that the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics is one of the ways the Obama administration has been working to close the Latino education gap. She applauded Obama for it and for his announcement of the deferred action program for undocumented youth.

“To me, this is something that will always be on his report card,” she said of the federal program.

Eskelsen said although she enjoys teaching inside the classroom, working as an education advocate with the NEA has been equally rewarding. That’s because she said the organization provides her the opportunity to advocate for improvements in the pubic education system so that students, like Julio, can succeed.

“Sometimes you have to go outside of your classroom so that you can talk to politicians, the press, the parents and work with your colleagues to get what your students need inside the classroom,” she said.

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Griselda Nevárez is a reporter with Hispanic Link News Service in Washington D.C.

[Photo by NEA Today]

By CBS News

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[Photo screenshot from CBS video]

By Steven Mufson and David Nakamura, Washington Post

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[Photo By U.S. DOL]

By Mark Pazniokas, The Connecticut Mirror

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[Photo courtesy jud.ct.gov]

By Susan Saulny, New York Times

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[Photo by coloniera2]

By David Bacon, New  America Media

MADERA, Calif.–To go pick blueberries I have to get up at four in the morning. First I make my lunch to take with me, and then I get dressed for work. For lunch I eat whatever there is in the house, mostly bean tacos. Then the ritero, the person who gives me a ride to work, picks me up at 20 minutes to five.

I work as long as my body can take it, usually until 2:30 in the afternoon. Then the ritero gives me a ride home, and I get there by 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon. By then I’m really tired.

Costs of Rides, Childcare on Little Pay

I pay $8 each way to get to work and back home. Right now they’re paying $6 for each bucket of blueberries you pick, so I have to fill almost three buckets just to cover my daily ride. The contractor I work for, Elias Hernandez, hooks us up with the riteros. He’s the contractor for 50 of us farm workers picking blueberries, and I met him when a friend of my aunt gave me his number.

I’ve known Elias two years now, since the first time we worked putting plastic on the grape vines. On that job, which lasts a month, we put pieces of plastic over the vines so that it looks like an igloo. They do this so the grapes won’t burn from the frost. The grapes are almost ready to pick when we do this, but we don’t pick them. Other people come after us to do that.

I pick grapes for raisins or wine with another contractor. I’ve worked with many contractors doing many different jobs. Sometimes I work a lot with the same contractor, but sometimes it changes — it depends on how they treat me. I also try to find work that’s easier. To me the contractors are all the same, but some treat us better than others, so I go with them.

Lorena Hernandez picking blueberries

I try to find work that will allow me to make enough to pay for my lunch, ride and rent. I have a daughter, Liliana, who’s four, so I also have to make enough to pay for the babysitter. That’s why I’m picking blueberries — to support her. I pay the babysitter $8 a day, but when my aunt isn’t working, she takes care of Liliana.

Blueberries—12 Pounds Per Bucket

My daughter’s still asleep when I go to work, because we leave so early. We start working at six, so I sleep on the way myself, and wake up when we get to the field. There the contractor gives us our buckets and we wash our hands before picking the fruit. The job isn’t that difficult, and I love seeing the buckets fill up.

Right now there are a lot of blueberries on the plants, so we can make more buckets. Sometimes we return to a field as many as four times. First we pick the ripe blueberries and then go back, because the green ones continue to ripen with the heat.

Each bucket has to weigh 12 pounds. This is the second year I’ve picked blueberries, so since I don’t have much experience. I can only fill 15 or 16 buckets. When the ripe fruit is scarce, I can only pick 13. Those with more experience can do up to 20 buckets a day.

To pick a lot, you have to skip your lunch break. After a day of picking blueberries, my hands feel tired and dirty and mistreated. We immediately wash them with cold water, but later they hurt a lot. They don’t give us gloves because they say they will damage the fruit.

Good and Bad Contractors

Yadira weighs the buckets. She is fair and doesn’t give special treatment to anyone. The grower didn’t want to put anyone in this position who was related to the contractor, so that there wouldn’t be favoritism for certain workers. Elias works directly with the owner. He’s been good to work for — he always has water in the field, and he follows the law.

Yadira, the checker, weighs the buckets of berries picked by a worker

Elias one of the better contractors. He respects the rules, and everything is always on the up and up. He jokes around with us, but he does his job. I joke with him too. I tell him that if one day he doesn’t provide us with water, I’ll go to the Farm Workers Union or Cal OSHA.

Some contractors know how to treat their workers and others don’t. That’s when you change jobs, when you see how a contractor treats you. Some only need men in their crews, so we women have to look elsewhere for work. We know how contractors are because other workers tell us, so we avoid the bad ones.

In general, the contractors I’ve worked for have been fair. The ones with many years of experience know how to talk to workers. And as workers, we understand that when we’re doing something wrong, the foreman has a valid reason to bring it to our attention. But they are not permitted to scream at us or mistreat us.

Pregnant at 15

I went to school in Mexico. I’m from a small town in Oaxaca, and I left when I was 15 years old. That’s when I crossed the border to come here. I don’t have many good memories of those times.

I got pregnant while I was in school and when I graduated. When I got pregnant my parents were very mad and my mother kicked me out of the house. My aunt came to visit during that time and told my mother that if she didn’t want me, she would take me with her to the U.S. I made a quick decision to go with her. My aunt helped me out then and she still does.

This is definitely a different country. After my daughter was born I wasn’t allowed to work because I was a minor. They told me if I tried they would take my daughter away. So I cared for Liliana at home, and my aunt supported both of us for three years.

When I turned 18 she took me to the fields and showed me how to do the work. It was really the only job I could do because I didn’t have much education.

Lorena Hernandez and her daughter Liliana

My first job was picking grapes. She then showed me how to pick cherries and blueberries, and that’s how I’ve learned to do everything I do now. We’ve picked many different crops and generally we’ve worked for good contractors. So here I am, working in the fields because it’s the only job there is for someone like me.

In my family we’ve always spoken Spanish. My grandparents didn’t teach my parents to speak Mixteco, so they never learned the language, even though it was the language of our town. I’m very proud of being from Oaxaca, and I’m not ashamed to be a farm worker, but I still don’t speak it.

Like everyone else in town, my parents worked their cornfield so that we could eat. I never liked working in the fields in Mexico, so they never took me with them. Today, when I call them, they laugh at me and remind me of how I never liked to work in the fields back home. And here I am, picking blueberries and tomatoes.

They ask me why I refused to work with them and now I’m here working for someone else. Oh well, it’s the only job I know how to do.

Turning 18 Meant New Responsibilities

I’ve been working since I turned 18, and now I’m 20. I really didn’t want to turn 18, but the years kept passing by. I knew I would have additional responsibilities and would have to learn to work.

I was afraid because I didn’t have any idea how to do the work and I knew I would be working in the heat. It was scary for me, because I knew things wouldn’t be like they’d been before. But my aunt was always with me, and thanks to her I learned new skills.

When I received my first check, I knew I had to continue working to earn that type of money. I began to work really hard and I was invited to join other crews and pick other crops. When I’m invited to join another crew now, I know how to do the job.

I’m very happy because I work in the fields with other people. Even though I’m tired at the end of the day, I de-stress and love the work I do. I’ll continue to do this work for as long as I’m in this country.

We’ve picked cherries, blueberries, grapes, tomatoes and figs. Picking tomatoes has been the hardest for me because of the buckets you have to carry and dump in the trailers. They’re very heavy and it’s very hot outside. You run all day long, competing with other workers. You can’t allow them to work faster than you, because then they’ll fill the trailer quickly, and you’ll have to go even faster to catch up to it.

Tomatoes—Good Pay and Back Injuries

Some workers have been doing this for years, so their hands move faster. You always are trying to catch up to them. It’s very hard on your back and many people end up with permanent back injuries.

But you earn good money. Even first timers like myself can earn $60 to $70 a day.

I like to pick tomatoes also because our day ends early. We’re done at about 10 or 10:30, because after that it’s too hot to work. Every year you hear about workers who faint because of the heat and some even die.

You’re in danger of fainting if you’re working too fast in the heat. It’s important to have water, but you can’t drink too much. When I first started I drank too much, and I felt like I couldn’t stand back up. The contractor sat me down in the shade and gave me a salt tablet.

In November, work gets scarce, so we rest. The pruning season begins in December, but I don’t like to do it because it’s so cold outside. They just pay 18 cents a vine, so after paying everything I would only make $20 a day — not enough to pay for the ride and my babysitter. I stay home with my daughter, and start picking fruit in March. So we don’t work for three months.

I can’t get unemployment benefits, so those months are very hard, but it’s better that I don’t work. When I’m working I manage my finances and save some money. That’s what gets me through those months.

I feel I don’t know my daughter anymore, though. She calls my aunt “mama” instead of me. My daughter thinks my aunt is her mother. I understand why — my cousins call my aunt “mama” and that’s what she hears. She worries about my aunt and brings her water and asks her how her day was. My daughter doesn’t really understand that I get home tired, but my aunt says she’ll understand me better when she’s older.

No Vision of My Future

I don’t have friends, just acquaintances from work. They don’t have responsibilities like I do, so they go out on the weekend. They share their stories with me because since I have a daughter, I don’t go out. I just stay at home.

I wash my daughter’s clothes on the weekends because during the week I’m so tired. There isn’t time to clean the house during the week either. That’s what we do on the weekends.

I don’t have a vision of my own future. I don’t really think about it. I know I want to work every day. I don’t think I’ll ever return to school because of my age. My job will be working in the fields. I’m at peace with my current situation. I would love to go back to school, but it’s too late for me. Perhaps one day.

This article was first published in New America Media.

David Bacon is a former union organizer and a fellow at the Oakland Institute. He is the author of Illegal People and the forthcoming The Right to Not Migrate.

[Photos by David Bacon]

By Hope Gillette, Huffington Post Latino Voices

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) suggested women receive too many mammograms, thus increasing their likelihood for misdiagnosis and unneeded treatments.

For Hispanic women, however, preventative care when it comes to breast cancer is often overlooked, leading to later diagnoses and a higher mortality rate.

Socioeconomic factors and lack of access to health care further hinder Latinas from receiving adequate screenings.

“Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Hispanic women…,” explains the Adelphi NY Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline & Support Program. “Some of the factors that increase risk of breast cancer (age, family history, later age at first full term pregnancy, early menarche, and late menopause) are not modifiable. Other factors such as post-menopausal obesity, use post-menopausal hormones, alcohol consumption, and physical inactivity are potentially modifiable.”

Despite the disparity seen between Hispanic women and other ethnic groups when it comes to mammograms and other breast cancer screenings, the NEJM study has suggested mammography procedures should be re-evaluated based on the issue of overtreatment for non-life threatening tumors.

Current recommendations suggest women over 40 receive screenings every 2 years. For Hispanic women, changing recommendations may mean an even more significant delay in screening procedures.

“We’re coming to learn that some cancers — many cancers, depending on the organ — weren’t destined to cause death,” Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Cancer Institute screening expert, reported the Associated Press. However, “once a woman is diagnosed, it’s hard to…

READ MORE HERE

This article was first published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.

[Photo by TipsTimes]

By Raisa Camargo, Voxxi

The National Hispana Leadership Institute honored four Latinas for their lifelong contributions to society and of those awarded include civil rights activist Maria del Rosario “Rosie” Castro, the mother of both Julian and Joaquin Castro.

The awards are recognized annually to highlight Latina women and their achievements. It featured a gala dinner with each of the honorees placed in the limelight through a video that summarized their background and accomplishments.

“After 25 years our mission is still relevant. If we were not to exist, someone would have created this organization to serve this audience,” said NHLI board chairwoman, Marieli Colón-Padilla.

Colón-Padilla is herself an NHLI alumna. NHLI is a non-profit organization that has provided one-on-one mentorship to more than 5,000 Latinas.

“It has been proven in our impact survey that for every dollar invested in each of these women, the return of the investment is 200 percent. So there’s no telling what the talent that comes out of our program does, not only in their network, but in their communities,” she said.

Latina leaders honored at NHLI’S dinner gala

The honorees for the Mujer awards include Congresswoman Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) who received the Legislative Award; Lidia Soto-Harmon, CEO of Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital, who received the Regional Mujer Award; Ivelisse R. Estrada, SVP, and Corporate and Community Relations for Univision, who received the National Mujer award.

Rosie Castro received the Chair’s award for her work as an activist, political figure and educator. During the 1970s, Rosie Castro joined a civil rights political movement known as La Raza Unida to confront the racial tensions in southwest Texas.

She participated in registering voters, identifying candidates and running campaigns. Castro is also known in her advocacy for better education and political representation; a mission she continues as an educator at the Palo Alto College.

“I am greatly honored,” Rosie Castro told VOXXI. “Slightly embarrassed. Many of the folks that are here from San Antonio and throughout the country—many of those women have accomplished a great deal more. They are all accomplished women.”

Soto-Harmon, who is of Cuban background, has worked on boosting morale among young Latinas. Among her initiatives is a conference for young Latinas called “El Encuentro de chicas Latinas,” which she started eight years ago and served 300 young Latinas to teach them about girl scouting.

“Leadership matters. We are all responsible to create our own success,” she told VOXXI. “One of the quotes I keep in my head is a quote my father use to say all the time: ‘Pa’ tras ni pa’ coger impulso,’—You don’t even look back not even to wind a leap. You always need to be looking forward.”

When Ivelisse Estrada walked on stage, the room lit up with applause. Estrada has a history of taking on leadership roles through the various partnerships she has held over the years.

Estrada, who is a native of Puerto Rico, recently developed an education initiative with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve academic achievement for Hispanic students in K-12 grade schools. In 2007, she worked closely with the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials to mobilize more Hispanics to participate in political civic engagement.

The end-result being that more than one million persons became naturalized citizens. The initiative received a Peabody award. Estrada’s alternative project “Enterate” also received a Peabody award for its ongoing national campaign in helping Latinos accomplish a healthy lifestyle.

“Life threw me a curve and my life changed,” Estrada said recalling when she started her work as an educator and later working with Univision. “As Ruben Blades says, ‘La vida te da sorpresas.’”

Rosie Castro says politically Latinas are held to a higher standard

NHLI also strongly believes it’s through Latina mothers that young women learn the skills of achieving tenacity and hard work.

Throughout the night, Rosie Castro sat with her son Congressman-elect Joaquin Castro. Rosie was acknowledged for her own efforts for pursuing political and educational empowerment. The speakers were also quick to note that Rosie had already changed history before she joined the program in 1990.

Born to a single mother, Rosie Castro’s involvement with the Chicano movement compelled her to become one of the first Chicanas to run for city council.

“There’s still a need for Latinas to be trained on how to run for office, how to finance their campaigns, how to have select campaign managers that know what they’re doing and the biggie the fundraising—I think it’s very challenging, very difficult for Latinas to ask for the money for a campaign,” she said.

“We tend to really get involved in the issues and push the issues and advocacy and not always look at that probably if we want those issues to come to the forefront then we’ve got to run for office,” she added. “The scrutiny is very high. So, you’re held to an even bigger standard then others may be.”

Joaquin and Julian Castro are both poised to rise up the ranks

Rosie Castro’s twin sons have raised plenty of eyebrows as candidates to higher office. Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, was tapped to give the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. Joaquin was recently elected into the U.S. House of Representatives.

Early on, Rosie taught her two sons about the electoral process by taking them everywhere. She said it’s important for parents to take their children to the voting booth and make them active participants in the community.

“It’s when you don’t have an eye on your representatives or not involved in crafting that policy that you see the worst that gets done, the deals, the things that are bad in politics, but at its best – citizens who talk to their legislators, citizens who attend meetings, who are involved can help those legislators craft the very best solutions,” she told VOXXI. “I’ve had the chance to see that with both my sons.”

When asked why she thinks both her sons have garnered plenty of appeal, she said, “There’s a number of things besides the fact that they’re good looking.”

She added that they have studied the policy issues and continue to look for guidance not just from legislators, but also the community.

“I think when people look at them—they can tell these are two honest men,” she said.

“I think both of my sons are capable of being President or governor. I don’t know, only god knows what is in store for them. I know that what they want is to be good public servants for as long as they can be.”

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Raisa Camargo is a staff writer at Voxxi.

[Photo by Walker Report]

By Hispanically Speaking News

Eva Longoria has been named one of the co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s inaugural committee after successfully helping during his re-election campaign.

This year, the former Desperate Housewives star used her celebrity to engage Latino voters and ask them to allow President Obama another 4 years in the White House.

Longoria also spoke at the Democratic National Convention as co-chair of the re-election campaign.

Now the 37-year-old actress will join the CEO of the inauguration, Stephan Kerrigan, executive director David Cusack, and fellow committee members Matthew Barzun, Frank White, and Jane Stetson.

Other co-chairs of this year’s inauguration include former presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush.

This article was first published in Hispanically Speaking News.

[Photo By Imagine Cup]

By Jose de la Isla, Voxxi

MEXICO CITY — Elia Andrade Olea and I sit down on a bench on Avenida Juárez. She was telling me about her collective’s mission to embroider handkerchiefs, pañuelos, of the dead and missing in Mexico’s drug war. They exhibit them along two long city blocks, across the street from the Monument of Benito Juárez. It was a gripping sight. Hundreds of pedestrians stopped to read what the pañuelos said.

Elia is a lovely 35-year old. “Do a headshot,” I ask “Mexico Voices” blog editor John Reed Brundage, who is doing the photos. “Be sure to get her nose ring.”

Bordando Por La Paz, the collective Elia formed, originally planned to put its silent but moving demonstration up in the Zocalo, the national square, across the street from the National Palace. But the square was closed off to public demonstrations. President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto was to arrive there after he was sworn in as president at the Congress, across town. The Felipe Calderón administration, responsible for the drug war escalation, was now leaving office, succeeded by Peña Nieto, who was taking the constitutional oath of office before noon.

Elia and I talked from one of the new iron benches on the sidewalk across the street from the Juarez monument  where the collective’s exhibit was set up. It too was part of Alameda Park’s renovations in the cultural heart of the city.

The park had just reopened to visitors three days before, with new walkways. The gardens and greenways were replanted, trees pruned, some replaced. The several water-fountain statues and collection basins were refinished. They draw admirers by the hundreds.

Elia is founder of the Fuentes Rojas collective, their name coming from an action a year ago putting red dye in public fountains as an outcry over civilian deaths from Mexico’s drug-war escalation. “The barbarism had to end,” she reflected on that first action.

Embroidering the handkerchiefs began in August 2011, with two major public displays in the next five months. In March 2012, the embroidery, intended to attest to each individual violent death, was taken up at Parque Rojo in Guadalajara.

Then it got picked up in the neighboring state of Morelos, where people there embroidered in red and green to represent disappearances. Then people in the state of Puebla started. Nine months after the collective began, a group in the far northern border states of Coahuila and then in Nuevo Leon, began embroidering, adding text in red and a number, by then possibly 4,000 embroidered handkerchiefs had been done.

Embroidered handkerchiefs symbolic of Mexico’s violence

They have as many as 90,000 to produce, accounting for “one handkerchief, one victim.” Elia reflects, “Constructing peace survives the memory of destructiveness, which comes much more rapidly.”

She had started on this mission because she felt indignant about the killing of people. “I was not at peace,” she explained.

The moral outrage and disquiet came at the time poet Javier Sicilia’s son, with six other youths, were murdered by elements connected to organized crime. She heard a reading of María Rivera’s protest poem, “The Dead,” which says: “They are called / the dead that no one knows that no one saw killed.” In the poem, Rivera objected to anonymous death, victims’ names going mostly unknown. The pañuelos intend to undo that.

This was the street battle of conscience I had expected to witness. What does a casualty to someone else’s family and friends and colleagues mean to us, the strangers, the presumed uninvolved? The embroidered handkerchief in red and green thread, is a testament to a terminated family’s life story. Each one leaves you with a haunting, unshakable, small grief of your own

Then the first explosion went off. It was like that of a muffled ceremonial canon, honoring a head of state.

Elia was telling me about the poem that compelled her on her mission when a collective member interrupted. It was better if they took down the exhibit. She said they could take it a dozen blocks away to the Monument to the Revolution.

When the second explosion went off, closer, I lost sight of Elia.

The other fight was starting. This one was not a metaphorical one over conscience but a street battle.

The crowd was now running away from the Historical District. John Reed and I went against the crowd in the opposite direction. Then the next explosion went off.

This article was first published in Voxxi.

José de la Isla, a nationally syndicated columnist for Hispanic Link and Scripps Howard news services, has been recognized during the past two consecutive years for his commentaries by New America Media. His next book, The Rise of Latino Political Power, will appear early in 2013. Reach him at joseisla3@yahoo.com.

[Photo by John Reed Brundage]