Daily Headlines: March 5, 2014

* Vatican: Despite helping shepherd increased interest in Catholicism and being named as a finalist to the next Nobel Peace prize, Argentine-born Pope Francis insisted in an interview that he is a “normal person.”

* U.S.: The head of the National Council of La Raza Latino rights group blasted U.S. President Barack Obama over his immigration policy, while the Supreme Court declined hearing appeals in two cases regarding controversial local immigration ordinances.

* Mexico: Hundreds of members of a “self-defense group” entered the city of Apatzingan in Michoacán and ordered the mayor to resign due to his supposed ties to the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel.

* Haiti: Gustavo Gallon, the U.N.-appointed expert on human rights in Haiti, said that “full compensation” should be paid to the thousands of victims of a cholera epidemic.

Video Source – Catholic News Service via YouTube
 
Online Sources- The Guardian; Politico.com; Reuters; BBC News; LAHT

Did the GOP snub La Raza conference?

Yesterday marked the final day for this year’s conference of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), one of the main Latino civil rights organizations in the U.S. The four-day event centered on issues such as the economy and education, and several business and political leaders spoke at the event. Unfortunately there was one vital group that skipped the event: the Republican Party.

The GOP is in dire need of regaining credibility with the Latino electorate, especially regarding the party’s strong anti-immigration stance. Several moderate Republicans have beseeched party elders to make a stronger effort to reach out to the Latino community. Sadly, there are those within the party whose rhetoric has been (shall we say) out-of-bounds. In perhaps the ugliest critique, ex-congressman Tom Tancredo maligned the NCLR by calling it a "Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses."

In the sake of fairness, most major GOP members do respect the NCLR and “praise the organization as a mainstream civil-rights group.” Yet the lack of a national Republican figure at the NCLR’s conference was a conspicuous omission:

Republicans’ dilemma in connecting with the growing Hispanic electorate will be on vivid display Tuesday: GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote overwhelmingly against confirming Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latino nominee to the Supreme Court. And the Democratic Party chairman will address the nation’s largest Latino political group — partly in Spanish. No national GOP official is speaking…

The Republican National Committee says no national party official will be speaking at the convention. The RNC’s four-day summer meeting starts Wednesday in San Diego.

Image- Houston Chronicle (Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John McCain spoke at the 2008 National Council of La Raza Convention).
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, Politico, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, abc7chicago.com