Daily Headlines: August 20, 2014

* El Salvador: “For me Romero is a man of God,” declared Pope Francis who eased the process for a possible beatification of assassinated Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

* Argentina: President Cristina Fernandez proposed legislation for a debt swap that would prevent a U.S. court ruling forcing Argentina into default.

* Venezuela: Police in Venezuela arrested at least thirteen people accused of smuggling goods across the closed border into Colombia.

* Puerto Rico: A recent Pew Research Center report found that Puerto Rico’s population fell between 2010 and 2013 with most residents leaving the island in order to “search for economic opportunity.”

Video Source – YouTube user interestmedia (“Oscar Romero became Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977. He was assassinated on 24 March 1980 while celebrating the Eucharist” during the Salvadoran civil war.)

Online Sources – USA TODAY; El Universal; The Independent; BBC News

Daily Headlines: November 30, 2012

* Panama: Only nine countries including Panama voted against a U.N. General Assembly proposal that granted nonmember observer status to Palestine.

* U.S.: A new report concluded that a sharp decrease in births among immigrant women led the U.S. birth rate to fall to its lowest level on record.

* Venezuela: Vice President Nicolas Maduro said that President Hugo Chavez is doing "very good" while seeking "hyperbaric oxygenation" therapy in Cuba.

* Brazil: Luis Felipe Scolari was rehired as the Brazilian men's soccer team coach ten years after he helped guide the squad to a World Cup title.

Online Sources: Huffington Post, NPR, Reuters, SI.com

Video Source: YouTube via euronews

Daily Headlines: September 11, 2012

* Venezuela: Human rights group Survival International retraced claims initially made last month over the alleged massacre of dozens of members of Venezuela’s indigenous Yanomami community.
* Cuba: Thirteen dissidents including “prominent” activist Marta Beatriz Roque started a hunger strike yesterday in order to protest the Cuban “government's persecution of its opponents.”

* Brazil: The Brazilian population between 2010 and 2012 grew by roughly 3.2 million people, which is nearly the same total population as Uruguay.

* U.S.: The U.S. Border Patrol halted the Migration Interior Repatriation Program, a plan started in 2004 where undocumented migrants were deported to Mexico via plane flights.

Video Source – YouTube via AFP

Online Sources- The Guardian, Reuters, Mercopress, Arizona Star

Daily Headlines: October 27, 2011

* Brazil: The country’s Supreme Appeals Court overturned a pair of lower court rulings banning same-sex couples from marrying.

* Mexico: Hurricane Rina may've weakened but that hasn’t prevented residents along Mexico’s Gulf coast to be on high alert.

* Latin America: According to a U.N. panel foreign direct investment in Latin America and the Caribbean rose by 54% in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2010.

* Cuba: A newly released government has reportedly raised concerns over a rapidly aging Cuban population that could impact the island’s economy.

Image Source – Via Flickr user Beraldo Leal (Photo taken during this year’s Sao Paulo gay pride parade). (CC BY 2.0.)

Online Sources – ABC News, Bloomberg, Fox News Latino, LAHT

World Watch: Seven billion and counting

* World: According to the U.N. Population Fund the global population is expected to reach the 7 billion person mark by the end of October.

* Israel: Israel’s Supreme Court approved the planned exchange of over 1000 prisoners for an Israeli soldier held by Hamas.

* U.S.: Questions over safety have been raised after the death of IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon who passed away in a massive accident while racing on Sunday.

* Spain: Several international delegates including ex-U.N. chief Kofi Annan and former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern urged Basque separatist group ETA to lay down their arms.

Image – Via Flickr user storyvillegirl (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Online Sources – The Telegraph, Voice of America, SI.com, BBC News

Daily Headlines: July 15, 2008

* Latin America: The latest summit of Petrocaribe oil alliance ended on Sunday with the loosening of terms between Venezuela and several Caribbean states.

* Uruguay: According to a demographics study, Uruguay has the oldest average population in Latin America.

* Cuba: A group called the Venceremos Brigade protested travel restrictions against Cuba by marching over the Peace Bridge linking the U.S. and Canada.

* Argentina: Could an alleged network of faked passports tarnish Argentine soccer?

Image- radiojamaica.com

Sources- Canadian Press, Goal.com, The Buffalo News, Xinhua

Making Babies is The Cause of Latino Population Growth, Not Immigration (and no one else is concerned with this framing?)

Cross-posted at VivirLatino
We'll say it once and I'll say it again, all those new brown faces in your hood are not coming from across the border. They are being born here. A study done out of the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute shows that the growth in the Latino population has to do with births increasing, not immigration.

This natural increase — more births than deaths — is accelerating among Hispanics in the USA because they are younger than the U.S. population as a whole. Their median age is 27.4, compared with 37.9 overall, 40.8 for whites, 35.4 for Asians and 31.1 for blacks.

And while the blogosphere and the media is using this study as an opportunity to say, "I told you so" to anti-immigration activists, My concern is another direction that this information could be used in.

There is a growing resurgence of the stereotype of Latina women as prolific breeders, reducing the role and image of mujeres to animals concerned with feeding their hot blooded lust and then feeding the babies that follow. There is a growing concern in the anti-immigrant movement with "anchor-babies", a disgusting way of describing children born in the U.S to undocumented women with the idea that these children will allow the women to stay in the U.S. or to take the fucked up analogy, anchor them to the U.S.

For declining counties, many in the Great Plains, the growth in young Hispanics may be the only way out of a population spiral.

"Demographically, they can't recover unless something like this happens," Johnson says. "There's no way older white populations can replace themselves."

Because more than half of births to Hispanic immigrants are to low-income women who have no high school degree, a natural population increase challenges communities, says Steve Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes limits on immigration.

"It's a huge growth in low-income population and low tax payments," he says. "If the town is not viable economically, immigration is not going to fix that problem."

Along with the image of the perpetually hot, knocked up mami, comes the image of what people expect to happen after children are born. These Latina women and their children are assumed to go onto the welfare rolls, to overwhelm the public school system, the change the language and way people communicate.
Just read some of the comments under the original USA Today article (if you can keep from going off).

Immigration activists and all (hey feminists want a cause to get behind), need to be on point for a resurgence of eugenicist calls that only certain people, meeting certain requirements should have babies (these requirements of course based on the intersections of race and class). Be prepared for calls for mass sterilizations and forced birth control.

There is no analysis of what families consume more. Be prepared for so called environmentalist pointing their green fingers at brown mamis and their babies.


Via / USA Today

Daily Headlines: March 12, 2008

* A U.S. judge tossed out $2.5 million in putative damages awarded by a jury last year from Dole Fruit to five former Nicaraguan plantation workers.

* Could the Venezuelan government land on a list of countries blamed with sponsoring terrorism?

* Apparently crime in Mexico has deterred some U.S. university students from spending spring break south of the border.

* Cuba’s population has decreased for the second straight year based on government figures.

Sources- The Latin Americanist, International Herald Tribune, Associated Press, miamiherald.com

Image- ABC News

Daily Headlines: May 16, 2007

* Are the rumors true that Colombian singer Shakira will get married in the Dominican Republic this September?

* Will Venezuelan smokers be pleased at a recent government anti-tobacco initiative?

* Is Colombian president Alvaro Uribe’s defense of his vice president against charges of paramilitary involvement justified?

* Are fewer births really the reason why Cuba’s pollution is in decline?
* Will the idea of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan to buy water utilities in Chile pay dividends?

Links- Dominican Today, Guardian UK, BBC News, CNN, Toronto Star

Image- LT24onLine (Shakira with her fiancée, Argentine Antonio de la Rua)