La Plaza Central

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey.  If you have some time, or even if you don’t, PBS’s Frontline came out with a program called The Hugo Chávez Show about his rise to power and his attempts to foment a socialist revolution in Venezuela.  It’s a whole 90 minutes, and you can watch the whole thing online in Inglés or Español.  Here’s the link.

I know this is more international than local, but since nobody answers the poll question (election fatigue?) I really don’t know what people want to hear about.

No doubt the President-elect has a lot on his plate right now, and everyone and their dog wants to give him suggestions.  Let me just say that a new report from the Brookings Institute titled Re-Thinking U.S.-Latin American Relations provides some pretty good suggestions on where to go from here.  The report was written by a group of men led by former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo and former U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering.  The editor’s summary is here, and the full report (PDF) is here.

Some of the highlights…

• 30% of U.S. oil imports come from Latina America and the Carribean.  The authors suggest putting emphasis on sustainable energy supplies to increase energy security throughout the region.
• Much like the OLLAS Report on Immigration in Nebraska mentioned on this blog a month ago, the report concludes that immigrants provide a net benefit to the U.S. in the form of spending and taxes.
• Modify the U.S.’s stance on Cuba by lifting the embargo that has been removing the Castro brothers from power for the last 50 years and allow Americans to travel to the island.

There is much more to the report concerning topics such as trade deals, the visa system, and the “war” on drugs, to name a few.  If you have the time, it’s worth a read.  And if not, hey, at least you read this.

Hola a todos.  You may or may not have noticed if you’re a repeat reader that I changed our name and image.  Hopefully they’re a little more interesting than where we started.  The picture comes from the central park in my home away from home in San Marcos, Nicaragua.

USA Today brings to our attention the advancing plight of immigrants, declaring that our sputtering economy is affecting them more than the locals. I wouldn’t doubt that. What can we do? I’m no John Keynes, so the only action I could take from behind a desk was read about Spain and its vaguely similar immigrant circumstance to perhaps generate some ideas. I learned that in the nineties, both the United States and Spain had hot economies. Both now have high numbers of Central and South American immigrants. And both have an economical dilemma causing strain to all populations. So, what is Spain doing? It’s now 10% unemployment rate has led Prime Minister Zapatero to offer money to immigrants in exchange for their immediate exodus of a minimum three years. That seems like an insulting solution. Three years ago Spain granted amnesty to immigrants, and now look. What will happen here? Read this article and this article and send ideas to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

There was an article in the New York Times today about the protests going on right now in Nicaragua following the recent mayoral elections.  Polls leading up to the elections indicated that the opposition candidate, Eduardo Montealgre, held a lead over the Sandinista candidate and current vice president, Alexis Arguello.  But the results of the elections held on November 9th, as reported by the Sandinista-controlled Election Commission, gave the victory to Arguello.  Since that time Montealegre and his party, the PLC, have called for peaceful marches in the streets to request a recount of the votes with international election observers present.  Roberto Rivas, the president of the Election Commission, has agreed to a recount but sans election observers.

This story hits home for me because I lived in Nicaragua for two and a half years before moving back to the States last year.  I was present for the 2006 elections that ushered Daniel Ortega back in to power thanks to a government power sharing deal between him and Arnoldo Alemán, the de facto leader of the PLC, and a divided opposition vote split between José Rizo and the same Montealgre.  I know this all gets very complicated very fast with lots of names, so if you want more information Wikipedia has a great summary here.

I was a Peace Corps volunteer at the time, so I was forbidden from participating or proselytizing in any way, but political conversations were acceptable and I didn’t meet a single Nicaraguan without an opinion on the subject.  What struck me right away was the absolute acceptance or resignation that all politicians were corrupt.  More than a few people expressed a desire for a benevolent dictator, even though many concurrently acknowledged that one probably doesn’t exist.  Another thing is how virtually everyone I knew considered as fact that the elections in 1996 were stolen from Ortega and given to Alemán under the auspices of international election observers like the Organization of American States and the European Union.  Some good friends of mine even spoke of their participation in the heist.  So when Ortega speaks of his distrust and even disdain for the OAS, and even though I disagree with him, I can understand where he is coming from.  It is not my personal opinion, but it is the belief of many Nicaraguans.

But that is probably a topic for another day.  The question is what happens now.  The immediate problem is the elections do not look clean to anyone, and neither side will concede any time soon.  Without hardly any observers one’s belief in the elections results that gave the FSLN (Sandinistas) 100 mayoral offices and the PLC 30 lies depends primarily in which cuadillo one chooses to believe, Ortega or Alemán.  Which brings us to the larger problem.  The power struggle of the last 15 years between these two men has circumvented nearly every government principle, office or function, and in the process demoralized many from a population that has known nothing but dictatorship or a system of caudillo favors and handouts for the last century.

I really haven’t scratched the surface, but work is calling so I’ll have to leave it here.  If I could make one suggestion that would stick it would be to go to the library and checkout Blood of Brothers by Stephen Kinzer.  It’s a phenomanal piece of work that sheds some light on so many aspects of a country that most people know very little about.

Not to be a downer on a Friday, but I wanted to share an article that my friend sent me that stands in stark contrast to the feel good article about community integration in Crete, Nebraska that Brent posted recently.  You can’t have the yin without the yang, right?  The NY Times had an article yesterday about an immigrant from Ecuador who was fatally stabbed in Patchogue, NY by a 17-year-old man who was drunk and looking “to beat up some Mexicans.”

Jeffrey Conroy and six other teenagers, one of them inexplicably Hispanic, got drunk in a local park and then went in search of a Mexican to beat up when they found 37-year-old Marcelo Lucero and a companion.  In the struggle, Lucero’s companion got away before he was allegedly stabbed by Conroy and died.  Conroy is being charged with manslaughter as a hate crime.

What struck me right away were both the similarities and the contrasts that exist between Patchogue and Crete.  Both towns are relatively small; Crete has about 6,500 residents and Patchogue 11,700.  Hispanic immigrants make up a slightly higher percentage of the population in Patchogue, 24%, versus Crete, 14%, though they are growing rapidly in both towns.  The difference seems to be that Patchogue has much more anti-immigrant hostility running through the community.  This assault is one in a series of attacks aimed at Latino immigrants in the area in the last several years.  Whereas Crete immigrants speak of the improvements in race relations in their community, Patchogue immigrants speak about their lack of feeling accepted and the hostility they perceive from the Anglo community.

To be fair, I don’t mean to imply that everything is perfect in Crete and the exact opposite in Patchogue.  I am sure that there exists a certain percentage of the Hispanic population in Crete that feels ostracized in the community.  I interviewed Crete residents last month along with Brent and noticed that there definitely exists some anti-immigrant sentiment.  And certainly there are Hispanics in Patchogue who feel integrated with their Anglo friends.  The point is that this is something that every community needs to continuously work on.  Raising issues of cultural awareness is as integral to a well-functioning community as anything else.  More participation in cultural events and holidays, more cultural education for both sides, more talk about our backgrounds and experiences…  so that we can, as the mayor of Patchogue, Paul V. Pontiere Jr., puts it, “realize that the things we have in common far outnumber those that divide us.”

Greetings, Brent here. I have many sorts; I am social: a social cyclist and social worker of sorts. That status worked into our lovely, intricate Lincoln Township provides common overlaps in my social Venn diagram. Notably, my friend Cara Pesek and I were on a terrific group bike ride a few warm Saturdays ago. As we flew down the Murdock trail towards el campo, catching up both socially and to the pack’s head, we learned Crete was a shared job site for the both of us in the weeks prior—she on assignment with the Journal Star and me knocking on doors doing quality of life surveys on UNL’s behalf. To boot, we had both been investigating how well the Latino community is integrating there. Turns out, really well. So let this and her article be a microcosm of how well our community is tied and how important it is to appreciate one another’s involvement in it.

Read up!

The Journal Star has an excellent article on the dual language preschool at Irving Middle School for children ages 3 to 5.  The class meets Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00 to 11:30 a.m., and they are accepting registrations for the second session, which begins on December 1 and runs through May.  For more information you can call the Irving Rec Center at 441-7954.

I think this is a great idea for so many reasons.  For one, as nearly all of our clients at El Centro will tell you, kids pick up second languages much faster than their parents.  While many New Americans struggle with communication in non-native languages, their children adapt much more rapidly as they pick up English while in school or from TV or their friends.  The article cites childhood research that shows between birth and 7 years old children are better able to learn a second language due to how their brains are developing and their heightened ability to hear and replicate different sounds.

Lincoln Public Schools doesn’t offer language classes until middle school, which is understandable considering budget and curriculum constraints but makes language retention more difficult.  Coming from someone who took four years of Spanish in middle and high school, I think that if the goal is fluency then one must either start at a very young age or immerse themselves in the language later by living in a country where that language is spoken.  After high school, I felt that I had enough Spanish to have a conversation  and express myself adequately.  After arriving in Nicaragua, I quickly realized that I had a long ways to go.

The dual language school is also important for its efforts to increase diversity by introducing new cultures to children.  Diversity in the classroom can mean much more than just differences in race but also differences in languages, customs, holidays, etc.  According to the article, of the 14 preschool students, nine are from English-speaking homes, two from Spanish-speaking homes, two from bilingual homes and one Latino child adopted into an Anglo home.

The articles also includes some helpful tips for introducing a second language to your child.  It almost makes me wish I had one of my own.