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Please Note: Articles posted on this page are for the current month. For news articles from previous months please visit the News Archives page. ARTICLES POSTED NOVEMBER 1998
Investigation Sought Into Journalist's Murder, (posted 11/9/98) 4 November 1998 PARIS-The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) urged the Mexican government on Wednesday to ensure a "thorough and expeditious investigation" into the slaying of newsman Claudio CortÈs Garcia of the French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique, the fourth journalist to be assassinated in Mexico since May 1997. In a letter to Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, WAN said, "we respectfully remind you that Mexico has the sad distinction of being one of the most dangerous countries in the world in which to exercise journalism," and it urged him "to do everything in your power to ensure that journalists in Mexico are permitted to carry out their profession free from murder, attack and intimidation." WAN, the global organization for the newspaper industry, urged the President to conduct a quick and thorough investigation into the death of Mr CortÈs, who was found strangled in the back seat of a car in Mexico City on 23 October. In addition to working for the Mexican edition of the prestigious French newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique, Mr CortÈs also worked for the Reforma and El Financiero dailies and La Crisis magazine. "While it is not yet possible to confirm the motive for the attack, we are concerned that it was related to Mr CortÈs activities as a journalist," said the letter, signed by WAN President Bengt Braun. The Paris-based WAN defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. Its membership includes 57 national newspaper publishers associations, individual newspaper executives in 90 countries, seven regional press organizations and 17 news agencies. It represents 15,000 newspapers. Franc Contreras, Mexico City Journalist Fernando MartÌnez Ochoa killed; IAPA Calls for Investigations Into Recent Murders in Mexico, (posted 11/9/98) SOURCE: Inter American Press Association (IAPA), Miami (IAPA/IFEX) - On 28 October 1998, IAPA expressed concern at two recent murders of journalists in Mexico and called for investigations. Over the previous days, two journalists were killed in mysterious circumstances. They are: reporter Fernando MartÌnez Ochoa, from Ciudad Ju·rez (previously unreported on IFEX,) and Claudio CortÈs GarcÌa, layout editor with the Mexican edition of "Le Monde diplomatique" (see IFEX alert.) The two murders bring the toll of journalists killed in Mexico in the past decade to 25. MartÌnez Ochoa, a journalist and currently the spokesperson of the social development agency SecretarÌa de Desarrollo Social (Sedeso) was killed with an axe around midnight on 27 October in the capital of Chihuahua. He was found in a Sedeso-owned vehicle. Danilo Arbilla, President of IAPA's Press Freedom and Freedom
of Information Commission, said it is worrisome how vulnerable
journalists are in Mexico; he called on authorities to investigate
these latest murders which, regardless of the motives behind
them, cast into doubt the media's capacity to carry out its work
without feeling threatened by violence. He recalled that Mexican law and other principles endorsed
by the Mexican government (like the Chapultepec Declaration)
call murder and violence against journalists the worst and most
brutal attacks on freedom of expression and press freedom. The
Chapultepec Declaration warns that "such acts must be investigated
promptly and punished harshly." The information contained in this alert is the sole responsibility
of IAPA. Farmworkers to be Aired on CNN -- Nov. 22, 1998, (posted 11/9/98) CNN's television-magazine program, NewsStand," will air a major piece on farmworkers and guestworker programs on Sunday, November 22, at 10 pm eastern time. Many farmworker legal advocates assisted in providing the
producers and reporters information and access to farmworkers
in several locations around the country. CNN also taped a portion
of a U.S. Senate hearing on guestworker issues and the National
Latino Summit on Guestworkers in Washington, D.C. Depending on
how it comes out, the piece may be useful in the inevitable replay
of a Congressional debate on guestworkers in the new Congress. NewsStand: CNN & TIME, co-anchored by Jeff Greenfield and Bernard Shaw, combines the depth and scope of TIME, print journalism's leading newsmagazine, with CNN's unrivaled, worldwide newsgathering capabilities. The program marks the evolution of IMPACT: CNN & TIME on Special Assignment, the network's award-winning investigative television newsmagazine and its first collaboration with TIME. NewsStand: CNN & TIME goes beyond breaking news to give viewers the authoritative information and context they need to understand today's events and issues. NewsStand: CNN & TIME airs Sundays and Mondays on CNN/U.S. from 10-11 p.m. (ET) and at 10 p.m. on the West Coast, under the supervision of Executive Producer Civia Tamarkin. Co-anchor Jeff Greenfield also serves as CNN's senior analyst.
Since joining the network in January 1998, he has reported on
and provided analysis for a wealth of stories, from the allegations
against President Clinton to the IRS. Prior to joining CNN, Greenfield was ABC News' political and media analyst for 14 years. Greenfield appeared regularly on Nightline and served as an essayist on World News Sunday. During political seasons, his reports from the convention floors and his election night analyses were a regular feature of ABC's campaign coverage. Bernard Shaw is the network's principal Washington anchor. In addition to his duties as co-anchor of NewsStand: CNN & TIME, he co-anchors Inside Politics and CNN WorldView, as well as anchoring much of the network's special events coverage. Shaw also has served as co-anchor of Impact and CNN Presents, the network's weekly, hour-long news documentary series. To order video tapes or transcripts of CNN programs, call 1-800-CNN-NEWS (1-800-266-6397) or email cnntranscript@fdch.com. Mail Sent: November 4, 1998 1:48 pm PST Item: R01FzeF A Present From Mexico's Past, (posted 11/4/98) One Man's Lifelong Pursuit of Latino History Earns Him a Humanities Medal By SCOTT MARTELLE, Times Staff Writer ANCHO SANTA FE-The morning is cool, California autumn, with
low-slung clouds trailing veils of gray mist as they drift inland
from the Pacific. Inside Ramon Eduardo Ruiz's house, a single-story
adobe that opens L-shaped onto a manicured garden, the dawn chill
clings stubbornly, and the crisp air shatters "I don't believe signing welfare reform was good for the poor," Ruiz says, sitting in a comfortable leather chair in his study, clay tiles underfoot and the dark walls lined with books. "Blockading Cuba is not a good thing for the Cuban people. I've been to Cuba many times and always believed in what they are trying to do." Ruiz has, as he freely admits, many opinions. Strong opinions. While even his critics concede that his ideas are formidable, well-reasoned and difficult to rebut, most of Ruiz's thoughts run contrary to the moderate-conservative mores dominating current cultural and political debate. Which means he has had trouble getting those views heard. That could change this week. On Thursday, Ruiz will be among nine Americans receiving the National Humanities Medal at the White House. Among his peers for this day are Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Ruiz, 77, has been writing and teaching about Latin America-mostly Mexican history-for more than 40 years. Highly regarded in his field, he's invisible to most of America. A quick check of bookshelves at Borders and Barnes & Noble outlets found one copy of his newest book, "On the Rim of Mexico: Encounters of the Rich and Poor" (Westview Press), a critical look at life on the south side of the border since NAFTA. There were none of the 11 previous books he has written or edited. Ruiz doesn't take it personally. He learned long ago that he's exploring a history that finds few enthusiasts north of the border, despite the inherent drama of bloody conquests and revolts, and what he sees as Mexico's present status as an economic colony of American state capitalism. Latin American history is ignored for myriad reasons, believes Ruiz, who was born and raised in the La Jolla area, the American son of Mexican immigrants. One of the factors is American hubris, a national egoism that disregards all histories but a European-derived one. Another factor is the politics of color, "and it's a mistake to ignore it," he says. And then there's the American citizenry itself, more interested in the personal and the present than the communal past. "Americans are just not historically oriented," Ruiz says. "It's a new country, an immigrant nation, most of them coming after the late 19th century. History doesn't play a very large role." Work Shed Light on Mexican Revolution Yet pursuit of history, the desire to put the present into context, has played a dominant role in Ruiz's life. And in turn, his work has been a critical factor in helping define the debate over the nature of the Mexican Revolution. It's a complicated history, one that is prone-like most histories of revolutions-to interpretations of convenience. For leftists, the Mexican Revolution was the first socialist
uprising of the century, presaging the Bolsheviks in Russia,
Mao in China and Castro in Cuba. Other historians, though, argue
the opposite, that the Mexican revolt was actually the last of
the bourgeois revolutions-like the French Revolution-in which
the middle class overthrew the Ruiz, though, stood the debate on its ear by arguing in his "The Great Rebellion" that, despite all the bloodshed and turmoil, the Mexican revolt wasn't a social revolution at all, since nothing really changed except who controlled the apparatuses of society. To paraphrase an old rock 'n' roll song, the old boss was the same as the new boss. "His thesis was that it was just a great explosion of anger," says Abdiel Onate, associate professor of history at San Francisco State, who uses some of Ruiz's books to teach Mexican history. "Mexico was already a capitalist society before the revolution, and it produced a regime that consolidated capitalist development afterward. "It was very well-received, not so much because people agreed with his thesis but because the work was of very high quality. Academically, it was very solidly researched and well-organized. It was a persuasive argument that he was presenting . . . that makes available a wide range of facts and information." 'Intuitive Mind, Supportive Nature' Behind Ruiz's academic rigor, says Ray Sadler, chair of the history department at New Mexico State University, stands a sharp, intuitive mind and a supportive, genteel nature. "He's a thoughtful historian," says Sadler, a former contributor to the conservative National Observer, and who often disagrees with Ruiz's perspective. "His friends are legion in this business. This is a case where everybody is not going to be jealous behind his back. His friends will all be pleased that somebody got [the medal] who really deserved it." Ruiz himself is pleased, for reasons both general and personal. A national honor can't help but direct attention to the work he has done-and, by extension, to Latin American history overall. And it puts a stamp on personal satisfaction already fed by the knowledge that his books-including his award-winning narrative history of Mexico, "Triumphs and Tragedy" (Norton, 1992)--are used as college history texts. "I'm very flattered," says Ruiz, a slender man with graying hair who runs five miles a day. "Everybody wants to be known for doing something well, particularly if it's something that you think that you do well." Ruiz was drawn to history through the influence of his father, a member of the Mexican Navy who left the service and his native country when the old regime collapsed during the revolution. He settled with his family near La Jolla and became a nurseryman. Ruiz writes books in English but has lectured and written essays in Spanish. His early school education was supplemented by informal evening classes with his father using Mexican textbooks to instruct him and his four brothers and sisters. "My father was a militant nationalist," says Ruiz, who speaks in a deep, measured voice. "He would talk about the heroes of Mexico, the food of Mexico, the character of Mexico and the folklore of Mexico. We were saturated with tales of Mexico, the values, and pride in our Mexican heritage." Theatrical Professor Ignited His Interest Ruiz himself served in World War II as an Army pilot in the Pacific and afterward entered San Diego State, where he encountered a history professor prone to the kinds of flamboyant theatrics that can bring the past to life. He disagreed with the professor's perspectives on history but was taken with his ability to make it relevant. "That really turned me on to history," Ruiz says. "It fit right in with what my mother and father inculcated in me. I wanted to learn more about myself, through history. To survive, you've got to be proud of yourself, of your heritage, where you came from and what you represent. There's no better discipline than history for that." Ruiz went on to earn a doctorate in history from UC Berkeley and taught at universities in the U.S. and Mexico before settling at UC San Diego at La Jolla around 1970. Ruiz and his wife, Natalia, a retired high school foreign-languages teacher, bought a three-acre parcel about six miles inland from Solana Beach in 1970. They later had the house built, and as their two daughters grew up they kept horses on the lot. One daughter is assistant to the mayor of Albuquerque; the other is a poet and anthropologist teaching at the Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. Despite Ruiz's standing as a historian, he views himself more as a writer, a point of pride that plays out in the stylized voice of his books. He dislikes the growing academic specialization of the field, in which historians write styleless books debating minor details and applying systems as templates, all for the consumption of other historians. "I'm a different kind of historian," Ruiz says, laying some of the differences to a generational divide. "We want to write narrative histories but also interpretive. I want to put together a history that's readable. I have opinions, and I don't try to hide them, but I also try to write for a larger public. I'm not writing for specialists. History is in the humanities, but it's also an art. The great historians were also great writers." Ruiz's passion for history and the stories of the past are
only part of his inheritance from his father. The son also shares
the father's love of the land. Ruiz's house stands amid a maze
of gravel-bedded gardens, with hummingbirds darting among the
bottle brush plants and birds of paradise Ruiz planted and maintains
after he tired of mowing and watering the He does most of the work himself, shuttling materials back and forth in a pickup truck, the professor as campesino. The work helps him think, helps feed his sense of social conscience. His father, he says, was dark-complexioned and from a poor family in Sinaloa. His mother, light-skinned and descended from Spanish Basques, came from a wealthy ranching family in Chihuahua. He sees in those two threads of influence the heart of his own intellectual outlook. "There's a tremendous advantage in growing up as a Mexican in this country," Ruiz says, smiling slightly as he recognizes the irony. "If you're not part of the mainstream in this country, you're ostracized, you know bigotry and prejudice. You're not apt to accept the main theology of the majority, that we're a gentle people, that we care about others, that we're idealists. You know that that is not entirely true. "You begin to examine carefully what this country is all about. You can see the warts along with the attributes. You can be more objective and original in your thinking and not get sucked into the concept that the American way of life is the best way of life." Copyright 1998 Los Angeles Times All Rights Reserved 'Hacktivists' of All Persuasions Take Their Struggle to the Web, (posted 11/3/98) By AMY HARMON Until they declared "Netwar" against the Mexican government, Ricardo Dominguez and Stefan Wray earned their activist credentials the old-fashioned way, attending rallies in support of the Zapatista rebels, handing out pamphlets, shouting political slogans. Now, the two New Yorkers organize "virtual sit-ins" and recruit computer programmers to attack the World Wide Web sites of any person or company they deem responsible for oppression. Their new rallying cry: "The revolution will be digitized." Wray, 37, and Dominguez, 39, are co-founders of the Electronic Disturbance Theater. It is one of several groups around the world that are beginning to experiment with computer hacking, so far largely nuisance attacks and the equivalent of electronic graffiti, as a means to a political end. "We see this as a form of electronic civil disobedience," Wray told a group of about 75 people who had gathered in New York's East Village for an "anti-Columbus Day" event in October. "We are transferring the social-movement tactics of trespass and blockade to the Internet." The notion is a departure for both radical activists and hackers, whose distinct, subversive subcultures have rarely intersected until recently. In some ways, the two psychologies are polar opposites. Hackers, while reliably anti-authoritarian, tend to limit their critique of the military-industrial complex to its imperfect computer security apparatus. Enamored of their image as the cowboys of the electronic frontier, most at least pay lip service to the hacker mantra, "information wants to be free." But whatever capacity they might have to disrupt the social order has so far been largely restricted to pointless vandalism and pinching the occasional credit card number. Political activists, on the other hand, preoccupied as they are with the power structure, have typically paid little heed to the information infrastructure on which it rests. Motivated by the desire for social change, they generally see building communities of support and cooperation as essential. But the rapid growth of the Internet has transformed what was once a hacker playground into, among other things, a far-reaching political platform. What's more, the tricks invented by hackers have become easier for activists to learn and adopt because they are now widely published on how-to Web sites. As a result, radical groups are discovering what hackers have always known: Traditional social institutions are more vulnerable in cyberspace than they are in the physical world. Likewise, some members of the famously sophomoric hacker underground are finding motivation in causes other than ego gratification. In recent months, groups as diverse as the Animal Liberation Front, a militant animal-rights group; Radio4All, which supports pirate broadcasting, and international teams of teen-agers with cyber pseudonyms like Milworm and causes like anti-imperialism have increasingly begun pumping political protest through the Internet's security holes. On Oct., 27, a day after China's human rights agency announced its new Web site, the official view of that nation's human rights record was replaced with an electronic trespasser's manifesto: "China's people have no rights at all, never mind human rights. How can the United States trade millions and millions of dollars with them and give them most-favored trade status when they know what is happening?" Earlier in October, computer intruders scrawled "Save Kashmir" over the opening screen of a Web site that the Indian government set up last summer to provide information about the region, whose ownership is disputed by Pakistan and several separatist groups. The hacked site included photographs of Kashmiris allegedly killed by Indian forces, overlaid with the words"massacre" and "extra-judicial execution." In June, after the Indian government conducted nuclear tests,
college students in Britain and the Netherlands claimed credit
for placing the image of a mushroom cloud on the Web site of
India's major nuclear weapons research center. No slouches in packaging and self-promotion, the burgeoning computer underground has adopted a catchy term for the trend: they call it "hacktivism." "Hacktivism is a way to be heard by millions," a group of three Mexican hackers known as X-Ploit wrote in an e-mail message to a reporter. "We want to speak out about what we and many, many people disagree with in this treasonous and corrupt government. If we protest both on line and off line, we'll have better chances to see a change." The tactic is not limited to one end of the political spectrum. A group of Serbian computer hackers this month claimed responsibility for crashing a Web site promoting the ethnic Albanian cause in the Serbian province of Kosovo. The Serbian newspaper Blic quoted one of the hackers as saying, "We shall continue to remove ethnic Albanian lies from the Internet." Wednesday, the group, called Black Hand, after a clandestine Serbian military organization at the turn of the century, attacked the site of the Croatian state-owned newspaper Vjesnik. Croatian hackers counterattacked the next day, inserting messages like "Read Vjesnick and not Serbian books" on the Web site of the Serbian National Library, Vjesnik reported Friday. Guerrilla attacks on Web sites may seem more of a headline-grabbing ploy than true information warfare. But security experts said the recent spate of digital vandalism underscores the risk to companies and governments that increasingly rely on the Internet for commerce and communication. "What this demonstrates is the capacity of groups with political causes to hack into systems," said Michael Vatis, chief of the National Information Protection Center, a new federal agency formed to protect the nation's crucial infrastructure. "I wouldn't characterize vandalizing Web sites as cyber-terrorism, but the only responsible assumption we can make is there's more goingon that we don't know about." Established by Attorney General Janet Reno this year, the center is in part a response to the perception that "political forces which could not take on the United States in conventional military terms stand a better chance on an electronic battlefield," said Vatis. The potency of the sling-shot approach is not lost on would-be hacktivists, either. "If you have 10 people at a protest, they don't do much of anything," said a Toronto-based computer jockey who calls himself Oxblood Ruffian. "If you have 10 people on line, they could cripple a network." Oxblood is a member of Cult of the Dead Cow, a hacker group that recently reserved the Web address www.hacktivism.org as an Internet distribution hub for tools to assist others in subversive digital activism. He said the group was planning to attack the Internet operations of U.S. companies doing business with China. But the effectiveness of such actions is unclear, prompting a debate over how best to implement the hacktivist brand of political protest. Under U.S. law, terrorism is defined as an act of violence for the purpose of intimidating or coercing a government or a civilian population. And breaking into a computer system and altering data are felonies. For that reason, the members of the Electronic Disturbance Theater emphasize that the software they use to attack Web sites disrupts Internet traffic but does not destroy data. In the tradition of civil disobedience protests, they encourage mass participation and use their real names. The group was forged in an online discussion among several American supporters of the Zapatistas, the first armed revolutionaries known to have solicited public sympathy for their struggle by publishing their communiques over the Internet. On Nov. 22, the group says, it plans to attack the Web site of the School for the Americas, a U.S. Army training center for foreign military personnel, some of whom have been accused of human rights abuses. Recent targets have included the sites of Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo and of the U.S. Defense Department. This tactic is a variation of what is known in Internet security-speak as a "denial of service attack." An unusually large volume of requests will overwhelm the computer that is serving up the target's Web pages. This can cause legitimate visitors to see error messages instead of the pages they are seeking, and it can even crash the server computer. "This isn't cyber-terrorism," insisted Carmin Karasic, a Quincy, Mass., software engineer who designed the FloodNet program. "It's more like conceptual art." The U.S. Defense Department does not agree. Alerted to a planned
FloodNet attack on its public site on Mexican Independence Day,
the agency responded by diverting the requests to a nonexistent
Internet address, a spokesman said. The victims of such attacks are not the only ones to criticize the digital desperados. In their quest for support from a public already suspicious of hackers and anxious about online safety, some political activists deride such methods as counterproductive. And hackers faithful to the ethic of electronicexploration for its own sake deride Web site intrusions as the work of "script kiddies," an epithet for people who break into systems by using schemes developed by others rather than by searching out new security holes of their own. Script kiddies have been responsible for a recent surge in attacks throughout the Internet-of which politically motivated hacks are a small fraction. But in e-mail and telephone interviews, several hackers promoting a political agenda-all of whom refused to give their real names- insisted that their motives were pure. "We have hundreds of servers we could hack, and we don't," said Secretos, a Portuguese hacker in his early 20's whose group, the Kaotik Team, has taken up the cause of East Timor independence. "By contrary, we even help them to fix their bugs. The main objective of our hacking pages is to transmit the message. It is not, 'We are groovy, we have power."' John Vranesevitch, editor of Antionline, an Internet publication that tracks hacker activities, said the apparent political awakening among hackers reflects a generation's coming of age. "We're starting to see right now the first generation of people who have grown up on the Internet," said Vranesevitch, who at 19 counts himself among that group. "These hackers are entering the ages where people are most politically active. This is their outlet." And some are trying to make that outlet more accessible. A 26-year-old University of Toronto dropout calling himself Perl Bailey, after a computer language popular among Web developers, said he had earned a living as a software developer and had dabbled in not entirely legal computer exploration for several years. Now, he is writing a tool to arm computer novices with basic hacktivist techniques. "After you reach a certain point, it feels like you are dressed up with nowhere to go," he said. "Iwant to make people doing questionable business dealings with countries that have no respect for human rights worry that someone who doesn't have a grade school education can sit downand go click-click and create havoc. To me that to me is very powerful." Hispanic National Bar Association Honors Latina Lawyers for Excellence in Public Service, (posted 11/2/98) WASHINGTON, DC, November 2, 1998 The Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA), has honored five women chosen from throughout the U.S. to receive the 1998 Award for Excellence in Public Service. Those named include Deborah Escobedo, META, Inc., co-lead counsel in Valeria G. v. Wilson , the challenge to the implementation of Prop. 227, San Francisco; Maria Medel, Florida International University School of Continuing Studies, Cuban American Bar Assn. Pro Bono Project, Miami, FL; Mildred Pinott, Community Law Offices, the Legal Aid Society of NY, Bronx, NY; Alpha Hernandez, Texas Rural Legal Aid, Inc., Del Rio, TX; and Olga Pedroza, Southern New Mexico Legal Services, Las Cruces, NM. "We are proud to honor these outstanding women who have excelled in their profession by helping those less fortunate," states Lillian G. Apodaca, recently elected as the fourth woman president in HNBAs 26-year history. She also announced that the Hispanic National Bar Association has recently launched a Pro Bono Project in collaboration with the American Bar Association. The Hispanic National Bar Association represents the interests
of 22,000 Hispanic judges, lawyers, law professors and law students
throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Fourth Woman President In 26 Years Assumes Leadership Of Hispanic National Bar Association, (posted 11/2/98) WASHINGTON, DC November 1, 1998 - Lillian G. Apodaca, Esq., a partner and shareholder in the law firm of Crider, Bingham & Hurst, P.C. in New Mexico, has recently been installed as the fourth woman president of the 26-year-old Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) for 1998-1999. There will be a strong female presence since the new president-elect is Alice Velazquez, Esq., a prosecutor with the Office of the District Attorney in Bronx County, New York, who will assume the presidency in October, 1999. The new president of the Hispanic National Bar Association Law Student Division is also a Latina, Lizzy Diaz-Ortiz, a Kent Law School student from Chicago, IL With Loretta Gutierrez Nestor, serving as Executive Director in Washington, DC, this marks the first time in HNBAs history that the four top positions have been assumed by women in the same year. Ms. Apodaca practices in the area of business and commercial litigation and transactions with an emphasis on construction law. She practices with eight other attorneys and is the only woman in her law firm. In recent years she has also expanded into the area of arbitration. She is the only woman certified American Arbitration Association construction arbitrator in the Southwest and is the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the State Bar International Law Section. She is also a frequent seminar lecturer in alternative dispute resolution and construction law. The Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) represents the interests of 22,000 Hispanic judges, lawyers, law professors and law students through out the United States and Puerto Rico. The HNBAs mission is to serve as the national voice for the concerns and opinions of Hispanics in the legal profession, such as the appointment of a Hispanic to the Supreme Court and other judicial appointments, to promote the recruitment and retention of Hispanics in law schools and provide them with financial assistance, provide testimony before Congress, state legislatures and the executive agencies on issues of concern to Hispanics, work with other bar associations, governmental agencies and community groups to achieve greater involvement and understanding of the American legal system by the Hispanic community, and conduct conventions and continuing legal education seminars. In addition to being a member of both the Kansas and New Mexico Bars, she is a member of the New Mexico Womens Bar Association and immediate past president of the New Mexico Hispanic Bar. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a coalition of more than thirty of the top Hispanic national organizations that advocate for Hispanic appointments and policy issues. Ms. Apodaca, whose ancestors first settled in New Mexico in 1598, was born and raised in a small northern New Mexico ranching village. At the age of thirteen, she started attending an all girls Catholic boarding school in Arizona, and also attended Phillips Exeter Academy in the summer. She holds a Bachelors degree in Government, a Masters in Urban Administration and a Juris Doctorate degree. She is married to James M. Apodaca, also an attorney, and has two children. HNBA can be reached at 202/293-1507, HYPERLINK mailto:hnba@aol.com California's Puente Project Wins Innovations in American Government Award, (posted 11/2/98) October 22, 1998 WASHINGTON, October 22, 1998 -- A government program in California that prepares educationally underrepresented high school and community college students for academic success in four year institutions was named one of 10 winners of the Innovations in American Government Awards, the Ford Foundation announced today. For putting creative thinking into action, the University of California's Puente Project, along with each of the other nine programs, receives a $100,000 award and is recognized as one of the nation's best examples of government innovation. These awards, among the most prestigious public service awards, honor federal, state and local government programs that invent new ways to resolve public policy challenges. "Many of government's most creative programs are now so familiar that we forget that their origins were experimental. From the GI bill to the Internet, our government has created many new ways to fulfill our nation's potential," said Susan Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation, which provides the grant funds for the Innovations program. "These 10 Innovations Award winners remind us that, despite the media's frequent contention to the contrary, government paves the way for much of our country's success." The Puente Project, originally founded with a mission of helping Latino students achieve academic excellence, now serves a full range of California's at-risk students. Puente, the Spanish word for bridge, pairs the Puente Project students with successful people in the community who act as mentors and makes writing classes and sustained academic counseling available to the students. For students, this continued academic career translates into greater job stability and earned income potential: 47 percent of Puente students transfer from community colleges to universities, compared with seven percent of non-Puente students. "It is a tremendous honor for Puente to receive an Innovations award. When we started Puente as a local grassroots program 17 years ago, we never imagined that our ideas would be recognized nationally," said Patricia McGrath, Co-Director of the Puente Project. "Receiving this award demonstrates the power of the community that has supported us over the years," added Co-Director Felix Galaviz. The competition is rigorous. Beginning each January, approximately 1,500 program applications are reviewed by Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, which administers the Innovations program. Each program application is evaluated according to four selection criteria: they must be novel, be effective, solve a significant problem, and be replicable by other government entities. In May, 100 semi-finalists are selected from this pool of applicants, and in September, 25 finalists are chosen. Each finalist program receives a $20,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. Yesterday, these finalists assembled in Washington, D.C., all attempting to convince the National Selection Committee that their program best satisfies these four criteria and is deserving of the additional $80,000 grant that goes to each winner. This morning, the National Selection Committee, chaired by David Gergen, announced the 10 winners. "At a time when Americans across the country are concerned about the educational advancement of minority students, the Puente Project provides solid evidence that with innovative leadership, answers can be within our grasp. Hispanic students in particular have gained from this excellent program," said Gergen. Other winners in this year's Innovations Awards include three federal programs (Best Manufacturing Practices from the U.S. Department of Defense, Fast Track Product Recall from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Northern New Mexico Collaborative Stewardship from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service); three other state programs (Smart Start, North Carolina; Reparative Probation, Vermont; and Center for Court Innovation, New York); three local initiatives (First Offender Prostitution Program, San Francisco, California; Edwin Gould Academy, Ramapo Union Free School District, New York; and BCMS Project Access, Buncombe County, North Carolina). The Innovations in American Government Awards programs is
funded by the Ford Foundation and administered by the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in partnership
with the Council for Excellence in Government. Since the Ford
Foundation began granting Innovations Awards in 1986, over 85
percent of the winning programs have been successfully replicated.
For example, a 1997 Innovations in American Government Award
winner from the city of Chicago, Gallery 37, has been replicated
in 18 U.S. cities, as well as Australia and England. More information
on the Innovations in American Government Awards, including the
application for the 1999 awards competition, is available at
the Innovations in American Government Website: Investigation Into Mailbox Explosion Leads Officials to Maryland Home, (posted 11/2/98) KEYSER, W.Va. - A mailbox explosion at a Mineral County home inhabited by 12 Hispanics is being investigated as a hate crime, police said. Three quarter-sticks of dynamite were placed inside a mailbox attached to the house Wednesday night in Piedmont. The house sustained minor damage, said Piedmont Police Chief Chris Cessare. "Any terrorist act committed against a group, such as
in this case several Hispanic Americans it's an act of terrorism
and a hate crime," Cessare said. Co-workers of the Hispanic men also may be involved, he said. Deputy Chief Fire Marshal James Woods, a state bomb squad technician, said storing the dynamite in a residential area was dangerous because the material is "extremely shock-sensitive." All but a small sample of the dynamite was destroyed by the bomb squad, he said. Illegal possession of explosives in Maryland carries a possible punishment of up to 25 years in prison and $250,000 in fines upon conviction. ASSOCIATED PRESS Public Shrines Are Reminders Of Interrupted Journey, (posted 11/2/98) FOR RELEASE: WEEK OF OCTOBER 30, 1998 The roadside shrines honor the spirits of the dead. Five crosses crowned with plastic flowers in a circle of colored rocks. We wonder, did a whole family die here along a dangerous road on the Navajo reservation? Did they embrace each other before the end? Another three crosses neighbor them. Did they know each other when death touched them? Eight crosses in one small patch of land: "Ten cuidado." Be careful here. The descansos, roadside memorials or crosses often erected with rock piles, can be found all over the United States, but they particularly mark the lands of the Southwest and the Americas. They are public altars to "an interrupted journey." And for many who place the descansos, the spot where their loved one died is the "campo santo," the graveyard, or literally, holy ground. The bare, white crosses remind motorists to drive safely, to never leave the house without kissing loved ones goodbye, to not leave angry. We never know when we might end up as a cross on the road or up along a hill, where someone was flung into the spirit world, their names and dates carved upon the landscape. "Died Dec. 12, 1981." "Aqui le toco fulano." So-and-so died here. Make the sign of the cross and bless yourself. "The crosses of the descanso are like the stations of the cross, the road the rosary," Rudolfo Anaya writes in "Descansos: An Interrupted Journey," (El Norte Publications), a book he penned with writers Juan Estevan Arellano and Denise Chavez. Every Memorial Day and Dia de las Animas (All Soul's Day, Nov. 2), people make offerings to their dead, bringing fresh flowers or a rosary. The descansos call forth their memory. The remembering becomes a prayer. The descanso, which means resting place in Spanish, is fashioned with wood, sticks, car metal, dolls, even carved into rocks and boulders, as are the dozens of crosses of unknown Indians and mestizos who led the Taos rebellion in New Mexico during the American invasion of what was then Mexico. In "Descansos," the writers suggest that the shrines in New Mexico were originally resting places where pallbearers would stop and rest while carrying the coffin from the church to the campo santo. There, they would lay down the cross of the deceased. In some remote villages, this ritual remains. "The cross of the descanso is like the tree of life, anchored to the soil, it takes root, neither time nor the weather can wash it away. Only memory can erase it from the earth," Anaya writes. Recently, we came across a poster created by the Truth or Consequences/Sierra County DWI Prevention Program. It was a photograph of a descanso devised as a bed of flowers near Gallup, N.M., for a 4-year-old boy killed by a drunk driver on Dec. 11, 1994. The poster noted: "Roadside memories. Reminders of tragedy, memorials placed in honor of loved ones lost to crashes. Many died because of drunk drivers." We've often wondered why there are no descansos for those
who have perished along the border, for the hundreds that have
drowned in the Rio Grande, died in the desert's hot sands, or
in boxcars or irrigation canals, or in high-speed chases. Now rituals of prayer are emerging for the border and those who have died while trying to enter the country: Masses for the dead in San Antonio; Mass on the border in El Paso, Texas, and protest rosaries; a billboard with the death count-now at 322 -- since Operation Gatekeeper was initiated in October 1994 on the San Diego-Tijuana, Mexico, border. The American Friends Service Committee has implemented an
"Adopt a Cross" project to place descansos in Tijuana
for Dia de las Animas, popularly known as Day of the Dead. To
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, the crosses will also be borne in a Christmas
"posada" procession along the border there, which re-enacts
Joseph and Mary's search for refuge, and the names of the dead
will be called out in witness. COPYRIGHT 1998 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Both writers are authors of Gonzales/Rodriguez: Uncut & Uncensored (ISBN 0-918520-22-3 UC Berkeley, Ethnic Studies Library, Publications Unit. Rodriguez is the author of Justice: A Question of Race (Cloth ISBN 0-927534-69-X paper ISBN 0-927534-68-1 Bilingual Review Press) and the antibook, The X in La Raza II and Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human. They can be reached at PO BOX 7905, Albq NM 87194-7905, 505-242-7282 or XColumn@aol.com Gonzales's direct line is 505-248-0092 or PatiGonzaJ@aol.com Raids Condemned In National Actions, (posted 11/2/98) From Oct. 11-18, thousands of people in some 28 cities around the US took part in marches, vigils, rallies, festivals and other activities as part of a National Week of Action Against Immigration Raids, called by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) and endorsed by dozens of labor, religious and community organizations. At press conferences in 15 cities around the country on Oct. 14, NNIRR released a report detailing abuses that took place during INS raids on workplaces and homes. The 63-page report, "Portrait of Injustice," concludes that INS raids violate constitutional and civil rights, traumatize children and families, threaten safe working conditions and undermine worker organizing. Among other demands, the report calls on Congress and the Department of Justice to end immigration raids, focus resources on enforcing labor law and worker protections, and implement international human rights conventions. [San Francisco Examiner 10/15/98; Associated Press 10/15/98; Notimex 10/14/98; NNIRR Report Executive Summary] [Copies of the report are $15 plus $3 shipping from NNIRR, 310 8th St, Suite 307, Oakland, CA 94607. The executive summary is at <http://www.nnirr.org/natl_week/exec_sum.html>.] Some 5,600 signed postcards demanding an end to the raids
and decrying INS-Department of Labor cooperation were delivered
to Attorney General Janet Reno by NNIRR and the New York-based
Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI) on Oct. 14,
after the NNIRR press conference in Washington. [CHRI press release
10/14/98] But Rev. Louis Vitale, of St. Boniface Church in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, said INS enforcement has a chilling psychological effect on the families in his largely immigrant congregation. "We have children in our parish who can't sleep at night because they're afraid they'll be taken off the school bus," he said. Instead of emphasizing enforcement, Vitale recommends addressing the root economic and political causes of immigration. "NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement] and such things have heightened the gap between the US and Mexico," said Vitale. "Most of our families would rather be in Mexico, but they would never survive." [SFE 10/15/98] Rash Of Border Patrol Killings, (posted 11/2/98) On Sept. 26 a San Diego, California Border Patrol agent fatally shot 23-year old Oscar Abel Cordoba Velez, of Guadalajara, Mexico. Officials said Cordoba had picked up a rock and approached the agent who was struggling with another suspect at the border fence near the San Ysidro crossing. "The agent ordered him to drop the rock and stop. [The man] went on in an aggressive manner," said Border Patrol spokesperson Mario Villarreal. "The agent discharged his service firearm in self-defense, striking the individual in the torso." The agent has been placed on administrative leave while San Diego police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigate the shooting. A statement issued Sept. 27 by the Mexican Consulate in San Diego said witnesses reported that Cordova was seeking to distract the agent and carried no weapon. On Sept. 27, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a suspected undocumented immigrant in San Diego County's Border Field State Park, a few miles west of the San Ysidro crossing. US officials said the agent was checking for footprints when he was pelted by rocks. Officials say the agent had retreated to his vehicle when a man emerged wielding a rock and ignored orders to stop. "Fearing for his life, [the agent] brings out the weapon and shoots this person, striking the person in the torso area," Border Patrol spokesperson Gloria Chavez said. San Diego Sheriff's Lt. Jerry Lipscomb, who is investigating the shooting, said the agent fired "several shots." Citing Border Patrol policy, Chavez did not identify the agent, who was placed on paid administrative leave while the matter is investigated. In early September a border agent in San Luis, Arizona, shot and killed an undocumented border crosser who allegedly threatened him with a rock. Luis Herrera-Lasso, Mexico's consul general in San Diego, has called for a full investigation into the killings, and into other recent shootings of immigrants by Border Patrol agents, including two non-fatal incidents on Sept. 24 and 26 in San Diego County. The Border Patrol policy for using deadly force is broadly worded, allowing the use of firearms "only with the intent of stopping the person or animal from continuing the threatening behavior which justifies the use of deadly force." [Los Angeles Times 9/28/98, 9/29/98] Detainess Stage Hunger Strikes In New Jersey, New York, (posted 11/2/98) On Sept. 29, about 94 of the 268 detainees held at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, began a hunger strike to protest detention policies and conditions, including inadequate food supplies and excessive telephone charges. On Sept. 30 INS officials closed the facility to outsiders-including lawyers-and confined all detainees to their dormitories. By Oct. 2, the number of hunger strikers had dropped to 22 after officials promised improvements and a review of some of the more complex concerns. [Bergen Record (NJ) 10/3/98; New York Times 10/1/98] Four detainees identified as organizers of the hunger strike were put in isolation. But after detainees conditioned ending the strike on the organizers' release from isolation, officials took three of the four out of segregation. The four are to face disciplinary action. "There were charges that they [the protest organizers] were intimidating people, inciting them not to eat," said INS Newark district director Andrea Quarantillo. "Those were the people fueling the flames, and we had to separate them." [BR 10/2/98, 10/21/98] These charges were contradicted by strike organizers. "The main thing we said was that this must be peaceful," said Nigerian asylum-seeker Aboyade Oluwole. "People were told that they didn't have to be in the hunger strike if they didn't want to, or felt physically that they couldn't do it," said Oluwole, who still hadn't eaten as of the night of Oct. 2. "We told people they could still show support for the causes even if they chose to eat. That was very clear." Eleanor Acer, senior coordinator of the asylum program at the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, says that an Algerian detainee was lying in his cot at the Elizabeth facility on Sept. 30 when several guards reportedly twisted his arm behind his back and handcuffed him with such force that he cut his lip on the rim of the bed. Acer said other detainees who witnessed the incident described the guards' actions as unprovoked and overly aggressive. Quarantillo said the INS is investigating the charges, and plans to raise the issue with the Corrections Corporation ofAmerica (CCA), the private for-profit company that operates the Elizabeth facility. [BR 10/2/98] On Oct. 2, INS and CCA officials tried to control the protest by moving the remaining 24 hunger strikers to one dormitory. Officials asked two detainees they identified as leaders to compel others to end the strike. When some complained, officials prevented the Muslims among them from going to the regular Friday prayer session in the recreation area. By Oct. 5, INS authorities said only eight detainees at the Elizabeth facility were still refusing to eat. [BR 10/3/98, 10/6/98] On Oct. 5, nearly 100 asylum seekers went on hunger strike at an INS detention center run by Wackenhut Corrections Corporation near JFK airport in Queens, New York. More than half of the 176 asylum seekers at the Wackenhut facility refused to eat breakfast on Oct. 5, and 69 skipped lunch, according to Mark Thorn, spokesperson for the INS in New York. Unlike Elizabeth, the Wackenhut facility was not closed to visitors during the strike. "It's business as usual," said Thorn. In telephone interviews with the Bergen Record, Wackenhut detainees said they were inspired by the Elizabeth hunger strike to protest the low rate of parole granted by New York INS officials to asylum seekers. Of 373 asylum seekers in New York who established in preliminary screenings that they faced a credible fear of persecution in their home countries, only 21% were granted parole between October 1997 and August 1998, said Thorn. (In New Jersey, the parole approval rate dropped to 24% in March from 89% in fall 1996.) Immigrant advocates say New York's rate of paroling asylum seekers is among the lowest in the US. A lawsuit challenging the parole system is pending in the New York federal court's Eastern District. "It's part of immigration law that anyone who is coming
into this country and declaring asylum shall be detained,"
Thorn said. "This district follows the established guidelines
for considering, on a case-by-case basis, parole for extreme
medical and humanitarian reasons. Parole is not reviewed for
a case just because somebody wants it." [BR 10/6/98] On Oct. 19, 47 detainees in Elizabeth announced they were renewing the hunger strike to continue pressing for changes in the parole system. This time, the INS did not confine detainees to their dormitories. By Oct. 21, 14 detainees were still not eating. Three detainees have maintained the hunger strike since it began on Sept. 29; they say they will stop drinking water next month. "We'll fight until death," warned asylum-seeker Alexei Joukov. [NJ Star Ledger 10/20/98; BR 10/22/98, 10/21/98; ED-LP 10/21/98] In related news, US District Court Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise in Newark, New Jersey has ruled that 19 foreign-born detainees who suffered abuse at the Elizabeth INS detention center in 1995 [when it was operated by Esmor Correctional Services, now called Correctional Services Corporation-see Briefs 6/98] may sue immigration officials for human rights violations. Attorneys for the plaintiffs said on Oct. 7 that the judge's ruling allows lawsuits against immigration supervisors who "fail to take appropriate steps to curb" human rights violations, and who display "deliberate indifference" toward such abuses. Penny Venetis, administrative director for the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers Law School and attorney for the plaintiffs, called the ruling "groundbreaking." "It's the first time a judge has ruled that United States officials who commit or allow abuse can be sued for international human right violations," said Venetis. [BR 10/8/98] Extensive University of California Report Documents Latino Demographics, (posted 11/2/98) A new University of California report on Latino demographics shows a dramatic increase in the stateís number of Latino residents and citizens in the 1990s, and a quadrupling of the percentage of California Latinos between 1950 and 1990. This population is expected to represent more than one-third of the stateís population by the turn of the century. The 218-page California Policy Seminar (CPS) report is the second edition of the California Latino Demographic Databook, originally published in 1993. The new edition gives the first detailed picture of the California Latino population in five years. The report was funded by the UC Latino Policy Research Program (which CPS administers) and UC MEXUS, the universityís Institute for Mexico and the United States. It was authored by researchers from the UC DATA project of the UC Berkeley Survey Research Center, including UC Berkeley graduate student researcher Jon Stiles and data archivist Frederic C. Gey. A summary of the report and links to some of the maps, figures and report tables-as well as ordering information-are available on the web at http://www.ucop.edu/cps/demodatabrief.html. The report documents the size, growth, and distribution of Californiaís Latino population; age, sex and household characteristics; language, education, employment, and income patterns; and Latino political participation and citizenship. Tables and figures compare Latinos by national origin, birthplace, time of immigration, and citizenship. Contrasting data for non-Latino whites, African Americans and Asian populations in California are also presented. The bookís illustrations make clear the differences in the composition of both the stateís Latino and non-Latino populations, and also identify the level of growth of the Latino population between the 1980 and 1990 censuses for other U.S. counties, showing how Latino population growth in California compares to that in other areas. The section on Latino political participation and citizenship is new, and shows that the Latino portion of adult citizens in the state ó the population eligible to vote ó jumped 10.1 percent from 1980 to 1996. The number of Latinos who actually took advantage of their voting privileges increased from 6.6 percent in 1980 to 11.5 percent in 1994. Andres Jimenez, director of the California Policy Seminar, said that, ironically, the rise of anti-immigrant policies in the 1990s has driven the Latino population toward higher levels of electoral participation. Faced with anti-immigrant sentiment and denial of social services to legal immigrants,î Jimenez stated, ìthe community responded with a greater presence among the stateís electorate. After becoming citizens and registering to vote, ìLatinos vote at essentially the same rates as whites, 83.1 percent and 84.7 percent respectively, and more than either blacks, 76.5 percent, or Asians, 79.5 percent,î the report said. Report statistics were drawn from U.S. Census records, the Annual Demographic Files and Voter Supplements of the Current Population Survey, the 1987 and 1992 economic censuses, the California Basic Educational Data System, California Department of Health Services vital statistics, Immigration and Naturalization Service records, and voter registration lists. Because of the length of time it takes to release decennial census data, this book should be a useful source of information for the next five to eight years. Groups To Call For Day Of Fast On Behalf Of America's Farmworkers, (posted 11/2/98) Lisa Navarrete Washington, D.C. - A coalition of civil rights, religious,
ethnic, and farmworker advocate organizations will hold a news
conference to announce a Fast for America's Farmworkers on November
27th to support the more than four million farmworkers and their
families in the U.S. The news conference will be held Thursday,
October 29 at 11:00 a.m. in room H-137 of the U.S. Capitol. MEDIA ADVISORY Mail Sent: October 28, 1998 11:27 pm PST Item: R01Fg8J. Nationwide Employment
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