Sunday, November 26, 2006
Required Reading
M/LAT 12
Revised Syllabus
Week of Nov. 27th
Snodgrass Godoy. “Health, Wealth & Trade: CAFTA & Medicine”
“Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry” The New York Times
“Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?” Los Angeles Times
Here's the list of articles we will be discussing this week. Please scroll down for the articles. Some are posted here in their entirety, for the rest you'll need to click on the link. You will need to reall all articles for your final paper/exam. Peace.
"Taking Aim At Immigration In Texas" [scroll down to find in this webpage]
"On Education" [scroll down to find in this webpage]
" Haiti" [scroll down to find in this webpage]
Week of Dec. 4th
“U.S. Cities Rise in Violence Along Border with Mexico” The New York Times.
“State of Siege: Drug-Related Violence and Corruption in Mexico – Unintended Consequences of the War on Drugs.”
Week of Dec. 11th
Work on Final Paper.
Week of Dec. 18th.
Final Paper Due.
In the fields, a rude awakening
Los Angeles Times, Front Page
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-tulelake5nov05,1,4592505.story?page=2&coll=la-headlines-frontpage
THE STATE
In the fields, a rude awakening
For some laborers, U.S. guest worker program was a bitter letdown.fell short of their dream.
By Lee Romney
Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2006
TULELAKE, CALIF. - The ad in his hometown newspaper was enticing, the meeting with a company recruiter even more so.
For six to eight weeks of strawberry work, Ricardo Valle and his wife, Ana Luisa Salinas, would get good pay, free transportation to and from Mexico with food included, three daily meals - even a little cabanita with a kitchenette that they would share with just one other couple.
Like most of the 250 Mexicans on U.S. guest worker visas who arrived Sept. 22 at this lonely post near the Oregon border, Valle and Salinas did the math: In the contract period promised, they could make more than they would in a year and a half in Nogales, Mexico. Valle quit his maquiladora job, where for a dozen years he had assembled electric curtain motors.
As strict immigration enforcement limits the pool of available farmhands, growers are clamoring to expand the federal guest worker program. But the experience of the workers, whose contract ended last week, offers a rare look at the system's potential pitfalls. In interviews and legal declarations, dozens of workers have said they went hungry not just on the bus north but in the weeks that followed. Instead of the cabanitas, they got crowded dorms. They were also paid less than they'd been told they would be - and less than the law required - for a shorter period than they'd been promised.
"From the moment we got on the bus in Nogales, we knew they were feeding us lies," Valle, 52, said as he tended to his sick wife in a cramped dormitory set up in an exhibition hall on the county fairgrounds here. On the bus, he said, "they gave us a liquid diet - pure water - for 24 hours. Those who had money could eat. The rest of us, we ate air."
After they arrived in Tulelake, the workers said, they found out their contract term had been cut nearly in half, to just over a month. Furthermore, they were required to trim 1,025 strawberry plants per hour to prepare them for later transplantation. Without farm experience, meeting the goal proved so grueling that they worked through breaks and lunchtime.
Many failed and quit. Others were fired. Soon, only a little over half the original workforce was left. The employer, Sierra-Cascade Nursery of Susanville, Calif., is now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees the guest worker program. California's Department of Industrial Relations has ordered the company to correct numerous wage violations and conduct a self-audit.
And, responding to an emergency request by attorneys for the nonprofit advocacy group California Rural Legal Assistance, a federal judge two weeks ago ordered Sierra-Cascade to make meals more nutritious, give workers more living space and heat the fairgrounds' frigid shower rooms.
Sierra-Cascade's human resources director, Larry Memmott, said the company was using the visa program for the first time and had made mistakes.
"We may not have provided the proper food for them in the beginning," he said. "We may have missed a meal. But we went in and corrected what we need to correctŠ. We'll take our lumps and move forward."
The complaining workers were "bad apples," he added.
Advocates with California Rural Legal Assistance, which has filed suit on behalf of more than 50 workers, point instead to systemic problems that arise when human labor becomes an importable commodity. Employees entirely dependent on the sponsoring company are unfamiliar with the law and unlikely to complain, they say.
"Unlike workers in any other part of the free market, who have the ability to vote with their feet, these workers don't," said Mark Schacht of the rural legal group's foundation, which plans to propose state legislation to strengthen worker protections.
"These guys get delivered when the employer wants. They get taken away when the employer wants, and they are subjected to a regime that has elements of un-free labor."
Sierra-Cascade's seedlings are grown in Northern California and Oregon, then trimmed and shipped to warmer climates. In 2004, Memmott said, an immigration review indicated that 80% of the company's workers were undocumented.
"Last year, we couldn't fill our trim shed at all," Memmott said. "We figured that this year we weren't going to wait and see."
Memmott recruited in the state of Chihuahua and in neighboring Sonora, which has achieved relative prosperity from ranching and multinational assembly plants known as maquiladoras.
Some learned of the jobs through friends. Some saw fliers. Rigoberto Talamantes Flores and his wife, Alicia Punuelas Ledezma, both 42, of Nuevo Casa Grande, Chihuahua, heard a radio pitch. "We thought we would come, because of the illusion that it would alleviate some of the economic pressures on us," said Flores, who shuttered his shoeshine shop to make the trip.
They said they were told the pay would be $9 an hour - the legally required rate under the program - plus production bonuses. Nowhere in the solicitation, workers said, was any mention of the high work quota. That was disclosed only in the contracts handed out at night in Susanville, where the bus dropped off 200 visa holders before taking the Tulelake workers farther north.
Disappointments multiplied upon arrival. The site of the nation's largest World War II Japanese internment camp, Tulelake sits in a desolate volcanic basin of rich soil. Road signs warn motorists not to run down migrating fowl, more numerous here than humans.
"We were cramped so close together that our legs would knock when we put on our shoes," Reyna Amelia Tarango Ponce, 45, whose husband closed his Chihuahua brake shop to come north, said of the dormitories.
At first, couples were housed with single women - until a man was accused of a sexual assault during the night. Foreman Javier Chavez fired the accused worker and installed wooden barriers to split the room.
The eight-hour days that workers say they were promised, and for which they were paid, quickly stretched to 10 - and longer, with the bus ride to the trim shed, where they stood in the cold for up to an hour waiting to begin.
Breakfast at first consisted of bread and coffee; after a few weeks the food did improve when Memmott changed cooks. Come payday, many workers were unable to cash their checks in the tiny town, whose bank is closed Saturdays and charges $15 for the service.
"We have nothing - not even enough to buy soap," said Valle, who, without change for the laundry machines, spent Sundays scrubbing clothes under a cold outdoor spigot and drying them on the fairgrounds' chain-link fence.
The gloves, aprons and boots that advocates say are required by law - to protect workers from such hazards as icy plants and knife blades - were not provided, though some workers purchased them.
Attorneys for the workers say the production quota is unreasonable and should have been disclosed during recruitment. Memmott says he showed them a video and told them: "It's going to be cold. It's going to be hard work."
Many others make the grade, he said. Most are domestic hires - experienced migrants from the poorer farming states of Oaxaca and Michoacan. The working conditions, housing, wages and food are no better or worse than what they are used to, said 28-year-old Alejandro Ramirez of Zamora, Michoacan. "Those on the contract, they were made certain promises," he said. "But for us, it's pretty good."
On a recent morning in the company's trim shed, 18-year-old Federico Hernandez of Oaxaca moved with a spasmodic rhythm, his hands twitching and his feet dancing as he separated plants at the roots. Working this way, he said proudly, he could trim 1,200 plants an hour and make a decent wage.
But a lack of experience hampered many of the visa holders.
It was a Oaxacan laborer from the Central Valley who took pity on the visa holders. The worker called an activist in Oaxaca, who in turn contacted an organizer at the Fresno office of the rural law group. That organization alerted regulators and dispatched attorneys to Tulelake.
Memmott said his company is cooperating with the U.S. Department of Labor. In response to the agency, he said, the laundry machines now operate without coins and the kitchen is serving healthier fare.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Industrial Relations' Division of Labor Standards Enforcement has notified SierraCascade that it is violating labor law by failing to pay overtime after eight hours, to ensure rest breaks and a 30-minute lunch break, and to compensate workers for time in transit and waiting to begin work.
They "intend to correct the issues we've addressed and pay restitution to their employees," said Dean Fryer of the Department of Industrial Relations.
The pending lawsuit alleges, among other violations, that the company, through false representations, enticed the workers across an international border.
Memmott attributed the problems to the program's learning curve. Sierra-Cascade had planned to provide couples the more private housing in nearby Newell, he added. But when fewer guest workers arrived than anticipated, the company opted to save the cost and time of busing them farther.
Next year, he said, the company might seek some more-experienced workers farther south in Mexico. Advocates, however, say they may petition the U.S. Department of Labor to block Sierra-Cascade from using the program.
The company has pledged to make workers whole. Still, some damage cannot be undone, workers said. In Mexico, where age discrimination is pervasive, Valle is certain he will never get his maquiladora job back.
"Twelve years to quit for the American Dream, which is now a nightmare," he said.
lee.romney@latimes.com
Times staff writer Sam Quinones contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-tulelake5nov05,1,4592505.story?page=2&coll=la-headlines-frontpage
THE STATE
In the fields, a rude awakening
For some laborers, U.S. guest worker program was a bitter letdown.fell short of their dream.
By Lee Romney
Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2006
TULELAKE, CALIF. - The ad in his hometown newspaper was enticing, the meeting with a company recruiter even more so.
For six to eight weeks of strawberry work, Ricardo Valle and his wife, Ana Luisa Salinas, would get good pay, free transportation to and from Mexico with food included, three daily meals - even a little cabanita with a kitchenette that they would share with just one other couple.
Like most of the 250 Mexicans on U.S. guest worker visas who arrived Sept. 22 at this lonely post near the Oregon border, Valle and Salinas did the math: In the contract period promised, they could make more than they would in a year and a half in Nogales, Mexico. Valle quit his maquiladora job, where for a dozen years he had assembled electric curtain motors.
As strict immigration enforcement limits the pool of available farmhands, growers are clamoring to expand the federal guest worker program. But the experience of the workers, whose contract ended last week, offers a rare look at the system's potential pitfalls. In interviews and legal declarations, dozens of workers have said they went hungry not just on the bus north but in the weeks that followed. Instead of the cabanitas, they got crowded dorms. They were also paid less than they'd been told they would be - and less than the law required - for a shorter period than they'd been promised.
"From the moment we got on the bus in Nogales, we knew they were feeding us lies," Valle, 52, said as he tended to his sick wife in a cramped dormitory set up in an exhibition hall on the county fairgrounds here. On the bus, he said, "they gave us a liquid diet - pure water - for 24 hours. Those who had money could eat. The rest of us, we ate air."
After they arrived in Tulelake, the workers said, they found out their contract term had been cut nearly in half, to just over a month. Furthermore, they were required to trim 1,025 strawberry plants per hour to prepare them for later transplantation. Without farm experience, meeting the goal proved so grueling that they worked through breaks and lunchtime.
Many failed and quit. Others were fired. Soon, only a little over half the original workforce was left. The employer, Sierra-Cascade Nursery of Susanville, Calif., is now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees the guest worker program. California's Department of Industrial Relations has ordered the company to correct numerous wage violations and conduct a self-audit.
And, responding to an emergency request by attorneys for the nonprofit advocacy group California Rural Legal Assistance, a federal judge two weeks ago ordered Sierra-Cascade to make meals more nutritious, give workers more living space and heat the fairgrounds' frigid shower rooms.
Sierra-Cascade's human resources director, Larry Memmott, said the company was using the visa program for the first time and had made mistakes.
"We may not have provided the proper food for them in the beginning," he said. "We may have missed a meal. But we went in and corrected what we need to correctŠ. We'll take our lumps and move forward."
The complaining workers were "bad apples," he added.
Advocates with California Rural Legal Assistance, which has filed suit on behalf of more than 50 workers, point instead to systemic problems that arise when human labor becomes an importable commodity. Employees entirely dependent on the sponsoring company are unfamiliar with the law and unlikely to complain, they say.
"Unlike workers in any other part of the free market, who have the ability to vote with their feet, these workers don't," said Mark Schacht of the rural legal group's foundation, which plans to propose state legislation to strengthen worker protections.
"These guys get delivered when the employer wants. They get taken away when the employer wants, and they are subjected to a regime that has elements of un-free labor."
Sierra-Cascade's seedlings are grown in Northern California and Oregon, then trimmed and shipped to warmer climates. In 2004, Memmott said, an immigration review indicated that 80% of the company's workers were undocumented.
"Last year, we couldn't fill our trim shed at all," Memmott said. "We figured that this year we weren't going to wait and see."
Memmott recruited in the state of Chihuahua and in neighboring Sonora, which has achieved relative prosperity from ranching and multinational assembly plants known as maquiladoras.
Some learned of the jobs through friends. Some saw fliers. Rigoberto Talamantes Flores and his wife, Alicia Punuelas Ledezma, both 42, of Nuevo Casa Grande, Chihuahua, heard a radio pitch. "We thought we would come, because of the illusion that it would alleviate some of the economic pressures on us," said Flores, who shuttered his shoeshine shop to make the trip.
They said they were told the pay would be $9 an hour - the legally required rate under the program - plus production bonuses. Nowhere in the solicitation, workers said, was any mention of the high work quota. That was disclosed only in the contracts handed out at night in Susanville, where the bus dropped off 200 visa holders before taking the Tulelake workers farther north.
Disappointments multiplied upon arrival. The site of the nation's largest World War II Japanese internment camp, Tulelake sits in a desolate volcanic basin of rich soil. Road signs warn motorists not to run down migrating fowl, more numerous here than humans.
"We were cramped so close together that our legs would knock when we put on our shoes," Reyna Amelia Tarango Ponce, 45, whose husband closed his Chihuahua brake shop to come north, said of the dormitories.
At first, couples were housed with single women - until a man was accused of a sexual assault during the night. Foreman Javier Chavez fired the accused worker and installed wooden barriers to split the room.
The eight-hour days that workers say they were promised, and for which they were paid, quickly stretched to 10 - and longer, with the bus ride to the trim shed, where they stood in the cold for up to an hour waiting to begin.
Breakfast at first consisted of bread and coffee; after a few weeks the food did improve when Memmott changed cooks. Come payday, many workers were unable to cash their checks in the tiny town, whose bank is closed Saturdays and charges $15 for the service.
"We have nothing - not even enough to buy soap," said Valle, who, without change for the laundry machines, spent Sundays scrubbing clothes under a cold outdoor spigot and drying them on the fairgrounds' chain-link fence.
The gloves, aprons and boots that advocates say are required by law - to protect workers from such hazards as icy plants and knife blades - were not provided, though some workers purchased them.
Attorneys for the workers say the production quota is unreasonable and should have been disclosed during recruitment. Memmott says he showed them a video and told them: "It's going to be cold. It's going to be hard work."
Many others make the grade, he said. Most are domestic hires - experienced migrants from the poorer farming states of Oaxaca and Michoacan. The working conditions, housing, wages and food are no better or worse than what they are used to, said 28-year-old Alejandro Ramirez of Zamora, Michoacan. "Those on the contract, they were made certain promises," he said. "But for us, it's pretty good."
On a recent morning in the company's trim shed, 18-year-old Federico Hernandez of Oaxaca moved with a spasmodic rhythm, his hands twitching and his feet dancing as he separated plants at the roots. Working this way, he said proudly, he could trim 1,200 plants an hour and make a decent wage.
But a lack of experience hampered many of the visa holders.
It was a Oaxacan laborer from the Central Valley who took pity on the visa holders. The worker called an activist in Oaxaca, who in turn contacted an organizer at the Fresno office of the rural law group. That organization alerted regulators and dispatched attorneys to Tulelake.
Memmott said his company is cooperating with the U.S. Department of Labor. In response to the agency, he said, the laundry machines now operate without coins and the kitchen is serving healthier fare.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Industrial Relations' Division of Labor Standards Enforcement has notified SierraCascade that it is violating labor law by failing to pay overtime after eight hours, to ensure rest breaks and a 30-minute lunch break, and to compensate workers for time in transit and waiting to begin work.
They "intend to correct the issues we've addressed and pay restitution to their employees," said Dean Fryer of the Department of Industrial Relations.
The pending lawsuit alleges, among other violations, that the company, through false representations, enticed the workers across an international border.
Memmott attributed the problems to the program's learning curve. Sierra-Cascade had planned to provide couples the more private housing in nearby Newell, he added. But when fewer guest workers arrived than anticipated, the company opted to save the cost and time of busing them farther.
Next year, he said, the company might seek some more-experienced workers farther south in Mexico. Advocates, however, say they may petition the U.S. Department of Labor to block Sierra-Cascade from using the program.
The company has pledged to make workers whole. Still, some damage cannot be undone, workers said. In Mexico, where age discrimination is pervasive, Valle is certain he will never get his maquiladora job back.
"Twelve years to quit for the American Dream, which is now a nightmare," he said.
lee.romney@latimes.com
Times staff writer Sam Quinones contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
Ruling: Classes divided by race
Ruling: Classes divided by race
At Preston Hollow, principal tried to appease affluent parents, halt white flight, judge says
09:14 AM CST on Saturday, November 18, 2006
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
For years, it was an open secret at North Dallas' Preston Hollow Elementary School: Even though the school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black, white parents could get their children into all-white classes. And once placed, the students would have little interaction with the rest of the students.
The result, a federal judge has ruled, was that principal Teresa Parker "was, in effect, operating, at taxpayer's expense, a private school for Anglo children within a public school that was predominantly minority."
Judge Sam Lindsay's opinion paints an unflattering picture of the elementary school and a principal who was so desperate to appease the school's affluent white parents that she turned back the clock on school desegregation 50 years.
In April, Hispanic parents sued, claiming illegal segregation. The three-week trial concluded in late August. On Thursday, Judge Lindsay declared that the school's principal violated the rights of minority children by assigning them to classrooms based on race.
The judge ordered Mrs. Parker to pay $20,200 to Lucrecia Mayorga Santamaría, the lone named plaintiff, who sued on behalf of her three children.
Although the judge did not find the Dallas school district liable for Mrs. Parker's actions, he strongly criticized DISD administrators for being "asleep at the wheel."
"The court is convinced that several of the area superintendents knew, or should have known, about the illegal segregation at Preston Hollow," the judge wrote in his 108-page ruling.
The district has until Jan. 17 to remedy the segregation at the school. Mrs. Parker did not return messages left at her home and school Friday.
District spokesman Celso Martinez said Mrs. Parker would remain the school's principal "until further notice."
Mr. Martinez said the school has undertaken steps to comply with the court order, namely relying on student language scores to place students.
"The truth is we have initiated quite a few changes at the school already," he said. "We need to compare those changes with the court order. We may well be in total compliance."
However, when asked if there are still classes at Preston Hollow containing only white students, Mr. Martinez replied: "That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that."
Desegregation plan
In 2003, a federal judge released the district from its court-ordered desegregation plan. That plan, however, focused on the allocation of resources and treatment of black students. In the 30 years the district operated under the order, whites fled and Hispanics have grown to become the majority. Blacks make up less than a third of the district; whites about 6 percent.
Preston Hollow's unwritten policy of clustering whites together was known for years among parents and teachers, according to testimony. In fact, Mrs. Parker's subordinates ˆ including teachers and her assistant principal ˆ raised concerns about it multiple times. One even wrote a letter to Superintendent Michael Hinojosa about it. Those complaints fell on deaf ears, the judge wrote.
"I began to see something very strange," Ms. Santamaría said in Spanish. "The difference was that the Anglo students would go to lunch together while the Latinos went with the Asians and the African-Americans." That, she said, raised a question in her mind "because the children don't know what segregation is."
Once the Hispanic families sued, Mrs. Parker tried to cover her tracks, according to testimony. For example, on the day an investigator was to observe classes at the school, Mrs. Parker "reshuffled" the student's classroom assignments, according to assistant principal Robert McElroy.
Mrs. Parker also asked members of her staff to sign confidentiality agreements about how students were assigned to their classes, and paperwork detailing the classroom assignments was destroyed under mysterious circumstances, according to the judge's ruling.
Principal uncooperative
The judge also took exception to Mrs. Parker's apparent unwillingness to cooperate with the court. At one point during the trial, the judge noted, Mrs. Parker testified that she didn't know whether Preston Hollow is a predominantly white neighborhood.
"The court finds it astounding that Principal Parker, who has served at Preston Hollow for five years, would testify that she knows nothing about the ethnic makeup of the immediate neighborhood surrounding her school."
The school's attendance zone is mostly north of Northwest Highway, east of Preston Road, south of Royal Lane, and just east of North Central Expressway. It includes affluent, mostly white single-family homes, as well as middle-class homes and apartments that are predominantly minority.
The judge also had sharp words for the district's attorneys, who argued that segregation would cause no harm to the minority students because their teachers used the same curriculum as those teaching white students.
"The court is baffled that in this day and age, that [DISD relied] on what is, essentially, a 'separate but equal' argument," the judge wrote.
Mr. Martinez, the district spokesman, said the district doesn't believe Mrs. Parker was segregating students, but he acknowledged that classrooms at the school need to be better integrated.
"It's our opinion that we were not segregating students at all," Mr. Martinez said. "In fact the judge found that we were not violating the constitutional rights of anybody. Do we need to integrate the classrooms? Yes, and we're doing precisely that."
Although the judge ruled against the school's principal in her personal capacity, he did not find the district, its trustees or Mrs. Parker liable in their "official capacities."
David Hinojosa, the parents' attorney from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said he apparently didn't convince the judge that the district knew the segregation was happening.
"You just have a certain legal standard you have to meet, and unfortunately, the court didn't find that," he said. "We might appeal the issue if need be ... but we got the ultimate relief we wanted. The parents wanted to stop the segregation that was going on there."
PTA chief criticized
Judge Lindsay also criticized Meg Bittner, the school's PTA president, who wanted to lure more affluent white families out of private schools and back to Preston Hollow.
More white families would result in a healthier PTA, she testified, bigger fundraisers and, ultimately, more money for the school. The best way to lure back white families, teachers and others testified, was to put white children together in the same classrooms.
Teacher Janet Leon told the court that "neighborhood classes" were predominantly made up of white students because "the people who live in the Preston Hollow neighborhood, who are the majority being white, would want their children grouped together."
To aid in the recruitment of more affluent whites, the school's PTA created a brochure for parents that featured almost all white students. Hispanic parents had shown up at the school the day photos were being taken for the brochure, but the principal blocked their entry into the classroom where the photos were being taken, the judge's ruling states.
Additionally, the PTA, in conjunction with the school, held separate open houses and kindergarten recruitments for white parents. And when PTA members gave prospective parents tours of the schoo, they were never taken down the "Hispanic halls" where the minority classes were housed, teachers testified.
Mrs. Bittner and other PTA officers did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
Sergio Chapa of Al Día contributed to this report.
E-mail kfischer@dallasnews.com
At Preston Hollow, principal tried to appease affluent parents, halt white flight, judge says
09:14 AM CST on Saturday, November 18, 2006
By KENT FISCHER / The Dallas Morning News
For years, it was an open secret at North Dallas' Preston Hollow Elementary School: Even though the school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black, white parents could get their children into all-white classes. And once placed, the students would have little interaction with the rest of the students.
The result, a federal judge has ruled, was that principal Teresa Parker "was, in effect, operating, at taxpayer's expense, a private school for Anglo children within a public school that was predominantly minority."
Judge Sam Lindsay's opinion paints an unflattering picture of the elementary school and a principal who was so desperate to appease the school's affluent white parents that she turned back the clock on school desegregation 50 years.
In April, Hispanic parents sued, claiming illegal segregation. The three-week trial concluded in late August. On Thursday, Judge Lindsay declared that the school's principal violated the rights of minority children by assigning them to classrooms based on race.
The judge ordered Mrs. Parker to pay $20,200 to Lucrecia Mayorga Santamaría, the lone named plaintiff, who sued on behalf of her three children.
Although the judge did not find the Dallas school district liable for Mrs. Parker's actions, he strongly criticized DISD administrators for being "asleep at the wheel."
"The court is convinced that several of the area superintendents knew, or should have known, about the illegal segregation at Preston Hollow," the judge wrote in his 108-page ruling.
The district has until Jan. 17 to remedy the segregation at the school. Mrs. Parker did not return messages left at her home and school Friday.
District spokesman Celso Martinez said Mrs. Parker would remain the school's principal "until further notice."
Mr. Martinez said the school has undertaken steps to comply with the court order, namely relying on student language scores to place students.
"The truth is we have initiated quite a few changes at the school already," he said. "We need to compare those changes with the court order. We may well be in total compliance."
However, when asked if there are still classes at Preston Hollow containing only white students, Mr. Martinez replied: "That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that."
Desegregation plan
In 2003, a federal judge released the district from its court-ordered desegregation plan. That plan, however, focused on the allocation of resources and treatment of black students. In the 30 years the district operated under the order, whites fled and Hispanics have grown to become the majority. Blacks make up less than a third of the district; whites about 6 percent.
Preston Hollow's unwritten policy of clustering whites together was known for years among parents and teachers, according to testimony. In fact, Mrs. Parker's subordinates ˆ including teachers and her assistant principal ˆ raised concerns about it multiple times. One even wrote a letter to Superintendent Michael Hinojosa about it. Those complaints fell on deaf ears, the judge wrote.
"I began to see something very strange," Ms. Santamaría said in Spanish. "The difference was that the Anglo students would go to lunch together while the Latinos went with the Asians and the African-Americans." That, she said, raised a question in her mind "because the children don't know what segregation is."
Once the Hispanic families sued, Mrs. Parker tried to cover her tracks, according to testimony. For example, on the day an investigator was to observe classes at the school, Mrs. Parker "reshuffled" the student's classroom assignments, according to assistant principal Robert McElroy.
Mrs. Parker also asked members of her staff to sign confidentiality agreements about how students were assigned to their classes, and paperwork detailing the classroom assignments was destroyed under mysterious circumstances, according to the judge's ruling.
Principal uncooperative
The judge also took exception to Mrs. Parker's apparent unwillingness to cooperate with the court. At one point during the trial, the judge noted, Mrs. Parker testified that she didn't know whether Preston Hollow is a predominantly white neighborhood.
"The court finds it astounding that Principal Parker, who has served at Preston Hollow for five years, would testify that she knows nothing about the ethnic makeup of the immediate neighborhood surrounding her school."
The school's attendance zone is mostly north of Northwest Highway, east of Preston Road, south of Royal Lane, and just east of North Central Expressway. It includes affluent, mostly white single-family homes, as well as middle-class homes and apartments that are predominantly minority.
The judge also had sharp words for the district's attorneys, who argued that segregation would cause no harm to the minority students because their teachers used the same curriculum as those teaching white students.
"The court is baffled that in this day and age, that [DISD relied] on what is, essentially, a 'separate but equal' argument," the judge wrote.
Mr. Martinez, the district spokesman, said the district doesn't believe Mrs. Parker was segregating students, but he acknowledged that classrooms at the school need to be better integrated.
"It's our opinion that we were not segregating students at all," Mr. Martinez said. "In fact the judge found that we were not violating the constitutional rights of anybody. Do we need to integrate the classrooms? Yes, and we're doing precisely that."
Although the judge ruled against the school's principal in her personal capacity, he did not find the district, its trustees or Mrs. Parker liable in their "official capacities."
David Hinojosa, the parents' attorney from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said he apparently didn't convince the judge that the district knew the segregation was happening.
"You just have a certain legal standard you have to meet, and unfortunately, the court didn't find that," he said. "We might appeal the issue if need be ... but we got the ultimate relief we wanted. The parents wanted to stop the segregation that was going on there."
PTA chief criticized
Judge Lindsay also criticized Meg Bittner, the school's PTA president, who wanted to lure more affluent white families out of private schools and back to Preston Hollow.
More white families would result in a healthier PTA, she testified, bigger fundraisers and, ultimately, more money for the school. The best way to lure back white families, teachers and others testified, was to put white children together in the same classrooms.
Teacher Janet Leon told the court that "neighborhood classes" were predominantly made up of white students because "the people who live in the Preston Hollow neighborhood, who are the majority being white, would want their children grouped together."
To aid in the recruitment of more affluent whites, the school's PTA created a brochure for parents that featured almost all white students. Hispanic parents had shown up at the school the day photos were being taken for the brochure, but the principal blocked their entry into the classroom where the photos were being taken, the judge's ruling states.
Additionally, the PTA, in conjunction with the school, held separate open houses and kindergarten recruitments for white parents. And when PTA members gave prospective parents tours of the schoo, they were never taken down the "Hispanic halls" where the minority classes were housed, teachers testified.
Mrs. Bittner and other PTA officers did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
Sergio Chapa of Al Día contributed to this report.
E-mail kfischer@dallasnews.com
Friday, November 24, 2006
For this week Nov. 27th
Here's the list of articles we will be discussing this week. Please scroll down for the articles. Some are posted here in their entirety, for the rest you'll need to click on the link. You will need to reall all articles for your final paper/exam. Peace.
Week of Nov. 27th
1) Snodgrass Godoy. “Health, Wealth & Trade: CAFTA & Medicine” [found at "Revised Syllabus post", need to scroll down this webpage]
2) “Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry” The New York Times
3) “Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?” Los Angeles Times
4) Taking Aim At Immigration In Texas
5) On Education
6) Haiti
Week of Nov. 27th
1) Snodgrass Godoy. “Health, Wealth & Trade: CAFTA & Medicine” [found at "Revised Syllabus post", need to scroll down this webpage]
2) “Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry” The New York Times
3) “Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?” Los Angeles Times
4) Taking Aim At Immigration In Texas
5) On Education
6) Haiti
Monday, November 20, 2006
Taking Aim at Immigration in Texas
In control of every statewide office, Republicans are targeting illegal immigrants by proposing to cut their benefits and even deny citizenship to their U.S.-born children
By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS/DALLAS
With the Democrats in charge in Washington, conservatives in Texas are wasting no time on a pity party. Republicans, after all, are still in the majority here, controlling every statewide office and the Legislature as well as the top courts. To press that advantage, conservatives plan to put their imprint next year on a variety of issues ranging from abortion to school vouchers. Their biggest push by far, however, will be passage of a host of bills dealing with illegal immigrants, including one that just might challenge the 14th Amendment, which defines citizenship and requires states to provide civil rights to anyone born on U.S. soil.
The opening salvo in the fight was made this week by Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas which is nearly 40% Hispanic. Despite protests in the streets and threats of lawsuits and boycotts, the city council voted to make English the official language and fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. In Austin, meanwhile, Republicans began trooping into the state Capitol with stacks of bills aimed at cutting off benefits to illegal aliens, taxing their remittances south of the border, and requiring proof of citizenship at the voting booth. The harshest bill would deny welfare and other benefits even to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens — rights supposedly given them under the 14th Amendment. Latino groups, who were only recently being wooed by Republican candidates, were left aghast at the onslaught, calling it "a hate campaign" against immigrants and "anti-human being" to boot.
John Colyandro, director of the Texas Conservative Coalition, told TIME that he expects "quite a bit of legislation" on illegal immigration to pop up in 2007 — and not just in Texas. "Because Congress did not pass a comprehensive reform bill on immigration, more and more states are going to step in like Arizona," he says. Arizona voters last month passed measures denying illegal immigrants access to state-subsidized benefits like child care as well as the right to bail and punitive damages in lawsuits. In the Texas Legislature, Colyandro expects a broad array of legislation targeting benefits to illegals, as well as voter verification of citizenship, employer sanctions for hiring illegal aliens, and additional funding for border security. He says the two extremes of the current immigration debate — deporting all illegals or granting amnesty to all — are "unworkable and frankly intolerable." He adds: "Somewhere between the two are workable solutions and that's where our focus will be in the Texas Legislature in January."
Just how far are conservatives willing to go? Far, according to a bill pre-filled this week by Republican state Rep. Leo Berman, who serves a onservative constituency in the east Texas town of Tyler, "the rose capital of the nation." Under Berman's bill, children born in Texas to illegal aliens would be denied state unemployment or public assistance benefits like food stamps as well as professional licenses. In Texas alone, he argues, there are an estimated two million illegal aliens whose U.S.-born children get these benefits, which go largely un-reimbursed by the federal government. "This is costing us a fortune," Berman argues. Although he had to back down on plans to deny education and health care (the feds require it), the central tenet of his bill remains: to challenge the automatic birthright of citizenship given to children of illegal aliens — all the way up to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
How could Texas deny benefits to U.S. citizens, even if they were born to illegals? Berman notes that the 14th Amendment was a late edition to the constitution, written after the Civil War to assure citizenship for the children of slaves. The courts later extended the amendment to include the children of illegal immigrants. But times have changed, he says. "There are 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. who have benefits that most U.S. citizens don't have," says Berman. "One of the most lucrative benefits is that pregnant illegal aliens can give birth in a U.S. hospital free of charge and be rewarded with citizenship while breaking the most basic of U.S. laws." To pay for all that free hospital care, he wants to tax all money transferred south of the border by individuals at 8 % (citizens could apply for reimbursement). The fee could raise $240 million a year, he estimates.
The larger issue for both Berman and Colyandro is carrying on with the conservative agenda now that Washington is in Democratic hands. "The American people expressed extreme disappointment in the Republican Congress but they certainly did not make a turn to the left," argues Colyandro, pointing to conservative-oriented ballot issues on property rights, gay marriage and quota elimination that survived even as the South Dakota abortion ban went down in defeat. In Texas, three new abortion bills have already been filed, including one that would immediately invalidate state law permitting abortions if Roe v. Wade were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The Republicans didn't fare badly in Texas so we have to preserve the Republican and conservative message," says Berman. "We'll be carrying the banner, probably for most of the U.S."
Hispanics in Texas plan to challenge the Farmers Branch ordinance in the courts and will battle bills like Berman's on every front. "This is a dark time for Latinos," says Rosa Rosales, a San Antonio resident and newly elected president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). "Can you imagine blaming children, trying to deny them medical care?" LULAC's former president, Hector Flores, who lives in the Dallas area, claims such conservative measures are "DOA on arrival" with the winds of change blowing through Washington. "These odious types of ordinances target Hispanics because of our growth. It is a hate campaign. That's not the American dream that we learned about in school," says Flores. What's need instead, he says, is comprehensive immigration reform to regulate the flow of people, not just from Mexico but other countries. "Bottom line: this is up to federal government not the state legislature."
By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS/DALLAS
With the Democrats in charge in Washington, conservatives in Texas are wasting no time on a pity party. Republicans, after all, are still in the majority here, controlling every statewide office and the Legislature as well as the top courts. To press that advantage, conservatives plan to put their imprint next year on a variety of issues ranging from abortion to school vouchers. Their biggest push by far, however, will be passage of a host of bills dealing with illegal immigrants, including one that just might challenge the 14th Amendment, which defines citizenship and requires states to provide civil rights to anyone born on U.S. soil.
The opening salvo in the fight was made this week by Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas which is nearly 40% Hispanic. Despite protests in the streets and threats of lawsuits and boycotts, the city council voted to make English the official language and fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. In Austin, meanwhile, Republicans began trooping into the state Capitol with stacks of bills aimed at cutting off benefits to illegal aliens, taxing their remittances south of the border, and requiring proof of citizenship at the voting booth. The harshest bill would deny welfare and other benefits even to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens — rights supposedly given them under the 14th Amendment. Latino groups, who were only recently being wooed by Republican candidates, were left aghast at the onslaught, calling it "a hate campaign" against immigrants and "anti-human being" to boot.
John Colyandro, director of the Texas Conservative Coalition, told TIME that he expects "quite a bit of legislation" on illegal immigration to pop up in 2007 — and not just in Texas. "Because Congress did not pass a comprehensive reform bill on immigration, more and more states are going to step in like Arizona," he says. Arizona voters last month passed measures denying illegal immigrants access to state-subsidized benefits like child care as well as the right to bail and punitive damages in lawsuits. In the Texas Legislature, Colyandro expects a broad array of legislation targeting benefits to illegals, as well as voter verification of citizenship, employer sanctions for hiring illegal aliens, and additional funding for border security. He says the two extremes of the current immigration debate — deporting all illegals or granting amnesty to all — are "unworkable and frankly intolerable." He adds: "Somewhere between the two are workable solutions and that's where our focus will be in the Texas Legislature in January."
Just how far are conservatives willing to go? Far, according to a bill pre-filled this week by Republican state Rep. Leo Berman, who serves a onservative constituency in the east Texas town of Tyler, "the rose capital of the nation." Under Berman's bill, children born in Texas to illegal aliens would be denied state unemployment or public assistance benefits like food stamps as well as professional licenses. In Texas alone, he argues, there are an estimated two million illegal aliens whose U.S.-born children get these benefits, which go largely un-reimbursed by the federal government. "This is costing us a fortune," Berman argues. Although he had to back down on plans to deny education and health care (the feds require it), the central tenet of his bill remains: to challenge the automatic birthright of citizenship given to children of illegal aliens — all the way up to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
How could Texas deny benefits to U.S. citizens, even if they were born to illegals? Berman notes that the 14th Amendment was a late edition to the constitution, written after the Civil War to assure citizenship for the children of slaves. The courts later extended the amendment to include the children of illegal immigrants. But times have changed, he says. "There are 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. who have benefits that most U.S. citizens don't have," says Berman. "One of the most lucrative benefits is that pregnant illegal aliens can give birth in a U.S. hospital free of charge and be rewarded with citizenship while breaking the most basic of U.S. laws." To pay for all that free hospital care, he wants to tax all money transferred south of the border by individuals at 8 % (citizens could apply for reimbursement). The fee could raise $240 million a year, he estimates.
The larger issue for both Berman and Colyandro is carrying on with the conservative agenda now that Washington is in Democratic hands. "The American people expressed extreme disappointment in the Republican Congress but they certainly did not make a turn to the left," argues Colyandro, pointing to conservative-oriented ballot issues on property rights, gay marriage and quota elimination that survived even as the South Dakota abortion ban went down in defeat. In Texas, three new abortion bills have already been filed, including one that would immediately invalidate state law permitting abortions if Roe v. Wade were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. "The Republicans didn't fare badly in Texas so we have to preserve the Republican and conservative message," says Berman. "We'll be carrying the banner, probably for most of the U.S."
Hispanics in Texas plan to challenge the Farmers Branch ordinance in the courts and will battle bills like Berman's on every front. "This is a dark time for Latinos," says Rosa Rosales, a San Antonio resident and newly elected president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). "Can you imagine blaming children, trying to deny them medical care?" LULAC's former president, Hector Flores, who lives in the Dallas area, claims such conservative measures are "DOA on arrival" with the winds of change blowing through Washington. "These odious types of ordinances target Hispanics because of our growth. It is a hate campaign. That's not the American dream that we learned about in school," says Flores. What's need instead, he says, is comprehensive immigration reform to regulate the flow of people, not just from Mexico but other countries. "Bottom line: this is up to federal government not the state legislature."
ON EDUCATION
2 of 2 additional Required articles for week of Nov. 27th
ON EDUCATION; For Hispanic Parents, Lessons On Helping With the Homework
New York Times November 1, 2006
By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: November 1, 2006
Claudia Crisostomo cannot help her three children with homework, nor can
she read to them at bedtime. Those are among the pretty prescriptions
educators favor for getting parents involved in schooling.
But the reality for Ms. Crisostomo, who came to the United States from
Mexico 17 years ago, is that she works laundering uniforms on a shift that
starts at 3 p.m., just as her children -- Eduardo, 10; Erica, 9; and
Jasmine, 6 -- are coming home from school.
''I don't have time,'' she said. ''I work, and I have to cook and clean.''
It is also not easy for Ms. Crisostomo to attend PTA meetings or see
teachers if her children are slipping. Even if she can arrange a morning
appointment, she does not have a car, cannot rely on the sparse bus
service in this city about 60 miles north of New York City, and so would
have to take a cab to school, a pinching $16 expense. It is not clear
anyway how much help Ms. Crisostomo could provide her children with their
homework. Her schooling ended at sixth grade and her English is weak.
Parental involvement is a buzzword in education, a recommended cure for
high dropout rates, poor test scores and almost everything else that ails
schoolchildren. But for immigrant parents, helping their children absorb
lessons in an inscrutable language in a strange country has always been a
distinctive challenge.
Hispanic children now make up 18.6 percent of the nation's public and
private school children, and many of those are immigrants or children of
immigrants. Their dropout rates and test scores trouble policy makers, so
educators have been focusing on what parents can do to help their children
thrive in school and what obstacles they face, among other approaches.
''It's a huge issue,'' said Dr. Pedro A. Noguera, director of the
Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University. ''Many
Latino parents are working a lot, so their ability to get involved is
limited. There's the language barrier. In many Latin American countries
there's a tendency to defer to authorities in school, an assumption that
educators know what they're doing.''
Long-established middle-class American parents, he said, take for granted
that they are ''critical consumers, making sure their kids are getting the
right teachers and the right classes.'' But, he said, ''many immigrants
parents don't understand that this is a role they need to play.'' For
those who immigrated without proper papers, the problem is ''compounded by
legal status; any time you engage public officials there's anxiety that
you can be discovered.''
Here in this city of 30,000, where 36 percent of the school population is
Latino, most of them Mexican immigrants, the school district is working
hard to help parents immerse themselves in school from kindergarten on.
Carmen Vazqueztell, the district's director of bilingual education, runs
six workshops a year for parents, instructing them on monitoring homework
and reading to children in Spanish, then having the children paraphrase
the stories. Peter Gonzalez, the district's bilingual liaison, pinch-hits
for parents and helps students do homework.
The city of Newburgh offers parents a smorgasbord of adult English
classes, though long workdays or homes with several children make getting
to such classes a heroic effort.
According to Richard Fry, senior research associate with the Pew Hispanic
Center, 12 percent of the country's Hispanic 15- to 19-year-olds are not
attending high school, while the number for whites is 5 percent; for
blacks, 7 percent; and for Asians, 2 percent. The number for immigrant
Hispanic children is three times that for Hispanic children born in the
United States. Ultimately, said Melissa Lazarin, a senior policy analyst
for education reform with the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic
civil rights organization, 50 percent of Latino children will never
graduate high school.
Despite the obstacles, it is crucial that parents get involved in school,
said Mariela Dabbah, a consultant on issues of concern to Latinos. She
recently wrote ''Help Your Children Succeed in School: A Special Guide for
Latino Parents.'' ''If the administration feels the parents aren't
interested, the administration does less for kids, so it's a vicious
circle,'' she said.
In Newburgh, Hispanic immigrants have found many ways to keep children on
track. After all, exposing their children to a fine education is one of
the reasons many of these immigrants braved deserts and rivers to enter
the United States.
''We want them to go to college; we don't want them to end up like us,''
said Laura Jurado, a mother of three who launders uniforms.
Emilio Pinado, a Honduran who works until 2 a.m. in a Gap warehouse, cuts
his sleep short to make sure his daughter Emily, 11, eats a breakfast of
pancakes or cereal, then sees her off on the bus. His wife left him, but
his niece watches Emily when he is not around and helps with homework.
Martin Bustos, a Mexican immigrant, works two jobs, in a factory that
makes shower curtains and at the U.P.S. warehouse at nearby Stewart
International Airport.
But when a teacher needs to hand out a report card personally, Mr. Bustos
drops his wife off at school in his minivan, though like other immigrants
she must bring a child along to translate, a situation that can place the
child in an awkward bind.
WHEN parents do get involved, the decisions they make can be pivotal --
few more so than whether to put youngsters in bilingual classes or the
English as a second language classes that quickly immerse students in
English. Patricia Ortega, the head of Newburgh's bilingual parents
advisory council, recalled how teachers advised her to put her son
Jonathan, then in first grade, in English-only classes.
''For three months all he brought home was drawings, and I was worried he
was falling behind academically,'' she said. She took it upon herself to
move Jonathan to bilingual classes, where he flourished, she said. He
eventually attended the University of Miami in Florida for three
semesters, though he joined the Army and is now in Afghanistan.
''When we have problems is when our children leave the bilingual
program,'' she said. ''They go into class with a teacher who speaks only
English, and then parents lose communication with the school entirely.''
ON EDUCATION; For Hispanic Parents, Lessons On Helping With the Homework
New York Times November 1, 2006
By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: November 1, 2006
Claudia Crisostomo cannot help her three children with homework, nor can
she read to them at bedtime. Those are among the pretty prescriptions
educators favor for getting parents involved in schooling.
But the reality for Ms. Crisostomo, who came to the United States from
Mexico 17 years ago, is that she works laundering uniforms on a shift that
starts at 3 p.m., just as her children -- Eduardo, 10; Erica, 9; and
Jasmine, 6 -- are coming home from school.
''I don't have time,'' she said. ''I work, and I have to cook and clean.''
It is also not easy for Ms. Crisostomo to attend PTA meetings or see
teachers if her children are slipping. Even if she can arrange a morning
appointment, she does not have a car, cannot rely on the sparse bus
service in this city about 60 miles north of New York City, and so would
have to take a cab to school, a pinching $16 expense. It is not clear
anyway how much help Ms. Crisostomo could provide her children with their
homework. Her schooling ended at sixth grade and her English is weak.
Parental involvement is a buzzword in education, a recommended cure for
high dropout rates, poor test scores and almost everything else that ails
schoolchildren. But for immigrant parents, helping their children absorb
lessons in an inscrutable language in a strange country has always been a
distinctive challenge.
Hispanic children now make up 18.6 percent of the nation's public and
private school children, and many of those are immigrants or children of
immigrants. Their dropout rates and test scores trouble policy makers, so
educators have been focusing on what parents can do to help their children
thrive in school and what obstacles they face, among other approaches.
''It's a huge issue,'' said Dr. Pedro A. Noguera, director of the
Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University. ''Many
Latino parents are working a lot, so their ability to get involved is
limited. There's the language barrier. In many Latin American countries
there's a tendency to defer to authorities in school, an assumption that
educators know what they're doing.''
Long-established middle-class American parents, he said, take for granted
that they are ''critical consumers, making sure their kids are getting the
right teachers and the right classes.'' But, he said, ''many immigrants
parents don't understand that this is a role they need to play.'' For
those who immigrated without proper papers, the problem is ''compounded by
legal status; any time you engage public officials there's anxiety that
you can be discovered.''
Here in this city of 30,000, where 36 percent of the school population is
Latino, most of them Mexican immigrants, the school district is working
hard to help parents immerse themselves in school from kindergarten on.
Carmen Vazqueztell, the district's director of bilingual education, runs
six workshops a year for parents, instructing them on monitoring homework
and reading to children in Spanish, then having the children paraphrase
the stories. Peter Gonzalez, the district's bilingual liaison, pinch-hits
for parents and helps students do homework.
The city of Newburgh offers parents a smorgasbord of adult English
classes, though long workdays or homes with several children make getting
to such classes a heroic effort.
According to Richard Fry, senior research associate with the Pew Hispanic
Center, 12 percent of the country's Hispanic 15- to 19-year-olds are not
attending high school, while the number for whites is 5 percent; for
blacks, 7 percent; and for Asians, 2 percent. The number for immigrant
Hispanic children is three times that for Hispanic children born in the
United States. Ultimately, said Melissa Lazarin, a senior policy analyst
for education reform with the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic
civil rights organization, 50 percent of Latino children will never
graduate high school.
Despite the obstacles, it is crucial that parents get involved in school,
said Mariela Dabbah, a consultant on issues of concern to Latinos. She
recently wrote ''Help Your Children Succeed in School: A Special Guide for
Latino Parents.'' ''If the administration feels the parents aren't
interested, the administration does less for kids, so it's a vicious
circle,'' she said.
In Newburgh, Hispanic immigrants have found many ways to keep children on
track. After all, exposing their children to a fine education is one of
the reasons many of these immigrants braved deserts and rivers to enter
the United States.
''We want them to go to college; we don't want them to end up like us,''
said Laura Jurado, a mother of three who launders uniforms.
Emilio Pinado, a Honduran who works until 2 a.m. in a Gap warehouse, cuts
his sleep short to make sure his daughter Emily, 11, eats a breakfast of
pancakes or cereal, then sees her off on the bus. His wife left him, but
his niece watches Emily when he is not around and helps with homework.
Martin Bustos, a Mexican immigrant, works two jobs, in a factory that
makes shower curtains and at the U.P.S. warehouse at nearby Stewart
International Airport.
But when a teacher needs to hand out a report card personally, Mr. Bustos
drops his wife off at school in his minivan, though like other immigrants
she must bring a child along to translate, a situation that can place the
child in an awkward bind.
WHEN parents do get involved, the decisions they make can be pivotal --
few more so than whether to put youngsters in bilingual classes or the
English as a second language classes that quickly immerse students in
English. Patricia Ortega, the head of Newburgh's bilingual parents
advisory council, recalled how teachers advised her to put her son
Jonathan, then in first grade, in English-only classes.
''For three months all he brought home was drawings, and I was worried he
was falling behind academically,'' she said. She took it upon herself to
move Jonathan to bilingual classes, where he flourished, she said. He
eventually attended the University of Miami in Florida for three
semesters, though he joined the Army and is now in Afghanistan.
''When we have problems is when our children leave the bilingual
program,'' she said. ''They go into class with a teacher who speaks only
English, and then parents lose communication with the school entirely.''
HAITI
1 of 2 additional Required articles for week of Nov. 27th.
Miami Herald
Tue, Nov. 14, 2006
HAITI
Crime wave provokes vigilante killings in Haiti village
As a crime spree hit a small Haitian village this summer, residents struck back and lynched two suspects.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
PLICHE, Haiti - The peasants bound the wrists of the neighbor they suspected of two murders in this remote mountain village, and herded him to the side of a deserted dirt road.
As the man wept, they grilled him about his alleged crimes. Then they handed him a shovel, forced him to dig his own grave and hacked him to death with machetes and picks.
''It was a lot of blows,'' recalled Renold Cherestant, 34, a Pliché resident and radio reporter who witnessed the lynching, one of two in this region in late July of alleged gang leaders suspected of leading a monthslong crime spree.
The killings illustrate not only the growing outrage of Haitians with the illegal armed gangs that have long terrorized the capital city of Port-au-Prince, but the vulnerability of even remote and usually peaceful parts of this troubled Caribbean nation.
It also points to the challenges facing President René Préval, six months in power, as he struggles to return security to a country with a small and ineffective police force, dysfunctional justice system and decades of political and economic upheavals.
In the past two years, an unprecedented spate of for-ransom kidnappings and other violent crimes has transformed life in the capital, where private security firms now flourish and well-to-do businessmen and government officials ride in bullet-proof vehicles with armed guards.
''What people want is peace,'' said Brinó Benice, 50, who moved from Port-au-Prince to Pliché in hopes of finding the security that eludes both rich and poor in the capital. ``There are areas in the country that are still peaceful, but there are areas where we are seeing increased violence.''
Benice and others in the Pliché area believe their recent crime wave is related to a summer spike in violence in Port-au-Prince that forced the Haitian government and U.N. peacekeepers to beef up security in the capital. Neighbors said the two Pliché lynch victims ran groups of young thugs who moved from the capital.
U.N. FORCE
Scores of blue-helmeted U.N. troops were redeployed from the countryside to the capital to help bolster the National Police, 32 additional street checkpoints were established and 11 more armored vehicles were sent to patrol the capital, said Edmond Mulet, overall head of the U.N. mission here.
The focused attention appears to be paying off. Police have entered previously no-go parts of Cité Soleil, the capital's main slum and stronghold of gangs well armed from the spoils of Haiti's political upheavals. Kidnappings are trending down, and a campaign to disarm the gang members has netted about 110 people who turned in guns in exchange for food grants and job training.
But there remain occasional clashes between U.N. peacekeepers and residents in Cité Soleil, as well as street protests by university students opposed to the presence here of some 9,000 U.N. military and police personnel. Friday night, gunmen killed two Jordanian peacekeepers.
''This is still a very fragile situation; it's wait-and-see,'' Mulet said.
Préval says the September lynching of a suspected kidnapper in the Port-au-Prince slum of Bel-Aire, and the two in Pliché, show Haitians are fed up with the ``weakness of the justice system.''
''If there was a justice system, it would not have arrived at this point,'' he told The Miami Herald in an interview.
But fixing the problems won't be easy.
The National Police claims it has 7,476 agents -- others estimate 4,000 -- in the nation of eight million. New York City, which has the same number of residents, has 37,000 police officers.
All agree that police are under-equipped, poorly trained and often corrupt.
A report last week by the Washington-based International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent think tank monitoring Haiti, called for vetting police officers and urged the U.N. force here be expanded from 1,700 to 1,900 officers and include anti-gang, SWAT and organized crime experts.
It also noted that millions of dollars have been spent in the past decade on reforming Haiti's justice system, still mired in corruption and a huge backlog of cases. Meanwhile, the country's laws are antiquated and the judges are underpaid.
''You cannot do a stand-alone police reform. You have to do it parallel to a justice reform so when the police do pick up people for violating the law, there is a judiciary that is going to deal with the cases on the merits and not based on who knows whom, or who paid whom,'' said ICG Haiti analyst Mark Schneider.
Crime, he added, is not going to go away. But the government can restore the population's faith so that ``they can look at the police and the justice system as the answer.''
The residents of Pliché, 85 miles southwest of the capital, know all too well the reality of Haiti's understaffed police force. When the crime spree in their village began, they say, they met with police and a government prosecutor.
''The insecurity was bad. The people could not sleep at home, they were afraid. They could not come to church,'' said The Rev. Ignace Coissy, a Catholic priest who took part in the meetings.
PATROL REQUESTED
Residents asked for a police patrol in the Pliché area and perhaps even their own police station. They were told neither was possible.
''I don't have a car, a motorcycle or even a bicycle,'' said Tertilian Adelson, the officer in charge of the police station in Cavaillon, responsible for Pliché and its surroundings. Cavaillon is a several-hours walk from Pliché on a mountain road.
''There are times I borrow money, or take my own money to borrow a motorcycle to go to the mountain to check on the population,'' Adelson said, adding that his station has only six officers, including himself.
Adelson, who confirmed the two vigilante killings in Pliché, said that after the incidents authorities immediately opened an investigation. It has gone nowhere, he said.
''They've hidden the information,'' he said. ``They are afraid to talk. They believe if they talk, there will be arrests and the bandits will return.''
Residents say one of the men lynched was a prison escapee known as Theophile. He and the other victim, known as Rigaud, led several gunmen. In the killings' aftermath, other gang members have left and peace has returned to this cocoa and coffee farming community.
But Coissy, the priest, cautioned that the situation can quickly change.
''It's a dynamite that can explode at anytime,'' he said. ```The situation in the country is out of control. The misery, the crime. Things like this will happen more and more as long as people's conditions don't improve.''
© 2006 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
Miami Herald
Tue, Nov. 14, 2006
HAITI
Crime wave provokes vigilante killings in Haiti village
As a crime spree hit a small Haitian village this summer, residents struck back and lynched two suspects.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
PLICHE, Haiti - The peasants bound the wrists of the neighbor they suspected of two murders in this remote mountain village, and herded him to the side of a deserted dirt road.
As the man wept, they grilled him about his alleged crimes. Then they handed him a shovel, forced him to dig his own grave and hacked him to death with machetes and picks.
''It was a lot of blows,'' recalled Renold Cherestant, 34, a Pliché resident and radio reporter who witnessed the lynching, one of two in this region in late July of alleged gang leaders suspected of leading a monthslong crime spree.
The killings illustrate not only the growing outrage of Haitians with the illegal armed gangs that have long terrorized the capital city of Port-au-Prince, but the vulnerability of even remote and usually peaceful parts of this troubled Caribbean nation.
It also points to the challenges facing President René Préval, six months in power, as he struggles to return security to a country with a small and ineffective police force, dysfunctional justice system and decades of political and economic upheavals.
In the past two years, an unprecedented spate of for-ransom kidnappings and other violent crimes has transformed life in the capital, where private security firms now flourish and well-to-do businessmen and government officials ride in bullet-proof vehicles with armed guards.
''What people want is peace,'' said Brinó Benice, 50, who moved from Port-au-Prince to Pliché in hopes of finding the security that eludes both rich and poor in the capital. ``There are areas in the country that are still peaceful, but there are areas where we are seeing increased violence.''
Benice and others in the Pliché area believe their recent crime wave is related to a summer spike in violence in Port-au-Prince that forced the Haitian government and U.N. peacekeepers to beef up security in the capital. Neighbors said the two Pliché lynch victims ran groups of young thugs who moved from the capital.
U.N. FORCE
Scores of blue-helmeted U.N. troops were redeployed from the countryside to the capital to help bolster the National Police, 32 additional street checkpoints were established and 11 more armored vehicles were sent to patrol the capital, said Edmond Mulet, overall head of the U.N. mission here.
The focused attention appears to be paying off. Police have entered previously no-go parts of Cité Soleil, the capital's main slum and stronghold of gangs well armed from the spoils of Haiti's political upheavals. Kidnappings are trending down, and a campaign to disarm the gang members has netted about 110 people who turned in guns in exchange for food grants and job training.
But there remain occasional clashes between U.N. peacekeepers and residents in Cité Soleil, as well as street protests by university students opposed to the presence here of some 9,000 U.N. military and police personnel. Friday night, gunmen killed two Jordanian peacekeepers.
''This is still a very fragile situation; it's wait-and-see,'' Mulet said.
Préval says the September lynching of a suspected kidnapper in the Port-au-Prince slum of Bel-Aire, and the two in Pliché, show Haitians are fed up with the ``weakness of the justice system.''
''If there was a justice system, it would not have arrived at this point,'' he told The Miami Herald in an interview.
But fixing the problems won't be easy.
The National Police claims it has 7,476 agents -- others estimate 4,000 -- in the nation of eight million. New York City, which has the same number of residents, has 37,000 police officers.
All agree that police are under-equipped, poorly trained and often corrupt.
A report last week by the Washington-based International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent think tank monitoring Haiti, called for vetting police officers and urged the U.N. force here be expanded from 1,700 to 1,900 officers and include anti-gang, SWAT and organized crime experts.
It also noted that millions of dollars have been spent in the past decade on reforming Haiti's justice system, still mired in corruption and a huge backlog of cases. Meanwhile, the country's laws are antiquated and the judges are underpaid.
''You cannot do a stand-alone police reform. You have to do it parallel to a justice reform so when the police do pick up people for violating the law, there is a judiciary that is going to deal with the cases on the merits and not based on who knows whom, or who paid whom,'' said ICG Haiti analyst Mark Schneider.
Crime, he added, is not going to go away. But the government can restore the population's faith so that ``they can look at the police and the justice system as the answer.''
The residents of Pliché, 85 miles southwest of the capital, know all too well the reality of Haiti's understaffed police force. When the crime spree in their village began, they say, they met with police and a government prosecutor.
''The insecurity was bad. The people could not sleep at home, they were afraid. They could not come to church,'' said The Rev. Ignace Coissy, a Catholic priest who took part in the meetings.
PATROL REQUESTED
Residents asked for a police patrol in the Pliché area and perhaps even their own police station. They were told neither was possible.
''I don't have a car, a motorcycle or even a bicycle,'' said Tertilian Adelson, the officer in charge of the police station in Cavaillon, responsible for Pliché and its surroundings. Cavaillon is a several-hours walk from Pliché on a mountain road.
''There are times I borrow money, or take my own money to borrow a motorcycle to go to the mountain to check on the population,'' Adelson said, adding that his station has only six officers, including himself.
Adelson, who confirmed the two vigilante killings in Pliché, said that after the incidents authorities immediately opened an investigation. It has gone nowhere, he said.
''They've hidden the information,'' he said. ``They are afraid to talk. They believe if they talk, there will be arrests and the bandits will return.''
Residents say one of the men lynched was a prison escapee known as Theophile. He and the other victim, known as Rigaud, led several gunmen. In the killings' aftermath, other gang members have left and peace has returned to this cocoa and coffee farming community.
But Coissy, the priest, cautioned that the situation can quickly change.
''It's a dynamite that can explode at anytime,'' he said. ```The situation in the country is out of control. The misery, the crime. Things like this will happen more and more as long as people's conditions don't improve.''
© 2006 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
Monday, November 13, 2006
Revised Syllabus
M/LAT 12
Revised Syllabus
Week of Nov. 13th
Maquilas and NAFTA
Immigration Forum
See website for required articles.
Week of Nov. 20th
“NAFTA’s Promise and Reality.” Carnegie Endowment Report
OR
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/nafta1.pdf
“Mexico’s Corn Farmers see their livelihoods wither away” SF Chronicle. Or here:
Mexico's Corn Farmers...
See website for required articles.
Week of Nov. 27th
Snodgrass Godoy. “Health, Wealth & Trade: CAFTA & Medicine”
“Fraying of a Latin Textile Industry” The New York Times
“Will Mexico Soon Be Tapped Out?” Los Angeles Times
See website for additional required articles.
Week of Dec. 4th
“U.S. Cities Rise in Violence Along Border with Mexico” The New York Times.
“State of Siege: Drug-Related Violence and Corruption in Mexico – Unintended Consequences of the War on Drugs.”
Week of Dec. 11th
Work on Final Paper.
Week of Dec. 18th.
Final Paper Due.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
For Next week, Nov. 13-15th
This monday we will finish our discussion of Maquiladoras and NAFTA, as well as get started on the immigration questions from the handout. We will be having a forum on immigration based on the readings and your answers Wed. and Friday.
Please write your response for Monday on the following required articles/essays/reports on immigration:
1.
"illegal Immigration
"Illegal Immigration"
2.
"2006 National Survey of Latinos: The Immigration Debate"
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/68.pdf
Please write your response for Monday on the following required articles/essays/reports on immigration:
1.
"illegal Immigration
"Illegal Immigration"
2.
"2006 National Survey of Latinos: The Immigration Debate"
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/68.pdf
