Latino USA Episode 25

This is Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and Culture. [Opening Music]

I'm Maria Hinojosa. Today on Latino USA, a Smithsonian tribute to Cesar Chavez.

This is a man who had an eighth grade education. His family were migrant workers. He was a self-educated man, but he learned one thing, he learned how to organize.

A mega showcase for Latino business. And Puerto Ricans get ready to decide the island's political status.

The only people that can talk about Puerto Rico now are the people that are living here in Puerto Rico.

I was born in Puerto Rico. When I die, whether it's New York City or Puerto Rico, I will die as a Puertorriqueño.

That and more coming up on Latino USA. But first, las noticias.

This is news from Latino USA. I'm Vidal Guzman. The number of Latinos who make up the US population is expected to rise dramatically by the next century according to new data just released by the Census Bureau. Barrie Lynn Tapia reports.

The figures show that Latino population growth is at three times the national average. And by 1996, Hispanics will add more people to the US population than any other ethnic group. In the early part of the next century, Latinos will increase by one million every single year and are well on their way to becoming the second-largest ethnic group, only behind African-Americans. The Census Bureau figures do not include the 3.5 million residents of Puerto Rico. But resident commissioner Carlos Romero Barceló, the island's representative in Congress, said he is urging for its inclusion when the next figures come out. For Latino USA, this is Barrie Lynn Tapia in Washington.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is proposing what they call the greatest reform of bilingual education. Congressman Jose Serrano, caucus chair, says their bilingual education program would concentrate funds on poor areas and on those with high numbers of limited English-proficient students. With this bill, Latino representatives hope to improve and expand educational opportunities for Latinos and other language minorities. According to a recent poll, almost half of public school teachers say students should be required to learn English before being taught other subjects. A coalition of Latino organizations is calling for an end to what they called the racist rhetoric surrounding the debate over NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. From Washington, Patricia Guadalupe reports.

In a recent floor debate in Congress, an Ohio representative spoke out against the North American Free Trade Agreement by saying all the United States would get in return were two tons of heroin and baseball players. Others say they are against a treaty because Mexico is in their words "a pigpen." The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a coalition of over 20 Latino organizations, wants that to stop. They say they are putting people on notice that any racist and stereotypical comment will no longer be tolerated. MaryJo Marion, senior trade analyst at the National Council of La Raza, is a member of the coalition.

We think their statements are much like what's said about Jews in Eastern Europe. What was said about Black Americans here 20 or 40 years ago.

Marion added that the coalition is meeting with labor and political leaders about their concerns. For Latino USA, I'm Patricia Guadalupe in Washington.

A wave of drive-by shootings has tapered off. In Los Angeles. Authorities say street gangs have been ordered to stop the shootings by members of the so-called Mexican Mafia Prison Gang. Reports say the Mexican Mafia has held several secret meetings with Latino gang members, telling them to stop the violent drive-bys, which often cause death or injury to innocent bystanders. This is news from Latino USA.

In San Diego, the county board of Supervisors has voted to bill the federal government for the cost of services provided to the undocumented in this country. Board members say they plan to charge President Clinton for the cost of providing hospital care and jail service to day laborers. This vote follows debate in several San Diego area school districts over the cost of educational access by undocumented immigrants. Wanda Levine reports on a resolution passed in the San Diego community of Vista, which criticizes federal laws requiring all children be taught regardless of citizenship districts.

The original resolution endorsed efforts by California Governor Pete Wilson to control illegal immigration. But public outcry and disagreement among board members toned down the final resolution to read, "The school board is concerned about legislation designed to curtail illegal immigration." School board member Joyce Lee proposed the resolution.

I'd like to be able to count the illegals, send the number back to Washington and ask for federal funding that they would send in foreign aid to Mexico because these are their people. So let's get some of that money back to the school districts.

The final vote on the resolution came after 30 minutes of heated public comments, most critical of the decree. Many called the resolution racist. For Latino USA, I'm Wanda Levine in San Diego.

1,500 Cubans holding US federal prisons will be repatriated to Havana. The prisoners who came to this country as part of the Mariel Exodus of 1980 are being deported under an agreement between the Clinton administration and the government of Fidel Castro. But some Cuban Americans are concerned about what could await the prisoners and fear that disagreement might signal the start of broader concessions between the governments of the United States and Cuba. I'm Vidal Guzman. From Austin, Texas, you're listening to Latino USA.

[Guitar Music]

I'm Maria Hinojosa. Lawmakers in Washington DC took up a bill introduced earlier this year by Democratic Representative Xavier Becerra of California. The measure would create an independent commission to oversee and investigate human rights abuses by the Border Patrol. Patricia Guadalupe reports from Washington.

The Independent Review Commission proposed by Democratic Representative Xavier Becerra of California would be in charge of investigating cases of alleged abuse within the ranks of the Border Patrol. According to the latest findings from the human rights group, America's Watch, cases of abuse by authorities along the US-Mexico border have increased dramatically. America's Watch says most incidents stem from a lack of adequate training and insensitivity on the part of Border Patrol agents. Becerra's proposed commission would review abuse cases and have the power to impose sanctions. It would also include substantial community outreach so people are aware of their rights when they file a complaint. Congressman Becerra says the current system is inadequate. Complaints take a long time to be investigated and then take years to complete. Even then, enforcement is minimal.

So you're talking about something that would take care of making sure that we have actual investigations and enforce investigation of abuse and then enforcement of any abuses of the law.

The new agency which would employ 10 commissioners appointed by President Clinton would cost $15 million. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which manages the Border Patrol is completely against Becerra's idea. Chris Sale, acting INS Commissioner, calls us a waste of money in these hard economic times. She adds the INS is in the middle of proposing their own advisory board to include cooperation from the Mexican government.

The major distinction is that Congressman Becerra's bill would propose yet an additional governmental agency with a staff that would increase the numbers of entities working the system. And we would prefer, frankly, to let the IG and the Civil Rights Division continue to do their work because it's already being done and to establish a citizen's advisory panel, which would have a broader set of requirements, but also deal with the abuse issues directly for the Attorney General. It's really a matter of not having to further complicate things with more laws.

But Congressman Becerra says he's tired of advisory boards.

It's a good concept. It's unfortunate that it's coming so late and it's only a reaction to what's happened in the past. But again, a citizens' panel only has so much power. It does not have power to investigate. It does not have power to subpoena. It does not have power to institute some type of discipline against an employee who is found to have committed abuses. It does not have oversight capacity that will give it the ability to stop the abuse that has occurred in the past.

Congressman Becerra says he has a lot of support for his measure among his colleagues, but sources close to the committee considering his bill say they don't think it'll pass, as the current climate in Congress is against further spending and more government. For Latino USA, I'm Patricia Guadalupe in Washington.

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Latino business owners and entrepreneurs met in New York City recently for the 14th Annual Convention of the US Hispanic Chambers of Commerce. The gathering took place as Latino business people ponder the fate of the North American Free Trade Agreement and as more and more US companies try to make inroads in the rapidly expanding Latino market. Latino USA's Maria Martin was in New York for the business convention and prepared this report.

In one exhibit booth, you could call anywhere in the world from a giant telephone for free. At another a mega television screen blared out soft drink commercials.

With four floors of exhibits representing major corporations trying to reach the Latino market, like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Sprint and AT&T, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce International Business Expo was indeed a major marketplace for buying, selling and networking between Latinos and corporate America.

My name is Eduardo Lara. I work for Nabisco Foods Group in East Hanover, New Jersey.

I'm Evangelina Lopez. I'm with UPS.

Well, we have two primary reasons we are here. First, we're here to help the organization itself. The second reason is to market [unintelligible 00:11:02] products to the Hispanic community.

From small concerns to some of the largest enterprises, many of the more than 600,000 Hispanic-owned businesses were represented at the Business Expo. The combined sales of these companies are estimated to be some $38 billion annually. John Cortez of Goya Foods, the largest US Latino-owned business.

Today we are listed as the number one Hispanic food company in the United States of America. We are presently grossing about $450 million, and our growth for the last 20 years has been phenomenal. We are entering new markets in various other states every day. We're currently in about 42 other states.

Well, I'm working with Bustelo. We are here in the Bustelo booth. We've been very busy. People love Café Bustelo.

At the Café Bustelo booth, young Latinas portioned out small paper cups of espresso. Luis de la Mata is the marketing director for that top Hispanic owned company.

This is a fastest growth segment in the nation. Latinos and Hispanics spend more money, are more loyal to products than the Anglo counterparts. This is a country of immigrants and we foresee that the new wave, the wave of the future, is going to be heavily influenced by the Hispanic consumer and population.

Goya Foods and Bustelo coffee, both companies traditionally associated with Puerto Rican products, are branching out. Bustelo to salsas, Goya to guacamole and other Mexican products. Meanwhile, some major corporations like JC Penney have begun to make inroads into the so-called ethnic market. After several years of studying the tastes of its minority consumers, that giant retailer will start to offer lines of clothing and cosmetics designed to appeal to African American and Hispanic women. It's estimated that this country's 25 million Latinos have a combined annual purchasing power of over $185 billion. That fact isn't lost on the media industry. In many major Latino markets, the daily newspapers have begun to include weekly inserts aimed at their Latino readers, such as the case in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and now Chicago, where the publication called La Raza is now distributed by the Chicago Sun-Times. Alfredo Valderas is the communications director for La Raza.

For many years, it's been the intention of the larger newspapers to penetrate the Hispanic market. Our association with the Chicago Sun-Times is exclusively for distribution. We are totally editorial and novice publication independence. And this shows how important the Hispanic market has become for corporate America.

The increasing demand for products by Latino consumers, a diverse group, not easily categorized, calls for managers who know that market. Corporate recruiter, Manuel Abuedo, came to the conference to look for Spanish-speaking executives.

Certainly the number of companies interested in Spanish-speaking people has grown immensely. And not only they're interested in them as workers, but they're interested in them as executives, people in professional capacities, accountants, lawyers. I'm looking for a lawyer right now. I'm looking for a marketing director for an American company from Mexico. So even if NAFTA were defeated, which I don't think it will, you have such a powerful market so close to our borders, that why to bother with China and all these places if we can sell it down the border?

As deals were struck and business cards exchanged in the glorified atmosphere of the New York Hilton, Jose Niño, the president and CEO of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, recalled a time when the situation for Latino business persons was very different, back when the Hispanic Chamber was founded 14 years ago.

Today we have over 400 exhibits here. 14 years ago, we held our first convention in a high school gym. In 1979, there were less than 250,000 Hispanic-owned businesses. Today, as I said, there are over 650,000. We have been organizing and helping Hispanic businesses get into areas they had never been before. Corrugated boxing, meat packaging, different type of advertising programs, different type of services program, franchising industry.

The members of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce adopted resolutions strongly supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement and calling for more aggressive action to remedy the lack of Latino representation on corporate boards. Of the more than 10,000 board seats pertaining to Fortune 500 companies, only about one third of 1% are held by Latinos. In New York City, for Latino USA, I'm Maria Martin.

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There are an estimated 2.6 million Puerto Ricans living on the US mainland, nearly as many as those who live on the island. And in the first week of October, many of those mainlanders will be voting in an unofficial plebiscite to decide the future status of Puerto Rico. Whether to become a state, stay a commonwealth, or become independent. Mandalit del Barco reports on the issue from New York and San Juan.

In New York City, television ads have begun to publicize the upcoming plebiscite for the status of Puerto Rico.

Participa. Vota. El siete, ocho y nueve de octubre. Consulta plebicitaria 93. Es tu derecho. Es tu responsabilidad.

On October 7th, 8th and 9th, New Yorkers born on the island and their voting-age children will have a chance to voice their opinions on the future of their homeland. While island officials decided against allowing mainland voters from participating in the Puerto Rican plebiscite in November, Latino political leaders in New York insist that US Puerto Ricans register their votes. Both plebiscites are non-binding and the US Congress will ultimately decide Puerto Rico's status. New York City Council Member Victor Robles is among many defending the right of onboarding Queños to vote.

I was born in Puerto Rico. When I die, whether it's New York City or Puerto Rico, I will die as a Puertorriqueño. And that's the point. And I think this election should be focusing solely on allowing the will of the people. Let the people in Puerto Rico have their elections. I haven't said they shouldn't have it, but we here in New York, like throughout the states where there's a large concentration of Puerto Ricans, do have the right to also express how we feel.

Councilman Robles and other New York Puerto Ricans say their voices will convey enormous weight on the Congress's decision. But on the island itself, there is much resistance to the idea. At the Plaza de Armas in Old San Juan, Jesus Quinoñes, says Puerto Ricans who left the island have no right to say what should happen.

No debería tener ningún dirigencia. Son puertorriqueño nostotros puertorriqueño pero realmente ellos no aportan nada bienestar de todos los puertorriqueños. O sea, no deben opinar.

Quinoñes says those who left the country shouldn't be able to give an opinion on the future of the island. But Aura Rosa Santiago, a retired journalist who lives in Arecibo, disagrees.

Bueno, sí yo creo que sí que lo puertorriqueños somos puertorriqeuños donde quiera que estemos. Sentimos por Puerto Rico. No dejamos de ser puertorriqeuño.

While some Puerto Ricans left for a better life, she says, they still have Puerto Rico in their hearts. Santiago says she would like Puerto Rico to be independent since that's the right of every people. But she fears being cut off completely from the United States will hurt the people on the island.

Otra cosa. El estado [unintelligible 0:19:30] el nombre de [unintelligble 0:19:31]. Estuvo una colonia aquí.

Sí, había una colonia.

Debates about the status of Puerto Rico are raging throughout the island, from government buildings to local bars. A group of men drinking beer outside Juniors Cafe on Calle Sebastian in San Juan talked about the pros and cons of the plebiscite, both in Puerto Rico and New York.

Look, I'm going to tell you the truth. The only people that can talk about Puerto Rico now are the people that are living here in Puerto Rico. Because he left Puerto Rico 10, 12, maybe 20 years ago, you don't know what are the problems that Puerto Rico having now? You know what everybody talks. You know what everybody let him know. You read the newspaper there.

They're not living, not the problems that we're living right now.

The problems we are living right now. That's exactly.

Jose Santiago isn't sure what he'll be voting in November. He's heard that if Puerto Rico becomes a state, many companies will leave the island because they'll have to pay workers minimum wage. He says whatever Puerto Ricans vote, the exercise is futile.

It don't mean that if the vote here says, "Yeah, statehood." No, it don't mean that. Congress and Washington DC is going to decide. The senators, the representatives, they're going to say, "Okay, we'll set Puerto Rico as a state." Otherwise their decision, our vote here don't mean nothing.

Leading archeologist, Dr. Ricardo Alegría is vocally opposed to the plebiscite, saying an international body and not Congress should decide Puerto Rico's fate. Alegría says a vote for Puerto Rico to become a state would spell disaster.

The statehood will be the end of our nationality, the end of our culture. The people who defend statehood in Puerto Rico, the government at this moment, they don't want the Puerto Ricans who live in the United States to vote in the plebiscite. And I think that they realize that the Puerto Ricans there know better than the Puerto Ricans here, what is statehood. And that's why they are afraid that they will vote against statehood because they have suffered prejudice and they know that although they vote for the president and they vote for congressmen, they don't receive the benefits that the defender of statehood here claim that we are going to receive as soon as Puerto Rico became a state of the union.

They tried to sell statehood here by putting some ads in television with packs of dollars and expressing how much money we are going to receive under statehood and that the poverty will disappear in Puerto Rico. And I have seen poverty in New York, even worse poverty than the one that we have in Puerto Rico, but for many Puerto Ricans who have never been in the States, they still have the whole idea of the United States with a lot of money. And because of that, maybe they will vote in favor of statehood.

Dr Alegría says he favors independence of the island, but he's a realist. He says most Puerto Ricans have been frightened away from voting for total autonomy through what he calls a government's campaign of fear, equating independence with an end to veterans benefits, food stamps and other aid. There are some in Puerto Rico who say the plebiscite is a waste of money, that the government would be better off spending its energy on social problems, preventing crime and AIDS.

(singing) Entre regas se encuentre el patriota. Con el arma rota de tanto dolor. Su delito es querer revivir a su patria querida.

Jose Rodriguez scrapes by with pocket change he earns by singing in the streets. He doesn't have a job and he's been living with AIDS for 10 years. He says the government never helped him, why should he bother voting in the plebiscite? Still like many Puerto Ricans, he has strong patriotic feelings. Jose Santiago cast his vote for Puerto Rico, not in the voting booth, but by singing in the streets of Viejo San Juan. [José continues singing] For Latino USA, I'm Mandalit del Barco in New York.

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This year, the Smithsonian institution in Washington DC has dedicated its commemoration of Hispanic Heritage Month to the memory of Cesar Chavez, the influential farm worker organizer who died last April. The museum staged a tribute to honor the union leader on the night of September 27th.

This cross remind us [unintelligible 0:24:38]

The documentary, Si Se Puede, shown at the Smithsonian as part of its tribute to Cesar Chavez, takes its title from the phrase the labor organizer used to keep his followers from becoming discouraged at the seeming futility of their effort to organize a union for farm workers. The film tells of the struggle to establish that union in Arizona in the early '70s and of the fast Chavez engaged in to call attention to the plight of migrant field workers.

I hope that the end of this fast will mark beginning of the victory here in Arizona. And so I say to any who doubt that victory can be won in Arizona, sí se puede.

I'm Dolores Huerta. I'm the co-founder and first vice president of the United Farm Workers.

Speaking at the Smithsonian Cesar Chavez tribute, Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers had these words on the meaning of the life and death of Cesar Chavez.

We want to talk about what Cesar did in this is a man who had an eighth grade education. He didn't go to high school. His family were migrant workers and he was a self-educated man. But he learned one thing. He learned how to organize, then he was determined that he was going to get farm workers organized and to bring them justice, even knowing that everything else up until the time that Cesar had started had failed. Every single effort had failed. But the foundation...

I just have to say, when they asked Cesar many times, "Cesar, what's going to happen to the United Farm Workers after you leave?" Cesar said, "If I thought that this union would not survive without me, I would not spend one hour of my life to build a union." So he knew. He taught with his life, as you all know...

I wish I could say too that the conditions of workers have improved. I've been working in Arizona recently, and I can tell you that there are workers out there working now that are not getting paid. So Cesar worker has got to continue, but we know that his spirit is with us. And as one of the workers said to me at the funeral when Cesar died, they said before Cesar could only be in one place. He could only be in Delano or in Salinas. Now Cesar can be with us everywhere because his spirit can be with us everywhere.

[Singing]. Up to California. From Mexico you come. To the Sacramento Valley. To toil in the sun. Your wife and seven children. Theyre working everyone. And what will you be giving to your brown eyed children of the sun?

On the second floor of the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, under a glass case, is displayed a black jacket with a red farm worker eagle, the same one worn by Cesar Chavez.

And for this week, y por esta semana, this has been Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and Culture. This week's edition of Latino USA was produced by Angelica Luevano and edited by Maria Emilia Martin. We had helped this week from Vidal Guzman and Karyl Wheeler. Latino USA is produced at the studios of KUT in Austin, Texas. The technical producer is Walter Morgan. The executive producer is Gilbert Garenas. Please call us with your comments or questions, deberas at 1-800-535-5533. That's 1-800-535-5533. Major funding for Latino USA comes from the Ford Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the University of Texas at Austin. Contributors include the Estrada Communications Group and the Hispanic Link News Service. Y hasta la próxima. Until next time, I'm Maria Hinojosa for Latino USA.