Latino USA Episode 34

This is Latinos USA, the radio Journal of News and Culture. I'm Maria Hinojosa. Today on Latino USA, the border prepares for NAFTA and Mexico's president names his successor.

His own destape, his own unveiling and his being chosen by Selena was handled perhaps in a more undemocratic fashion than in the previous two presidential successions.

Also the guitar sounds of Brazil and a Latino mystery novel.

It is late night Denver. We have the booze thirst for one more soul search in a city packed with blue blood prosecutors and urban developers.

This and more coming up on Latino USA, but first Las Noticias.

This is news from Latino USA. I'm Maria Martin. A group of influential Cuban Americans is calling for a major shift in US policy towards Cuba, including lifting of the 30-year-old economic embargo.

We feel that to isolate Cuba is to help the Castro government. We feel that the moment that there is an openness that we Cubans can travel to United States, Cubans there can travel here. When that is open, I think that is going to produce a change and that's what we are looking for, some type of change.

New York businessman, Marcelino Miyares, heads up the new Cuban Committee for Democracy. Miyares, who fought in the Bay of Pigs and was a POW in Cuba, says he and many other Cuban-Americans no longer believe in a confrontational or interventionist US policy towards the island.

And we believe that there is a large number of Cuban, as a matter of fact, close to 50%, who has a moderate progressive perception of the reality, who really will like to see the Cuban problem solved by peaceful means, not by means of confrontation.

The new group has enlisted the help of former Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias, in an effort to establish a new US relationship with Cuba.

The Clinton administration has announced a major push to encourage legal residents to become US citizens. As Patricia Guadalupe reports from Washington, this represents a major policy shift by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The US Immigration and Naturalization Service, which spends only 10% of its budget on naturalization efforts, will be trying to persuade this country's more than 10 million legal residents to become US citizens. The INS says it hopes this will help to cut down on hostility towards immigrants. Policy Analyst, Cecelia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza said this is a step in the right direction.

Naturalization is about welcoming people as new Americans, not keeping people out, and there's too many people in INS who have a focus on the negative and not the positive, and that's a focus that's been needing to change for a long time.

INS Commissioner Doris Meisner has said that she intends to work with immigrant rights groups to promote the advantages of citizenship and to streamline the application process. Munoz added that if Commissioner Meisner follows through on her intentions and more residents become citizens, it could be especially beneficial to Hispanics, which make up the majority of these legal residents. For Latino USA, I'm Patricia Guadalupe in Washington.

The internationally known singer and actor, Ruben Blades is now officially a candidate for the presidency of his native Panama.

The scenario Panama will be determined by the Panamanian people, by its will and its desire to carry out a specific position and if you try...

Blades says he's willing to give up the comfort of life as a US entertainer to try to end political corruption in Panama. You're listening to Latino USA.

A group of Latino immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area says the Avis Car Rental Agency is guilty of discrimination. Workers say they faced pre-civil rights era conditions at Avis, as Isabella Alegria reports.

Ramiro Hernandez, a Guatemalan immigrant and former Avis employee says he clearly remembers the incident that finally drove him and 16 other workers to sue Avis for discrimination.

Ese dia trabajamos todos tremendamente un dia… [Spanish]

Hernandez says that day a calculator was found missing from a returned rental car. Avis managers detained 15 Latinos in the lunchroom, including some who were just coming onto their shift, then they called the police. Non-Latinos were allowed to return to work

Paso como una hora detenidos en forma illegal… [English dub]

For an hour, we were held illegally, like common delinquents they held us. Us a group of responsible Avis drivers.

….resonsables como somos nosotros choferes de Avis…

Hernandez says Latinos were repeatedly accused of theft and denied benefits routinely granted other employees.

No se como sentiran ustedes que estuviera cayendo grandes aguaceros… [English dub]

During a downpour, everyone had company raincoats and boots except us and imagine how we felt when at 7:00 AM everyone else was allowed a coffee break while we kept working.

Nosotos se nos prohiban tomar café.

The immigrant workers also claim they were ordered to use a segregated toilet and sit at certain tables in the lunchroom. Avis has denied all the charges, but attorneys say the company will not comment any further while the suit is in litigation. The trial is set for December 13th. The two sides are currently trying to reach a settlement. From San Francisco, I'm Isabella Alegreia for Latino USA.

And from Austin, Texas, I'm Maria Martin. This is Latino USA.

[Transition--music--guitar]

This morning it was my great honor to welcome seven outstanding Central American leaders to the White House, President Cristiani of El Salvador, President Endara of Panama, President…

In a historic gathering, president Clinton met recently with the heads of all of the Central American countries. President Clinton released $40 million in aid to Nicaragua and said he was committed to expanding free trade throughout Latin America. He's calling for a study to see how the North American Free Trade Agreement could be expanded to include other countries in the hemisphere. Along the US Mexico border, many businesses are already gearing up to take advantage of NAFTA. As Ancel Martinez reports from the border communities of Mexicali and Calexico.

Dozens of maquiladora workers solder at workstations and weld electrical transformers at the Emerson Electric Company in Mexicali, the capital Baja California. Owned by a worldwide corporation based in St. Louis, Emerson Electric employs Mexican workers and exports the finished products back to the United States. Simon Diaz, president of Emerson Mexico says NAFTA will mean less tariffs on Emerson products and finally put its inventory within reach of Mexican consumers.

Certainly for us, it's going to open up lot markets that are really right now prohibitive in terms of the tariff. Most of our products as they sell in Mexico now incur a 20% duty. If we can get rid of that duty, that's just going to allow us to sell a hell of a lot more of our products in Mexico that right now are not able to compete as well as we'd like them to compete.

Already there's been a rush of industry. A new steel plant owned by Guadalajara investors is opening up on the outskirts of the city. A huge new bottling plant has been built. Business operations here can prosper with inexpensive labor close enough and competitive enough to the United States. These companies are expected to flourish under NAFTA. Across the border is the small town of Calexico, baked by the sun. Little changes here day to day. The Calexico Chronicle on second Street is where the local mayor tells the Chronicle editor, Hildy Carillo, of his next political fundraiser.

Primary is going to be a dinner dance at the National Guard, $25 a couple and we're going to have a fantastic dinner and at the same time, I will be making my presentation, goals and objective for the board of supervisor.

Oh, Pretty good.

Calexico Mayor, Tony Tirado, has seen progress sometimes bypass his city, but now with cross-border trade, a hot topic, he hopes the predominantly agricultural county can capitalize on a developing Mexicali.

In all the years that I lived here in Calexico and the border that the borders have never been given their rightful, how shall I say, in the perspective of funding from the gift federal government to upgrade our borders. Okay. Until now, because this is where the action's going to be. So we have to improve and one of the factors is we were able to convince the federal government, "Hey, your port port of entry here in Calexico is inadequate."

Indeed, the government is spending millions on a new border crossing to handle more commerce. Lower tariffs and open investment laws under NAFTA will now allow border businessmen to plan years in advance. [Backgound--natural sounds--office work] Secretaries type out waybills and answer calls from warehouses at Bill Polkinhorn's custom brokerage house. The company was founded by Bill's grandfather at the turn of the century, originally shipping cotton from Mexico to Los Angeles for markets in the Orient. Now his grandson mostly handles electronics with a made in Mexico label. Polkinhorn explains NAFTA will increase trade.

NAFTA is kind of going to be the icing on the cake to a trade program with Mexico that we kind of started in 1985 or 86. We've seen exports from the United States to Mexico increase from eight to 10 billion a year, clear up to 40 billion since 1985. NAFTA's going to make it possible for, mostly for the United States to sell our products down there. Plus there's a lot of products, Mexican manufactured products coming up from Mexico City, Guadalajara, and the west coast of Mexico that are coming into the LA area either for consumption in LA or for shipment to the Orient.

Custom brokers like Polkinhorn on the US side of the border are excited about NAFTA, but one only has to wander a few blocks to the Mexican border to see how poverty still separates these two countries. In Calexico and Mexicali, the different standards of living still cause disputes over immigration and border pollution. [Background--natural sounds--harmonica] Yards away from US. Customs checkpoints, one man panhandles with his harmonica on a Mexicali street. Boys and Girls Hawk, chicklets and newspapers, thousands come to this city searching for a better life and delivering jobs, housing, schools and health clinics are problems that'll take more than a paper treaty like NAFTA to solve. For Latino USA, I'm Ancel Martinez in Mexicali, Mexico.

NAFTA is just one of the issues facing the man who's almost sure to be Mexico's next president. He's Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, who as is the custom in Mexico, was named to be the candidate of Mexico's ruling institutional revolutionary party by the incumbent president, Carlos Salinas De Gortari. With us to speak about what Colosio's nomination means is David Ayon, director of the Mexico Roundtable at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Bienvenido David. Given all of the attention that's now focused on Mexico and NAFTA and Mexico's political system, why do you think it was Colosio who was chosen as the candidate of the PRI?

Well, I think it is now pretty plain that Salinas has been grooming Colosio for this moment, for this role for quite a number of years. Further than that, he also has an enormous amount of experience in knowing how to run a campaign all over the country. He was Salinas' own campaign manager when Salinas was a candidate in 1988, and subsequent to that, Salinas made Colosio the president of the PRI party. So Colosio is very well positioned and the ground has been prepared very carefully for him to be something of an ideal candidate, to be the PRI standard there.

What do you think Colosio is going to bring to the particular relationship between Mexico and the United States now that NAFTA has been approved though?

He's unlikely to represent any difference or modification of the basic project or trajectory that's been traced by Salinas, which is one of really transforming various levels, Mexico's attitude towards the United States and its relationship with the United States. This is the project that continues along the path of especially commercial and business integration.

In Mexico, Colosio has been chosen by what's called El Dedazo, by the pointing of the finger. In other words that people assume that he will be Mexico's next president and there's a lot of talk about pressuring Mexico to democratize the institutional party there. Do you think that Mexico will heed this call or do you think that there will be a kind of sense that they have to now bow down to the United States who is suddenly telling them what they have to do? How do you see this democratic process within the PRI.

It's very difficult to see how this is going to be democratized and they plainly have not achieved this at all. In fact, Colosio's own destape, his own unveiling and his being chosen, the dedazo, the pointing of the big finger by Salinas was handled perhaps in a more undemocratic fashion than in the previous two presidential successions. It was just simply announced suddenly, unexpectedly Sunday morning that he's going to be the guy without any pretense of a process whatsoever. So I think what this suggests to us is that they haven't figured their way out of a really complicated corner that historically the Mexican political system finds itself in.

Now the election takes place on August 24th, 1994, but the opposition candidate, the main opposition candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, is surely expected to give Colosio a run for his money. Do you think that there's a possibility that this might be the first election in which the PRI actually loses and the opposition with Cuauhtemoc Cardenas actually has a chance to win or not?

Colosio is going to have a vast machine and a virtually unlimited budget behind him. He starts already, if we can go by most recent polls, there was a poll taken in October that measured a hypothetical matchup between Colosio and Cardenas. He already starts with a significant lead about a dozen percentage points over Cardenas, and that is before ever being named. This is such a mountain to overcome that it's really hard to conceive that Cardenas, popular as he genuinely is, will be able to really to surmount it.

Well, thank you very much for joining us. David Ayon teaches political science and specializes in Mexican policy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Muchas gracias.

[Transition--music--marimba] [Transition--music--guitar]

[Background--music--classical guitar] They've been called the world's foremost guitar duo, Sergio and Odair Assad have been playing classical music together ever since. They were young boys in their native Brazil. The Assad brothers recently completed their 13th US tour. Nina Tiecholz caught up with them in New York. She prepared this report.

[Background--music--guitar] Sergio and Odair are practicing absorbed with concentration. The brothers practice 10 hours a day every day, but they "never tire of it," says Sergio and music is always on his mind.

I think I go to an extreme and I think of music all the time, that's too much. I can't live without. [Laughs]

[Highlight--music--guitar]

[Background--music--guitar] Sergio says his brother Odair is more relaxed, although of the two Sergio is more talkative and open. It's an openness that extends out to their audience when they play or more like an interplay says Sergio, since the audience affects how they improvise.

[Highlight--music--guitar]

[Background--music--guitar] From the beginning, we never planned anything, just let it go. I think that's the only way to have a nice feeling when you play a concert. That you can be improvised. So some of the dynamics come there on stage. It depends on the hall, it depends on the people. It comes together. Everything comes together.

They respond so well to people responding to them that it's kind of like a dance

Guitar maker and friend Tom Humphrey.

[Background--music--guitar] And it gets intense, absolutely intense. They are willing to go as far as the audience wants them to go.

[Highlight--music--guitar]

[Background--music--guitar] These are the kinds of rhythms and melodies that Sergio and Odair grew up with in the house of their father, an amateur mandolin player who still lives in their small hometown outside of Rio de Janeiro. For a long time, Brazilian songs and Argentine Tangos were all they performed, but as teenagers, they began listening to classical music and in a turn away from Latin America, the Assad's latest release is devoted entirely to 18th century baroque music transcribed from pieces written for the harps accord. Because the instrument was plucked and therefore more percussive, its rhythms work well for the guitar.

[Highlight--music--guitar]

[Background--music--guitar] When the Assads play, it's as if they have four hands, two guitars, but only one body. Their starts and stops are so accurately timed that you think they were somehow wired together.

You have your internal temple, right? Everyone does. So what happens at through the years we started to have the same temple, internal temple. So I don't know, sometimes I find it very strange to begin a piece. Sometimes I don't give any sign, but he starts with me. So I don't know. Sometimes it's weird. [Background--music--guitar]

[Background--music--guitar] Weird, but also seamless and intimate. Even when they play classical music or American jazz, you can hear the echo of Brazil with its sensual passionate rhythms. For Latino USA, I'm Nina Tyschultz reporting.

[Transition--music--guitar]

This year there's been an unprecedented interest on the part of East coast publishers in Latino themes and literature. St. Martin's Press, for instance, has come out with its first Chicano mystery novel, The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz by Manuel Ramos. The novel follows this story of a middle-aged Chicano lawyer unraveling the mystery of an old homeboy's death in the sixties. Juan Felipe Herrera has our review.

It is late night Denver. We have the booze thirst for one more soul search in a city packed with blue blood prosecutors and urban developers. We are after love too. In the brown buffoon stance of middle-aged Luis Montez, we follow the drowsy meditations of this ex legal age Chicano lawyer, an accidentally trip into an old homeboy's death, Rocky Ruiz. In the sparse language and short jabs of 21 chapters, we listened to Montez decipher Rocky's last days in Denver's Aztlan, the mythical land and moment of Chicano's 60s unity. Montez doesn't look back willingly. He seeks this home base by accident. In broken desks and hidden journals, he uncovers the old student walkout days, Chicano Power chance, and Red Beret rallies. Montez is more interested in finding his own life center at Lawley's Taco Shack over beans and bourbon, slouch and sport bars, or in his collapsing legal practice, he half digests the city machine.

He doles over his divorce, his abandoned kids, and Jesus, his fading father. Montez feels the grip of hooded men and the heat of racial slurs as he plays back Rocky's killing. Yet all Montez can do is whimper. He spills nostalgia and spits barrio desolation until he traces the sudden death of another companero, Tino Pacheco. Tino's death leads him to Rocky's last night and breaks open the trap door to Los Guerrilleros, a tight-knit Chicano homeboy crew of the 60s led by Rocky Ruiz. Finding Rocky requires fumbling through romance, sex, and the voices of wives and stark eye Chicanas. Montez meets Teresa Fuentes, a Chicana with multiple names and guises. By day, the only minority lawyer working for an upscale firm. By night, a silvery persona with a secret assignment in Denver that will unravel the mystery around Rocky's death. Montez is condemned to seek who killed Rocky Ruiz. Why is the crew of the old Movimiento Gang being quickly taken out in cold blood?

Montez finds the answers in shreds. The truer keys come from the private knowledge and power that Teresa and her mother, Margarita, possess. Although the figure of Rocky Ruiz at times appears utopian and forced, this is outweighed by the complex development of Teresa's and Margarita's voice. Manuel Ramos writes a ballad where we must discover the hero and the heroine, where we must rise through a post-modern turf of laws, cultural rupture, and reassess the meanings of a bygone social movement that only comes to us in memory fevers in two-fisted blows against the 21st century in the elegance of versions of women in male-centered networks. Who is this lawyer dude Montez? Maybe it is not Rocky. We are after. Maybe we are looking for the 90s hombre, alone now. No longer surrounded by his homeboy vatos. No longer insulated by his self-made narratives for justice and revolucion. Ramos asks us, "Who will search for him? Who and where is he now?"

Juan Felipe Herrera is a writer and professor in the Chicano and Latin American studies department at California State University in Fresno.

This poem was written for Elizabeth Ramos, who upon discovering that she was HIV positive, became very active in the fight against aids and who died November 6th, 1988. Death by Association for Elizabeth Ramos.

[Background--music--symphony] I never knew her when she was healthy, when she could run or walk in the sun or rain. I never knew her when she was able and willing to play with her children, feed them or cloth them. In fact, I never really knew her, never met her or even talked to her. But I heard her once in an interview and cheered her at a rally, listened to her dreams that she so clearly stated, "I want to buy a house. I want to go to Disney World and always in between the words I want to live and see my children grow." A long time ago, unbeknownst to her, she came across death by association and her world was never the same again. In the end, thanks to her, we come across life by association and in the end, our world will never be the same either.

Marta Valentin is a poet, musician, and radio producer living in Boston.

[Closing music]

And for this week, y por esta semana. This has been Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and Culture. Latino USA is produced and edited by senior producer Maria Emilia Martin and Associate Producer Angelica Luevano. We had help this week from Vidal Guzman, Radio Station KUVO in Denver, Colorado, and Lance Neal. Latino USA is produced at the studios of KUT in Austin, Texas. The technical producer is Walter Morgan. The executive producer is Dr. Gilbert Cardenas. Call us with your comments on our toll free number. It's 1-800-535-5533. That's 1-800-535-5533. Or write to us at Communication Building B, University of Texas at Austin, 78712. Major funding for Latino USA comes from the Ford Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the University of Texas at Austin. Y, hasta la proxima, until next time, I'm Maria Hinojosa for Latino USA.