José Hernández was a migrant worker when he first started to dream about becoming an astronaut. He is the first astronaut to Twitter in Spanish from space on shuttle mission STS-128. NASA wasn't happy about the controversy he caused when he advocated for the legalization of undocumented immigrants. He is not the first Hispanic-American to fly on the space shuttle. Hernández is a national hero in Mexico and has been invited to dine with President Calderon.
posted by desjardins on Sep 24, 2009 - 15 comments

Rosa is a bailarina. For a couple of dollars per song, she dances with strangers in a bailarina bar. It’s a job held by many immigrant women in Spanish-speaking New York, filling a need created by many immigrant men. The man on the phone is typical of her clients. He’s in his twenties, doesn’t speak English, and immigrated to the United States by himself—no mother, no girlfriend, no wife. He works six days a week at a restaurant and sends his money back home to Ecuador. Most of all, he’s lonely.
posted by jason's_planet on Nov 12, 2008 - 43 comments

Newcomers, with the zeal of recent converts, are often the most vocal in resisting change to the neighborhood they have just discovered. An exploration of NIMBYism. If not in your backyard, then whose? Probably a low-income minority group. Opposition to affordable housing is often thinly-veiled racism. How NIMBYism affects a seven-year old boy on LA's skid row. [more inside]
posted by desjardins on Aug 25, 2008 - 61 comments

Why do Asian-American students achieve higher grades than Latino-American students? Despite the fact that the students come from the same socioeconomic background (median annual household incomes below $50,000 in working-class Los Angeles neighborhoods), Asian-American students disproportionately get better grades, attend AP courses, and go to college than their Latino-American counterparts. Students at Lincoln High School sit down for a frank discussion of why that is.
posted by jabberjaw on Jul 23, 2008 - 234 comments

Mexican and Latin Immmigrants as Superheroes [ via guanabee ]
posted by Stynxno on Jul 3, 2008 - 37 comments

As the immigration debate rages, Anti-Latino hate crimes rose by almost 35% between 2003 and 2006. Here are a few dozen of them. To some, this trend may seem perfectly FAIR.
posted by hermitosis on Dec 18, 2007 - 50 comments

While the first pioneering forays into atonality and free chromaticism were starting to occur in Western European music, the talents of Latin and South America were discovering the Romantic beauty of re-interpreting the past. [much, much more inside!]
posted by invitapriore on Jun 3, 2007 - 6 comments

While doing research to learn some mexican and latino songs, I found "Mexican Song", "Cartel de Sinaloa", comedian Pablo Francisco and Ray Conniff. Let's just call this some YouTube Friday Fun.
posted by snsranch on Mar 2, 2007 - 4 comments

"I have an agenda." Luis Jimenez, a Latino sculptor who worked primarily in fiberglass, portraying Latin themes, died last month in an accident in his art studio.
posted by John of Michigan on Jul 19, 2006 - 20 comments

Music from Morrisania: Dr. Mark Naison, urban historian at Fordham University and principal investigator of the Bronx African-American history project, leads a musical tour of one South Bronx neighborhood from the 1950s to the present, describing how hot summers, open windows and a fertile mixing of ethnic groups influenced landmarks in American musical history -- from Tito Puente to "Watermelon Man" to KRS-One.
posted by Miko on May 18, 2006 - 8 comments

Is Cinco De Mayo For Sale By the Alcohol Industry? In the 1960s, Chicano activists in Colorado promoted a boycott of Coors beer in response to employment discrimination against Latinos at Coors breweries. Coors had two problems. They had to fix their image with Latino consumers, and they had to figure out some way to get college students to drink more beer in May. The solution: start sponsoring Cinco de Mayo! Thus, even though Mexicans in Mexico celebrate their independence day on September 15th and 16th, Mexican-Americans are more likely to celebrate the May 5th anniversary of the Battle of the Puebla, which is not even commemorated with a national holiday in Mexico. In fact, the Battle of the Puebla was a skirmish in the Pastry War, a French intervention in Mexico that began because a French chef demanded several thousand pesos to compensate him for Mexican military officers looting his pastry supply.
posted by jonp72 on May 5, 2006 - 44 comments

Amexica. So, living in two hispanic-dominated regions (Los Angeles, South Florida), I've seen the growth of the latino population create one of the oddest political coalitions ever. Ultra-conservatives (mostly white) want to tighten the borders because they see their "way of life" disappearing or mixing linguistically with Spanish. Blacks are threatened by dropping to #3 in the country's racial make-up, and see whatever political power they've gained begin to evaporate in a numbers game. In LA's recent mayoral race, this coalition became the deciding factor in defeating the latino candidate.
posted by owillis on Jun 18, 2001 - 20 comments