By Marina E. Franco and Russell Contreras
Welcome to Axios Latino, a newsletter to tell you every week the stories that have a special impact on the Latino communities in the United States and in Latin America. If you are interested in subscribing and receiving the newsletter in your email (in English), you can do so by clicking here. Every week we will publish it in Spanish on Noticias Telemundo. [Sign up here to read the newsletter in Spanish]
1 Topic: The Multiracial Revolution Among Latinos
The number of Latinos
who identify as multiracial increased by 567% in the last decade, while the number of Hispanics who see themselves as purely white fell substantially, according to the most recent data from the 2020 Census.
2020 Census data. Axios Data graph
Why it matters:
The dramatic turnaround in racial identification was possible because the Census questionnaire incorporated new options, but also because Latinos celebrate indigenous and African roots more.
For decades, many Hispanics marked the white box on forms largely to avoid segregation and discrimination laws that would have made it difficult for them to own their homes or access certain jobs.
By the numbers
: The number of people of Latino or Hispanic ethnic origin who identify as two or more races increased from 3 million to 20.3 million between 2010 and 2020, according to Census data.
Latinos who identify as white alone fell by half, from 26.7 million a decade ago to 12.6 million in 2020.
Latinos now make up 18.7% of the US population.
In his own words:
"I am proud to be a mixed race individual, because that is how I carry the banner of all the vicissitudes and difficulties that my ancestors experienced, by claiming my skin tone, the curl of my hair and even how I speak Spanish. "Celeste Cabrera, a 19-year-old Puerto Rican living in Florida, told Axios Latino.
2. Exclusively: A historic narco speaks from jail
Who is Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and why was he so powerful?
Aug. 18, 202101: 47
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo
, former leader of the Guadalajara Cartel (the first Mexican organized crime organization), breaks 32 years of silence in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
It is the only one he has granted since he was arrested in 1989 for the murder of the US anti-narcotics agent Enrique
Kiki
Camarena and the Mexican pilot Alfredo Zavala.
More details
: The man who was once considered the
Godfather
of drug trafficking and one of the most feared criminals in the world is now considered a “corpse” just waiting to be buried near a tree.
Félix Gallardo assures that he never met Camarena, but that he knew he was a "good man", maintaining his argument that he was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted.
But he says he hopes that Camarena's widow "has the satisfaction that those guilty of that are paying their faults."
In addition to Félix Gallardo, the co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel Ernesto Fonseca is in prison (at home), while the former police officer accused of being the material author of the murder, Francisco Tejeda Jaramillo, left prison in 2016 and is now dedicated to painting.
Context
: The Guadalajara Cartel, under the leadership of Félix Gallardo, Fonseca and the still fugitive from the FBI Rafael Caro Quintero, expanded drug trafficking routes from South America and to the US via Mexico, to become the first large organization drug trafficking in the region.
Félix Gallardo was nicknamed
Chief of Chiefs
because in his time he supervised lieutenants such as Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán, later leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, and Amado Carillo Fuentes, nicknamed
The Lord of the Skies
for the fleet of planes with which he moved drugs for his Juarez Cartel.
The way things are
: The Sinaloa and Juárez cartels are still operating, while the Guadalajara one was dismantled.
The Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel now rules in his area.
3. Immigration agents must now record their actions
A protest demanding justice in the case of Anastasio Hernández, who died in 2010 during a Border Patrol operation to deport him.
Sandy Huffaker / Corbis via Getty Images
A third of all
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents will be required to wear body cameras as part of their uniform before the end of the year, the federal agency announced.
Why it matters
: The cameras will provide "greater transparency" about interactions between agents and the public, according to CBP, whose operations include immigration raids, border arrests and the management of detention centers with migrant children.
State and local law enforcement agencies have used body cameras for years as an accountability mechanism for abuses in the use of force.
The program for CBP will begin with Border Patrol officers in the Southwest and North areas;
the rest of the 20,000 or so agents will have the cameras in the future.
In figures
: On average there are 550 incidents of abusive use of force related to CBP officers each year in the last four fiscal years.
The figure is already higher than 600 so far in fiscal year 2021.
According to activists, 130 people have died in Border Patrol operations since 2010.
Other reported abuses include cases such as that of Esteban Manzanares, an agent who kidnapped and raped three Honduran women and forced them into his official vehicle in 2014. Manzanares committed suicide in the hours that followed when the authorities were looking for him;
the women later tried, unsuccessfully, to sue CBP civilly.
But
: The agents will not be obliged to have the cameras in recording mode automatically, and only the recordings that do exist will be saved if they are considered to have “value as evidence”.
4. The vaccination experiment in the Southern Cone and the Caribbean
A Uruguayan who received the Sinovac vaccines as the first two doses now gets a booster dose from Pfizer on August 16, 2021. Ana Ferreira / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Chile, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay
have begun distributing booster vaccines against the coronavirus as COVID-19 continues to hit Latin America and the Caribbean hard.
In the news
: The experience of those countries can serve as an example now that in the US the Joe Biden Administration determined that it will be necessary to be immunized with a third dose approximately eight months after receiving the second dose of Pfizer or Moderna.
In Latin American countries, it was decided to put booster doses because at first they used the Sputnik and Sinovac vaccines, more affordable and available but which seem to have less efficacy against variants such as delta, according to studies.
People in those nations are now getting Pfizer or AstraZeneca, in a near-real-time lab of how effective it is to mix vaccine types.
But
: In most other Latin American and Caribbean countries, the first and second doses are barely being distributed.
The Pan American Health Organization even announced that it will buy doses to distribute them to those nations, since the COVAX mechanism, which was originally so that less developed nations had access to doses outside their financial reach, is being exhausted by rich nations for the doses. reinforcement.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the delta, gamma and lambda variants are concurrently present.
Note
: In the United States, the most recent vaccination rounds are finally reaching Latinos and non-Hispanic black and Asian people, who had previously suffered obstacles to vaccination and misinformation doubts.
The proportion of vaccines destined for Hispanics increased significantly through August in the 40 states that report demographic information, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Mexico and the US start a pilot program for cross-border vaccination against COVID-19
Aug. 18, 202101: 52
5. Your voice: what readers are saying about the terms Hispanic and Latino
The indifference between the two terms
seems to unite the readers of this newsletter, based on the responses they sent us last week after we reported on a related poll.
What is happening
: Many of the readers, however, did say they were disgusted with the term Latinx, calling it “forced” and “a way in which English wants to co-opt cultural identity” because the x in Spanish is hardly pronounced the same .
But there is interest in a gender-neutral alternative, and several readers said that
Latin
is a good option.
In her own words
: Young
Latinos
"are getting updated with how to have alternatives to the he / she binary," said reader Marcela Pinilla.
6. Summary of key news from Latin America and the Caribbean
Tragedies continue to devastate Haiti
, as the passage of Grace (a tropical storm turned hurricane) left floods in its wake, which could increase the death toll above the 2,200 already registered so far due to Saturday's earthquake.
The earthquake had already left thousands homeless while hospitals cannot cope with treating the thousands more injured.
The US and the World Health Organization are assisting as the Haitian government remains fragile since the Haitian president was assassinated on July 7.
The flooded streets of Saint-Louis-du-Sud, in Haiti, after the passage of "Grace".
The August 14, 2021 earthquake struck just 7 miles northeast of that town.Jonathan Alpeyrie / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The purge in Nicaragua of any dissent towards the regime of Daniel Ortega
and Rosario Murillo continues, now with a raid on the only daily publication, La Prensa, which had to suspend its print publication.
At least 33 people, from student activists to Ortega's former guerrilla partners, have been arrested ahead of the November elections.
The new Salvadoran constitution
promoted by the government of Nayib Bukele is almost ready, with changes that would include a presidential term of one more year and that the governments of a single party are not prohibited.
The text would also incorporate cryptocurrencies into the nation's monetary policy, following a law that made bitcoin accepted in all types of businesses.
7. This young man opens his own passage in Venezuela
A Venezuelan boy went from having no shoes to becoming a manufacturer of sandals
Aug. 10, 202101: 54
Venezuelan teenager Andrés López
only had one pair of shoes and lost them.
Since his family couldn't afford another pair, López decided to make them himself with scraps of rubber from a tire and straps from a handbag.
He ended up discovering a market that had not been exploited.
Why it matters:
Like López, many Venezuelans have had to resort to ingenuity to weather crises of hyperinflation and food and medicine shortages.
The 14-year-old Venezuelan's creations began to circulate in his town in the Ciudad Bolívar area and are now sold as far as Caracas, 300 miles away.
He has received orders and donations from the United States, such as a needle and thread, to continue his endeavor.
López says that in Venezuela, flip flops or cholas cost up to $ 10, despite the fact that the minimum wage a few months ago was equivalent to approximately 0.64 cents on the dollar.
López charges about $ 3 for his shoes.
Thanks for reading, until next week.
Do you want to see any of the previous editions?
- The political battle that is coming
- Shooting against Latinos
- Recommended reading for this summer: new Latin American voices
- Olympic hopes despite obstacles
- Behind the multiple crises due to COVID-19 in Latin America
- A pain for the whole hemisphere
- The shedding of innocent blood
- A heat-battered border thirsts for protection