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]
Before we begin, we have an announcement for you: this newsletter will be published twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, starting today.
1 Topic: Cancer Hits Latinos Earlier
Latino men and women in the United States are diagnosed
earlier than non-Hispanic white people with cancers such as leukemia, Kaposi's sarcoma, gallbladder and Hodgkin's lymphoma, according to a study.
The Big Picture:
Cancer is the leading cause of death for Latino women in the United States and the second leading cause of death for Latino men.
Hispanics between the ages of 16 and 64 are at higher risk as they are much more likely to be uninsured compared to the non-Hispanic white population, making it difficult to receive treatment for serious illnesses such as cancer.
The lack of health insurance is also a barrier to Latinos accessing detection or prevention services for diseases such as breast cancer, the most common among Latinas in the United States.
Latinos, on average, more commonly have cancer risk factors such as diabetes or obesity.
In his own words
: By being diagnosed younger, “Latinos who are cancer survivors may experience a reduced quality of life for longer, with huge financial impacts and long-term effects, such as an increased risk of cancer recurrence, seconds cancer or heart disease, ”epidemiologist Humberto Parada, author of the study, told Axios Latino.
Parada called for "more specific messages and recommendations that are relevant to Latinos of different origins and with different cultures" to encourage studies or scans and preventive care such as quitting smoking or eating better.
In numbers
: Projections indicate that cancer cases among the US Hispanic community could increase by 142% by 2030.
Study suggests numbers of patients diagnosed with cancer dropped during the pandemic
Sept.
2, 202101: 44
Bottom line
: While there is a lower incidence of most cancers among Latinos than among non-Hispanic whites, survival rates for Hispanic patients are generally worse.
Furthermore, in comparison, survivors end up with a poorer quality of life, with additional health conditions such as anxiety, and socioeconomic obstacles such as not having a fixed home.
And the economic hardships faced by older Latinos living with chronic diseases, including cancer, make their health even worse.
Watch Out
: A six-year study examines how issues such as discrimination, depression or family lineage can affect the severity of cancer-related symptoms and emotional conditions in patients.
2. Latinos and the California recall vote
Only 39% of California voters are in favor of removing Gavin Newsom, according to a poll
Sept.
2, 202100: 34
A vast majority of potential California voters
oppose the removal of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is getting more support thanks to Latinos days before the Sept. 14 election, according to a poll.
As it is
: 66% of Latino voters surveyed said they would not support impeachment, compared with 27% who did, according to the Public Policy Institute poll.
Those numbers represent a sea change from previous polls that showed a close contest with many more California Latinos in favor of removing Newsom.
In August, 54% of Latinos said they were in favor of impeachment in an Emerson College / Nexstar poll.
Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist from California and an expert on Latino voting trends, said early polls on electoral issues tend to be wrong because they don't include enough Latinos.
A word of caution
: Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha said Newsom's team still needs to reach out more directly to nonpartisan and low-turnout Latino voters to ensure they go to the polls, thus avoiding a mistake that both Democrats and Republicans make of taking Latinos for granted and not mobilizing them enough.
Newson has been visiting predominantly Latino enclaves in recent days near Dodger Stadium, the Coachella Valley, and in schools with large numbers of Hispanic students.
Bottom line
: Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in California, accounting for 39% of the population.
They represent about 28% of registered voters.
About 66% of Latinos voted for Newsom when he was elected governor three years ago.
3. How Heat Kills Hispanic Farm Workers
Fernando Llerenas, who does farm work, drinks water while picking pears in Hood River, Oregon, in August 2021. Michael Hanson / AFP via Getty Images
Farmworkers, mostly Latino
, are 20 times more likely than other outdoor workers to die in the extreme heat that hits much of the country.
Why it matters
: In the United States, extreme heat kills more people each year than floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service.
On average, a Latino worker suffers between 40 and 45 days with maximum temperatures above 90 ° F (32 centigrade), according to research by the Adrienne-Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.
While non-Hispanic white workers are exposed to high temperatures for approximately 25 to 30 days a year.
Currently, the federal government does not have any thermal safety standards to protect outdoor workers.
Between the lines
: Farmworkers usually take fewer breaks during their shifts because they are paid a variable salary based on the number of units of fruits, vegetables or others they collect, warns an analysis by the law firm Heit Law Group.
Farm work by undocumented people doing farm work contributes $ 9 billion annually to the fruit and vegetable industry, according to the National Immigration Forum.
4. The Salvadoran experiment with Bitcoin begins in earnest
El Salvador's law that converts Bitcoin into legal tender
came into effect on Tuesday, amid skepticism that decentralized digital currency can actually function as a country's currency.
El Salvador launches bitcoin and becomes the first country in the world to use it as legal tender
Sept.
7, 202100: 26
Why it matters
: The Central American nation is the first in the world to establish Bitcoin as a formal currency.
The president, Nayib Bukele, assures that he will promote inclusion, since 70% of Salvadorans do not have a bank account, and affirms that people will benefit because in theory the remittances sent from the United States will not have commissions if it is used. Bitcoin
But eight out of ten Salvadorans say they have little or no confidence in the cryptocurrency, whose value is highly volatile, according to a survey by the University Institute of Public Opinion.
In El Salvador, some speculate that the adoption of Bitcoin is an attempt by Bukele for the country to abandon the dollar, the national currency since 2001, so that the Government can reissue its own currency.
News Momentum
: The Salvadoran Supreme Court, controlled by Bukele supporters since May, ruled this weekend that presidents can seek immediate reelection despite a years-old constitutional ban.
The decision opens the door for Bukele to participate in the 2024 elections and has drawn criticism from the State Department.
Important note
: El Zonte, a seaside community that attracts international tourists for its surfing waves, has been accepting Bitcoin as payment since 2018 after an anonymous donor from California delivered all of its cryptocurrencies to the city.
The intrigue
: The use of Bitcoin will be voluntary for people but mandatory for Salvadoran businesses of all kinds, unless they can demonstrate that technologically they cannot accept it.
El Salvador has the second worst internet connectivity in all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Bukele government announced plans to offer $ 30 in digital currency to up to four million Salvadorans who choose to create the digital wallet called Chivo as an incentive to use it.
5. Summary of key news from Latin America and the Caribbean
Protests by indigenous groups outside the Supreme Court of Brazil, in Brasilia, on August 26.
The "reform to the legal framework" promoted by the Bolsonaro government would take away their right to inhabit ancestral lands if it is considered that they were not massively populated before 1988, despite the fact that the then dictatorship expelled many indigenous people.Evaristo Sa / AFP via Getty Images
Brazil's Supreme Court
is yet to decide whether many of the ancestral lands where indigenous peoples live can be opened to legal industrial logging and mining, based on a law promoted by the president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Deforestation rates in the Amazon, where many of the indigenous groups reside, reached their highest level in a decade in August.
This Tuesday there will be massive protests against and in favor of Bolsonaro, amid fears that violence will break out in major Brazilian cities.
A Colombian court has blocked
a criminal charge against General Mario Montoya for extrajudicial executions known as false positives.
The indictment would have made him the highest-ranking officer to possibly face jail for the killings of peasant people whom soldiers tried to pass off as guerrillas.
The court determined that the indictment was not appropriate, because Montoya is working with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, an
ad hoc
court
where those accused of serious crimes during the conflict can avoid jail if they provide useful testimony to find mass graves or people missing.
Mexico and the United States will resume
their high-level economic dialogue on Thursday for the first time in four years.
The focus will be joint investments in Central America to try to reduce migration and the implementation of the new North American free trade agreement.
6. Meet the Dominican who is on the trail of Cleopatra
The search for the tomb of Cleopatra
, who was the last Egyptian queen, is in the hands of a Dominican woman who went from studying law at a small university in Santo Domingo to becoming the first Latin American to obtain an excavation permit in the archaeological sites of Egypt.
A Latina rewrites the history of Egypt with her archaeological discoveries
March 8, 202103: 58
More details
: Martínez calls herself a "lawyer by training and archaeologist by vocation" and since 2005 she has led a team on the outskirts of Alexandria, in a complex called Taposiris Magna.
There he has made "sensational" discoveries such as the statue of a pharaoh believed to be the ancestor of Cleopatra;
200 coins with the face of Cleopatra;
and two intact tombs where those buried had shrouds and tongues made of gold, indicating that they belonged to high echelons of Ptolemaic society.
But Cleopatra's last resting place after her suicide remains a mystery.
Thanks for reading, see you again on Thursday.
Do you want to see any of the previous editions?
- Past drinks
- The racism of immigration laws
- The multiracial revolution
- 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