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1 Topic: The Hispanic Caucus sets its sights on 2022
The campaign team of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus
wants to exceed the record number of Latinos in the federal legislative branch, with the expectation that adding more Democrats of Latino origin will help prevent the Republican Party from obtaining a majority in the House of Representatives. in the midterm elections next year.
Why it matters
: There are currently 47 Hispanic legislators in the lower house, including two non-voting delegates and the resident commissioner, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Of that total, 34 are Democrats and 13 are Republicans.
The CHC BOLD PAC group, led by Rep. Rubén Gallego (D-Arizona), is already trying to recruit more Latino candidates.
He is especially targeting Latinos to run in contested districts and counties, in reaction to many Republicans succeeding in attracting Hispanic voters in 2020.
In his own words
: Gallego told Axios Latino that increasing Latino voter turnout and getting more Hispanic Democratic candidates could create a “blue wall” to maintain Democratic control of the House of Representatives in 2022.
Arizona Democratic Rep. Rubén GallegoTasos Katopodis / Getty Images
He said the PAC is beginning to recruit candidates and is awaiting how the new districts are drawn to see which candidates fit them.
“We are not looking only for progressives or moderates or conservatives.
We want to make sure we have the right Latinos and Democrats to win the district, ”the legislator said.
Bottom line
: Democrats are beginning to appeal to Latinos a year before the midterm elections to avoid the missteps they saw in 2020, when former President Donald Trump fared better than expected with Hispanic voters.
Yes, but
: Gallego stressed that the redistribution of the electoral maps, which are being revised in many states based on the 2020 Census data, could alter candidate recruitment plans.
It can also reduce the number of Latinos in Congress if the more restrictive maps that Republicans have proposed are imposed in some states, where there are also often few Latino Republican candidates.
2. Hispanic heritage: social change with music, a la Venezuelan
Musical training
as a means to get out of poverty from childhood and to build community is the main component of El Sistema, the group of youth and children's orchestras and choirs from Venezuela that has been adopted around the world.
Members of one of the youth orchestras that are part of El Sistema during a presentation in Caracas in 2012.Leo Ramírez / AFP via Getty Images
Why it matters
: The program has been exported to 60 countries.
The program affirms that it is the most effective social project in Venezuelan history, as it is an effort to achieve social changes through art, introducing music to minors, many of them in situations of poverty.
It is a free program started in 1975 by the economist and teacher turned conductor José Antonio Abreu, who said that the purpose is for music to stop being "a monopoly of elites" to become a "right of the people."
The System has public financing, and is praised by the Chavista regime, which has earned it criticism of being a propaganda tool.
Despite this, members of El Sistema have also been critical of Chavismo.
In his own words
: The program “uses music created by an ensemble so that each child experiences being a value to and within their community,” according to Eric Booth, author of
Playing for Their Lives: The Global System Movement for Social Change Through music
.
Don't forget
: Gustavo Dudamel, musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and first Hispanic musical director of the Paris Opera, had his beginnings as a musician and conductor at El Sistema.
Dudamel also conducts the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, whose members are graduates of El Sistema.
More from Hispanic Heritage Month:
La Cajita Feliz migrated from Guatemala
Cuban literacy
The Colombian neurosurgeon who saved us from dementia
Chilean development behind vaccines
Fight crime with Argentine legacy
Thank you, Mexico, for your ingenuity
Peru feeds the world
3. America celebrates indigenous peoples
The White House proclaimed yesterday as the Day of the Indigenous Peoples
for the first time, aligning itself with most of the American countries when commemorating October 12 as a recognition of the original inhabitants of the continent over a celebration of Christopher Columbus.
An act of protest in front of where the statue of Christopher Columbus was in Mexico City, in October 2020. The statue was removed for cleaning, but this 2021 it was announced that it will not be installed again.Pedro Pardo / AFP via Getty Images
In Context
: The US typically celebrates the Monday leading up to October 12 as Columbus Day, while elsewhere on the continent the date has been formally known as Columbus Day since the early 1900s.
The parade for Christopher Columbus Day returns to New York and with it its traditional controversy
Oct. 11, 202101: 38
Some countries have changed the name since the 1980s, using Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity or Day of the Encounter of Two Worlds.
These different names are thought to "highlight the fusion of cultures" at the date, and thus leave behind the idea that what came with the arrival of European explorers was a "discovery".
The news push
: In Mexico City, the rejection of Colón as a figure to be venerated even led local authorities to decree that his statue on the main avenue of Reforma be replaced by one that pays honor to indigenous women. Several statues of Columbus have also been removed, but 149 public monuments to the Italian explorer remain, making him the third most commemorated figure in stone after Lincoln and Washington, according to the nonprofit Monument Lab. .
4. A new look at an acclaimed author who was silenced by Cuba
The life of the influential Cuban poet and writer
José Lezama Lima, who was initially celebrated by the Cuban Revolution and later silenced for his homoerotic writings and criticism of the regime, is celebrated in a film that opens in the US on Friday.
A portrait of José Lezama Lima Iván Canas via Voces / Latino Public Broadcasting
Overview
: The documentary
Cartas a Eloísa
, produced by Voces and PBS, is told through the correspondence of Lezama, forced to stay in Cuba, for his exiled sister.
The program is narrated by Alfred Molina.
The story shows the repression and censorship faced by Lezama, who was initially celebrated by the Fidel Castro regime for his prominent role in the so-called
Latin American literary
boom
.
The documentary also includes the voices of authors who were inspired by Lezama or knew him personally, such as the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.
The documentary was filmed by Adriana Bosch, also from Cuba and producer of the Peabody Award-winning series
Latinos Americanos
.
What's Happening
: The monumental novel
Paradiso
de Lezama, published in 1966 and ordered by the Cuban government to be removed from all the bookstores on the island that same year, has just been republished in Spanish.
The eighth chapter of
Paradiso
describes, without inhibitions, the main character's sexual encounters with men and women.
It was the reason why the regime forced him into hiding.
At that time, Castroism persecuted gay men and sent them to forced labor camps.
Despite numerous invitations to receive literary awards and speak at conferences, Lezama was not allowed to leave the island and remained a virtual prisoner in his home in Havana.
5.
Summary of key news from Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazilian doctors have
testified
before the Senate that one of the country's largest healthcare providers falsified death certificates to cover up deaths from COVID-19;
knowingly administered ineffective treatments to patients;
and allegedly reduced oxygen to people who had been intubated for more than 10 days.
An art protest installation in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, with 600,000 white flags representing all the coronavirus fatalities in Brazil.Francesca Gennari / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Brazil has the world's second worst death toll from the new coronavirus, but the president, Jair Bolsonaro, publicly defends unproven drugs such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.
More than 19,000 children
tried to cross the treacherous Darien Gap this year, a record, according to UNICEF data.
The dangerous jungle crossing between Colombia and Panama has seen an unprecedented flow of people this year, many of them Haitians who are trying to reach the United States to seek asylum.
"One is afraid to even go to work": violence with firearms increases in Mexico
Oct. 10, 202101: 43
Mexico and the United States agreed to
scrap the Mérida Initiative's security plan, moving from a “war on drugs” aid flow to cooperation in public health and economic development, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said.
Violence in Mexico, which barely declined during the pandemic, is on the rise again, with nearly 100 homicides a day.
6.
👩🏫 No road is too far for schooling
To ensure that Colombian children
in a remote mountainous village have classes, Ruth Susa does not hesitate to jump into the void: every day she rappels through a valley to go to school.
This teacher travels on a pulley every day to get to the school where she teaches
Sept.
16, 202102: 34
More details
: The cable running through the valley is about 2,600 feet (800 meters) long and is located at approximately 2,000 feet (700 meters).
Susa throws herself on the pulley through the valley, then propels herself with her own arms towards the end, and then makes a steep 30-minute walk to the Brisas de Guayuriba school in the Acacías area, south of Bogotá.
Eight elementary school students take classes with Susa, who also prepares some food for them.
The 52-year-old teacher says she would be more afraid of leaving the children without a teacher.
Until Thursday, thanks for reading us.
Do you want to see any of the most recent previous editions?
How the Happy Meal migrated
The 'perfect' business for drug trafficking
Hispanic economic engine
Vaccines thanks to a South American
Footprints of truth from Argentina
What Mexican ingenuity has given us
Potato secrets
The Hispanics who will take us to Mars
