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1 topic to highlight: Forced exile of veterans
About a thousand veterans
, many of them Latino, live outside the United States and cannot return to the country they defended due to their immigration status.
The Big Picture
: A new VOCES / PBS documentary focuses on the story of two brothers, both Mexican immigrants, who fought in the Vietnam War and were later honorably discharged.
They now face deportation for misdemeanors.
American Exile
follows the fight of Corporal Manuel Valenzuela and Sergeant Valente Valenzuela against deportation orders and in favor of other veterans already expelled from the country.
The Valente brothers and Manuel Valenzuela during an American Independence Day parade, July 4, in Colorado.Elia Lyssy / Voces
More details
: An immigration law signed in 1996 by the then president, Bill Clinton, and that was applied with fruition during the term of Barack Obama, sought to deport, retroactively, immigrant veterans even if they had been convicted of minor crimes such as driving while intoxicated.
Many of the deported veterans were in combat and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, which can trigger addictions such as alcoholism.
Please Note
: In July, the Joe Biden Administration announced a plan to allow immigrants who served in the Army and were later deported to legally return to the country.
The program is already beginning to benefit some deported veterans, such as the Mexican Héctor Ocegueda, whose case we will tell later.
Yes, but
: Rebecca Sheff, a New Mexico attorney for the American Civil Rights Union (ACLU), told Axios Latino that Biden's order can be reversed by a future president and that only with new legislation can it be protect immigrant veterans more effectively.
2. A settling of accounts regarding abuses in the Army, thanks to a Latina soldier
More than a year after
the death of Latina soldier Vanessa Guillén, the
The Pentagon has launched a pilot program for the military to have an alternative way to report sexual harassment and abuse.
The Big Picture
: Guillén's murder, and the slow military investigation (which only got better when the soldier's relatives publicly questioned it), put the spotlight on sexual assault, harassment, and murder rates at Fort Hood, the base that has had the highest number of such incidents in the Army.
"Promoting a culture of denunciation": the reasons that led Cecilia Suárez to participate in the Fort Hood podcast
Oct. 28, 202104: 40
A Noticias Telemundo podcast explains how the Army's rocky investigation uncovered other cases of violence and disappearances of soldiers at Fort Hood.
An investigation to review what went wrong in Guillén's case found that she had warned people at the base that she was being sexually harassed, without action, before she was reported missing.
A report commissioned after her death indicated that the rate of sexual assault against female soldiers at Fort Hood is 8.4%, which means that approximately 1 in 12 female military personnel have been assaulted.
The figure is 5.4% for all women in the US Army.
Sexual assaults on the base also affect male soldiers, as happened to Elder Fernandes, a sergeant who was found dead in August 2020 after reporting that he was harassed.
On average since 2019, Hispanic women and men represent one in five newly recruited military personnel.
News Momentum
: The incidents at Fort Hood and the Black Lives Matter movement also strengthened calls to rename military bases, especially those that honor Confederate soldiers.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus recently suggested that Fort Hood be renamed to honor General Richard E. Cavazos, a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars who was the first Hispanic to achieve the rank of four-star officer.
In Congress, the
I am Vanessa Guillén Act
,
introduced this past summer in the Senate and House of Representatives, would change the mechanism for reporting and investigating sexual assault and harassment from the chain of command to the prosecutor's office. head of the military branch.
3. A hidden story of heroes in Germany
Deep in the German Hürtgen Forest,
you can walk the route that Mexican-American soldiers took to help defeat the Nazis.
A photograph of Macario Garcia, a Mexican-American soldier, in the Hürtgen Forest, Germany.Russell Contreras / Axios
The Big Picture
: Latino veterans returning from World War II played a critical role in creating America's Hispanic middle class and helped fuel the Latino civil rights movement.
But his actions are still relatively unknown to the American public.
The North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany
allows visitors to hike the Hürtgen Forest Trail to see first-hand where Macario Garcia fought.
In November 1944, the soldier destroyed two German camps and captured four prisoners by himself, after his infantry regiment dodged bullets and bombs near Grosshau, Germany.
Garcia was injured, but refused medical assistance until his unit was safe.
He crawled and fought the Germans to destroy the Nazi artillery.
Then-President Harry Truman presented Garcia with the medal of honor ... but just days later the 25-year-old soldier was denied service at a Texas restaurant for being Latino, and was even arrested and beaten for protesting against bad treatment.
Between the Lines
: Today there are only a handful of historical markers in the US that honor Latino veterans.
But in Germany one can walk the Route of the Liberation of Europe, which connects important places where the allied invasion passed.
An estimated half a million Latino soldiers, both migrants and citizens of Puerto Rican origin, fought in the ranks of the US military during World War II.
Unlike what happened with black soldiers, who were forced into segregated regiments, Latinos fought side by side with non-Hispanic whites.
But neither Latino nor black soldiers received the same recognition as whites.
4. New possible sanctions after controversial vote in Nicaragua
Nicaraguan electoral authorities named Daniel Ortega
winner of a fourth consecutive presidential term in a vote that Biden described as "pantomime" and that most of the international community has criticized or asked not to know.
The international community describes the elections in Nicaragua as "mockery of democracy"
Nov. 9, 202100: 49
Why it matters
: Human rights abuses have been on the rise in the Central American country since 2018, when Ortega cracked down on massive protests, and his alleged re-election will significantly worsen the situation, Amnesty International warned.
A record number of Nicaraguans have made their way to the United States in recent months, after years of fleeing to Costa Rica.
Ortega's FSLN party controls Congress and figures loyal to him are in charge of the electoral body and the justice system.
What's next
: The State Department indicated that it would consider new sanctions and unspecified “coordinated regional actions” against Ortega and Rosario Murillo, the first lady who has also served as vice president since 2007 and was recently named “co-chair” by Ortega.
In a statement, the department said that Ortega and Murillo had "deprived Nicaraguans of any real option" by incarcerating or forcing the other candidates to flee.
Nicaraguans did have a choice between voting or abstaining.
Although there were lines of soldiers and police waiting to vote Sunday morning outside the voting centers, most of the polls later appeared empty.
A CID Gallup poll last week showed that 78% of Nicaraguans thought the election was illegitimate.
Ortega and Murillo will begin their new five-year term in January.
5. Summary of key news from Latin America and the Caribbean
The International Criminal Court
formally opened an investigation into allegations of physical and sexual torture, arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial executions in Venezuela, which were especially suffered by members of the opposition and protesters.
The complaints stem from a dozen cases registered during the anti-government protests in 2017, although subsequent investigations by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the UN Human Rights office estimate, respectively, that extrajudicial executions since 2014 could range between 2,500 and 18,000.
The ICC investigation is the first of its kind for a Latin American country, following several similar investigations into atrocities in African nations.
The Chilean Lower House
, with an opposition majority, voted early Tuesday morning to proceed with a constitutional impeachment action against the president, Sebastián Piñera.
The Senate will now review the issue as if it were a jury, to decide whether Piñera should be removed from office on allegations that he intervened inappropriately during the sale of a mining project in which his family had investments.
Chile has presidential elections scheduled for November 21, which will likely advance to a second round if none of the seven candidates gets more than 50% of the vote.
Piñera can no longer run for reelection.
6. A veteran returns home
Héctor Ocegueda
dedicated years of his life to the US Marine Corps.
But that didn't stop authorities from deporting him in 2009 when the veteran was caught driving with a higher-than-allowed level of alcohol.
Now, after a decade, Ocegueda is back in the United States and has become the first in his family to obtain citizenship.
This war veteran returns to the US a decade after being deported
July 12, 202101: 41
Details
: Ocegueda took the naturalization oath in July, the same month that Biden launched a program for veterans and family members of deported military men to return to the United States and continue their citizenship process.
Immigrant veterans are eligible for an expedited citizenship process, although Ocegueda had to file a lawsuit to obtain their naturalization interview.
Ocegueda served in the Marine Corps from 1987 to 1991, and was later honorably discharged.
She says she wants to train to be a nursing assistant and help other veterans.
Between the lines
: At least 93 veterans were wrongly deported between 2013 and 2018, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Thanks for reading us
.
This Thursday we rest for Veterans Day in the US;
we returned on Tuesday.
Do you want to see any of the most recent previous editions?
The fight for 'green' money
A tradition in transition
Real violence at the border
The brake on Latino education
A Hispanic paradox
The right to die
A neglected danger
In search of future politicians
