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1 topic to highlight: Latinas righteous
Several Latina judges and jurists
have recently been nominated to federal courts in the United States, which for many years has seen few Hispanics and Afro-Latinos in their seats.
Why it matters
: Decisions made in court can have major effects on voting rights, redistricting, discrimination in housing, the health care system, or health insurance, among other critical issues.
However, there are few Latino voices in those courts.
Although Latinos make up 18.7% of the US population, making them the largest minority population group, they comprise only 7% of federal judges.
Latina judges only make up about 2%.
This is also seen in local courts: in California, the state with the largest Latino population, the superior courts of the Hispanic-majority counties do not have Latino judges.
In numbers
: Since 1789, only 140 of the more than 3,400 federal judges have been of Hispanic or Afro-Latino origin.
Of them, 34 have been women, according to data from the Federal Judicial Center.
In fact, the percentage of Latina judges has remained virtually unchanged since 2009, when Sonia Sotomayor became the first female judge of Latina descent on the Supreme Court.
That percentage could increase with recent appointments.
Judges Kate Menendez, Linda Lopez and Myrna Pérez Photo illustration: Annelise Capossela.
/ Photos by Tom Williams, Caroline Brehman / CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images
Details
: Myrna Pérez, an expert on voting rights, was confirmed as a judge on the Second District Court of Appeals in late October.
She is the first Latina in that position since Sotomayor served in the same court beginning in 1998.
The Joe Biden Administration has also nominated Linda López, Cristina D. Silva, Ruth Bermudez Montenegro, Katherine Menendez and Evelyn Padin for district judges in the last three months.
Your confirmations are pending.
The nominations are part of the president's promise to diversify the judiciary by filling current vacancies, while organizations like Latinos for a Fair Judiciary have urged him to include more Hispanic judges.
The Big Picture
: The lack of diversity in the justice system goes beyond the judiciary: There are not enough Latinos with prosecutorial positions, in law firms, or in law schools, all positions that serve as stepping stones to the federal bench.
Experts attribute the low participation of Latinos to the exorbitant costs of obtaining a master of law (JD), when the price of an education has meant that Hispanics in the United States already have low graduation rates since graduation. bachelor's degree.
With "proportionally fewer Latinos in the most selective institutions," and taking into account that many go to
community colleges
where it is difficult to make the leap to law school
,
"the ranks of potential Latino lawyers are scarce," he told the network. Jennifer Rosato Perea, dean of DePaul's Law School, in 2017.
He added that since many Latinos are the first in their family to go to college, "there are problems of tutoring, preparation and support" that make it difficult to think about having a career in law.
Important note
: Threats against federal judges have increased in the last five years.
In one of those cases, the threats were against a Latina judge, Esther Salas, specifically for being Hispanic.
Judge Esther Salas recounts between tears and pain the murder of her son
Aug. 3, 202003: 12
The man responsible went to the judge's home, fatally shot her son when he opened the door, and wounded her husband last summer.
Salas has returned to the stand and has become a strong advocate for greater judicial security.
The FBI also found that the gunman, an attorney named Roy Den Hollander, had documents indicating that he was closely following Sotomayor's movements.
2. Warn that media merger could exclude Latino content
Members of Congress are raising objections
to a proposed WarnerMedia and Discovery merger over concerns that it could limit opportunities for Latino creators.
Details
: Representatives Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), David Cicilline (D-Rhode Island), and Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), as well as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), have asked the Justice Department to review the proposed agreement.
The Warner Bros. Discovery joint venture would be worth $ 43 billion.
It would host news, sports and entertainment content from WarnerMedia in conjunction with Discovery's international sports and entertainment businesses and non-fiction businesses.
A 2020 WarnerMedia Equity and Inclusion report found that 11% of workers are Hispanic, a number that has not changed since 2018. About 58% of employees are non-Hispanic white.
Why It Matters
: Castro is launching a campaign to pressure media and entertainment media to hire more diverse staff and produce more programming with Black, Latino, Native American and Asian descent.
Media mergers could make that more complicated.
Texas Representative Joaquin Castro during a legislative session in November 2019.Jacquelyn Martin / AP / Bloomberg via Getty Images
"I am deeply concerned that the proposed merger between Discovery and WarnerMedia will lead to concentrated exclusion, hurting consumers and workers, especially Latinos, who are already the least represented group," Castro said in a statement.
Don't forget
: Only 5% of leading actors and actresses in movies, and 2.9% of all TV and
streaming shows
were Latino in 2020, according to a recent report.
3. The most feared threats in the hemisphere
The fear of facing a natural disaster
is one of the biggest concerns in the Americas for 2022, more than the possibility of a terrorist attack and even another epidemic, according to an Ipsos survey.
Why It Matters
: Hurricanes and earthquakes have especially devastated Latino communities across the hemisphere in recent years, in some cases forcing people from their homes in what is coming to be called climate migration.
Examples include the aftermath of Hurricanes Eta and Iota, which wreaked havoc in Central America last year.
The hurricanes isolated villages and destroyed homes, but also devastated crops that have yet to be recovered, leaving Guatemalans and Hondurans especially without harvesting work or food.
Some Central Americans who tried to emigrate to the United States last year said hurricanes were the reason they had to leave their country.
In numbers
: Between 85% and 91% of those surveyed in Peru, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and the United States said they believe that a natural disaster could be a major threat in the coming year.
They are among the eight countries most concerned about a potential natural disaster, out of 17 countries surveyed.
Most also said they do not consider their countries to be prepared against a major natural disaster.
People from Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Mexico and the US were also among the 10 nations that most consider that they increased the dangers in the world last year.
4. The Latino museum begins to take shape
The Smithsonian has released
details
of what will be the first exhibition of the National Museum of the American Latino, a year after the law that orders the creation of that cultural institution was passed.
An artistic reproduction of what the entrance to the exhibition "Present!" Will look like.
at the Smithsonian Latin Gallery Courtesy of the Smithsonian Latino Center
Details
: The exhibition is called
Present!
and includes a series of videos on the diversity of Latino experiences;
Celia Cruz dresses;
a jacket worn by activist César Chávez;
and a raft used by Cubans to reach the United States in the early 1990s.
The exhibition will initially be in the Latin Gallery of the Molina Family, which will open inside the Museum of American History in May, in which the new museum is built.
It has not yet been decided where the Latino museum will be.
The deadline for deciding on a location to build on is December 2022.
Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) said recently that it should be built on the National Mall, the area of Washington, DC where most of the other Smithsonian museums are located.
Menendez and other senators argue that the Latino museum deserves the same prominent space.
The future of the museum will depend on raising funds to pay for its construction and operation, which is estimated to need hundreds of millions of dollars.
The museum recently received a $ 2 million donation from Wells Fargo Bank to the Smithsonian Latino Center.
Background
: Congress voted to create the museum in December of last year, with a bill co-sponsored by Senators Menendez and John Cornyn (Republican of Texas) and Rep. Tony Cárdenas (Democrat of California).
Having a museum to highlight the contributions of Latinos in the United States was an effort that required several decades of work, especially from activists.
His initiative was reinforced after the Smithsonian himself commented in a 1994 report that it had had a “deliberate oversight” in its museums towards the contributions of Hispanics to art, culture and history.
5.
Summary of key news in Latin America and the Caribbean
Chile began this Monday to vaccinate children as young as 3
years old
against COVID-19, having already inoculated about 90% of the rest of its population.
The Andean country is one of the nations with the highest rates of vaccination against coronavirus in the world.
He was also one of the first to test booster vaccines and to begin vaccinating children and adolescents.
Chile reported its first case of the omicron variant over the weekend.
Chilean children wait at a school in Santiago, Chile, to be vaccinated in October 2021. Marcelo Hernández / Getty Images
More than 12,000 Haitians have been expelled from the Dominican Republic
in the last three months, an increase in deportations that activists find concerning.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island with a porous border.
While the Dominican government has long taken steps to deport Haitians, including pregnant women, experts say the current crackdown is the worst in decades.
Dominican authorities are reportedly sending back not only new Haitian immigrants to a torn nation that is the poorest in the hemisphere, but also people who have lived on the Dominican side of the island for many years.
6. 🎻 Farewell Smile: Musical Inventions
A Peruvian music teacher
set out to show that everyone can have an instrument by creating a violin with cheap materials such as plastic bottles and plywood.
This music teacher created a violin out of recycled material to teach poor youth in Peru
Nov. 5, 202102: 17
Details
: Homemade violins can cost as little as $ 10 each, compared to an average of at least $ 200 for the most affordable beginner violins from professional manufacturers.
Professor Jesús Peralta was a member of the National Symphony Orchestra of Peru.
He teaches private music classes to pay for free classes for children living in the poor neighborhoods of Lima.
Peralta also conducts a teen orchestra whose members currently use borrowed violins.
The Peruvian hopes to manufacture a thousand of the instruments that he nicknames bottle violin, to encourage young people to continue practicing an instrument that would otherwise be out of their reach.
Thanks for reading us. We will be back on Thursday!
Do you want to see any of the most recent previous editions?
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The people behind the death toll at the border
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The Latino story of Thanksgiving
The purchasing power of Latinas
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The fight for 'green' money