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Axios Latino summarizes the key news for Latino communities in the hemisphere;
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You will always find it in Spanish on Noticias Telemundo.
1 topic to highlight: What awaits the next president of Colombia
The election of Gustavo Petro
as president of Colombia (the first from the left in the country's history) may have important implications for the relationship with the United States.
In addition, Petro and the elected vice president, Francia Márquez, have strong domestic challenges ahead of them since before assuming power on August 7.
Why It Matters
: Colombia has long been one of the United States' closest allies in Latin America.
The two countries have especially strong ties on trade and security issues, including close cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking and the Venezuelan migration crisis.
Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez celebrate their electoral victory on June 19, 2022Andrés Cardona/Bloomberg / via Getty Images
News push
: Petro campaigned on several promises that contravene the policies that have marked US-Colombian relations for years.
"The two nations will be hard-pressed to cooperate on security, trade, and potentially energy issues," says Shannon K. O'Neil, an expert on Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Petro wants to end oil exploration while the United States has asked oil-producing nations to make more efforts to lower gasoline prices.
Petro has also indicated that it will review Colombia's free trade agreements to ensure they are fair.
On drug trafficking
, Petro has said that US policy in Latin America, which has focused on crop eradication and the extradition of traffickers, "has categorically failed."
He wants to legalize marijuana for medicinal uses and create more economic incentives so that impoverished farmers do not see the coca plant as their only option for making a living.
Petro, a former guerrilla from the now-defunct M-19 movement, has also proposed reopening peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) as another step in what he calls a "peaceful dismantling of drug trafficking."
The United States considers the ELN a terrorist organization.
As for migration
, the future of an agreement that allows the US to deport Venezuelan migrants to Colombia is unclear.
Petro has not commented on the agreement, and in the electoral campaign he focused on the possibility of reestablishing direct relations with the Venezuelan regime.
"We have to wait for him to comply."
Division among Colombians in the US after the victory of Gustavo Petro
June 21, 202200:50
In his own words
: Those differences “will likely end the two-decade bipartisan consensus on support for Colombia in the United States Congress,” O'Neil told Axios Latino.
Yes, but
: "The Biden Administration will find fertile ground for collaboration on environmental and human rights issues," O'Neil opines. Mitigating the effects of the climate emergency is a cornerstone of Petro's promises.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken
said in a statement on Sunday that the US looks forward to "working with Petro to further strengthen the relationship and lead the nations towards a better future."
Big Picture
: One of the biggest challenges for Petro will be living up to the expectations of voters who have shunned traditional parties over worsening inequalities and persistent violence.
Petro and Francia Márquez, who will become the first Afro-Colombian vice president, have vowed to appoint a cabinet with gender equality and focus on helping "the nobodies": the impoverished, peasants and Afro-descendants who they say have long been ignored. weather.
But legislative support will be key, and his progressive coalition of the Historic Compact currently has only 40 of the nearly 300 seats in the Senate and House of Representatives.
The Petro government will struggle "without a majority in Congress and facing global shocks from inflation and interest rate hikes," O'Neil said.
2. Housing rates that are through the roof
Financial education programs
and the hiring of more diverse staff at banks have helped Latinos in cities like El Paso, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, have much higher homeownership rates than most places around the world. despite systemic barriers, experts say.
Cities with the Highest Rates of Nonwhite Homeownership Graphic by Kavya Beheraj/Axios / US Census Data
Why It Matters
: Hispanics, Blacks, Asians and Native Americans are more often turned down for mortgages, and have had discriminatory access to financing for decades.
By the numbers
: Nationwide, 49% of Latinos owned a home in the first quarter of 2022, compared to 74% of non-Hispanic whites, according to the Census Bureau.
But in El Paso, Texas, the homeownership rate for Latinos is nearly 60%.
El Paso ranks as the top large city for Latino homeownership, with more than 350,000 Hispanic homeowners in 2019, according to Axios analysis of five-year estimates from the 2019 American Community Survey. Census Bureau and a study by Constructioncoverage.com.
Albuquerque, New Mexico ranked second with a homeownership rate of over 58%.
Fort Worth, Texas, also had a rate close to 58%, followed by San Antonio, Texas, with close to 54%.
In his own words
: “Diversity, inclusion and equity are woven into our DNA here,” Max Villaronga, president of Teachers Federal Credit Union in the El Paso area, told Axios.
Villaronga said TFCU, one of El Paso's largest mortgage lenders, has long worked to diversify its staff in order to help prospective homebuyers comfortably navigate the process.
"We have to make sure we have a level of representation. Most of our team members here are bilingual, they handle English and Spanish," he said.
Michelle Meléndez, director of the Albuquerque Office of Equity and Inclusion, told Axios that the city's investments in low-income housing have helped Latinos, who are then able to attend financial education classes and purchase a home. .
3. Recruitment in video games
Mexican cartels are using
violent video games to recruit unsuspecting children and teenagers.
How it works
: Cartel members use generic nicknames to contact minors through online mobile gaming messaging services like
Free Fire
and
Call of Duty
.
Since they are mobile games, it is more difficult for parents to monitor their use, according to the authorities.
Narcos recruit children in video games: they offered to enter one as a hawk and promote him to a hit man
May 18, 202202:42
Drug traffickers ask young people to exchange phone numbers in order to coordinate game schedules and send messages more frequently, a 14-year-old boy who escaped a recruitment attempt in October told Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
Already trusted, drug traffickers offer children up to 800 dollars a month to travel to the border area of ​​Mexico with the United States and act as lookouts (nicknamed
halcones
) to check for police patrols or enemy cartel vehicles, according to Telemundo investigation.
Authorities in Oaxaca
, where one victim lives, say there have been more than 30 reports of cartel recruitment attempts through video games in the past year.
Cybersecurity police say the actual number in Oaxaca and other parts of Mexico could be much higher because children are likely to be afraid to speak out.
In their own words
: Garena, the company behind
Free Fire
, said the situation was “deplorable” and promised to take strict measures to better monitor dangerous activity.
The Mexican government urges parents to use parental controls and create email addresses that their children can use strictly for video games to avoid exposing private data and being contacted by unwanted people.
4. Equity... in a century
A recent
study
concluded
that even if the rate at which Hispanics are becoming doctors were to double, it would take 92 years for the number of Latino doctors to approach the proportion of the US Hispanic population.
Why it matters
: The shortage of black and Hispanic doctors "could worsen already dire racial and ethnic disparities" in health issues such as maternal mortality and obesity rates, the study authors write.
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
It would take 66 years to remedy black physician deficits, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study used population and medical school enrollment data from 2015, without taking into account that immigration and demographics could result in even larger black and Hispanic populations in years to come.
Current situation
: Latinos, who represent almost 19% of the population in the United States, were 7.8% of medical residents of all specialties between 2020 and 2021, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
But only 6.7% of medical students were Latino.
Big picture
: Better recruitment systems for minority students in medical schools and an expansion of the programs that typically attract them could help alleviate the shortage of doctors needed to cover a larger portion of the population, which is becoming more diverse.
Studies show there could be an overall shortage of up to 124,000 physicians in the United States by 2034.
In their own words
: “A sustained, multifaceted approach must be implemented that addresses both the size of the underrepresented medical school applicant pool and the number of underrepresented medical and graduate students,” write Héctor Mora, Adetokunbo Obayemi, Kevin Holcomb and Maurice Hinson, the authors of the JAMA study.
5. Summary of key news in Latin America and the Caribbean
1. Groups of indigenous demonstrators arrived in the Ecuadorian capital
this Monday after marching for more than a week in protest against the policies of President Guillermo Lasso, which they say do not serve to mitigate the effects of inflation.
The protesters, who have blocked highways, are demanding support for farm workers and a halt to mining developments they see as dangerous to their land.
Lasso declared a state of emergency in three provinces in an attempt to quell the protests, called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.
Protesters carry out blockades and strikes on the outskirts of Quito on June 20, 2022Cristina Vega Rhor/AFP / via Getty Images
2. The ex-military man accused of being the intellectual author of the murder of the Honduran activist
Berta Cáceres was sentenced this Monday to 22 years in prison.
Cáceres, an award-winning environmental defender who was part of the Lenca indigenous group, was shot dead in 2016 after organizing protests against the construction of a dam.
The man sentenced on Monday, Roberto David Castillo, worked for DESA, the company that wanted to build that dam.
Cáceres' family said the sentence is insufficient and that a stronger message against violence was needed to Honduran indigenous populations and environmental activists.
6. These kids teach how to pose.
Three children from a small town in Bolivia
are helping tourists in the largest salt desert in the world to take perfect photos for the social network Instagram.
Child photographers cause a sensation with their great photos in the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia
June 15, 202202:09
Details
: Kevin Mamahi, 14, along with Piter Condori and Ismael Chambi, both 11, practice their mobile photography skills and earn some money on weekends at the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.
They bring props with which to pose to the tourist site and give tips to visitors on how to get their best angle.
All the money they earn — about $12 a day — they save so they can stay in school and help their families pay for home repairs or care.
They hope at some point to be able to buy their own professional cameras.
Thank you for reading!
We will be back on Thursday.
Do you want to see any of the previous editions?
A little-known story: Latinos in the fall of Richard Nixon
Learn about a new initiative for LGBTQ+ Latinos backed by Ricky Martin and Lin-Manuel Miranda
Google announces a millionaire investment for Latin America to digitize
Democratic congressmen ask Biden to protect journalists in Mexico
A heat that melts (and kills): this is how these cities fight to avoid dangerous sunstroke
