📢
Welcome.
Axios Latino is the newsletter that summarizes the key news for Latino communities throughout the hemisphere every Tuesday and Thursday.
You can subscribe by clicking
here
.
1. The topic to highlight: FBI Files
Two members of the United States House of Representatives want the FBI and CIA to declassify all documents related to surveillance the agencies carried out against Latino civil rights leaders between the 1950s and 1970s.
Why it matters
: It is known that the FBI's COINTELPRO group and the CIA's Operation CHAOS sought to disrupt or disrupt the marching and rallying activities of black civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr. But it remains unknown until to what extent those intelligence and security agencies also targeted Latino activists.
Up Close
: U.S. Representatives Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) this week sent a letter to current CIA Director William J. Burns and current FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, asking them to reveal all documents related to surveillance of the American Latino civil rights movement.
"The historical record is unclear as to whether the FBI (or the CIA) conducted surveillance of First Amendment-protected activities of the Latino civil rights movement, which in itself would be very concerning," they wrote in the letter.
"It is also unclear whether the agencies went further with attempts to sabotage the movement, like what the FBI did with Martin Luther King Jr."
the politicians wrote in the letter.
Castro also asked Burns and Wray to consider making the documents public as part of a House Intelligence Committee hearing.
Burns and Wray promised to review the issue.
Historic photos of activists Dolores Huerta, Héctor Pérez García and Rodolfo Gonzales.Photos by Cathy Murphy/Getty Images and the Denver Post via Getty Images
Background
: The FBI's COINTELPRO, its counterintelligence program, was created in the 1950s with the supposed intention of stopping activities considered communist.
However, it was used to routinely monitor the activities of King, Malcolm X and others with informants and hidden recording devices.
The federal agency also reportedly looked for ways to disrupt peaceful protests planned by the civil rights movement.
Between the lines
: In recent years, historians and newspaper reporters in Texas or California have already uncovered some data about FBI surveillance of Latino leaders, by requesting that certain files be declassified, according to Brian Behnken, a history professor at the Iowa State University. This is how it was known, for example:
That the FBI carried out surveillance against Héctor Pérez García, of the Young Lords Party of Puerto Rican activism, and against the GI Forum group founded by Pérez García, which united Hispanic veterans of the Second World War who suffered discrimination.
That the FBI monitored peasant rights leader César Chávez for years.
That the US investigations bureau was also monitoring the activities of Rodolfo
Corky
Gonzales, Reies López Tijerina, José Angel Gutiérrez and Dolores Huerta, all part of the Chicano Movement.
2. Gabo's farewell novel
See you in August
, the novel that Gabriel García Márquez said it would be better to destroy than publish, has just gone on sale as a posthumous work.
Overview
: The Colombian Nobel Prize winner in literature was working on the draft of the novel before he died.
Although García Márquez even told his family that he did not consider it good enough to be published, after his death his children decided to send it to a publishing house considering that it was worth it for readers to have a little more Gabo.
The novel went on sale in Spanish on March 6, which would have been the author's 97th birthday.
This week its translation into English and a dozen other languages was also launched.
Up Close
: The plot follows Ana Magdalena Bach, who visits an (unnamed) Caribbean island every year to visit her late mother's resting place.
In his own words
: "My theory is that when he said it didn't work he had lost the ability to judge it. It is not as polished as his other novels, but it is not a disaster that cannot be understood either," Rodrigo García Barcha told the press, one of the author's children.
3
.
Concerns about in vitro fertilization
Some Latinas are on tenterhooks after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos must be considered unborn children.
News Momentum
: Several fertility clinics suspended treatments in Alabama after the ruling, even after a law, signed last week by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, that seeks to allow some doctors to avoid lawsuits as a result of the ruling.
About 250,000 Latinos live in Alabama, a 202% increase since 2000, according to an analysis of Census data by the Latino Policy and Politics Institute at UCLA.
What's happening
: Some Latinas who are looking to have children or who have used in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments to conceive say the Alabama ruling sets a worrying precedent.
"It is quite clear that there is too much ambiguity around embryos" and in vitro fertilization with failures like the one in Alabama, Karina Luna, who gave birth in January after IVF treatments, told Noticias Telemundo.
Andrea León, who lost several pregnancies before conceiving with IVF, says she is now worried about the possibility of having a second child, since she lives in Florida, where a bill on categorizing fetuses as "persons" is being discussed. to what happened in Alabama.
By the numbers
: Access to fertility treatments and infertility care in the United States is poorer for Latinas in the country than for non-Hispanic white women, according to an analysis.
About 2% of annual pregnancies in the U.S. result from IVF, according to the CDC, although there is no racial or ethnic demographic breakdown of the data.
In her own words
: "It's not just about having access to abortion, it's about access to contraception, prenatal care, having children if you want, fertility support through IVF if you need it, and postpartum care once you have them." children," Lupe M. Rodríguez, director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, told Telemundo.
"It's concerning that any part of this whole picture of reproductive care is being removed," she added.
4. Exclusively: Criticism for layoffs in the media
A coalition of Latino leaders in the United States, including renowned activist Dolores Huerta and former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, are demanding in a letter — to which Axios Latino had access — that the Los Angeles Times explain why there were so many Latinos and black people in the newspaper's recent layoffs.
Big picture
: The LA Times, like many other media outlets in the United States, has implemented staff cuts in recent months amid financial losses and lower revenue from advertising space purchases.
Among the 115 people laid off was almost the entire team of the De Los vertical, focused on the Latino communities of Los Angeles and launched just last year.
The Los Angeles Times headquarters offices in January 2024.Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
Up Close
: In the letter seen by Axios Latino, a group of Latino leaders write to the owner of the LA Times (Patrick Soon-Shiong) and tell him that the newspaper needs Hispanic journalists to adequately cover one of the most Latino cities in the US. USA
We are "deeply concerned by the recent decision to lay off 115 employees, a significant number of whom come from Black, Latino, Asian, and other underrepresented communities," the letter says.
"Our concerns are compounded by the apparent contradiction between these layoffs and the promises made by the LA Times in 2020 to improve diversity in its newsroom," they add.
The Other Perspective
: An LA Times spokesperson, Hillary Manning, told Axios Latino that the layoffs were incredibly difficult and were done after exhausting other viable options.
"The layoffs of union members in our newsroom were carried out in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement, which prioritizes seniority and states that the last people hired are the first to be fired, with very few exceptions," Manning said. .
5. Summary of key news in Latin America and the Caribbean
1. A Mexican NGO on missing persons
was awarded this Wednesday with the King of Spain Award for Human Rights, at a time when the Mexican Government has been accused of hindering the search for missing persons.
FUNDEJ is based in Jalisco, one of the states with the highest rates of disappearances and missing persons in the country.
2. A new Nicaraguan bill
would require telephone operators to provide geolocation data on users, which activists fear will be misused as part of the regime's repressive actions against dissidents.
The U.N. Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua said in a report in February that the Central American country's authorities regularly commit "serious human rights violations to ensure full government control over any civic space."
3.
Bad Bunny
is suing
a person who recorded and uploaded videos of his concert in Salt Lake City, Utah, on February 21, alleging copyright infringement.
The lawsuit could cause big changes in how many concertgoers behave, sometimes recording entire concerts or livestreaming them on social media.
Thanks for reading us!
We return on Tuesday.
And thanks to Patricia Guadalupe, Eulimar Núñez, and Alison Snyder for editing and helping review.
If you want to share your experiences with us or send us suggestions and comments, send an email to
axioslatino@axios.com
.
Do you want to read any of the previous editions?
How the 'ventanitas' give a glimpse into the political influence of Latinos in Florida
On alert for hate crimes: Latino activists and politicians warn that electoral rhetoric can worsen violence
Defenders see risks for the right to abortion in Latin America after the “setback” suffered in the United States
“It's been pretty popular”: Why Latino Protestants are embracing ideas of white Christian nationalism