Victoria Vergara possesses a third-grade education and the confident voice of a natural leader.
She makes beds and cleans bathrooms for a living but tells her daughters that the U.S.A. is a country "where you can fly if you want to." After listening to her tell her story in her humble home in West Adams, I was inclined to agree. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Several minority internship programs targeting African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans are now welcoming applications for 2009. The internships will take place in various cities across the country during the spring, summer, fall, and winter seasons.
The programs are being administered by a combination of major corporations, non-profit organizations, and government agencies. Many of the opportunities offer compensation for students, and some will even pay for a student's travel needs. Applicable majors include business, computer science, engineering, psychology, communications, marketing, advertising, and many more. READ FULL STORYRead more…
The selection, and seeming consideration, of nothing but white males for three high-profile political positions has prompted substantial backlash from Colorado's Latino political and business leaders who feel left out and ignored at a time of nearly unprecedented state and local political change.
"This will have legs down the road, I swear to God it will," said former Democratic state Sen. Paul Sandoval. READ FULL STORYRead more…
A gay farmworker in Salinas was tired of fellow employees teasing him. A UC Santa Cruz student needed help paying his bills because relatives opposed his sexual orientation and would not help him out.
Abel Murillo, director of the Diversity Center's new Latino Outreach Program, talked to the Salinas man's boss to quell the intimidation and is working to solve the student's financial problems. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Amalia Dominguez was 18 and desperate and knew exactly what to ask for at the small, family-run pharmacy in the heart of Washington Heights, the thriving Dominican enclave in northern Manhattan. "I need to bring down my period," she recalled saying in Spanish, using a euphemism that the pharmacist understood instantly.
It was 12 years ago, but the memory remains vivid: She was handed a packet of pills. They were small and white, $30 for 12. Dominguez, two or three months pregnant, went to a friend's apartment and swallowed the pills one by one, washing them down with malta, a molasseslike extract sold in nearly every bodega in the neighborhood. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Bill Richardson's withdrawal from his commerce secretary nomination Sunday didn't just leave a major gap in the new administration, but it also sorely disappointed Latinos who view the New Mexico governor as their most prominent representative.
"We are hugely disappointed. It's a stunned community out there," said Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. READ FULL STORYRead more…
After the withdrawal of Bill Richardson's name as an Obama administration Cabinet nominee, Hispanic leaders say they expect the president-elect to name another Latino to head the Commerce Department.
An Obama transition team source said a veteran California congressman, Xavier Becerra, has emerged as the leading congressional candidate to replace Richardson, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico, as President-elect Barack Obama's choice for a job that will include overseeing the 2010 U.S. Census. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Sonia Espinoza crowded among a group of parents yesterday, darted across a room and raced to retrieve her shoe to get a gift for her son from the three wise men.
"It reminded me of when I was little," Espinoza said of a game she played as a girl in Puerto Rico when her family celebrated the day the trio is said to have visited the baby Jesus with gifts. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Two mortgage brokerage companies must compensate 445 black and Hispanic borrowers who were systematically charged higher fees than white clients.
HCI Mortgage and Consumer One Mortgage must pay $665,000 in restitution, according to a settlement between the companies and the state Attorney General.
The state sued the mortgage firms after an investigation of GreenPoint Mortgage Funding, a unit of Capital One Financial, uncovered the discriminatory practices. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Singers Marc Anthony and Paulina Rubio are among entertainers slated to perform at the upcoming Latino Inaugural Gala in Washington, organizers said.
Also confirmed to participate in the Jan. 18 festivities at Union Station are Rosario Dawson, Tony Plana, War, Cucu Diamantes & Yerba Buena, Elida Reyna and Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano. READ FULL STORYRead more…
An Arkansas rice mill has agreed to pay $350,000 after the federal government found the company discriminated against hundreds of women and non-Hispanic job applicants.
The U.S. Labor Department announced that Producers Rice Mill Inc., based in Stuttgart, discriminated against 246 females and 363 non-Hispanics who were seeking work as machine operators or laborers with the farmer-owned cooperative. The Labor Department alleged the cooperative engaged in hiring discrimination over 2004 and 2005. The 609 people will be paid back pay and interest. READ FULL STORYRead more…
California Rep. Joe Baca has long pushed legislation he said would "open the doors to the American Dream" for first-time home buyers in his largely Hispanic district. For many of them, those doors have slammed shut, quickly and painfully.
Mortgage lenders flooded Mr. Baca's San Bernardino, Calif., district with loans that often didn't require down payments, solid credit ratings or documentation of employment. Now, many of the Hispanics who became homeowners find themselves mired in the national housing mess. Nearly 9,200 families in his district have lost their homes to foreclosure. READ FULL STORYRead more…
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is withdrawing his nomination to be commerce secretary, citing the distraction of a federal investigation into ties to a company that has done business with his state.
Two Democratic officials told CNN the investigation involves a California company that won municipal bond business in New Mexico after contributing money to various Richardson causes.
In a statement Sunday, Richardson said he asked Obama "not to move forward" with his nomination now. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Being an illegal immigrant doesn’t make someone a criminal—that’s a distinction Elizabeth Young hopes to hammer home to Arkansas residents.
“It’s not a crime to be here undocumented,” Young says. “It’s a civil issue.”
As director of the University of Arkansas’ new immigration law clinic, she’ll lead students helping clients through the dense web of regulations governing those coming to the United States. The new clinic, which opens in early January, comes after Arkansas became home to one of the nation’s fastest growing Hispanic populations. READ FULL STORYRead more…
In Illinois, Latina/Hispanic women are twice as likely as any other race or ethnicity to have a baby born with a birth defect involving the spine.
That's why they will be the focus of National Folic Acid Awareness Week, which will be observed next Monday through Jan. 11
"We need to educate all women, especially Latinas, that folic acid can help prevent birth defects of the brain and spine, said Adriane Griffen, chair of the national Council on Folic Acid. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Crystal Perez never tried to hide her Mexican heritage.
Perez, a University of Wisconsin-Parkside senior studying communications, speaks Spanish fluently especially at home, where she still celebrates her family’s cultural traditions, such as Las Posadas and Tres Reyes, or the Three Kings during the Christmas season.
But in school, at work, and at just about every social setting outside her home Perez was just “Crystal” to her friends, teachers, acquaintances and others. She spoke English with no accent, didn’t really use her Spanish around them, and in fact, many of her classmates, as a result, never thought of her as Mexican American. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Growing up along the Texas border, Edward Caballero remembers fearing the green-uniformed agents of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Now, the 32-year old Caballero — a former schoolteacher in the Rio Grande Valley — is one of thousands of new agents who have swelled the force's ranks to more than 18,000, a product of an historic recruitment blitz.
And unlike the Border Patrol of his youth, which was overwhelmingly Anglo, the expanded border agency is now 54 percent minority. Hispanics like Caballero comprise 52 percent of the agents. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Nancy C. Andrade is President and General Counsel of Mexifeast Foods, Inc. Ms. Andrade is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago with a B.A. in Political Science and law degree from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Ms. Andrade began her career in the food industry while practicing law at a large Chicago law firm. Ms. Andrade was one of only four Latino attorneys at that time and happened to be the only attorney of Mexican ancestry. Being the resident Mexican “expert”, colleagues and staff would often ask her where one could get authentic Mexican tamales. It so happened that Ms. Andrade’s parents operated a part-time catering outfit at the time and was able to refer the tamale inquiries to her parents, who gladly filled tamale orders.
The popularity of her parents tamales grew so much at the firm, that she decided to establish an ordering system similar to “Market Day” for the Christmas Holidays. Having sold 200 dozen tamales in a 6 week period and 300 dozen tamales the following Christmas season, she knew she was on to something and THAT sparked the creation of Mexifeast Foods, Inc.
Mexifeast is a family owned business which sells authentic Mexican tamales to retail outlets in the Midwest. Accounts include Whole Foods Market, Wal-Mart stores in the greater Chicago area, and Fox & Obel Food Market. Mexifeast has been in business for 4 years and sales have systematically increased each year.
learn more about Mexifeast by visiting >> MEXIFEAST WEBSITERead more…
With budget cuts straining California's public colleges and universities, some are worried about the effects on Latinos, who are particularly difficult to recruit to higher education in the best of times.
The California State University system, where more than one-quarter of students are Latino, plans to cut enrollment by 10,000 next year. Although the university still plans to guarantee entry to the vast majority of qualified California residents, the plan could discourage students from applying.
Several organizations have worked for years to increase college-attendance rates among the state's 14.3 million Latinos, and some are concerned the new challenges could roll back gains. More than 43 percent of California's 18- to 24-year-old population is Latino, compared with 27 percent of the state's public college and university enrollment. READ FULL STORYRead more…
With his choice of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as commerce secretary, President-elect Barack Obama broke with tradition, putting a longtime public servant in a position that has recently been held by private-sector executives.
Richardson, who was one of Obama's rivals for the Democratic nomination, has spent almost his entire career in prominent government roles -- as a governor, congressman, United Nations ambassador and energy secretary. Obama cited the range of Richardson's experience in naming him to his economic team Wednesday, saying he would be a domestic strategist and "a leading economic diplomat." READ FULL STORYRead more…
