RECENT ARTICLES

The Hispanic Paradox: U.S. Hispanics Live Longer, Despite Socio-Economic Hurdles

Photo Essay of Conservation Corridor threatened by the Border Wall

Obama nominates Sotomayor to Supreme Court

Immigrants are Learning English at a Faster Rate

Patrons of Mexican- American Music

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The Hispanic Paradox: U.S. Hispanics Live Longer, Despite Socio-Economic Hurdles

When it comes to Hispanics and health care, the horror stories are well known. Less so is the mysterious phenomenon known as the “Hispanic Paradox.”

Again and again, we hear that the Hispanic population is disproportionately beset by the bugbears of poverty, obesity, Type 2 diabetes and lack of access to quality health coverage and insurance.

These unfortunate facts are indisputable. But what many people don’t realize is that, when it comes to the bottom line — that is, mortality — the news for Hispanics is good. Very good.

In the United States, Hispanics, despite their socio-economic hurdles, on average live longer than blacks by seven years, and whites by five years, says Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, a professor of medicine at UCLA.

“There’s something about being Latino that is good for their health,” Hayes-Bautista told HispanicBusiness.com, adding wryly: “Just think if we had access to health care.”

Widely known as the “Hispanic Paradox,” the phenomenon was discovered and coined by researchers decades ago.

Now, Hayes-Bautista is on the front lines trying to figure out why this is so.

“There’s something going on here,” he said. “Is it diet, is it family, is it spiritual, is it the Latino mind-body balance? I don’t know.”

In 2007, the Public Policy Institute of California found that the average lifespan of a Hispanic man in that state is 77.5 years, compared to 75.5 among white males and 68.6 among black males. The lifespan of Hispanic men was topped only by Asian men, whose average lifespan came in at 80.4.

In 2008, the National Center for Health Statistics released a study showing that the overall mortality rate for Hispanics in 2006 was 550 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 778 for whites, and 1,001 for blacks.

Hayes-Bautista said that Hispanics in the United States are 35 percent less likely than whites to die of heart disease, and 40 percent less likely to develop cancer.

Immigration plays a factor, he said, albeit a small one.

Immigrants, he said, are far less likely than U.S. born Hispanics to smoke, drink, do drugs and contract sexually transmitted diseases. Similarly, he said, U.S.-born Hispanics with high levels of education also tend to avoid these high-risk behaviors and their consequences.

This might lead one to ask whether this means that Mexicans live healthier than Americans. Not so, according to the CIA World Factbook of 2008.

On that index, the life expectancy of Americans in 2008 reached 78 (a national record). For Mexicans, it was about 76.

However, Hayes-Bautista said the lifestyle in rural Mexico is much healthier than that of urban Mexico. What’s more, he says, the bulk of Hispanic immigrants in America hail from the rural pockets of Mexico.

Elena Rios, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association, said overall, the immigrant Hispanics are younger, and abide by healthier habits, than U.S. born Hispanics.

“With the immigrants, the first generation has healthier habits: less driving, less smoking, less fast foods, more walking,” she told HispanicBusiness.com. “As the second-generation Hispanic families happen, they pick up the Western — the American — lifestyle.”

As a result, Rios said she wants any healthcare reform package to include an educational component urging Hispanics to get back to their basics, such as traditional foods.

“It is important to have more prevention and education when they are younger, before they get into bad habits,” she said.

To read the full article click here.

Author: Rob Kuznia

Source: HispanicBusiness.com

Photo Essay of Conservation Corridor threatened by the Border Wall

Launch the photo essay featuring the Chihuahuan Desert!

In the heart of North America’s largest desert lies a biological oasis—a little-known expanse of basin and range straddling both sides of the boundary between the United States and Mexico. The Chihuahuan Desert Borderlands, as it is called, is a sparsely populated 30- million-acre wilderness where barren lunarscapes, arid scrublands and cactus forests coexist with majestic canyons, lush grasslands and pine-oak woodlands.

To the abundant populations of year-round and migrating wildlife, the borderlands is a land without borders, a single ecosystem that rivals Greater Yellowstone in its biodiversity. Hundreds of species use the borderlands as a migratory megacorridor, including monarch butterflies, black bear and more than 10 species of hummingbirds. Populations of elk, pronghorn and desert bighorn sheep flourish as well.

Hovering several thousand feet above are sky islands—desert mountains whose peaks snag clouds and drain their moisture. These mountains nourish the region’s relict forests of oak and pine trees and isolated stands of Douglas fir and quaking aspen. This rich habitat is one reason why more than 400 bird species have been seen in the 800,000-acre Big Bend National Park—more than in any other national park in the United States.

The borderlands are the linchpin of one of North America’s most vital wildlife corridors. And yet the region is also the focus of plans that would fashion a barrier along the border, although it is difficult to imagine a more effective deterrent than the canyon walls that rise as high as 2,000 feet above the river.

While most of the discussion about fences has centered on urban areas, concern is being voiced about the potential impact barriers in more remote areas would have on wildlife. “The specter of any kind of barrier that would preclude the movements of native and migratory wildlife back and forth between the United States and Mexico causes us a great deal of consternation,” says Carter Smith, director of the Conservancy’s Texas chapter. Other, more conservation-friendly tactics should be considered in the Chihuahuan Borderlands, he says, such as vehicle barriers, surveillance technologies, and stepped-up border and aerial patrols.

Whatever the outcome, the Conservancy and partners plan to press ahead. “The borderlands is one landscape, irrespective of political boundaries,” says Smith. “We are participating in an extensive binational conservation effort.” Private land owners, agricultural cooperatives, corporations, governments and conservation groups have banded together to place more than 2 million acres on both sides of the border under some kind of protection. And more land is being added every year. Through their efforts, the borderlands remains one of the continent’s wildest places.

to read whole article click here.

Aurhor:  Joe Nick Patoski

Source: nature.org

Obama nominates Sotomayor to Supreme Court

President Obama on Tuesday nominated federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday calls her nomination to the high court “the most humbling honor of my life.”

Sotomayor, 54, would be the first Hispanic and third female U.S. Supreme Court justice if confirmed.

Obama announced the nomination Tuesday morning in the East Room of the White House.

She “has worked at almost every level of our judicial system, providing her with a depth of experience and a breath of perspective that will be invaluable as a Supreme Court justice,” he added. 
Obama said Sotomayor ” would bring more experience on the bench and more varied experience on the bench than anyone currently serving on the United States Supreme Court had when they were appointed.” 

Sotomayor, a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was named a U.S. District Court judge by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and was elevated to her current seat by President Clinton.

Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, rose from humble beginnings at a housing project in the South Bronx and went on to attend Princeton University and Yale Law School.

Supporters say her appointment history, along with what they call her moderate-liberal views, would give her some bipartisan backing in the Senate.

A senior White House official said that Sotomayor was “nominated by George Bush — then Bill Clinton — [and has] more judicial experience than anyone sitting on the court had at the time they were nominated.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, issued a statement calling Sotomayor’s record “exemplary.”

“Judge Sotomayor has a long and distinguished career on the federal bench,” Leahy said. “I believe [she] understands that the courthouse doors must be as open to ordinary Americans as they are to government and big corporations.”

Obama’s nominee will replace retiring Justice David Souter, who announced this month he would step down when the court’s current session ends this summer.

There had been wide speculation that Obama would name a woman to the court, which has one female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Obama’s nomination will have to be confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate.  The nominee is not expected to have difficulty being confirmed in the Democratic-controlled Senate in time for the new court session in October.

Read full article.
  
Source:  CNN.com

Immigrants are Learning English at a Faster Rate

‘If you live in America, you need to speak English.’ According to a Los Angeles Times Poll (1998), that was how three out of four voters explained their support for Proposition 227, the ballot initiative that dismantled most bilingual education programs in California.

Non- English speakers are at a disadvantage; thus schools must not fail to teach English to children from minority language backgrounds. Students’ life chances will depend to a large extent on the level of English literacy skills they achieve.
 

As the linguist Einar Haugen (1972) once observed, ‘America’s profusion of tongues has made her a modern Babel, but a Babel in reverse.’ By their third generation in the United States, newcomers have typically adopted English as their usual language and abandoned their mother tongue.
There is no reason to think the historic pattern has changed. Although
the number of minority language speakers has grown dramatically in
recent years, so too has their rate of acculturation. Census figures confirm the paradox. While a language other than English is now spoken at home by
nearly one in five US residents, bilingualism is also on the rise. A century
ago, the proportion of non-English speakers was 4.5 times as large as it is
today, and in certain states the disparity was considerably larger.  As the US population becomes increasingly diverse, linguistic assimilation
seems to be progressing rapidly by historical standards.  The political problem is that the average American has trouble believing all this.  To see chart comparing non- English speakers in 1890 and 1990 click here.

An English-only movement based on these premises came to prominence
in the 1980s. Thus far it has succeeded in legislating English as the
official language of 25 states, although such declarations have been
primarily symbolic, with few legal effects thus far.

To counter the English-only mentality, advocates have coined the slogan English Plus. They argue that the United States remains an underdeveloped country where language skills are concerned. In a global economy, more multilingualism – not less – would clearly advance the national interest.
Some English-speaking parents have been receptive to the ‘bilingual is
beautiful’ pitch. Over the past decade, growing numbers have enrolled
their children in ‘dual immersion’ classrooms alongside minority children
learning English. Yet, despite excellent reports on this method of cultivating
fluency in two languages, probably no more than 20,000 English background
students are participating nationwide. Compare that with the324,000 Canadian Anglophones enrolled in French immersion programs, in a country with one-tenth the population of the USA (Statistics Canada, 2003).

Author: James Crawford

Source: Language Policy Website

Patrons of Mexican- American Music

The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center announced in March 2009 that the public can now access the Arhoolie Foundation’s Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings (http://frontera.library.ucla.edu) — the largest online digital archive of its kind.  The archive is financed in part by a $500,000 donation by Los Tigres del Norte Foundation.

Los Tigres del Norte bandleader Jorge Hernández said, “Los Tigres del Norte is very proud to have been a part of the preservation of so many historic recordings from our musical forebears.
 
“This collection will provide the next generation of Mexican and Mexican American music artists with previously unimaginable access to our rich cultural history, and in doing so, will help them expand the appreciation of Spanish-language music even further in the future.”
 
The archive includes more than 41,000 recordings and is a treasure trove of historical Spanish-language songs dating from the early 1900s to the 1950s.

Los Tigres Del Norte are the undisputed legends or “Los Jefe’s de Jefes” of Norteno music.  Billboard magazine declared the family of musicians as the world’s “most influential regional Mexican group… Los Tigres Del Norte are not just a popular musical act …. Instead, they’re widely viewed as the voice of the people.”  Los Tigres Del Norte have been singing border stories for more than [four] decades”. In fact, the year 2008 marked the 40th anniversary of Los Tigres Del Norte. In this time, Los Tigres have recorded more than 500 songs over the course of nearly 60 albums, have sold over 35 million albums around the world, received countless Platinum records and numerous awards—including multiple Grammy and Latin Grammy awards and the Latin Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Beyond the album and concert sales though, what truly makes the legendary Los Tigres Del Norte the most significant Regional Mexican group in the world, is their unquestioned role as the leading voice of the immigrant community. According to The Los Angeles Times, “Los Tigres is the most enduring binational band today because it hears the humble… Los Tigres [are] the most perceptive chroniclers of the Mexican American experience. In song, they reflect its most personal feelings, and [take] the side of these millions of immigrants who are voiceless on both sides of the border.