Latino USA Episode 21

Date range: September 19, 1993 - September 25, 1993

Las Noticias

Labor Secretary Robert Reich led the latest Clinton administration push for NAFTA, but a coalition of Latino/a organizations and elected officials made their support conditional. California Congressman Esteban Torres, joined by the National Council of La Raza and others, demanded provisions for dislocated workers, a regional development bank, and fair access for minority-owned businesses before endorsing the agreement. Torres warned that without enthusiastic Latino/a support, NAFTA had little chance of passing Congress. The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and LULAC supported NAFTA as written. New York City named Ramon Cortines, a Mexican-American educator from Texas who had served as superintendent in San Francisco and Pasadena, as the city's new schools chancellor. He took on the role amid an asbestos crisis and political controversy that had ousted his predecessor. Growing anti-immigrant sentiment was also producing a surge in hate crimes, with Roberto Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego documenting roving gangs of white men beating migrant workers throughout the county. Mexico reversed course and granted U.S. visas to eight Cuban refugees it had previously deported, following a week of protests in Miami in which Cuban exiles burned Mexican flags. Mexican-American community leaders in Miami criticized the flag-burning as irresponsible and said repairing relations between the two groups would take time.

The March on Washington: 30 Years Later

75,000 people gathered in Washington on the 30th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. Correspondent Patricia Guadalupe reported that while the crowd was smaller than the original, the calls for jobs, justice, and an end to prejudice were unchanged. A Joint Center for Political Studies report found that Hispanic poverty had actually increased by 10% since 1963, with 60% unemployment in some urban areas. Marchers included Latino/as demanding attention to their community's needs, among them a young woman from Rhode Island who used the march to speak out about Puerto Rico's political status ahead of the November plebiscite. Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros expressed optimism about the Clinton administration's commitment to change. Several Latino/as noted with disappointment that President Clinton did not attend and that Latino/a turnout at the march was relatively small.

Latinos in the U.S. Workforce

A major sociological and economic study, Latino/as in a Changing U.S. Economy, found that while Latino/a employment numbers had doubled every decade since the 1950s, the quality and compensation of those jobs had steadily declined. Economist Raul Hinojosa explained that the income gap between Latino/as and other workers, which had been narrowing through the postwar era, reversed sharply after the mid-1970s as the U.S. economy shifted from manufacturing to services. Researchers found that immigration was not a significant cause of declining Latino wages, since immigrant and native-born Latino/as generally competed for different types of work. Political scientist Maria Torres of DePaul University noted that all Latino/a subgroups, across regions and industries, were experiencing economic impoverishment, with Latino/as ranking at the bottom of all workers when compared to African Americans and Anglos.

Commentary: An Immigrant Speaks

Commentator John Guardo, who came to the United States from Colombia as a child to reunite with his mother, delivered a personal account of the immigrant experience. He described arriving with hope, quickly facing violence and language barriers, and eventually joining a gang as the only way to gain safety and acceptance. Now approaching 10 years in the country, he called for expanded English as a Second Language programs and greater structural support for newly arrived immigrants, arguing that the U.S. had been built on immigration and that welcoming newcomers with prejudice and racism contradicted its own history.

Ana Castillo and So Far From God

Maria Hinojosa spoke with Chicana novelist and poet Ana Castillo about her latest book, So Far From God, set in New Mexico and centered on a woman named Sofia and her four daughters. Castillo pushed back against the label of magical realism, saying the extraordinary events in the novel were rooted in faith, whether Catholic, Pueblo Indian, or folk tradition, and that the landscape and spiritual life of New Mexico made extraordinary occurrences feel entirely real. Having written and published for nearly 20 years before achieving wide recognition, Castillo told young Latina writers to read voraciously, write constantly, and trust their voices, even when facing rejection and the weight of systemic barriers rooted in racism, sexism, and class.