Latino USA Episode 29

Date range: August 22, 1993 - August 28, 1993

Las Noticias

Mexican opposition legislators from the Democratic Revolutionary Party traveled to Washington to urge U.S. members of Congress to reject NAFTA, arguing that the treaty would harm ordinary citizens on both sides of the border, regardless of President Salinas's support for it. Six Democratic senators subsequently wrote to Clinton, urging renegotiation. In California, Senator Barbara Boxer's proposal to use the National Guard to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border drew sharp criticism from Hispanic officials, as did Senator Dianne Feinstein's border-crossing fee idea, with the mayor of El Paso warning it would push more people to cross illegally and damage the economies of both countries. A Stanford University study found that Latino/as who maintained traditional diets high in rice, corn, and beans had lower rates of cardiovascular disease, while those who adopted more Americanized diets high in red meat and fat faced greater health risks. The 1993 Midwest floods continued to ripple through the agricultural economy, with thousands of migrant farmworkers returning early to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas with no wages saved and little prospect of emergency unemployment assistance, given that many had traveled north without confirmed jobs.

Remembering Santos Rodriguez

Twenty years after the 1973 killing of 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez by Dallas police officer Darrell Cain, the Latino community in Dallas held a day of commemoration. Rodriguez and his brother had been pulled from their beds and accused of robbing a vending machine. The officer fired a gun at Rodriguez's head while attempting to force a confession. Dallas City Council member Domingo Garcia, who grew up three blocks from the Rodriguez family, described the pre-1973 relationship between the Latino community and the Dallas police as one of systematic abuse and invisibility. Dallas Latino Police Officers Association president Gil Cerda said covert discrimination within the department persisted even two decades later. Maria Hinojosa then spoke with attorney Juan Milanes of Washington D.C.'s Latino Civil Rights Task Force and professor Gloria Romero of the Los Angeles Police Commission about the broader national pattern. Romero traced the roots of police-Latino/a tensions to structural inequity and the criminalization of Latino/a identity, citing everything from the Zoot Suit Riots to the Frito Bandito. Milanes described how Washington D.C. officers in heavily Latino precincts would routinely arrest immigrants on minor charges to inflate their arrest records and compete for a monthly department award.

Helena Gonzalez: A Judo Comeback

Correspondent Rosalind Soliz profiled Helena Gonzalez, a 33-year-old San Antonio judoka who took a silver medal at the U.S. Olympic Festival. A former Junior National Champion who had stepped away from competition to raise two sons, Gonzalez returned to the mat training four days a week despite knee problems. Her coaches noted that most competitive judo athletes retire around age 30, making her performance all the more remarkable. She and her husband also ran a judo program for children in San Antonio housing projects, with Gonzalez saying the sport taught discipline and respect that extended well beyond the mat.

The Musical Legacy of Cachao

Correspondent Emilio San Pedro profiled bassist Israel Lopez, known as Cachao, one of the largely unrecognized architects of modern Latin music. In 1937, Cachao and his brother Orestes transformed the traditional Cuban danzón into a new form they called the mambo. In the late 1950s, Cachao organized late-night jam sessions in Havana called descargas, freewheeling improvisational recordings made after musicians finished their formal nightclub sets. Actor Andy Garcia, who directed a documentary on Cachao's life titled "Como Su Ritmo No Hay Dos," described the bassist as overlooked by the general public despite being universally revered by musicians. Cachao had recently collaborated with Gloria Estefan on her Cuban music album "Mi Tierra" and was working on a new danzón recording, which he described as Cuba's equivalent of the mariachi tradition, a national heritage at risk of being forgotten.