Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Recently, New York’s Diario La Prensa estimated that the Puerto Rico government lost nearly $245 million due to corruption cases during the administration of former Gov. Pedro Rossello [a statehood advocate].

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - In a whirlwind fund-raising swing in Puerto Rico, a U.S. presidential hopeful said Monday that if elected he would try to resolve the issue of the island's relationship to the United States as quickly as possible.

Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, told reporters that Puerto Ricans must decide what status they want via a referendum.

"The decision of the future of Puerto Rico should be made directly by Puerto Ricans," he said at the campaign headquarters of former Gov. Pedro Rossello, who is running again in the 2004 gubernatorial election as a member of the opposition [pro-statehood] New Progressive Party.

Graham said he supports Rossello's view, which is to hold a federally-mandated referendum on Puerto Rico's future, meaning the [U.S.] government would be legally bound by the results.

A clerk innocently used a word to describe a section of books that made [Sandra] Cisneros's skin crawl. "She used the word Hispanic," Cisneros said, her voice dripping with indignation. "I wanted to ask her, 'Why are you using that word?'

"People who use that word don't know why they're using it," said Cisneros, a Mexican American poet and novelist. "To me, it's like a slave name. I'm a Latina." ...

Another Mexican American writer, Luis J. Rodriguez, only reluctantly accepted an award from a Hispanic organization "because I'm not Hispanic," he said.

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

[A Canadian] won a decision in Federal Court last year that told the Commons its debates must be broadcast in both official languages. The debates, carried on the Canadian Parliamentary Access Channel (CPAC) and some local cable channels are not always bilingual. Some broadcasts use only the floor feed from the House, without translation.

However, the board of internal economy, which manages the administrative operations of the Commons, decided to appeal the court ruling. The case is to be heard in Halifax in September.

"What is at stake here is the right of Canadians ... to receive service in both official languages," Quigley said Tuesday at a news conference.

[T]he English which echoes through the glass and concrete halls of the EU is not quite the same as is heard in Buckingham Palace.

"English always gets butchered," said one of the EU's 700 interpreters. "International English is a kind of pidgin English."

Interpreters, a tight-knit crowd, are reluctant to go on the record about their shortcomings, but one can glean plenty of examples simply by putting on a pair of earphones.

Take, for instance, the French speaker whose "head counts" became "hit counts." Or the Dutch representative who told a colleague he didn't "want to mow the lawn before your feet." He meant to say he didn't want to "cut the rug out from under you."

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Mastery of the English language and of an academic curriculum that could help Latino students compete in California’s tough labor market is discouraged in the state’s public schools and colleges in favor of the separatist ideology of Chicano Studies and a bilingual education in which Mexican-American children become competent in neither English nor Spanish.

[T]he consent decree requires the Brentwood school district to appoint a Spanish Language Assistance Coordinator to ensure that Spanish-speaking citizens receive full and complete information in Spanish about all stages of the electoral process; investigate and remove poll workers who have engaged in hostile treatment of Spanish-speaking and/or Hispanic voters; and provide sufficient numbers of poll officials who are bilingual in Spanish and English to assist voters.

No doubt Clinton has been briefed on the federal lawsuit by the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) and NAACP. The dismissed lawsuits challenging the recall were in state court. It's possible a federal court could still intervene. But it must soon: This costly election is on the fast track. If the feds move the recall special election to coincide with the March presidential primary, then, it will turn into Bush-bashing by the Democrats, too long a campaign for Arnold, and long enough for the recall movement to collapse.

Friday, August 15, 2003

When Aileen Gallegos hosts a seminar on 401(k) investing, she does something that not many other brokers do. She conducts the session in Spanish, which is a selling point for the Hispanic-American clients she targets.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

Latinos are an important swing voting group, but not yet the overwhelming, electorate-transforming tide that wishful-thinking Democratic pols and reporters seem to think they are.

Although the White House and the Democratic Party have approached Hispanics as if they were an ethnic group with common experiences that predictably inform voting behavior, the poll suggests the extent to which Hispanics are less than monolithic in their background, culture and political beliefs.

Most of these [later studies] find enough differences among the three national origin groups surveyed in the LNPS to argue strongly for analyzing them separately.

[H]er chief concerns with the Legislature's amendments are that they open the door to evading the law. She described the problems as an exemption allowing some districts to maintain "two-way" bilingual education classes taught half the day in Spanish and the other half in English, and another exemption allowing some kindergarten students to be taught part of the time in Spanish.

The total cost of the election for Santa Barbara County is estimated at $800,000, the amount the elections division is requesting from the County General Fund Contingency. The county Board of Supervisors will vote on the appropriation today.

The last major special election held in Santa Barbara County was in 1998 for the 22nd congressional district after the death of Rep. Walter Capps, D-Santa Barbara. That election cost approximately $500,000 - but was not county-wide and did not have the added financial burden of providing bilingual ballots and poll workers, which will be required in the recall.

Monday, August 11, 2003

During one of the few instances Don Nazario spoke, regarding the use of cocoa leaves in offerings to the spirits, the English translator confused the word "apu" [spirit(s)] with the Spanish word "sapo," which means toad. So the word toad kept coming up at crucial moments of the discussion instead of the word spirit. As an observer, I wondered what the students were able to make out of this belief system based on reverence for, and communication with, toads.

Friday, August 08, 2003

Have you considered the flashing, English-only "Variable message signs" that appear above our major highways?

When an 18-wheeler towing a trailer of gasoline comes up a flashing sign that says "traffic stopped ahead," I sincerely hope the driver is not thumbing through a dictionary trying to figure out what that sign means.

The Clinton Administration's solution to this problem -- all "variable message signs" should flash in the languages spoken in the region -- would not necessarily solve the non-English-speaking trucker problem.

The truck driver in question might not be able to read in any of the languages used on the sign. Even if he was literate in one of the languages used, he would still have to stop in front of the sign in order to wait for the message
to appear in his language of choice. A sudden stop on a highway can cause a deadly accident.

Reminds me of the tale a white Catholic priest told me. He was giving a sermon [in Spanish], where he was telling people to quit complaining. "If you don't like the choir, join the choir. If you don't like the priest, join the priesthood." etc. etc.

Ends up the Spanish word he was using (I have no earthly idea what it was) sure as heck meant "join" in Mexico. In Guatemala, where a full third of his congregation was from, it meant "F---"! OOPS!

Friday, August 01, 2003