Latinos gaining influence in the pages of comic books

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American comic books have traditionally been dominated by white male characters that are wealthy and powerful and reflect the dreams of a once-mainstream audience of white boys. Women and minorities have been hugely underrepresented in comics or, if there were characters from a minority background, they would be presented in a racially stereotypical way, often with their race or ethnicity shaping their super power such as the Zorro-like swordsman El Aguila or the Chinese-American girl Jubilee who shoots fireworks from her hands. But times are changing as awareness grows that the high proportion of white men working in the comics industry is not reflective of the greater population and the potential readership market. The data crunching website FiveThirtyEight.com recently ran the numbers and found that while attendance at comic book conventions split fairly evenly between genders, only one in four comic book characters is female. Now, as the comics industry is trying to better reflect the market’s demographics, Latinos are slowly growing in influence.

Shakespeare gets border style in bilingual Romeo and Julieta performances in El Paso

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Courtesy KCOS El Paso

KCOS, El Paso’s PBS station, and Shakespeare on the Rocks, El Paso’s premier classical theater company, are partnering this winter to present Romeo and Julieta, a bilingual adaptation of Shakespeare’s famous play. Set in 19th century Mexico, in this version of Romeo and Julieta, the Montagues speak English, the Capulets speak Spanish, and together English is spoken.  The aim is to contextualize Shakespeare into a more local and familiar setting. Romeo and Julieta will be presented in four different venues throughout our border community between January 22nd and February 1st. Venues include UTEP, La Fe Cultural and Technology Center, the Philanthropy Theater and even a performance at UACJ in Juarez.  All performances are free and open to the public.

Popular Latin American foods show common characteristics, diverse accents

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Food is often called a universal language that brings people together. There is much diversity among Hispanic cultures, but we can find some familiar experiences in the foods that we eat, and how we eat them. Living on the U.S., Mexican border I see the similarities between many popular Mexican dishes and the Puerto Rican staples my mother would prepare. Here is a look at three standard Puerto Rican dishes and their counterparts found in traditional Mexican, Cuban, and Dominican cuisine. 1.

LGBT advocates push for broader nondiscrimination law

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By Wesley Juhl – SHFWire.com
WASHINGTON – A new report by the Center for American Progress prompted renewed calls for legislation to protect the LGBT community from discrimination. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., the lead sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the Senate, spoke Dec. 10 at the progressive think tank’s headquarters about the importance of such legislation. Sarah McBride, the lead author of the CAP report, said that progress made by the LGBT community in the last 10 years highlights the issues it still faces. “A lot of Americans think that LGBT discrimination is a relic of the past,” she said.

The suburbs of Fort-de-France, the capital of Martinique, with the legendary Mount Pelée looming in the distance. Photo courtesy of Stacy Marie-Luce, Tanisha Photography.

Learn more about America’s neighbors in the Caribbean’s Creole region

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 Life in the Creole region of the Caribbean

FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique — Bonjour ! Sa’w fè?  Please allow me to introduce myself.  I am a former aid worker, journalist, musician and all-around n’er-do-well who lives in Martinique, an island with a history, people, and language most people know very little about. The booming influence in the United States of all things Hispanic dwarfs our knowledge of the Caribbean’s Creole region, even though the latter is geographically closer to our shores than most of Latin America. Like the other islands that form this diaspora of former slave colonies, Martinique is much more than a Club Med beach or the obligatory “…and the Caribbean” tacked on  to discussions about Latin America.  First, unlike, say, Saint Lucia or Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique is not a nation; its status as part of France could best be compared not to Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. territory but rather to Hawaii’s statehood.

At 80, El Paso folklorico pioneer Rosa Guerrero still lets faith guide her steps

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EL PASO – Dressed in a bright orange jacket adorned with a necklace and a crucifix pendant, Rosa Guerrero flashes a warm smile, projecting the trademark youthful spirit and upbeat stamina that belie her approaching 80th birthday. “Age is just a matter of the mind,” Guerrero said as she sipped her cranberry and orange juice drink, a mix she concocted herself. “If you don’t mind, then it doesn’t matter.”

Guerrero’s long resume in the professional dance world has not weighed her down. An avid dancer in all types of genres, a dance teacher of students that range in age from two-year- olds to 100-year-olds, and an ambassador for Mexican folkloric dance, her love for dance is evident in the rhythm of her hand gestures and expressive nature. “I started dancing in my mother’s womb,” Guerrero exclaimed as she sculpted a simple dance move with her hands.

Award-winning writers team up in Texas to broadcast unique national showcase for creative writing

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EL PASO – A little stubble on his face, a fedora hanging on an empty microphone to his right, Daniel Chacon is ready to record Words on a Wire, a KTEP-FM weekly radio show that showcases some of the best in creative writing. The show, in its fourth year, is attracting listeners throughout the borderlands and beyond. That’s no surprise to the creator of the show, Chacon, a University of Texas at El Paso associate professor of creating writing and novelist who has a reputation around campus as being somewhat eccentric. A lover of reading and books since childhood (his favorite book as a child was “Danny and the Dinosaur”), several years ago Chacon began thinking about doing thought-provoking radio interviews with accomplished writers. After discussing the idea with then chair of the UTEP creative writing department, Benjamin Alire Saenz, they agreed to approach El Paso’s public radio station KTEP-FMA with the idea.

The Mextasy of William Nericcio dashes stereotypes and builds ‘mexicanidad’

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EL PASO— The Mexican experience in America, presented with verve as a celebration of the culture and and as a bulwark against negative stereotypes in popular art and media was dubbed Mextasy by Dr. William Anthony Nericcio. “This anti-Mexican fervor needs to be met with a kind of invocation of mexicanidad that needs to be equally strong,” Nericcio says. “You got to attack it with the same power with the same fervor, with the same dynamic focus.”

Nericcio captivated a room of faculty members and students when he came to the University of Texas at El Paso recently to discuss and present his travelling art show,

TheMextasypop-up exposition contains objects that Nericcio has collected over the years, Ranging from dolls to posters that harken back to the 1950’s representing and satirizing the Mexican experience in the United States, representing an analysis of Hollywood’s contribution to perceptions of Mexican ethnic identities. Nericcio gets serious when addressing how consumers should fight the negative commentary on Mexicans that some commentators in media like Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter advocate. Ectasy healing

For Nericcio, Mextasy can be seen as a form of defense and cure against those Mexican stereotypes and tropes.

For Hispanics, same-sex marriage another sign of generational culture shift

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By Vanessa Hornedo, Hispanic Link News Service
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 8 –The Supreme Court’s recent decision to not hear five states’ appeals that challenge same-sex marriage, coinciding with the majority of states now accepting the rapid social change, leaves the nation’s 54-million Hispanics trying to determine where their cultural heritage fits in. “Hispanics have been lagging a couple of steps behind and this will move our community to be more embracing,” Armando Vázquez-Ramos, professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University, tells Hispanic Link News Service. “We have to go beyond the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church relative to same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian communities in Latino families because it’s not typically accepted.”
According to a 2013 Pew Research Center National Survey, 55 percent of Latinos identify as Catholic – a faith which denounces marriage between two people of the same gender. Bishop Richard Malone, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, chairman of the USCCB’s Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, responded in a joint statement released Oct.

Ebola coverage too important to be a competition, editor tells journalists

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After reports of an El Paso hospital closing its emergency room over a possible Ebola case burned like wildfire through social media Friday, Bob Moore, editor of the El Paso Times, posted the following cautionary note on his Facebook account:

“Something important to remember about reports of the closure of the Del Sol ER and any possible connection with Ebola:

Hospitals across the country have been dealing with concerns about possible Ebola cases. They react with an abundance of caution, as is appropriate. But in every case except those tied to the case in Dallas, tests have all turned up negative. We in the media should be informative but not alarmist.”

On Saturday the hospital released a statement saying its emergency room did not close. It explained that a patient’s symptoms and answers during a screening process triggered infectious disease protocols.

Song inspires writer to search for nameless victims in ‘Deportees’ plane crash

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EL PASO — Folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a poem In 1948 about a plane crash that year in which 32 people lost their lives near Los Gatos Creek in the Diablo mountain range of California. The flight was carrying 28 migrant farmworkers who were being deported back to Mexico. Guthrie was disturbed by press accounts at the time that didn’t include the names of the passengers. The poem was eventually set to music and was popularized by Pete Seeger as “Deportees,” which included the haunting line: “to fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil, and be called by no name except “deportees.” Sixty-six years later, writer Tim Z. Hernandez has made it his mission to remember those whose lives were lost by finding out their names.

Images of Latinos in U.S. culture to be examined in 1-night lecture, exhibit at UT El Paso

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The UTEP Department of Communication and the Chicano Studies program presents a lecture and exhibit by Dr. William Anthony Nericcio that examines American visual culture reflecting images and stereotypes of Latinas/os. The event, Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious , will be at  5:30 pm, Wednesday, Oct. 15 in Quinn Hall Room 212 at the University of Texas at El Paso. 

Mextasy is a traveling art show/exhibit based on the work of William “Memo” Nericcio and Guillermo Nericcio García. The show, originally curated by Rachel Freyman Brown, South Texas College, McAllen, Texas, had its last exhibition at Boise State University, for the Third Cinema Research Group and El Consulado de México en Boise, Idaho on April 11, 2014.  

Mextasy both reflects and expands upon Nericcio’s 2007 book with UT Press, Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the Mexican in America.

Herbal remedies big sellers in wellness strategies for Hispanics

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EL PASO— When it comes to trying to keep bodies healthy in the fit-vs-fat wars, this predominately Hispanic border city leans toward natural solutions. Seventy percent of residents here and across the border in Cuidad Juarez say they use herbal medicines to lose weight and treat a variety of illnesses, according to a 2010 study funded by the Paso del Norte Health Foundation. Infographic: The pros and cons of 5 common herbal remedies

El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are essentially one urban metropolis of some 2 million residents divided by an imaginary political line. Together they make up one of the largest population centers to regularly use medicinal herbs. “It is definitely tied to the cultural factors especially among Hispanics,” said Armando Gonzalez-Stuart, one of the authors of the study.

Street Photography exhibit, rare Beatles print Oct. 23 to help journalism students

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Borderzine.com, a digital publication based at UT El Paso that focuses on achieving diversity in news media, announces an exhibit of photographs by  journalism professor David Smith-Soto at the Glass Gallery of the Fox Fine Arts Center on the UTEP campus, October 23 to 31. An opening reception of the exhibit at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23 will help celebrate the 6th anniversary of Borderzine, an award-winning web news portal and online community for Latino student journalists. Attendees will learn about the online publication’s future plans and programs, and have an opportunity to help send UTEP multimedia journalism students to news internships throughout the United States. A celebration of photojournalism

The 24 prints from Smith-Soto’s 60-years of street photography were taken during his travels as a journalist in Latin American, European and U.S. cities.  They include images from Oaxaca, Ciudad Juarez, Guatemala, Tangier, Paris and Madrid.

New Fox TV show “Bordertown” treats Latinos with respect, cartoonist says

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By Ramon Renteria – El Paso Times

Award-winning Chicano cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz describes the new Fox network comedy “Bordertown” as a historic step for Latinos in American television. “This is the first time that Latinos are going to play at least half the characters on a primetime animated show,” Alcaraz said recently before speaking to students at the University of Texas at El Paso. “We finally have an actual mainstream show that treats Latinos with respect.” Alcaraz, a nationally syndicated cartoonist and political satirist, is among five Latino writers on the 13-episode series which is scheduled to air next spring. The writing team also includes Gustavo Arellano, a newspaper editor who writes the nationally syndicated column “¡Ask a Mexican!”

Message to news media: Embrace diversity if you want to survive and thrive

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Editor’s note: This commentary is part of Borderzine’s continuing series about the growing urgency to transform newsrooms into diverse work places. By Hugo Balta

Diversity doesn’t happen easily. It is slow progressive change. The pundit who asks, “why don’t they just hire more _____,” fails to understand the fiscal constraints in which media companies operate under. Newsroom budgets continuously contract in the ever-changing new technology economy.

Love and death visit Handel’s Acis and Galatea in a Bhutanese cremation field

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EL PASO –The German composer G.F. Handel took his genius to London in the 18th century and in the 21st century the University of Texas at El Paso transported him to Bhutan. Famous for its century-old campus of Bhutanese architecture, UTEP has always been a beacon of diversity in the Chihuahuan desert, so no eyebrows were raised when the melodies of Handel’s Acis and Galatea were performed before dancers in skull masks. Tshering Goen, a musician from Bhutan and one of the program coordinators, described the opera as incorporating elements that both cultures can relate to. “From the story we can learn the nature in death, the love, and we can see the eccentricity of transformation of one’s life,” he said. Goen also danced in the opera, bringing Bhutanese music and culture into the performance.

Borderzine names digital pioneer as web content manager

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Borderzine, a digital media outlet dedicated to promoting diversity in media, has named multimedia editor and digital strategist Kate Gannon as digital content manager. Gannon has more than 25 years experience on the leading edge of change in newsrooms. She was news systems editor at the El Paso Times where she oversaw technology research and training for journalists and supervised the newsroom’s new media department for online, broadcasting and non-daily publications. In 2005, Gannon was named new media manager of content for the Fort Collins Coloradoan where she helped develop multimedia, data and other digital strategies to successfully grow Coloradoan Media Group into the leading news and information provider in Northern Colorado. She returned to El Paso in 2011 with her husband, El Paso Times Editor Robert Moore, and has been working as a digital content and social media consultant. “I believe Kate’s extensive experience as a journalist, new media manager and teacher make her an excellent fit for Borderzine,” said Borderzine Director Zita Arocha.

Border writer Charles Bowden remembered for his passion for the truth

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By Dylan Smith – TusconSentinel.com

Reporter and author Charles Bowden — he eschewed the term “journalist” — is

dead. The longtime Southern Arizonan recently moved to New Mexico and focused

his work on the dangerous turmoil of Ciudad Juarez. Bowden was a dogged investigative reporter and brilliant storyteller with a passion

for the truth. A finalist for a 1984 Pulitzer Prize, he won numerous other awards and

the respect of reporters everywhere with his gritty yet painstaking work. “People felt that so much of his work dwelt in the dark side and was mired in

negativity.

Study: MSNBC spent most time on Ferguson story, Fox the least

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A new study reveals significant differences in prime time coverage by three major news outlets of the protests in Ferguson, Mo.. MSNBC, Fox and CNN differed in the amount of coverage provided after the death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, out of the three major cable news outlets, MSNBC devoted the most coverage to Ferguson, followed by CNN, and Fox News, which devoted the least amount of coverage. The study analyzed 18 hours of programming from Sunday Aug. 9, to Friday Aug.

Changing the complexion of news media calls for revolución

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It’s time to shatter the myth that young Latino journalists won’t leave home for jobs in news media. This thought and others flashed in neon across my mind as I sipped white wine recently in a San Antonio ballroom to celebrate 30 years of tilling the soil to transform newsrooms into diverse work places by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. As the speeches and awards played out on stage, I recalled the offensive words of a top news media recruiter not so many years ago.  The recruiter, in his early fifties, had come from Washington, DC to UT El Paso, where I teach journalism, to meet with our journalism students. We thought he was coming to talk about jobs and internships. Instead he lambasted me and my journalism colleagues for producing journalism graduates who “aren’t aggressive enough, do not speak up and refuse to leave home for jobs elsewhere.”

Old stereotypes linger among recruiters

While we were all too stunned to respond, his insensitive comments didn’t surprise me.

An off-brand X-Box controller and a tablet computer sit on the Cadillac SRX’s console. The controller is able to control the vehicle, but a driver is still needed to steer. Photo by Daniel Wheaton, SHF Wire

Roads will be safer when cars can talk to each other

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MCLEAN, Va. – While Taylor Lochrane was driving through a heavy rainstorm in Virginia, the lack of visibility didn’t worry him. He pressed a few buttons on the Cadillac SRX Crossover’s console, allowing the vehicle’s cruise control to maintain a large gap between his car and the one he was following, preventing a possible crash. “The radar could see the car, even though I couldn’t,” he said. The Cadillac’s radar adds another layer to regular cruise control, making it able to react to the environment using what is called adaptive cruise control.

Does stripping for money empower or demean women?

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The almighty dollars wait to be scooped up from the floors of Dreams… Jaguars, Tequila Sunrise or any strip club The bills are usually wet from the sweaty hands of the men, eager to touch the women. Up on the poles, the women hang on a fine line that moves from humility to humiliation, from objectification to empowerment. In the instant it takes to kneel down and pick up the bill, an array of emotions and thoughts web through the stripper’s mind. Having once been employed by local strip clubs, I know that feeling and I recall the stigmas that are born from such a life. I decided to dive back into the world of strip clubs for a class project and look again into the tangled universe of a stripper’s thoughts.

Declining minority representation in American newsrooms dominates discussion at convention of Hispanic journalists

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SAN ANTONIO – The celebration of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ 30th anniversary was brought to a sobering pause last week when Hispanic Link News Service publisher Charlie Ericksen voiced his dissatisfaction with the progress mainstream media have made in diversifying the staffs of their newsrooms.

Hispanic journalists from all corners of the country made their way here to the NAHJ convention to celebrate its three decades of advocating for more minority participation in news media. Much of the talk at the four-day NAHJ convention was on the diversification of newsrooms throughout the United States and that conversation became a strident argument. During the convention’s final event – the Gala and Awards banquet – the association recognized news organizations that had “increased the visibility and accurate representation of Latinos in cable news,” including CNN, PBS, Buzzfeed and Fox News Latino. Ericksen, 84, a founding member of NAHJ, was given a chance to speak when he was recognized for his lifetime of work in newsroom diversity. He told the gathering that celebrating increased visibility and accurate representation of Latinos in the media by honoring a network such as Fox News was a “kind of a farce.” He also said that despite the organization’s 30 years of work on increasing newsroom diversity the number of Latinos in mainstream newsrooms has actually declined.

Hear the rattle as civilizations collapse under the weight of complex problems

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The sound of collapse is all around us. In the U.S. the political system is in a close race with our transportation system to see which one gets declared the winner in a race towards non-functionality. Our physical bridges along with our metaphorically constructed political bridges are in different degrees of collapse. And we, as a nation,  are the model of stability. Whole countries are suffering from Gang or Terrorist warfare.

Mindless in Gaza

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LAS CRUCES, NM — After three weeks in Europe I returned to my patch of high desert and basked in the hundred-degree afternoon knowing there is no place like home and with some new perspectives on the tragic human strife we see in the world. Nothing like visiting Europe to see the tracks of senseless violence in human history glorified in art, and architecture. From the gleaming marble statuary in Florence to the dark halls of old palaces built on blood in Spain, history demonstrates that military might and time eventually conquer just about everything. In Florence’s Medici palace, one football field full of statues and paintings after another speak of immense wealth, war, religion, politics. In Spain’s Prado museum, one painting in particular attracted my attention.

Empower girls, keep them in school, global education experts say

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WASHINGTON – Globally, 30 million girls don’t get a basic education, according to the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Isabel Matenje, a gender and social development specialist who is married to the ambassador of Malawi to the U.S., was one girl who got the opportunity to pursue an education.  In fact, she was the only girl at her school who didn’t drop out. “I happened to go to a secondary school that was in a district where my dad came from and that was kind of the rural district,” Matenje said. “I was working very hard, being advised by my parents that I needed to succeed. The other girls’ parents weren’t helping them to understand what education was all about.”

Experts in women’s education said Tuesday at the Brookings Institution that it is important for girls and their families to see the value in educating girls and empowering them to feel entitled to an education.

Borderzine announces selected participants for fifth Dow Jones Multimedia Training Academy

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EL PASO — Twelve journalism instructors have been selected to participate in the fifth annual Dow Jones Multimedia Training Academy in early June at the University of Texas in El Paso. Thanks to a grant provided by the Dow Jones News Fund, Borderzine organizes this fifth annual workshop training geared to multimedia journalism instructors who teach in institutions with a large Hispanic population. The chosen instructors come from seven states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico:

Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante, University of Arizona
Christopher Temple Northup, University of Houston
Jay Seidel, Fullerton College
Joe Hale Cutbirth, Manhathan College
Kirstie Elizabeth Hettinga, California Lutheran University
Laura Lynn Camden, Northern Arizona University
Michael Vincent Marcotte, University of New Mexico
Michele D. Mohr, Morton College
Richard Eugene Brunson, University of Central Florida
Susannah Nesmith, Barry University
Tsitsi D. Wakhisi, University of Miami
Yadira Nieves-Pizarro, Inter American University

This intense multimedia-journalism academy has a proven track record of four successful years helping journalism educators acquire a new skill set in multimedia production. “The trainers at the academy understand what educators need to learn about new and emerging technologies to better prepare their students for the fast-changing future” said Linda Shockley, Deputy Director of Dow Jones News Fund. “This quality of instruction at absolutely no cost to participants and their universities is priceless.”

The goal of this experience is to learn and practice new storytelling skills through the use of current technology.

ImpreMedia CEO — Latino journalism is now less about language and culture and more about competing as major media

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EL PASO — The Chief Executive Officer of ImpreMedia, the nation’s leading Hispanic Media Company, told students at the University of Texas at El Paso that media today must inform, educate and empower communities. Born into mainstream media — Monica Lozano’s father owned the powerful La Opinion, a Spanish language newspaper in Los Angeles — she quickly realized that she would find her destiny in the field of journalism. Lozano said she trained teams of Spanish language journalists to do groundbreaking reporting, which had a lasting effect on the profession and the community. “The evolution of the Latino community and media, that is my greatest achievement,” she told a group of students and faculty at UTEP. Her professional life took a new turn in 1990 when she moved from the journalistic side of media to the business side.