Politics

As part of yesterday’s #USTired2 national protests against Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, this YouTube video was tweeted to us today by @asambleahouston:

[View the story “#USTired2 Protests Greet Peña Nieto Visit to White House” on Storify]

Oscar López Rivera was born in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico in 1943. Roughly six years after the Ponce Massacre and about five years prior to the infamous Law 53—also know as the Ley de Mordaza. Five-year-old Oscar began coming into awareness of the society around him in a world where it was illegal to […]

This is what local Kansas media is reporting about the January 3 death of John Paul Quintero: video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player Yesterday, the Quintero family shared a statement with the media: My name is Alina Quintero. I am the cousin of John Paul Quintero and the spokesperson for our family. At this time I’m […]

Now that President Obama has spoken about immigration and Cuba, the White House has several speech templates it can adapt to pay attention to the one issue no one wants to discuss but is just as important: Puerto Rico. Understanding that Puerto Rico might not be a priority for the Obama administration, not to worry. […]

It’s all Dante’s fault. Were it not for his son, Bill de Blasio would probably not have won New York City’s Democratic primary, let alone the mayoralty. And the mess that boiled over last week between the mayor and the NYPD would’ve never happened. Dante —or rather, the political ad featuring him— was a hit […]

The following video, called “Missing Piece,” shows how Barrios Unidos in Santa Cruz, California, has rallied around #Ayotzinapa. You can read more here.

Earlier today, our friends at Puerto Rico Indie posted a recent interview with Angela Davis. The Puerto Rico Indie story is in Spanish, but the interview Ezequiel Rodríguez had with Davis is in English. Here is the YouTube version of the 9-minute interview.

There is no question that the Mexican government of Enrique Peña Nieto uses automated Twitter profiles (also known as “Peñabots”) to try and block out what the country’s Twitter users are actually saying, especially when it comes to the Iguala tragedy, which marked its three-month anniversary with more demonstrations on December 26. Such is the […]

2014 was supposed to be the year of the “Latino vote.” If this year taught us anything about Latinos and voting trends, it proved that we as a people are more complex than perhaps once believed. Regardless, let’s dissect the highly contested midterms elections and consider other little-known takeaways for the year. 1. It’s not […]

The Late 1800s Arturo Alfonso Schomburg —born in Santurce, Puerto Rico— was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance. He moved to Harlem in 1891 at the young age of 17. Schomburg was a self-proclaimed Afroborinqueño who later helped found the Negro Society for Historical Research. Known today as one of the fathers of what […]

Late Tuesday evening, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed a lawsuit filed by Joe Arpaio, the controversial Arizona sheriff who was challenging the legality of President Obama’s executive action on immigration. In a 33-page ruling issued a day after the court heard arguments from the parties, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell tossed the suit […]

According to reports from The Associated Press, The Huffington Post, and the National Law Journal, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., heard arguments from the lawyer representing Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio in his challenge to President Obama’s executive action on immigration. By all accounts, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell seemed unimpressed. Howell was hearing arguments […]

[View the story “Thousands Protest in Peru Against Country’s Youth Employment Law” on Storify]

In 1972, President Nixon began a process to normalize relations with communist China. In his own stumbling-into-stuff-way, President Reagan did the same with the Soviets in the 1980s. Both countries were powerful and in a position to really challenge the United State. When all these changes happened, having two Republican presidents reach out to Cold […]

The first domino in the normalization of U.S-Cuba relations fell last Wednesday. Since the government of Fulgencio Batista fled in 1959, the 90 miles between Florida and Cuba has become a Berlin-like Wall. The actual Berlin Wall and the Cold War with the Soviet Union might have ended in 1989, but for the past 55 […]

On December 13, we received the following email from a student a Cal State Long Beach: The university promotes itself as a “liberal” institution that promotes diversity speaks or teaches about “white privilege” but deeply embedded in its institutional culture and in other pockets of the campus culture is a white supremacist, individualistic and hateful […]

Over the weekend, several Spanish-language outlets reported that the FBI assisted Mexican officials in the investigation of the #Ayotzinapa case in Iguala. According to reports, Sergio Alcocer, Mexico’s Undersecretary for North America, said that FBI agents traveled to Mexico just days after the disappearances occurred to provide forensics assistance. Alcocer said that the FBI’s help […]

Ay, Cuba. The media tend to ignore you until they can’t anymore. That certainly happened when President Obama announced the U.S. would seek to normalize relations after a hiatus of more than half a century. It was a plot worthy of Graham Greene, involving spies in Havana and Miami, secret negotiations in Canada, and even […]

On December 22, 1997, 45 Tzotzil Indians were massacred in the village of Acteal, Mexico. Of the 45 who died, 21 were women and 16 were children. With the focus on Ayotzinapa continuing in Mexico along with the news that Mexican authorities were complicit in the recent Iguala mass kidnappings, the 17th anniversary of the […]

Between November 20 and 22, scholars, activists, students, film directors and community organizers met in Otavalo, Ecuador for the first “International Encounter on Good Life [Sumak Kawsay], Plurinational State, and Interculturality in Latin America.” The event was covered by several media outlets, including Ecuador’s TVN, APAK and Taiwan’s Mata!. The conference explored the way in which […]