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1990s Immigration Battles Resurface in California Recall 

The special election in California, in which voters will decide whether or not to vote out Gov. Gray Davis and replace him with a successor, has unexpectedly become a forum for a re-airing of the angry immigration disputes that rocked the state in the 1990s. 

Groups that want to restrict immigration are enthusiastic about the elections because they feel immigration issues are returning to the forefront. Once the dominant topic of political debate in the mid-1990s, when former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson was in office, immigration had faded into the background of California politics. 

“We’re certainly glad to see immigration become more of an issue in the recall; it is something that has a huge impact and affects the budget crisis,” says Craig Nelsen, director of Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement, or FILE, based in Washington D.C. He told El Norte Digest that California can ill-afford the extra stress that undocumented immigrants put on public hospitals and schools. 

The National Review, a conservative newsmagazine, published an interview August 19 with former Gov. Wilson, now co-chair of the campaign of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wants to replace Davis. Wilson is known for promoting Proposition 187, which sought to cut off public services for undocumented immigrants. Schwarzenegger also voted for the 1994 proposition. Wilson told National Review: “187 would pass today, I think perhaps by a greater margin.” 

The Proposition 187 connection led Jorge Mújica, in an Aug. 15 commentary for bilingual weekly La Prensa-San Diego, to refer to Schwarzenegger as “Terminator 187.” 

N.Y. Latino neighborhood: Twice Struck by Blackouts 

While all of New York City suffered from the economic impacts of the blackout that affected parts of the east coast beginning Aug. 14, one heavily Latino part of Manhattan was particularly hard-hit. 

Washington Heights and Inwood, adjacent neighborhoods in an area that is the traditional home of the city’s large community of Dominican immigrants, are seeking financial relief from the state government of New York because they suffered from another crippling blackout in recent times, reports Spanish-language daily Hoy in its Aug. 19 edition. 

“No other community in the state of New York suffered more from the blackouts than Washington Heights and Inwood, which have suffered two major blackouts in less than four years,” said Adrian Espaillat, a Democrat and state assembly member from the area, according to Hoy. 

The neighborhood is “ground zero” for blackouts, State Senator Erik Schneiderman was quoted as saying. 

The politicians said they would ask for Gov. George Pataki to declare the neighborhood an “Empire Zone,” a special designation that would make businesses in the area eligible for cheap investment dollars and financial relief. New York authorities said the 18-hour summer 1999 blackout in Washington Heights was caused by worn out equipment in the electricity delivery system. 

Chicago-Area Boycott Against No-Match Letter Firings 

Latino groups and politicians organized a boycott against two Chicago-area companies that fired workers after receiving so-called no-match letters from the Social Security Administration, reports Chicago Spanish-language weekly La Raza. 

The no-match letters are sent out every year in an effort to inform of employers of possible irregularities with workers whose numbers don’t match those in federal records. Latinos are often affected by the no-match campaign because if they are undocumented, they often work with fake or stolen social security numbers. 

Latino rights advocates, however, say many Latinos fired as a result of no-match letters are legal workers that are the victims of bureaucratic mix-ups. 

Cook County Commissioner Robert Maldonado, who is one of several local politicians backing the boycott, says the legendary defender of migrant farm workers in California, Cesar Chavez, also used boycotts to defend workers’ rights: “It’s the only way to make them respect us,” Maldonado was quoted as saying in the Aug. 15 article. 

Latino groups have accused the government of stepping up the no-match campaign after the 9/11 terror attacks. They say the deluge of letters led to mass firing of workers, although the letters tell employers that they should not take immediate action and must first talk with workers and offer them an opportunity to set matters straight. 

The two Batavia, Illinois, companies being boycotted are Party Lite, which produces aromatic candles, and Suncast, which manufactures garden accessories, the paper said. Each has fired some 125 workers as a result of no-match letters. 

Latino Hip Hop: The Explosion of “Urban Regional” 

The fusion of Mexican regional music with hip hop has produced a new musical genre, “urban regional,” which has one foot on either side of the border, reports the Los Angeles Spanish-language daily La Opinión Aug. 19. 

While Latinos account for about 60 percent of all purchases of hip hop CDs in English, they have traditionally not entered this genre as musicians, according to the paper. 

The movement to combine traditional Latino sounds with hip hop, which has long been a strong force among young people in New York and Puerto Rico, is emerging from the underground scene and exploding in Los Angeles. 

Urban regional combines more traditional popular Mexican songs with hip hop beats. The popular genres that are used can include Mexican regional music, the country music of Mexico’s north, or more urbane romantic ballads that are also popular. 

The lyrics used are often a contemporary version of corridos, Mexican popular ballads that often deal with current events. The “urban regional” songs reflect on the lives of young Mexican Americans, and Latinos in general, often using slang and “Spanglish” to talk about love, politics and the struggle to survive in the less fortunate neighborhoods of the city. 

The trend, in a somewhat different form, has also spread to another mecca of Spanish-language music: Cuba. With rap quickly gaining popularity among Cuban youth, some experts think hip hop may now compete with the most popular of Cuban rhythms, salsa, which seemed to dominate the Cuban musical landscape until very recently, reports the Orlando bilingual weekly newspaper El Sentinel. 

Cubans in Seaworthy ‘51 Chevy Serenaded by Miami Radio 

Newspapers around the world followed the story of the Cubans that fitted out a ‘51 Chevrolet pickup truck as a seaworthy raft, and used it in an attempt to float away from their island to reach Florida, before being picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard. 

Now, a Miami Spanish-language radio station known for its on-air pranks has written a song in honor of the intrepid migrants, reports Miami Spanish-language daily El Nuevo Herald Aug. 20. 

Roughly translated, the song begins, “Since in Cuba the situation is so bad, that’s why I prepared the best truck at hand. A ‘51 Chevy was all I had, it’s the best ride I could find.” 

In parts of the song, which airs almost daily, the morning DJs at El Zol 95.7 FM also blast U.S. policy toward Cuba, including the so-called “wet-foot, dry foot” policy, which states that Cubans reaching U.S. soil are allowed to stay, while those caught at sea are turned back. 

Emilio Rodríguez, the show’s creative producer, wrote the song and he told El Nuevo Herald that he was angry because after repatriating the Cubans, the U.S. Coast guard sank the unique vessel. 

Elena Shore contributed to this report.