The latest group was photographed from an aircraft flying over a reserve near the remote Brazil-Peru border, FUNAI said. The agency says it is dedicated to protecting the groups. Some of the photos show people painted bright red and toting bows and arrows. Here's a story from O Estado de Sao Paulo about the photos.
The subject of uncontacted tribes has become a matter of some controversy. Some doubt their existence.
But organizations such as Survival International say dozens of such groups exist and face threats from logging and other human activities, as well as from disease. Survival International has launched a campaign to win protection for remote Amazonian tribes.
Photo: Image released by Survival International is said to show uncontacted Amazonian Indians near the Brazil-Peru border, photographed from an aircraft. (AP Photo/FUNAI.)
The setting is this steamy western city, long known as the narco capital of Mexico. The main character is a drug trafficker with an easy smile who wins his young love's heart by replacing an old tin-roofed church so the two can attend Sunday Mass without rain leaks interrupting the sermon.
But the young man, known as "El Roba Chivas," the Goat Bandit, is soon gunned down inside his gold-plated SUV on the streets of Culiacan.
The scene, drawn from real life, may soon show up in the pages of a novel.
Disputes over the Department of Homeland Security's border fence project continue. The Dallas Morning News reports that a coalition of wildlife protection groups will file a federal lawsuit next week in El Paso, challenging the department's authority to waive state and federal laws to build a border security fence.
"The lawsuit by the Frontera Audubon Society, the Friends of the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and the Friends of the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge claims that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff violated the Constitution's separation of powers when he waived 36 federal environmental laws to speed up construction of the fence."
Tropical Storm Alma slammed into northwestern Nicaragua on Thursday, forcing evacuations and causing flooding along the coast, reports the Associated Press.
The Miami Herald called Alma the "first menacing storm of the tropical Pacific season."
"The fast-growing storm took forecasters and much of Central America by surprise. Forecasters warned that Alma could dump as much as 20 inches of rain in some places. The storm was expected to continue on a northern path, bringing its effects to parts of Honduras and El Salvador."
Revelations that several laptop computers owned by paramilitary bosses extradited to the United States this month were not kept secure by Colombian officials have raised concerns about government carelessness with potential evidence, writes The Times' Chris Kraul from Bogota.
Colombia's Interior Ministry said it was investigating what happened to six of 11 laptops used by militia bosses in prison before they were extradited May 13 to face drug and terrorism charges in the United States. Chief prosecutor Mario Iguaran said an investigation could determine whether anyone tampered with the laptops. Read on...
Today's L.A. Times Calendar section reports on a small show of photographs by Maria Teresa Fernandez that focuses on the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border that begins a couple of hundred feet out in the Pacific and ends about 60 miles inland, near El Centro, Calif. The exhibition is in an upstairs hallway at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, writes David Pagel.
"That's a lot of territory to cover, and rather than documenting all parts equally or presenting a historical overview of the politically charged barrier, Fernandez zeros in on details: little incidents that might seem insignificant but that accumulate to form a knot of narratives by turns tragic, defiant and touching. Of the 84 color prints that make up the accessible exhibition, all but eight are close-ups -- tightly framed pictures that bring visitors nose to nose with the fence and arm's length from the often poignant mementos left beside it by people whose lives it has affected."
Photo: "Paraiso Fondo": Maria Teresa Fernandez's photo shows an idyllic view through a hole in the border fence at Tijuana along with drawings of skulls representing dead migrants.
Looks like another banner year for the myth of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentina-born revolutionary whose beret-topped visage stares from countless T-shirts, coffee mugs and bikinis. Che look-backs proliferated last year, marking the 40th anniversary of his execution in rural Bolivia, where his leftist crusade culminated in a bloody debacle.
June 14 marks what would've been Guevara's 80th birthday -- yet another chance to assess this enigmatic figure who rose from a middle-class, rugby-playing upbringing in provincial Argentina to global archetype of the uncompromising rebel.
A four-hour, two-part biopic by Steven Soderbergh debuted at Cannes this month starring Benicio del Toro, the Puerto Rico-born star with an eerily Che-like look.
This week, Argentines got to see a 12-foot bronze likeness of their late compatriot, constructed from tens of thousands of donated keys melted down and molded into form. The monumental statue, paraded through the streets of Buenos Aires on a flatbed truck, is to be placed next month in the Argentine city of Rosario, Guevara's birthplace.
Photo: Bronze statue of Ernesto "Che" Guevara paraded through downtown Buenos Aires en route to the late rebel's birthplace in Rosario. (Natacha Pisarenko / Associated Press.)
Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico have been strong in promoting human rights internationally and in supporting the U.N. human rights machinery.
But unless the gap between their policies internationally and their performance at home is closed, their credibility as human rights champions will be challenged, according to this week’s report from Amnesty International on human rights around the world.
Mexico will tell the U.S. to keep its Merida Initiative money if the U.S. Congress insists on linking the proposed anti-drug aid package to a series of human rights and legal conditions, reports The Dallas Morning News.
Both houses of Congress have passed the package but have not agreed on a final version.
The Merida Initiative, which is proving controversial with lobbyists on the left and right, proposes to inject US $1.4 billion worth of aid into Mexico to help President FelipeCalderon fight the country's increasingly violent drug trade and illegal arms smuggling. But opponents to the package argue that it will put more arms into the hands of a corrupt army and law enforcement system in Mexico.
Only eight people in Mexico speak the Xwja, or Ixcateco, language. But a group of investigators are working with the few Oaxacans who do to stop it from dying out.
A new study has found widespread fear-mongering and reckless journalism by cable television hosts such as CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who have made a career of bashing Hispanic undocumented immigrants and their home countries, writes Andrew Oppenheimer in his Miami Herald column today.
Spanish-language television network Azteca America is now producing its U.S. national and Los Angeles local newscasts from Mexico City, reports the L.A. Times' Meg James.
The company, a subsidiary of Mexican broadcaster TV Azteca, until this week had originated its news programs for the U.S. from its facilities in Glendale. The network and its flagship station, KAZA-TV Channel 54 in Los Angeles, made the switch to save money amid a weak advertising market.
A Dallas suburb's ban on apartment rentals to illegal immigrants is unconstitutional, a federal judge decided Wednesday.
Only the federal government can regulate immigration, U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay concluded.
The ordinance, passed by Farmers Branch city officials last year and endorsed by a citizen referendum, didn't defer to the federal government, Lindsay said, which is in violation of the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Police in northern Mexico have arrested a couple accused of buying Mexican babies to sell to U.S. couples for profit, investigators said Wednesday.
Amado Torres, 64, of Harlingen, Texas, and his 25-year-old wife, Maria Isabel Hernandez, are suspected of buying more than a dozen children age 2 or younger, officials said.
In Mexico, the drug violence continues. This dispatch from The Times' Ken Ellingwood reports that seven Mexican federal agents looking for an arms cache were killed early Tuesday in a shootout in the western state of Sinaloa.
The agents came under fire when they went to search a home in Culiacan, the state capital. Four agents were wounded.
"The state has registered more than 200 killings this year, mainly as a result of a vicious power struggle within one of Mexico's biggest drug gangs, the so-called Sinaloa cartel.
"Mexican President Felipe Calderon dispatched 2,000 soldiers and federal agents to Sinaloa two weeks ago, the latest major deployment in his government's 18-month-old drive against organized crime."
Opinion L.A. does some soul-searching this morning on whether The Times was among many news outlets that have given readers only a partial view of John McCain's immigration views, according to a Media Matters report.
"Now McCain's flip-flopping on immigration is a topic we report on with borderline obsessiveness at Opinion L.A., and in particular we watch for shifting definitions of 'comprehensive' in the McCain vocabulary. I'd also note that McCain got a special grilling over the whole not-voting-for-his-own-bill topic at The Times-sponsored Republican debate this year. Nevertheless, Media Matters is correct that in the specific story it cites, Times reporters Maeve Reston, Noam N. Levey and Scott Martelle noted only that McCain 'has a record of pushing immigration overhaul' in the context of describing his possible advantages in the Western states."
This Los Angeles Times editorial argues that Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe has bent over backward to try to get a controversial trade deal approved by the U.S. Congress, and he deserves for it to go through.
"If the proposed free trade pact with Colombia is not approved by the U.S. Congress, it won't be because President Alvaro Uribe gave up. Rather, he has used every diplomatic tool within reach. His latest volley in the back and forth with Washington is the extradition of 14 right-wing paramilitary leaders to the United States on drug-trafficking charges."
Cities like Baldwin Park are turning away from ethnic-oriented retail projects in favor of mainstream businesses. Starbucks is welcome, Hector Becerra writes.
"Call it 'immigrant' store fatigue. It's happening in cities that are overwhelmingly Latino, with Latino political leaders and with large immigrant communities.
"For decades, these cities attracted working-class and immigrant-centric retailers: check-cashing businesses, Latino supermarkets, discount gift stores, bridal shops and Mexican western wear stores. Some are independent, and some are chains such as La Curacao, an appliance and electronics retailer that offers credit accounts to immigrants who lack the documentation for conventional credit cards."
"Until relatively recently, cities like Baldwin Park, South Gate and Santa Ana had few options beyond 'Latino' retailers. But this year, Baldwin Park -- a city of 70,000 in the San Gabriel Valley -- enacted a moratorium on new payday loan and check cashing stores. The city is now partners with Bisno Development Co. on an 'urban village' of mixed-income housing, theaters and mainstream restaurants such as Claim Jumper, Applebee's and Chili's."
Photo: Many residents of cities like Baldwin Park are second-, third- and even fourth-generation Latinos with little interest in stores aimed at immigrants. Luis Cinco / Los Angeles Times
The $500-million fund will support projects that improve agricultural productivity, invest in rural areas, improve distribution and strengthen programs designed to improve health and encourage education.
Recent Times stories have highlighted some of the food shortage problems that Latin America is experiencing -- see these dispatches from Haiti and Nicaragua earlier this month.
The BBC reported Tuesday that the Mexican government is taking matters into its own hands by announcing that it will give its poorest citizens a monthly cash payment of 120 pesos ($11.55) to help them cope with rising food prices. That's about an extra 4 pesos a day. Big deal. See President Felipe Calderon's speech on the matter here.
Photo: Wilma Sosa buys cooking oil at the Wholesale Market of Managua, Nicaragua. Tomas Stargardter / For The Times
Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Swede who coached England to consecutive quarterfinal appearances in the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, appears poised to become Mexico's next national soccer coach.
Eriksson, who led England in the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, appears to be in line to succeed Hugo Sanchez. His agent, however, says the reports are "hot air."
Photo: Although Sven-Goran Eriksson’s agent denied today that any contract had been signed or that any talks had taken place, the president of Mexico’s soccer federation said Eriksson would be named Hugo Sanchez’s successor as Mexico's coach. Tom Hevezi / Associated Press
Augustin Gurza reviews the seminal 1970s band that was on the cutting edge of the Eastside sound performing at the Greek Theatre.
"Led by the white-haired Bobby Espinosa -- who was perched behind his beloved Hammond B-3 organ, draped for the occasion in a colorful Mexican serape -- El Chicano performed on the second of a two-night concert series called Latin Legends Live!, now in its seventh year at the Greek."
United States vegetable growers are getting around problems such as immigration raids and increasing risks for migrants coming north to work their farms by outsourcing that work down to Mexico.
"Antonio Martinez used to pay smugglers thousands of dollars each year to sneak him into the United States to manage farm crews. Now, the work comes to him."
"Supervising lettuce pickers in central Mexico, Martinez earns just half of the $1,100 a week he made in the U.S. But the job has its advantages, including working without fear of immigration raids." From the Associated Press via the Miami Herald.
Some advocates are asking immigrant families, many of which include at least one U.S. citizen, to make emergency plans for rent, bail and lawyers, The Times' Paloma Esquivel writes. Others are asking them to write certified letters designating caretakers for their U.S.-born children. Read the report here.
This video report visits an "immigrant rights" workshop at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church near USC, during which immigrant organizer Antonio Bernabe urged illegal immigrant parents to set aside money to be used in case they are picked up in an immigration raid.
Argentina, Chile and Peru were just some of the Latin American countries to be blighted by dictatorships and 'dirty wars' during the 1970s, '80s and '90s, and at least some of the perpetrators of crimes and disappearances committed during those years are facing legal accusations and being brought to justice.
Chris Kraul in Bogota profiles Pedro Antonio Marin, the hard-bitten Colombian peasant who oversaw South America's largest rebel group's rise to power as well as its recent disintegration. He has died at age 77.
"Under the twin banners of land reform and social justice, Marin went by the aliases Manuel Marulanda and 'Sureshot.' He built the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, into a force that a few years ago numbered nearly 20,000. The FARC at that time seemed on the verge of assaulting the capital."
"But strategic decisions that Marin made in the 1980s to finance the FARC through drug trafficking, kidnapping and terror reduced the popular support on which the leftist rebel group's success depends."
Some taxpayers won't get stimulus checks because of the status of a foreign-born spouse, says this L.A. Times editorial in this morning's Opinion section.
"Call someone anti-immigrant for opposing public services for non-citizens, and chances are you'll be corrected. It's anti-illegal-immigrant, you'll be told, not anti-immigrant. To some extent, that's true. But the arcane rules of the new economic stimulus package, which keep tax rebates from going to many legal residents and even citizens, show that the realities of immigration policy are more complicated, and more hostile to the foreign born, than such an answer implies."
Fabian Nuñez, the new ex-speaker of the California Assembly, has accused reporters who have criticized his spending habits of racism. The Times responded today in an editorial:
"Nancy Vogel, our esteemed colleague here at The Times, discovered that Nuñez spent lavishly as speaker, treating himself to fancy dinners ($1,795 for one particularly lovely night out in Paris) and European vacations. He shopped at Louis Vuitton ($2,562 in "office expenses") and gorged at a French winery ($5,149 for a "meeting"). Nuñez did all this on the dime of his contributors; they did not, he naturally insists, get anything in return."
"Still, publication of these facts bugs Nuñez, and last week he appeared to have had enough. Why did he think critics were so fascinated by these details? His reply: 'Because of the fact I am Mexican, they think I have to sleep under a cactus and eat from taco stands.' "
With its backyard pools and beach culture, Southern California is known as a competitive swimming incubator where most high schools have aquatic programs, powerhouse clubs abound and Olympic medal winners are reared, Tony Barboza writes.
But not in Santa Ana. Though the city is at the core of sun-soaked Orange County, public pools are scarce and Latinos -- who make up 78% of the population -- are drawn more to soccer.
Latinos outnumber African Americans now by nearly 2 to 1 in the county's vast 2nd Supervisorial District in Los Angeles, an area of 2 million people that was predominantly black until the 1990s, writes the Times' Michael Finnegan.
The battle between Bernard Parks and Mark Ridley-Thomas for county supervisor could be the last of its kind, as a rise in Latino power pushes out African Americans, the story continues. Read on...
Once predominantly African American, South Los Angeles has seen an influx of Latino immigrants, along with their roosters, chickens and other barnyard critters not typically part of the urban scene.
"For many, the image of South Los Angeles is that of a paved, parched, densely packed urban grid. But increasingly, it is also a place where untold numbers of barnyard animals -- chickens, roosters, goats, geese, ducks, pigs and even the odd pony -- are being tended in tiny backyard spaces," writes Jessica Garrison of The Times.
Photo: Barnyard fowl are penned in a chain-link enclosure in the backyard of a residence in South Los Angeles. Some area residents complain that their neighborhood is being overrun with roosters. The problem illustrates an ongoing divide in a traditionally black neighborhood that is transitioning into a Latino enclave. Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times
The increasingly meager flow of the Colorado River into northern Mexico imperils the Cucapa Indians and the millions of others who depend on it, writes Frank Clifford.
"As U.S. scientists warn of a semi-permanent drought along the Colorado River Delta by midcentury, Mexico today offers a glimpse of what dry times can be like. Rationing is in effect in some areas. Farmers have abandoned crops they can no longer irrigate. Experts fear that the desert will reclaim some of the region's most fertile land."
"Nearly everyone in this small farming community in eastern Washington speaks Spanish -- nearly everyone except those in city government and the Police Department, where English is spoken."
"And almost everyone who speaks one language does not speak the other," writes the Times' Stuart Glascock.
"That language barrier has engulfed the community, which has grown over the last 20 years from 300 to about 3,200 year-round residents. Nine out of 10 Mattawa residents speak Spanish at home, and 8 out of 10 adults speak English 'less than very well,' according to the 2000 U.S. Census."
"But the gap between an English-speaking city government and an overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking population has grown so wide that the federal government has stepped in to mandate that the city bridge the divide."
"After a legal aid group filed a Civil Rights Act complaint, the U.S. Department of Justice worked with the city and Police Department to develop a language assistance plan."
"Adopted in March, the plan is unique in Washington and is seen as a bellwether for cities with similar demographics. The plan requires Mattawa to employ at least one bilingual employee during regular business hours and to make vital information available in Spanish as well as English. It also requires the police to have qualified interpreters on call at all times."
Photo: Maybeline Pantileon is a new bilingual receptionist at Mattawa Town Hall, hired under an agreement with the Justice Department. A legal aid group had filed a Civil Rights Act complaint; the town didn’t provide formal language services. Kris Holland / Yakima Herald-Republic
A South American union was born Friday as leaders of the region's 12 nations set out to create a continental parliament.
Some see the Union of South American Nations, or Unasur, as a regional version of the European Union. Summit host Brazil wants Unasur to help coordinate defense affairs across South America, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calls it a counterweight to the United States. Read the Associated Press report here.
From Mexico, Times bureau chief Héctor Tobar writes a dispatch from a party that his domestic employee, a single mom, threw for a her daughter -- a luxury she can ill-afford.
"The Castañedas are not rich people. Vicente Castañeda, the sixtysomething patriarch, owns a few acres of land where he grows beans and corn. Benita, the seventh of his nine children, travels two hours to Mexico City every Monday to work in the home of an expatriate American family: mine."
"Benita lives in our home four nights a week. After two years of eating her meals, and too many kitchen conversations to count, my wife and I know her pretty well."
"We know she makes a mole sauce that reminds you that the Aztecs considered that chocolaty dish a food of the gods. We know she is an intelligent and upbeat woman of 30. And we know she's a single mom."
"The Colombian government on Saturday said it believes the founder of the nation's largest rebel group died in March of natural causes," reports the Times' Chris Kraul.
"The Ministry of Defense said in a statement that information from 'various military intelligence sources' had led it to conclude that Pedro Antonio Marin, 77, founder and leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, died March 26 of a heart attack."
Kraul continues that, although "the government provided no photos or forensic evidence" of the death of the man also known by aliases Manuel Marulanda and "Sureshot," a member of President Alvaro Uribe's Cabinet "said in an interview Saturday that intelligence sources heard in January that Marin was mortally ill. 'Highly reliable' word came last week that Marin, one of the world's longest-lived rebels, had died in an eastern jungle state."
It's not exactly Disneyland's Indiana Jones Adventure, but the "Caminata Nocturna" (Night Hike) is becoming an unusual tourist attraction with a sociological edge, the Los Angeles Times' Reed Johnson writes from Mexico City. The roughly 7-mile night hike through a park in rural Mexico attempts to give visitors a sense of what it's like for illegal immigrants trying to cross the U.S. border.
The hike is run by residents of a village in the rural Mexican state of Hidalgo, which has been decimated by immigration to the U.S. For $10 a person, tourists run up mountains and along a riverbank while being pursued by actors impersonating U.S. Border Patrol agents in pickup trucks. The "agents" fire guns and try to get the "immigrants" to surrender. The hike started in 2004 and has been drawing visitors not only from Mexico but the U.S., Europe and Japan. It takes place every Saturday night.
The amphibious assault ship Boxer is off the coast of Acajutla in El Salvador as part of a humanitarian mission called Continuing Promise 2008.
The ship, with dozens of medical personnel and Seabees, left San Diego on April 28 for a two-month mission that will include stops off Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru.
Setting up clinics ashore, U.S. personnel, working with host-country counterparts, are seeing about 600 to 700 patients a day for dental, optometry and primary care, the Navy said. In Guatemala, 5,000 patients were treated; 1,000 pairs of eyeglasses were distributed; and 1,000 animals were inspected by U.S. veterinarians.
Seabees are busy doing roofing, plumbing and repair on schools and churches
Kevin Thomas commends Christopher Zalla's "Sangre de Mi Sangre," a movie about illegal immigrants living in New York, in this Los Angeles Times review.
He describes the movie, which translates as "Blood of My Blood," as "a great, impassioned immigrant odyssey in which the desperation of illegal immigrants to make it across the Mexico border at any cost drives a compelling, suspenseful fable of innocence and betrayal."
"Sangre de Mi Sangre" is the latest film to tackle the hot-button issue of immigration on the movie screen.
Earlier this year, "La Misma Luna" (Under the Same Moon) hit theaters, and dealt with the issue of families separated by borders. Click here to read our feature story and watch a video interview with direct Patricia Riggen and writer Ligiah Villalobos.
Citing evidence gleaned from a dead rebel's computers, Colombia's chief prosecutor announced Thursday that he was investigating suspected illegal links between Colombia's largest guerrilla group and several prominent Colombians and foreigners, including a U.S. consultant, writes the Times' Chris Kraul.
The investigations are based on evidence taken from laptops recovered from the camp of Raul Reyes, second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Colombian forces killed Reyes in a March 1 bombing raid in Ecuador, setting off a regional crisis. Read on...
The Mexican economy showed good growth for the first three months of this year, despite the fact that the United States is flirting with recession. Marla Dickerson writes in the L.A. Times:
"The fortunes of Mexico have long been linked to those of its northern neighbor, bound as the two countries are by geography, immigration, trade and investment. The U.S. housing industry, for example, which employs 1 in 5 Latino immigrants, is in a slump, resulting in a marked slowdown of remittances sent to Mexico. A prolonged downturn would undoubtedly hit Mexico hard."
Still, the nation's economy is holding up well. One factor is that much of the world economy is growing despite the U.S. slowdown. Although Mexico still ships about 80% of its exports to the U.S., its farmers and manufacturers are looking for new customers in Asia, Europe and the rest of Latin America.
At least 58 of the 500 Californians who lost their lives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were immigrants, according to a Los Angeles Times story based on a detailed analysis.
A rough, uncut version of Steven Soderbergh's highly anticipated movie about legendary Argentine revolutionary and guerrilla fighter Ernesto "Che" Guevara (see IMDB listing here) divided critics at Cannes this week.
Some critics faulted the film, which runs more than four hours, for not having a subplot, and complained that the Commandante appears diminished, if anything, by Soderbergh's interpretation.
"No doubt it will be back to the drawing board for 'Che,' Steven Soderbergh's intricately ambitious, defiantly nondramatic four-hour, 18-minute presentation of scenes from the life of revolutionary icon Che Guevara. If the director has gone out of his way to avoid the usual Hollywood biopic conventions, he has also withheld any suggestion of why the charismatic doctor, fighter, diplomat, diarist and intellectual theorist became and remains such a legendary figure; if anything, Che seems diminished by the way heâs portrayed here. ... Neither half feels remotely like a satisfying stand-alone film, while the whole offers far too many aggravations for its paltry rewards." Todd McCarthy, Variety.
Read the Los Angeles Times report here and BBC Mundo's for Spanish language.
Federal grand juries in Key West and Miami have indicted 28 South Florida men on charges of smuggling immigrants into the United States, writes Carol J. Williams today.
The number of Cubans arriving in the U.S. illegally has risen by double digits in each of t
